Italy

ROME, August 10. /TASS/: Antibodies to coronavirus after receiving a second dose of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine were developed by 99% of the participants of a joint study by San Marino’s government and Italy’s Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases, representative of San Marino’s Institute for Social Security Franco Cavalli told TASS.

TRAPANI, Italy, Aug 7 (Reuters) - A ship carrying 257 migrants docked in the Italian port of Trapani on Saturday almost a week after rescuing the people from international waters off Tunisia.

Migrants onboard the vessel, mainly men from Morocco, Bangladesh, Egypt and Syria, waved and applauded as the ship, run by German organisation Sea Watch, approached the port of Trapani on the Italian island of Sicily.

One sat on deck and held up a sign which read "Italy Good".

MILAN, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said, and the daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 from 6,513.

Italy has registered 128,068 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eighth-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.355 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with COVID-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 1,954 on Sunday, up from 1,851 a day earlier.

ROME, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Ministers from the Group of 20 countries on Friday concluded two days of talks on the role of culture in the world, saying that investing in cultural initiatives can be a driver of sustainable economic growth and that they should be a part of future G20 negotiations.

ROME, July 29. /TASS/: The Culture Ministers Meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20) put the culture to the forefront for recovery after the pandemic, Culture Minister of Italy Dario Franceschini told TASS in an interview. 

ROME, July 29 (Reuters) - Mario Draghi is struggling to hold together his coalition government due to divisions over a proposed justice reform which is contested by the 5-Star Movement, the largest ruling party, and by many Italian prosecutors.

Italy has long been dogged by a dysfunctional, painfully slow judicial system, but repeated attempts to overhaul it have failed to significantly reduce backlogs in many courts.

ROME, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Energy and environment ministers of the G20 group closed a two-day meeting with a 58-article final communique on Friday, but without an agreement on a specific commitment related to global temperature target, the G20 Italian presidency said.

At the end of the summit held in the southern city of Naples, Italy's Ecological Transition Minister Roberto Cingolani said the G20 group -- which represents the 20 countries with the largest economies in the world -- was unable to find a wording related to the climate change commitment that could satisfy everyone.

ROME, July 22 (Xinhua) -- A newly-published research paper indicates that the novel coronavirus could have circulated in Italy in late 2019, weeks before it was formally identified in China.

Researchers in northern Italy have retested blood samples taken for cancer screening, and found coronavirus antibodies in samples taken in as far back as October 2019. The new paper, not yet peer-reviewed, was published this week by MedRxiv, an online medical preprint entity.

NAPLES, July 22 (Reuters) - Environment and energy ministers from the Group of 20 rich nations were making little progress on Thursday on how to reach climate goals, officials said, with a cluster of countries resisting any firm commitments.

The G20 meeting in Naples discussed biodiversity and the natural environment on Thursday, while energy and climate change will be on Friday's agenda. Diplomats have struggled for days to find meaningful common ground on both topics.

OLBIA, Italy July 17 (Reuters) - Forces in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region have released around 1,000 government soldiers captured during recent fighting, the head of its ruling party said, as both sides prepared for a showdown over contested land in the west of the region.

Debretsion Gebremichael, leader of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), told Reuters by satellite phone late on Friday that they have released 1,000 low-ranking soldiers.

"More than 5,000 (soldiers) are still with us, and we will keep the senior officers who will face trial," he said.