Italy

ROME, July 30 (Reuters) - Italy made an "improvised and atrocious" decision when it joined China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) four years ago as it did little to boost exports, Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said in an interview published on Sunday.

Italy signed up to the BRI under a previous government, becoming the only major Western country to have taken such a step. Crosetto is part of an administration that is considering how to break free of the agreement.

ROME, July 28 (Reuters) - The wreck of an ancient Roman cargo ship from more than 2,000 years ago has been found off the coast near Rome, the arts squad of Italy's Carabinieri police said on Friday.

The ship was located off the port of Civitavecchia, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north-west of the Italian capital, on a sandy seabed at a depth of about 160 metres (525 ft), a statement said.

CATANIA, Italy, July 26 (Reuters) - A fire early last week at Sicily's main airport is still causing massive disruption for visitors to the island, laying bare the disorganisation and poor infrastructure that challenge Italy's tourism ambitions.

The fire broke out on July 17 at Catania airport, below Mount Etna, which acts as a hub for the east of Sicily and attracts more arrivals than the capital Palermo.

MILAN, July 25 (Reuters) - Two women were killed and a 16-year-old boy seriously injured as severe storms battered northern Italy overnight, while a wild fire in Sicily forced the temporary closure of Palermo airport.

With much of southern Italy still baking in a heatwave, the overnight storm in Milan tore off roofs and uprooted hundreds of trees, blocking roads, smashing parked cars and disrupting overground transportation in the Italian financial capital.

ROME (AP) — The Jesuits said Monday that a famous artist priest is definitively expelled from the religious order for sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women, and lamented they couldn’t prosecute him more vigorously under the Vatican’s internal procedures.

The Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik remains a Catholic priest but is no longer a Jesuit priest, after he didn’t appeal his June expulsion decree, said Rupnik’s former superior, the Rev. Johan Verschueren.

ROME, July 23 (Reuters) - Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will visit the White House on Thursday, said that U.S. President Joe Biden had never challenged her on the issue of Rome being part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Meloni leads the only major Western country to have joined China's BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni on Sunday called for new, more equal relationships between Europe and migrants’ countries of origin and transit as she convened a summit of some 20 nations, EU officials and international organizations aimed at stanching flows of illegal migration.

ROME (AP) — Italian health officials intensified heat warnings as southern Europe began a brutally hot week on Monday with temperatures expected to top 40 C — or 104 F — on a continent already overburdened by tourists.

ROME, July 2 (Xinhua) -- Qu Dongyu was re-elected as director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) here on Sunday during the ongoing 43rd session of the FAO Conference.

Qu was first elected in June 2019 to head the UN agency and is the first Chinese national to serve in the position.

ROME, June 29 (Reuters) - The reluctance of Italy's right-wing coalition to ratify reform of a vital euro zone bailout fund is rooted in a deep distrust of the European Union, analysts and lawmakers said, leaving Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni no easy way out of a political mess.

Italy is the only euro zone country that has not yet given a green light to a treaty that revises the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) - a fund created in 2012 after the euro zone sovereign debt crisis to provide a financial firewall for members of the currency bloc.