Worldcrunch
Here in the Italian region of Lombardy, which has been one of the pandemic’s deadliest epicenters, months of grief have now turned to anger. It began as relatives of COVID-19 victims formed a Facebook group Noi Denunceremo (“We will sue”), where 55,000 members are demanding the truth about Italy’s fumbled coronavirus response, La Repubblica reported. […]
ROME — “We deserve a smile …” With these words, Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte urged the country to celebrate the reopening of the country’s regional borders on June 3. Unfortunately, there’s very little to smile about, and nothing to celebrate. As it reopens, Italy is a country that has been worn out by the […]
MILAN — In our pandemic times, face masks are politics. Last Thursday, the debate arrived with fury at the Culture Commission of the Italian parliament. “I won’t be gagged and I won’t wear it!” barked Vittorio Sgarbi, a Parliament member from the center-right Forza Italia party. The obligatory face mask policy inside the Parliament, he […]
In India, Thailand and elsewhere, authorities have recently passed laws or decrees limiting what media can do and say.
-Essay- Among the many things that COVID-19 taught us, one is to not measure the world by latitude. Take the case of Milan, a shining example, we’re told, of northern Italian industriousness and efficiency that’s supposedly absent in the south. And yet this capital of the Lombardy region saw one of the world’s worst COVID-19 […]
MILAN — In March, the first coronavirus outbreak in the West put Italy’s hospitals under unprecedented strain, with health authorities facing what they described as a “tsunami” of new patients. As intensive care units filled with COVID-19 patients, hospitals scrambled to convert other wards, freeing up corridors and operating theaters for patients of the potentially […]
Welcome to Monday, where Gaza shelling intensifies, Bill Gates is under fire for a relationship with staffer and the Titanic is spotted in China. We also ask why Italy lags behind others in Europe in protecting LGBTQ from violence. • Israeli air strikes hit Gaza as calls for ceasefire intensify: Israel conducted dozens of air […]
Charles de Gaulle was the first world leader to truly understand the power of television, using regular presidential broadcasts as a way to circumvent French legislators, labor unions and other levers of democratic influence.
Fewer seats, fewer trains, more masks. A quick world tour from Milan to Paris, Beijing to Tehran finds the wheels (tentatively) ready to roll on subways and buses.
-Analysis- ROME — “Curiouser and curiouser!” the famously ungrammatical exclamation from Alice in Wonderland in the 1865 Lewis Carroll classic. The current situation created by the pandemic is certainly not wonderful, but it is quite curious, and grows stranger and stranger with every passing day. We are caught between the willingness to continue the social […]
NEW TAIPEI CITY — The Catholic priest, Father Giovanni Rizzi of the Camillians religious order, has been well known in Taiwan for his decades of work helping to set up hospitals on the island nation. But in recent days, Rizzi humbly asked for some help in return: for contributions to purchase face masks for hospitals […]
FERRERA ERBOGNONE — Though Italy’s total number of COVID-19 cases has topped 100,000, one town near the epicenter in the Lombardy region has registered zero infections. Now researchers hope to see if this town, with a population of 1,200, holds clues to understanding how the virus spreads? Ferrera Erbognone, the town that has been completely […]
As the toll passes 10,000, Italians try to look past the unthinkable numbers to remember each life lost, including a 34-year-old father from a town near Milan.
For the coming weeks, Worldcrunch will be delivering daily updates on the coronavirus global pandemic. The insidious path of COVID-19 across the planet is a blunt reminder of how small the world has become. Our network of multilingual journalists are busy finding out what’s being reported locally — everywhere — to provide as clear a […]
In the country hit hardest by coronavirus, a shortage of seasonal workers who couldn’t cross the border has set of a spiral of trouble for farmers across Italy.
-Essay- ROME — I’ve got a daughter who works abroad and, like many Italians, she is experiencing for the first time a different reaction when she says: “Yes, I’m Italian.” It is the gaze of mistrust and fear that makes her and her friends uncomfortable and cautious: Almost all of them have given up on […]
It’s a bittersweet scene captured at Milan’s Central Railway Station, at the global epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis. With more than 800 deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus and 12,000 infected in Italy, the northern region of Lombardy, which includes Milan, is by far the hardest hit, with 617 deaths as of Thursday. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has extended a severe lockdown to the entire country, with all shops, restaurants, cafes and bars being ordered to close, with the exception of grocery stores and pharmacies, until March 25. Amid the chaos and uncertainty, this photograph recalls Gabriel García Márquez” epic […]
Grueling shifts, grave warnings and the spectre of having to choose between the living and the dead.
Welcome to Tuesday, where Italy surpasses 100,000 coronavirus deaths, Lula is cleared of corruption charges, and the trial of the former police officer accused of murdering George Floyd starts. We also look at how the pandemic has impacted fertility rates in developed countries. • COVID-19 latest: Italy passes 100,000 deaths mark, as it announces it […]
A Venice-based novelist reflects on the disappearing tourists, imploding economy and politicians siding with the apocalypse.
Entrepreneurs say ‘Basta’ to stop the ordinances they say risk paralyzing the economy.
Shortages of medical supplies are already hitting in the northern city of Turin, in Italy, which is by far the worst hit European country from the COVID-19 coronavirus.
The tendency to compress language belongs not only to humans, but also to this particular African penguin species’ way of communication.
Welcome to Friday, where Myanmar trouble deepens, Navalny’s doctor dies and $60 million in Bitcoin is lost behind a password. We also look at one country trying to figure out where it fits in with the global rush to do business with China. • COVID-19 latest: AstraZeneca applies for approval of its COVID-19 vaccine in […]
It’s now been a century since the brilliant, Italian-born artist passed away in Paris, France at just 36 years of age.
A group of good Samaritans gathers regularly in Trieste, near the border with the Balkans, to receive weary migrants and tend their wounds.
Locals are pushing back against plans to build a five-star hotel that would throw grape-killing shade on the famed Italian city’s last ‘real’ neighborhood.
Welcome to Thursday, where Trump becomes first president impeached twice, China goes back into lockdown, and a 45,000-year-old wild boar makes news. We also scan what sets “Made in Africa” ID tech apart. SPOTLIGHT: D.C. TO ROME TO KAMPALA, DEMOCRACY IS A COUNTING QUESTION At 6 p.m. local time Wednesday in Rome, while much of […]
The legendary composer — just 13 at the time — left Austria exactly 250 years ago for a lucrative but exhausting odyssey through the powerful Italian kingdoms and duchies of the day.
Fourteen months ago the progressive mayor of Riace, in Calabria, was arrested. Soon after, many of the refugees he’d help settle pulled up stakes and left.
A new rendition of the famous Puccini opera opens this month in Milan, and it all revolves around the powerful and predatory Scarpia character.
Welcome to Wednesday, where Trump blocks U.S. stimulus package, the last continent gets its first COVID cases and Messi breaks Pele’s record. We also discover the different ways the world’s teachers kept 1.5 billion students learning through the pandemic’s lockdowns. SPOTLIGHT: A HUMAN MUTATION: PANDEMIC TRIALS, TRANS SPECIES VISIONS Seeing Manel de Aguas can prompt […]
‘Entry to Italy guaranteed for €10,000’ is the hook: An inside report of how Pakistani and Bangladeshi migrants arrive in Europe, following the death of 39 Vietnamese in a refrigerated truck in Britain.
VATICAN CITY — While several Vatican buildings are embroiled in scandal, a few meters away from the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square the “Palazzo Migliori” is becoming a symbol of goodness and generosity. Pope Francis has effectively “donated” it to the poor. Various entrepreneurs were interested in acquiring it and transforming it into a five-star […]
Medically assisted procreation is restricted by law in Italy to heterosexual couples. A La Stampa reporter posed as a woman seeking to get pregnant and found dozens of willing men online.
A facility that opened last year in the northern city of Monza offers residents a fleeting respite from the lonely, disorienting effects of dementia.
Thousands of Romanian girls are tricked and coerced into working the Italian streets, which are controlled by brutal Albanian mafia clans.
The venerable old city needs to embrace innovation and stop putting all of its eggs in the tourism basket, writes Italian-born architect and MIT professor Carlo Ratti.
With a now-leaderless Democratic Party and no charismatic successor to take over from Berlusconi, his one-time backers may migrate to more extremist parties.
Buccinasco, a town just outside of Milan, was quietly invaded decades ago by the ‘Ndrangheta mob from the southern region of Calabria. But a new program could be sweet revenge.