Category Archives: Italy

‘I didn’t know if she was alive’: the Australian couple split apart as Covid-19 tore through their cruise ship

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David Connell and his wife Margaret were separated for weeks in Italy after catching coronavirus on the Costa Luminosa. For days, David didn’t know if his wife had survived

‘I didn’t know if she was alive’: Australian couple separated overseas when Covid-19 hit cruise ship

‘I didn’t know if she was alive’: the Australian couple split apart as Covid-19 tore through their cruise ship

David Connell had to pack his wife Margaret’s luggage quickly. She was sick, lying on the cabin’s bed, conscious but barely.

Her knitting and a book were already in her bag, he threw in some essentials and put both their phones in his pocket for safekeeping. They were headed from their cruise ship to a hospital in Italy, which on 22 March was one of the countries most heavily infected by Covid-19.

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Calls for investigation into mysterious death of Italian UN monitor in Colombia

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  • Doubts over claim that Mario Paciolla, 33, killed himself
  • Mayor of Naples joins calls for truth and justice

The mayor of Naples has joined human rights groups in calling for “truth and justice” following the death of an Italian United Nations volunteer who had been on a peace mission in Colombia.

Mario Paciolla, 33, from Naples, was found dead on 15 July at his home in San Vicente de Caguán, a town in Colombia’s southern jungle long used as a strategic rearguard for rebel groups and drug traffickers.

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Rescuers struggle to free sperm whale trapped in netting off Sicily

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Divers and biologists trying to free whale caught in illegal netting near island of Salina

The Italian coastguard is struggling to free a sperm whale caught up in illegal fishing netting off the coast of one of Sicily’s Aeolian islands.

A team of divers and biologists have been working for more than 48 hours to help the whale close to the island of Salina. The whale’s huge size and agitated state has made the operation more challenging.

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EU leaders go into extra time as tempers fray at coronavirus summit

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Proposals on the size and terms of a recovery fund have led to splits between member states

Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron said they are willing to walk away from a summit of EU leaders, as they arrived at the third day of a long and acrimonious debate on the terms of a €750bn (£682bn) pandemic recovery fund.

With the EU split between northern and southern member states as well as eastern and western, France’s president and the German chancellor both indicated their patience was waning despite the need to respond to the economic recession facing the bloc.

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EU leaders in bitter clash over Covid-19 recovery package

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Orbán accuses Netherlands’ Rutte of ‘communist’ tactics on tense third day of talks

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, accused his Dutch counterpart of using the same methods as his country’s former communist leaders on Sunday, as EU leaders publicly clashed during tense and acrimonious negotiations over the terms of a proposed €1.8tn budget and recovery package for the bloc.

A third difficult day of a summit of the EU’s 27 heads of state and government – the first in person for five months – saw movement towards agreement as talks stretched deep into the night, but laid bare the deep splits between north and south, and east and west.

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Medical error led to painter Raphael’s death, study finds

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Bloodletting contributed to worsening health of painter, who probably had pneumonia

A medical error contributed to killing the Italian painter Raphael, according to the latest reconstruction of the circumstances surrounding the Renaissance master’s untimely death.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino is believed to have been aged 37 when he died in Rome on 6 April 1520, eight days after contracting a fever. Several museums in Italy are holding exhibitions to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death.

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‘Italy’s Robinson Crusoe’ despairs as eviction from island paradise looms

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Mauro Morandi, 81, has lived on Budelli near Sardinia since his catamaran broke down in 1989

He has lived alone on an Italian paradise island for over three decades and intimately knows its ecosystem. But as eviction looms, Mauro Morandi, 81, has plunged into despair.

Labelled “Italy’s Robinson Crusoe”, Morandi, originally from the Emilia-Romagna city of Modena, stumbled across Budelli, an island off Sardinia famous for its pink-sanded beach, in 1989 after his catamaran broke down on the way to the South Pacific. In a fortuitous twist of fate, he discovered that the island’s caretaker was about to retire, and so he abandoned the sailing trip, sold his boat and took over the role.

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Italy deploys soldiers to town housing quarantined migrants

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Residents protest against arrival of people who tested positive for coronavirus

Italy has deployed dozens of soldiers to a town in Calabria to patrol apartment buildings where rescued migrants who tested positive for coronavirus have been placed under quarantine.

The decision follows residents’ protests in Amantea, in the province of Cosenza, where 13 people from Bangladesh were moved to after arriving in the coastal town of Roccella Jonica last week and testing positive for the virus.

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Bereaved urge EU chief to supervise Italian coronavirus inquiry

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Relatives say there appear to be ‘signs of crimes against humanity’ in Lombardy region

Relatives of coronavirus victims in Italy have urged the European commission president to supervise an investigation into the deaths, as 100 new cases were submitted to prosecutors on Monday.

In a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, the legal commission of Noi Denunceremo (We Will Denounce), the group driving the investigation, said there appeared to be “signs of unspeakable crimes against humanity” in Lombardy, the region worst hit by the virus in Italy.

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Brutal deaths of exploited migrants shine a spotlight on Italy’s farms

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Covid-19 exposed the country’s reliance on ‘invisible workers’ enduring wretched conditions – and a new visa scheme has not addressed the problem

Earlier this summer, as millions of Italians were locked down inside their homes, fruit and vegetables were left to rot in the fields despite the cost to the country’s economy.

Italy’s informal refugee and migrant workforce, who had previously worked long hours in wretched conditions for paltry wages to bring produce off the fields, were absent from the farms.

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Coronavirus brings tension and prejudice to Italy’s beaches

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Tempers fray over social distancing and visitors from Lombardy tell of discrimination

Tensions are breaking out on beaches and tourists from Lombardy have reported instances of discrimination as Italy’s first holiday season since the coronavirus outbreak gets under way.

Residents of Codogno, in Lodi province, the first town in the country’s badly affected Lombardy region to be quarantined, have claimed attempts to book holidays elsewhere in Italy were rebuffed after they revealed they would be travelling from a former “red zone”.

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Venice’s much-delayed flood defence system fully tested for first time

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Designed in 1984 and expected to be in service a decade ago, the project is still incomplete

Italy has successfully conducted the first full test of Venice’s flood defence system, a much-delayed project designed in 1984 but still incomplete a decade after it was due to come into service.

Amid much fanfare, the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, activated the 78 mobile barriers of the Mose dam on Friday. “We’re here for a test, not a parade,” Conte, who was greeted in Venice by activists who have long protested against the project, told reporters. “The government wants to check the progress of the work.”

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Médecins Sans Frontières is ‘institutionally racist’, say 1,000 insiders

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Medical charity accused of shoring up colonialism and white supremacy in its work

The medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières is institutionally racist and reinforces colonialism and white supremacy in its humanitarian work, according to an internal statement signed by 1,000 current and former members of staff.

The statement accused MSF of failing to acknowledge the extent of racism perpetuated by its policies, hiring practices, workplace culture and “dehumanising” programmes, run by a “privileged white minority” workforce.

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Sex traffickers left thousands of women to starve during Italy lockdown

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Revealed: Gangs abandoned trafficked Nigerian women without access to food or funds amid coronavirus pandemic

Thousands of Nigerian women forced into prostitution were left to starve by sex traffickers during the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, the Guardian can reveal.

According to the UN’s International Office for Migration (IOM), more than 80% of the tens of thousands of Nigerian women who arrived in Italy from Libya in recent years were victims of highly organised sex trafficking gangs. The women are forced into prostitution to pay off debts of up to €40,000 (£36,000) and controlled through violence and fear of “juju” black magic rituals they are made to undergo before their journey to Europe.

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Ennio Morricone, Oscar-winning Italian film composer, dies aged 91

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Morricone’s work helped define the western but he went on to work across all film genres

Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer whose symphonic scores backed everything from spaghetti westerns to romance, horror and sci-fi films, has died aged 91.

Morricone had broken his femur days ago and died during the night in a clinic in Rome. His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Giorgio Assumma. In a statement, Assumma said that the composer “died at dawn on 6 July in Rome with the comfort of faith. He preserved until the final moment full lucidity and great dignity.

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Algae turns Italian Alps pink, prompting concerns over melting

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Pink snow observed on parts of the Presena glacier believed to be caused by plant that makes the ice darker, causing it to melt faster

Scientists in Italy are investigating the mysterious appearance of pink glacial ice in the Alps, caused by algae that accelerate the effects of climate change.

There is debate about where the algae come from, but Biagio Di Mauro of Italy’s National Research Council said the pink snow observed on parts of the Presena glacier is likely caused by the same plant found in Greenland.

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Italy breaks up child abuse ring ‘that shared images of babies’

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Police say material, including photos of acts with newborns, shared on a well-known instant messaging platform

Italian police say they have broken up a child abuse ring used to share illicit material, including photos of newborns, via an instant messaging platform.

Police said on Saturday that the crackdown involved dozens of search warrants and led to the arrest of three people for allegedly possessing what was described in a statement as “huge quantities of pornographic material depicting minors”. About 50 people are under investigation.

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Italian police seize £900m of ‘Isis drug’ fenethylline en route from Syria – video

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Police in Italy have seized more than 84m fenethylline tablets, weighing 14 tonnes, at the port of Salerno, in what they say is the biggest seizure of amphetamines in the world. Fenethylline is known by some as the 'Isis drug' after investigations found it was used by Islamic State fighters during battles and sold by the group for profit

This video does not include sound

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Record Covid-19 cases in California as some countries prepare for ‘universal’ testing

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LA closes beaches and businesses as hospitals fill up while Bavaria announces ‘test offensive’

California has reported record new infections following its reopening as Los Angeles county ordered all beaches closed for 4 July and the re-shuttering of some businesses.

Amid warnings hospitals were filling up and others could run out of intensive care beds in the coming weeks, the state broke its record on Monday for the highest number of new coronavirus cases reported in a single day, with more than 8,000 – the third time in eight days the state has broken a record for new cases.

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