Italy

ROME, Sept. 6 (Xinhua) -- Ministers of health from the Group of Twenty (G20) on Monday took a step toward a plan to curb the spread of the coronavirus among vulnerable populations in poor countries.

After two days of talks, the ministers agreed on a broad plan to provide financial assistance and vaccines to slow the spread of the pandemic in the poorest countries, according to Italian Minister of Health Roberto Speranza.

CERNOBBIO (Italy), Sept 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The challenges to security emerging from the upheaval in Afghanistan should be a wake-up call for the European Union, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, urging the EU to be more ambitious on defence and on global leadership.

“Europe has to become No 3 super-power besides China and the United States. Let’s open our eyes, we are facing threats and we cannot rely anymore on the protection of the United States,” Le Maire told reporters during an annual business conference in Cernobbio on Lake Como.

CERNOBBIO, Italy, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Europe will miss a key climate target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20 years unless it picks up the pace on energy transition measures and improves governance, a study involving Europe’s biggest utility Enel (ENEI.MI) said.

At the current pace, Europe will only reach its 2030 target for a 55% reduction in greenhouse gases in 2051, a study by Enel Foundation and the European House-Ambrosetti said.

03 Sep 2021; MEMO: The evacuation of people from Afghanistan revealed the European Union's incompetence in managing the migration issue, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said yesterday. Draghi told journalists in Rome that the problem lies "within the union itself."

Denouncing countries which have refused to accommodate Afghan refugees, Draghi warned that Afghanistan is witnessing a "terrible tragedy".

ROME, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Italy will start administering a third COVID-19 vaccine shot to people with the most fragile immune systems and plans to extend the use of the so-called Green Pass certificate, the country's leaders said here on Thursday.

The government might also consider making COVID-19 vaccination compulsory for everyone.

Following the first cabinet meeting after the summer break, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said during a joint press conference with several ministers that 80 percent of the country's population would be fully immunized by the end of September.

MILAN (AP) — Italian firefighters on Monday were tackling remaining hotspots and continuing to search a 20-story apartment building in Milan that was destroyed by fire, but said that there was no indication that anyone was missing inside.

Some cases of smoke inhalation were reported from Sunday’s blaze, but no serious injuries or deaths.

ROME, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Staff involved in efforts to evacuate as many people from Kabul as possible after the Taliban seized power did their best in extremely difficult conditions, NATO's senior civilian representative to Afghanistan said on Saturday.

"We have a clean conscience ... because with what we had, we did our best under the circumstances," Italian diplomat Stefano Pontecorvo told reporters on arriving in Rome.

ROME, August 27. /TASS/: Russia and Italy support the full implementation of the Minsk Accords on settling the conflict in Ukraine and the positions of both parties are identical on this issue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a joint press conference following talks with his Italian counterpart Luigi di Maio on Friday.

ROME, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was discharged from Milan's San Raffaele hospital on Friday after an overnight stay for a check up, a source from his Forza Italia party said.

Berlusconi, 84, has been in and out of hospital since contracting coronavirus last September. He said at the time that it was "the most dangerous challenge" of his life.

The four-times prime minister and billionaire businessman underwent major heart surgery in 2016 and has also survived prostate cancer.

MILAN (AP) — The Italian charity Pangea helped tens of thousands of Afghan women become self-supporting in the last 20 years. Now, dozens of its staff in Afghanistan are in hiding with their families amid reports that Taliban are going door-to-door in search of citizens who worked with Westerners.

Pangea founder Luca Lo Presti has asked that 30 Afghan charity workers and their families be included on Italian flights that have carried 500 people to safety this week, but the requests were flatly refused. On Thursday, the military coordinator told him: “Not today.”