Italy

VATICAN CITY, Jan 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Pope Francis praised China’s “great commitment” to contain the coronavirus outbreak and said he was praying for the dead, the sick, and families of victims.

“I would like also to be close to and pray for the people who are sick because of the virus that has spread through China,” Francis told tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s Square for his weekly message and blessing.

26 January 2020; AFP: Italians vote Sunday in a key regional election which the far-right hopes will shake the country's fragile coalition government to its core and return strongman Matteo Salvini to power.

26 Jan 2019; MEMO: Pope Francis met Iraq’s president on Saturday and the two agreed that the country’s sovereignty must be respected, following attacks on Iraqi territory this month by the United States and Iran.

President Barham Salih held private talks for about 30 minutes with the pope and then met the Vatican’s two top diplomats, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, its foreign minister.

ROME (Reuters) - Luigi di Maio will step down as leader of Italy’s co-governing 5-Star movement on Wednesday, a senior 5-Star source said.

Di Maio, who is also foreign minister, is expected to meet other 5-Star ministers during the morning and is due to announce his resignation at a party meeting in the afternoon, several newspapers reported.

Di Maio and his spokesman declined to comment.

Italian government bond yields jumped 5-8 bps across the yield curve on the reports.

19 Jan 2019; MEMO: The EastMed pipeline project will fail to be a feasible plan in terms of its cost and construction process, according to Italy’s foreign minister, Anadolu Agency reports.

“It is obvious that the EastMed pipeline project, proposed by Greece, will not be an option in the medium and long-term compared to other projects, when its cost and the construction process are taken into consideration,” Luigi Di Maio told Anadolu Agency.

Vatican City, Jan 13 (AP) Retired Pope Benedict XVI has broken his silence to reaffirm the value of priestly celibacy, co-authoring a bombshell book at the precise moment that Pope Francis is weighing whether to allow married men to be ordained to address the Catholic priest shortage.

Benedict wrote the book, "From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church," along with his fellow conservative, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who heads the Vatican's liturgy office and has been a quiet critic of Francis.

ROME (Reuters) - World food prices surged for the third consecutive month to reach a five-year high in December, lifted by strong rises in vegetable oils, sugar and dairy as well as rebounding cereal prices, the United Nations food agency said on Thursday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food price index, which measures monthly changes for a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar jumped to its highest point since Dec. 2014, averaging 181.7 points, up 2.5% on the previous month.

MILAN (Reuters) - An investigation by Italy’s transport ministry into the deadly collapse of a bridge operated by Atlantia has shown “serious and unforgivable acts of negligence”, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was quoted as saying on Monday.

Conte told la Repubblica newspaper in an interview the government was nearing a decision on whether to revoke Atlantia’s motorway concession after a highway bridge collapsed in August 2018 killing 43 people in the city of Genoa.

ROME, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Italians need to be more confident and strengthen their social cohesion, Italian President Sergio Mattarella said in his New Year speech on Tuesday.

The Italian society was experiencing many difficulties and fractures, which were not overlooked, and yet it should create the right conditions "to allow all of our resources to come to light and express themselves without impediments," according to the president.

ROME, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- The inflow of new bad loans in Italy will remain at pre-crisis levels in the next two years, although it would stop decreasing due to an economic slowdown, the Italian Banking Association (ABI) forecast on Friday.

In its new Outlook, provided together with credit rating company Cerved, ABI said levels of non-performing loans (NPLs) to non-financial companies dropped as expected in 2019, reaching 3.1 percent.