Italy

ROME (AP) — A moderate earthquake rattled Italy’s financial capital of Milan on Saturday morning. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Italy’s Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology said the quake had a preliminary magnitude between 4.3 and 4.8. It struck at 11:34 a.m. (1034 GMT; 5:34 a.m. EST) in the province of Bergamo.

Italy’s fire department tweeted that “at the moment no reports of damage or requests for rescue” had arrived in its operations center.

ROME, December 17. /TASS/: The ISS crew commander must be ready for any challenges and bear the responsibility for the safety of the crew in an emergency, Samantha Cristoforetti, a European Space Agency astronaut that will lead a mission to the space outpost, said in an interview with TASS on Tuesday.

ROME, Dec 17 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A third of people in the 420-million-strong Arab world do not have enough to eat, the United Nations said, highlighting that 69 million suffered from malnutrition last year.

  In a report, the world body’s Food and Agriculture Organization said that between 2019 and 2020, the number of malnourished in the Arab world rose by 4.8 million people to 69 million, nearly 16 percent of the population.

ROME, Dec 15 (NNN-AGENCIES) – The Italian government, yesterday, approved a decree, allowing extension of the state of emergency over the pandemic for another three months.

Due to expire on Dec 31, the state of emergency was extended until Mar 31, 2022, thus confirming the cabinet’s special powers, in terms of anti-virus rules and crisis management.

The decree allows the central government to keep in place the latest anti-virus restrictions, issued to contain the fourth pandemic wave during the Christmas and New Year holidays.

ROME, December 11. /TASS/: The authorities of the Republic of San Marino will begin using the Russian Sputnik Light vaccine as a booster dose on December 22, representative of San Marino’s Institute for Social Security Franco Cavalli told a TASS correspondent on Saturday.

"The first shots with Sputnik Light as a booster dose will be administered in San Marino on December 22, almost 300 people have already signed up," he said.

MILAN (AP) — Italy is making life more uncomfortable for unvaccinated people as the holidays draw near, excluding them from indoor restaurants, theaters and museums to reduce the spread of coronavirus and encourage vaccine skeptics to get their shots.

MILAN, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Italy reported 43 coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday compared to 75 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new reported infections fell to 15,021 from 16,632.

Italy has registered 134,195 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak began in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the ninth-highest in the world.

Patients in hospital with COVID-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 5,597 on Sunday, up from 5,428 a day earlier.

29 Nov 2021; MEMO: Pope Francis said on Monday that migrants were being exploited as "pawns" on a political chessboard in an apparent reference to the crisis at the Belarus border, Reuters reports.

Thousands of migrants are stuck on the European Union's eastern frontier in what the EU says is a crisis Minsk engineered by distributing Belarusian visas in the Middle East, flying them in, and letting them go to the border.

ROME, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has been identified in a citizen from Italy's southern Campania region, who returned to Milan from Mozambique "some days ago," Italian news agency ANSA reported Sunday.

The patient, an employee at an international company, "had been vaccinated with two doses," ANSA reported.

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that a bilateral treaty signed on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron to strengthen bilateral cooperation would in turn strengthen the European Union, including such areas as defense, aerospace and technology.

The treaty deepens cooperation “in crucial sectors, from security to justice, from research to industry,” Draghi told a press conference.

That includes spending to create “a true European defense” that Draghi said “obviously is complementary to NATO” and doesn’t substitute the alliance.