Italy

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Venetians stopped in dismay Wednesday to pay respects to the 21 foreign tourists who were killed when an all-electric shuttle bus crashed through an overpass guardrail and fence, plunging more than 10 meters to the ground.

It’s a road they had traveled many times and considered safe but now stopped to inspect the aging guardrail and rusted fence.

The bus, which was just a year old, crashed to the ground and landed upside down on Tuesday night. The 40-year-old driver was among those killed and 15 people were injured.

ROME, Sept 27 (Reuters) - A leading volcanologist has warned that mass evacuations might be needed in a town close to Naples, which sits on a so-called Super Volcano that has been hit by hundreds of small earthquakes in recent weeks.

A 4.2 magnitude earthquake struck the area early on Wednesday, the strongest jolt in 40 years to rattle the volcanic field, known as the Campi Flegrei or Phlegraean Fields from the Greek word for burning.

ROME, Sept 24 (Reuters) - A German plan to finance charities helping migrants in the Mediterranean causes difficulties for Italy, defence minister Guido Crosetto said on Sunday, as Rome tries to enforce tougher measures to stem the flow of sea arrivals.

Following reports in Italian media, a spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said on Friday that Berlin was implementing a parliamentary financial support programme for both civilian sea rescue and projects on land.

ROME, Sept 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A 4.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Italy north of Florence on Monday morning, sending residents into the streets but causing no immediate damage, authorities said. 

Schools were closed in some areas as a precaution and trains were delayed pending checks on the railway lines.

Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) measured the quake at 4.8 on the Richter scale, with its epicentre near Marradi, a town of about 3,000 residents in the province of Florence within the Apennine mountain range.

ROME, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Data show that the trade volume between China and Italy has increased for three consecutive years in 2022. Bilateral cooperation in various fields has been fruitful and has a broad prospect, experts said.

Vito Petrocelli, former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Italian Senate, told Xinhua that Italy and China have highly complementary economies, whose bilateral relationship, especially in the economic and trade fields, has made a "leap forward."

LAMPEDUSA, Italy, Sept 14 (Reuters) - The small Italian island of Lampedusa is being overwhelmed by the number of migrants arriving on its shores, its mayor said on Thursday, after thousands of people landed from North Africa on flimsy boats over the past two days.

Lampedusa sits in the Mediterranean between Tunisia, Malta and the larger Italian island of Sicily and is a first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the European Union.

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the G20 summit and vowed Saturday to “consolidate and deepen” relations, as Rome considers abandoning Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative of Chinese-built and -funded infrastructure projects.

Neither government mentioned the initiative in brief statements after the meeting in New Delhi, the first between Meloni and Li.

VENICE, Italy, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Venice plans to experiment with an admission fee of 5 euros($5.35) for day trippers next year to try to manage the flow of tourists drawn to its historic canals, the city council said on Tuesday.

The fee will be applied on a trial basis on 30 days next year, focusing mainly on spring bank holidays and summer weekends when tourism numbers are at their peak. All visitors over the age of 14 will have to pay it.

FORNELLI, Italy, Sept 3 (Reuters) - In October 1943, after the Nazis began a brutal occupation of their former ally, German troops hanged six Italian civilians on a hillside in southern Italy as collective punishment for the killing of a soldier, who had been foraging for food.

Eighty years later, some of the relatives of the men put to death in Fornelli are finally set to receive a share of 12 million euros ($13 million) awarded by an Italian court as compensation for their families' trauma.

ROME (AP) — A former Italian premier, in an interview published on Saturday, contended that a French air force missile accidentally brought down a passenger jet over the Mediterranean Sea in 1980 in a failed bid to assassinate Libya’s then leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Former two-time Premier Giuliano Amato appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron to either refute or confirm his assertion about the cause of the crash on June 27, 1980, which killed all 81 persons aboard the Italian domestic flight.