Italy

ROME, Aug 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Italian-American automaker, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), posted net losses of one billion euros (1.18 billion U.S. dollars), in the second quarter (Q2) this year, the company said, yesterday.

FCA said, it shipped 424,000 vehicles worldwide in Q2, down by 63 percent, compared to the same period last year, due to COVID-19 pandemic-related production stoppages and demand disruptions.

The automaker added, it secured a three-year, 6.3-billion-euro credit facility with Intesa Sanpaolo, one of Italy’s major banking groups.

ROME, July 30 (Xinhua) -- The number of coronavirus infections is on the rise in three-quarters of Italy's regions, according to a research paper released Thursday by the GIMBE Foundation, with the country as a whole seeing a net week-by-week rise in infections for the first time since April.

ROME (AP) — The governor of Lombardy, Italy’s hardest-hit region in the pandemic, acknowledged Saturday that he is being investigated by Milan prosecutors over a lucrative contract to obtain protective medical gowns from his brother-in-law’s company.

The contract for 75,000 gowns reportedly was awarded without public bidding in April, when the coronavirus outbreak was devastating Italy, Italian news reports said.

LAMPEDUSA, Italy (Reuters) - About 100 migrants who crossed the Mediterranean in small boats landed on the southern island of Lampedusa during the night, the latest in a wave of arrivals straining an already overcrowded holding centre.

Officials said the migrants, arriving from Libya, were either rescued at sea or managed to avoid detection and reach the island.

The arrivals of small boats, some carrying as few as eight people, brought to nearly 1,000 the number of migrants who have reached the island from Libya in the last three days.

MILAN (Reuters) - Italy’s antitrust authority said on Wednesday it had opened an investigation into whether Apple Inc and Amazon Inc had engaged in anti-competitive cooperation in the sale of Apple products and Beats headphones.

It said the investigation was aimed at establishing whether Apple and Amazon had reached an anti-competitive agreement to prevent electronics reailers not included in Apple’s official programme to sell the products.

It added that Antitrust officials searched Amazon and Apple offices in Italy on Wednesday.

ROME, July 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The captain of an Italian-flagged ship is to be tried for allegedly forcing migrants back to Libya, in the first such case in Italy.

The Asso 28 supply ship picked up 101 migrants near an oil and gas rig in international waters, before taking them to the port of Tripoli and handing them over to the Libyan coast guard, according to prosecutors in Naples.

ROME (AP) — The United Nations says the ranks of the world’s hungry grew by 10 million last year and warns that the coronavirus pandemic could push as many as 130 million more people into chronic hunger this year.

The grim assessment was contained in the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, an annual report released Monday by the five U.N. agencies that produced it.

ROME (AP) — The world surpassed two sobering coronavirus milestones Sunday -- 500,000 confirmed deaths, 10 million confirmed cases -- and hit another high mark for daily new infections as governments that attempted reopenings continued to backtrack and warn that worse news could be yet to come.

“COVID-19 has taken a very swift and very dangerous turn in Texas over just the past few weeks,” said Gov. Greg Abbott, who allowed businesses to start reopening in early May but on Friday shut down bars and limited restaurant dining amid a spike in cases.

Rome, Jun 26 (AP/PTI) Pope Francis has ordered a Polish bishop to leave his central diocese and let someone else run it while he is under investigation for covering up cases of sexual abuse that were featured in a second clergy abuse documentary that has rocked Poland's Catholic Church.

Francis on Thursday named the archbishop of Lodz, Grzegorz Rys, to temporarily take over as head of the Kalisz diocese.

ROME, June 20 (NNN-XINHUA) – A deal for Italy to export two kinds of special rice to China is seen as a sign of continued strengthening of ties between the two countries, as it does about the popularity of Italian rice-based cuisine.

Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, announced recently that, the two countries finalised a deal that will allow Italy to export Arborio and Carnaroli rice to China. The agreement is one of the latest commercial deals between the two countries.