A fresh controversy over the construction of the high-speed Turin-Lyon‘Tav’ rail line has once again raised tensions in Italy’s coalition government, which is divided over whether the half-completed project should go ahead.
The CEO of troubled Italian bank BMPS, Fabrizio Viola, resigned Thursday, six weeks after unveiling plans to reverse its ailing fortunes, the bank said.
The Italian coastguard on Monday said rescuers had recovered the bodies of 15 migrants in search and rescue operations which saved nearly 2,700 people making the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.
A further 16,109 jobs will be lost in Italy’s banking sector by 2020, Lando Maria Sileoni, the secretary general of the banking trade union, Fabi, said on Tuesday.
Shares in Monte Paschi di Siena (BMPS) soared on the Milan stock exchange Friday, boosted by a possible new lifeline tabled by a veteran Italian banker and Swiss giant UBS.
Stress test results for Europe's top banks come out Friday and all eyes will be on Italy's embattled Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS) - the world's oldest bank.
An online project seeking to discourage migrants dreaming of a better life in Italy from making the dangerous journey to central Europe was launched by the Italian government on Thursday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced
optimism on Tuesday that Italy will be able to head off a banking crisis and insisted the situation would not snowball into a new eurozone emergency.
Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco said on Friday that public intervention in the country's banks was not to be ruled out amid growing fears the sector's €360 billion ($398 billion) in bad debt would trigger a potentially contagious banking crisis.
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena prides itself on being the world's oldest bank but could, along with its peers, turn into Europe's newest problem as some analysts fear its bad debts may trigger a bank crisis in Italy and eurozone turmoil.
Around 2,000 migrants were plucked to safety off the coast of Libya in the latest series of rescue operations in the Mediterranean on Thursday, the Italian coastguard said.
At least 1,000 people are thought to have drowned or are missing in nine migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean over the last six days, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.
Italy says it is making headway in its bid to persuade African countries to help close migrant routes to Europe and take
back some of those arriving via Libya in exchange for increased aid and investment.
Four African refugees arrived in
Cyprus from Italy on Tuesday as part of an EU relocation programme for asylum seekers to help ease Europe's migration crisis, officials said.
Italy's coastguard has coordinated the rescue of
another 1,800 migrants, lifting the total plucked from stricken boats since the start of 2016 to more than 30,000, the navy announced on Friday.
AC Milan chief executive Adriano Galliani has played down claims of an impending crisis following a shareholders meeting at which the struggling Serie A giants came under attack amid reports of nearly €90 million euros in losses for 2015.
Italy told Austria on Thursday it would prove Vienna was "wasting money" on anti-migrant measures and closing the border between the two countries would be "an enormous mistake".
Italy's navy said Monday that work to salvage a sunken trawler stuffed with the corpses of migrants was progressing but that the wreck would not be brought to port before next month.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Friday played down a spike in boat crossings from Libya which has resulted in 6,000 mainly African migrants landing in Italy this week, insisting: "we are not facing an invasion."
Italy has asked local authorities to find an
additional 15,000 beds for asylum seekers as fears mount that it could be squeezed between a surge in new arrivals from Libya and its neighbours
tightening their borders.
Austria has threatened to completely close the Brenner pass, one of the main links across the Alps, unless Italy stops the flow of refugees to its northern neighbour.
Nearly 1,500 migrants, including many women
and children, have been rescued in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya
over the past two days, the Italian coastguard said on Monday.
The man accused of being the captain
of a migrant ship which sank in the Mediterranean last year killing over 700 people insists he was no different from the other passengers, his lawyer told AFP on Tuesday.
