Breaking News, Latest Philippines Headlines, World, Entertainment, Politics, Weather & Video News
by Sonia Logre and Gildas Le Roux Agence France-Presse ROME, Italy (AFP) – The people of Rome voted on Sunday to elect a new mayor who will have the daunting task of tackling poor public transport and disastrous rubbish management in the Italian capital, dubbed one of the dirtiest cities in the world. Across the country from the Eternal City to Milan, Naples and Bologna, voting kicked off late on Monday for municipal elections being […]
by Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS Agence France-Presse MILAN, Italy (AFP) – The forthcoming COP26 summit — which could determine the viability of the Paris Agreement — will “not be easy” but an outcome matching the urgency of the crisis is an “absolute necessity”, the UN’s climate chief said Wednesday. As the world faces stronger and more frequent droughts, wildfires, flooding and storm surges made worse as the planet warms, the COP26 summit in Glasgow is being billed […]
MILAN, Italy (AFP) – Swedish activist Greta Thunberg opened a youth climate summit on Tuesday by lambasting three decades of government inaction, accusing world leaders of having “drowned” future generations with “empty words and promises”. Speaking weeks ahead of a crunch UN climate meeting in Glasgow, Thunberg accused governments of “shamelessly congratulating themselves” for insufficient pledges to cut emissions and promises of financing. Hurling leaders’ own words back at them, the 18-year-old laid bare to […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — Bookings for coronavirus vaccines in Italy spiked this week after the government said all employees must show proof of a jab, negative test or recent recovery from Covid-19, authorities said. “On a national level, there was a generalized increase in bookings for the first dose of between 20 and 40 percent compared to last week,” coronavirus commissioner Francesco Figliuolo said in a statement late Saturday. Reservations for the first dose of […]
ABUJA, Nigeria (AFP) – UNESCO on Wednesday added 20 new sites in 21 countries to its global network of biosphere reserves, the UN agency’s designation for specially protected regions. New biosphere reserves are designated each year to promote sustainable development, protect terrestrial, marine and coastal ecosystems and encourage conservation. For the first time, Lesotho, Libya and Saudi Arabia joined the list. In Lesotho, the Matseng Biosphere Reserve covers an area of 112,033 hectares in the northern […]
VENICE, Italy (AFP) — Philippines actor John Arcilla was the surprise choice for the best acting award at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. The 55-year-old took home the prize for his starring role in “On the Job: The Missing 8”, a crime thriller that delves into corruption and fake news. “I’m the happiest actor tonight also because I know we come from different countries and we have different languages and cultures, yet I […]
MILAN, Italy (AFP) — Fire ripped through a 20-storey residential building in Milan, northern Italy, on Sunday, leaving rescue workers scrambling to make sure no one had been caught in the spectacular flames and thick smoke. The blaze started on the upper floors of the tower on the southern outskirts of the capital of the Lombardy region. “The flames then spread to the lower levels,” causing thick smoke, the fire services said on a Twitter […]
European powers present in Afghanistan moved Sunday to evacuate their nationals and local staff as the Taliban were on the outskirts of the Afghan capital poised to take power. Germany moved dozens of diplomatic personnel from its embassy in Kabul to the airport ahead of an evacuation planned from Monday, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter. “We are not going to risk our people falling into the hands of the Taliban,” Foreign Minister Heiko […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — Italian firefighters said Thursday they had battled more than 500 blazes overnight as another death was reported, taking the total toll linked to wildfires to four over the past week. An anticyclone dubbed Lucifer is sweeping across Italy, sending temperatures soaring and causing what is believed to be a new European record of 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 Fahrenheit) in Sicily on Wednesday. Southern Europe has experienced intense heatwaves and wildfires this […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — More than 70 percent of fires that have swept Italy this summer are caused by human action, aided by climate change, a government minister said Thursday. Firefighting planes were deployed again overnight to tackle forest fires in the southern region of Calabria and on the island of Sicily, where flames threatened a nature reserve in the north. They are the latest in hundreds of blazes that have broken out across the […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — French prosthetics maker Carmat said Monday it had sold one of its artificial hearts for the first time since its 2008 founding, for implantation into an Italian patient awaiting a transplant. The operation “was performed by the team headed by heart surgeon Dr Ciro Maiello at the Azienda Ospedaliera dei Colli hospital in Naples, one of the centres with the greatest experience in the field of artificial hearts in Italy,” […]
Blinken cites US $2B pledge for COVAX, add’l 500M Pfizer doses to other countries by Shaun TANDON / Gildas LE ROUX Agence France Presse MATERA, Italy (AFP) — The United States led calls at a G20 meeting Tuesday for greater global cooperation in light of the coronavirus crisis as China insisted that multilateralism should not just be a slogan. Italy welcomed foreign ministers of the Group of 20 major economies to the southern city […]
