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Geography is, in part, destiny for Italy: The country will always be a bridge between Africa and Europe, as the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean so starkly shows.

A surge of refugees this year, usually transported by smugglers on overcrowded vessels, has sought to reach Europe via the Libyan coast. A boatload of 900 migrants who embarked from Libya are now feared dead in the latest sinking. Over 10,000 were rescued off the coast of Italy in the last week alone. European leaders are scrambling to deal with this emergency.

Many of the refugees involved in recent disasters come from some of Italy's former colonies in North and East Africa, namely Eritrea (occupied from 1890-1941) and Somalia (1908-1941). As migrants, Libyans are fewer in number, but Libya (1912-1941

Italy is on course for a hung parliament after voters backed right-wing and populist parties, vote projections based on partial results suggest.Ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition looks set to win the most seats in the lower house of parliament.

Though no party will be able to rule alone based on the early poll figures, the surge of support for populist outfits has been compared with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the US.Vote projection figures put the Eurosceptic, anti-establishment Five Star Movement in second place, after the centre-right coalition.

The anti-establishment Five Star party was founded in 2009 by comedian Beppe Grillo, who denounced cronyism in Italian politics. Current leader Luigi Di Maio has pledged a universal basic income schemeMatteo Renzi's Democratic Party has partnered with three smaller parties to form a centre-left, pro-EU bloc that has staked its campaign on proposals to revive the economy. Mr Renzi resigned as PM in December 2016.

The United States has surpassed Italy and China in having the most confirmed coronavirus cases, according to a global case tracker run by Johns Hopkins University.

overwhelm hospitals in the coming days and weeks.

As of Thursday afternoon, the United States was reporting more than 82,400 cases, above China’s tally of more than 81,700 and Italy’s count of more than 80,500.

The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy barrelled past 10,000 on Saturday, a figure that made an extension of a national lockdown almost certain.

Officials said 889 more people died in the previous 24 hours, the second highest daily tally since the epidemic emerged on Feb. 21, and that total fatalities reached 10,023.

Confirmed cases rose by about 6,000 to 92,472, the second-highest number of cases in the world behind the United States.

In Italy, 9.5 percent of the people who have tested positive for the virus have succumbed to covid-19, according to data compiled at Johns Hopkins University. In France, the rate is 4.3 percent. But in Germany, it’s 0.4 percent.

The biggest reason for the difference, infectious disease experts say, is Germany’s work in the early days of its outbreak to track, test and contain infection clusters. That means Germany has a truer picture of the size of its outbreak than places that test only the obviously symptomatic, most seriously ill or highest-risk patients.

Germany, with 31,150 cases at midday Tuesday, appeared to have a larger outbreak than France, with 20,149. But the higher death rate in France implies there were more undiagnosed cases there. France’s outbreak could be larger than Germany’s.

CASALPUSTERLENGO, Italy — Europe confronted its first major outbreak of the coronavirus as an eruption of more than 150 cases in Italy prompted officials on Sunday to lock down at least 10 towns, close schools in major cities and cancel sporting events and cultural touchstones, including the end of the Venice carnival.

The perception of a rising threat was amplified on television channels, newspaper headlines and social media feeds across Europe, where leaders could face their greatest challenge since the 2015 migration crisis.

The Trump administration has barred entry to the United States by most foreign nationals who have recently visited China, where the virus first appeared and spread. Much of the world has adopted similar controls, but the virus has continued to spread, most notably to South Korea, where more cases have been recorded than anywhere else outside China, and this past week to Iran, where eight deaths have been reported.

They call them corona taxis: Medics outfitted in protective gear, driving around the empty streets of Heidelberg to check on patients who are at home, five or six days into being sick with the coronavirus.They take a blood test, looking for signs that a patient is about to go into a steep decline. They might suggest hospitalization, even to a patient who has only mild symptoms; the chances of surviving that decline are vastly improved by being in a hospital when it begins.

Heidelberg’s corona taxis are only one initiative in one city. But they illustrate a level of engagement and a commitment of public resources in fighting the epidemic that help explain one of the most intriguing puzzles of the pandemic: Why is Germany’s death rate so low?

According to Johns Hopkins University, the country had more than 92,000 laboratory-confirmed infections as of midday Saturday, more than any other country except the United States, Italy and Spain.

Spain’s crisis has demonstrated that one symptom of the virus, by now as persistent as the fevers, aches and labored breathing it brings, has been the tendency of one government after another to ignore the experiences of countries where the virus has struck before it.

as in most nations, the Spanish authorities initially treated the virus as an external threat, rather than considering that their country could be the next domino to fall.

The epidemic has now forced Spaniards to confront the kind of struggle that could be recalled only by those old enough to have lived through the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

Venice was once one of the greatest trading powers in European history.

Venice was the European end of the Silk Road trade route which moved goods all the way from China, and consequently was a cosmopolitan city, a true melting pot.

Venice developed as a trading center, happy to do business with both the Islamic world as well as the Byzantine Empire, with whom they remained close.

For Italy and its neighbors, that call could not have come at a worse time.

Only days earlier, Prime Minister Mario Draghi reassured Italians who had become wary of the AstraZeneca vaccine. “There is no clear evidence, clear correlation, that these events are linked to the administration of the vaccine,” he said.

lest public opinion punish them if they seemed incautious by comparison, and for the sake of a united European front.

When Justinian came to the throne, his troops were fighting on the Euphrates River against the armies of the Persian king

the Treaty of Eternal Peace was ratified in 532. The treaty was on the whole favourable to the Byzantines, who lost no territory and whose suzerainty over the key district of Lazica (Colchis, in Asia Minor) was recognized by Persia.

In Italy, the mother province of the Roman Empire in which the older capital city (Rome) was situated, Justinian found a situation similar to that in North Africa and particularly favourable to his ambitions.

The Italian Bishops’ Conference on Friday presented its plan to investigate clerical abuse, but critics say it is insufficient and disappointing.

Seeking to address the concerns about the revelations of abuse that have devastated the church worldwide, the bishops announced that they would commission a report examining cases from 2020-21, to be published in November, as well as a second report that would analyze how clerical abuse had been handled in Italy in the past two decades.

Victims groups and their advocates in Italy have been frustrated by the church’s failure to follow in the footsteps of other countries — including Australia, Ireland and the United States — that have commissioned fully independent investigations carried out by third parties.

This is the way the euro ends — not with a bang but with bunga bunga. Not long ago, European leaders were insisting that Greece could and should stay on the euro while paying its debts in full. Now, with Italy falling off a cliff, it’s hard to see how the euro can survive at all.

if you look around the world you see that the big determining factor for interest rates isn’t the level of government debt but whether a government borrows in its own currency. Japan is much more deeply in debt than Italy, but the interest rate on long-term Japanese bonds is only about 1 percent to Italy’s 7 percent. Britain’s fiscal prospects look worse than Spain’s, but Britain can borrow at just a bit over 2 percent, while Spain is paying almost 6 percent. What has happened, it turns out, is that by going on the euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies. In particular, since euro-area countries can’t print money even in an emergency, they’re subject to funding disruptions in a way that nations that kept their own currencies aren’t

in the face of the current crisis, austerity has been a failure everywhere it has been tried: no country with significant debts has managed to slash its way back into the good graces of the financial markets. For example, Ireland is the good boy of Europe, having responded to its debt problems with savage austerity that has driven its unemployment rate to 14 percent. Yet the interest rate on Irish bonds is still above 8 percent — worse than Italy.

More than 4,200 migrants trying to reach Europe have been rescued from boats in the Mediterranean in the past 24 hours, the Italian coastguard has said.

In some of the most intense Mediterranean migrant traffic of the year, a total of 4,243 people were saved from fishing boats and rubber dinghies in 22 operations involving ships from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Belgium and Britain.

About 35,500 migrants arrived in Italy from the beginning of the year up to the first week of May, the UN refugee agency estimated, a number which has swelled considerably since. About 1,800 are either dead or missing.

“What do you mean by this term ‘laity’?” he asked. “Two words: inclusive and exclusive. The French way of understanding laity is to exclude. You have to ban every religious symbol. In Italy, by tradition, we understand laity as inclusive. You have to put value on your ‘belongings,’ including your religious ‘belongings.’”

He added: “It is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of belonging to a tradition.”

In Bologna, the prayer controversy quickly rippled into local newspapers and stirred anger on social media against the complainants. Some said that liberals were willing to make special accommodations to Muslims but not Catholics. Others warned that stripping schools of Christian rituals would open society to an Islamic invasion.

Spain’s central problem in the 17th century had been to maintain what remained of its European possessions and to retain control of its American empire

In the 17th century the greatest threat had come from a land power, France, jealous of Habsburg power in Europe; in the 18th it was to come from a sea power, England, while the Austrian Habsburgs became the main continental enemy of Spain

In 1700 (by the will of the childless Charles II) the duc d’Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, became Philip V of Spain

Italy’s Surging Populists Run Into a Political Muddle. But for How Long?

Another European election, another scene of political carnage. The stunning showing by the Five Star Movement and other populist parties in Italy’s election on Sunday shattered the establishment and suggested that the country was at the cusp of a political revolution.

A complicated law passed last year — and aimed at Five Star — made it difficult for any single party to win the election. Now, in typical Italian fashion, there is a muddle: No party, or coalition, has won enough support in parliament to form a government, thrusting the country into protracted negotiations over who will govern.

A coalition government has been agreed in Italy, ending months of uncertainty in the EU's fourth-biggest economy.Prime Minister-designate Giuseppe Conte presented his list of ministers to President Sergio Mattarella for the second time in a week and the new government will be sworn in on Friday.

After meeting President Mattarella, Mr Conte confirmed reports that the new candidate for the key finance post would be economics professor Giovanni Tria.

"We will work intensely to realise our political objectives which we have already put together in our government contract," Mr Conte was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. Italy is no stranger to political turmoil - it has had 64 governments since World War Two.

the first of five monarchs of the Angoulême branch of the House of Valois.

he waged campaigns in Italy (1515–16) and fought a series of wars with the Holy Roman Empire (1521–44).

Francis was the son of Charles de Valois-Orleáns,