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The Spanish health watchdog has said it sees no reason to stop the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the potentially dangerous medicine touted as a Covid-19 treatment by the US president. Several European nations, including France, Italy and Belgium, have decided to suspend prescription of the anti-malaria drug, which came to international prominence after US President Donald Trump said the medicine could be used to tackle Covid-19 and that he himself was taking it. The Spanish health watchdog, AEMPS, said the paper published by the magazine Lancet, which warned about health risks associated with HCQ, was not conclusive enough to stop...

ROME — Two and a half months of forced lockdown has pushed many married couples into crisis, Italian media report, and divorce filings have seen a whopping 30 percent increase since the outbreak began. Marriage counselors took to Skype and WhatsApp to help struggling couples cope with the stress of lost jobs and extended co-confinement during the 67 days of national lockdown but this did not stop the surge in requests for divorce, Corriere della Sera reported last week. According to accounts related by counselors, the irritation caused by everything from badly squeezed toothpaste tubes, socks left on the floor,...

La Pestilenza: The Black Death in Italy Pauline Montagna Aug 21, 2016 The Black Death entered Europe through Italy where it brought with it utter devastation. The Black Death arrived in Italy by sea, first making landfall in Sicily in early October, 1347. By January 1348 it had landed in Venice and Genoa. A few weeks later it appeared in Pisa and from this foothold it moved rapidly inland, east through Tuscany and south to Rome. By the time it died down in the winter of 1348 more than a third of Italy’s population had perished. Horrendous as it was,...

Italy’s coronavirus death toll in March and April could be nearly 19,000 higher than the official figure of 32,000, the national social security agency said Thursday. The Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale (INPS), the largest social security and welfare institute in Italy, said in a new study that the official death figures were not “reliable”, according to AFP. Its study showed that 156,42 total deaths were recorded in Italy in March and April, which is 46,909 higher than the average number of fatalities in those months recorded between 2015 and 2019. But only 27,938 deaths linked to coronavirus were reported...

...In recent years, Italy has been registering peaks in death rates, particularly among the elderly during the winter season. A mortality rate of 10.7 per 1,000 inhabitants was observed in the winter season 2014/2015 (more than 375,000 deaths in absolute terms), corresponding to an estimated 54,000 excess deaths (+9.1%) as compared to 2014 (Signorelli and Odone, 2016), representing the highest reported mortality rate since the Second World War in Italy (UN, 2019). Although the above-described excess mortality created concern among researchers, health authorities and public health experts, it has been challenging to identify its determinants (Signorelli and Odone, 2016)...

Italians enjoyed their first meal out for two months on Monday, as the country eased lockdown restrictions, with bars, restaurants and cafes back in business and St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican open for visitors. After a gruelling lockdown period during the coronavirus pandemic, Italy was once again able to sip cappuccino and cold beers - albeit at a physical distance from other customers. **SNIP** The prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, described the ending of curbs as a “calculated risk”. Italy was the first European country to go into full lockdown more than two months ago. It is now returning to...

On May 17, I published an article in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a “public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama administration in the United States. According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to...

Havens received a 25-year sentence in Washington in 2011 after being convicted for murder. He found his love and gift for mathematics while in solitary confinement a few months after his incarceration. His journey in mathematics and research led to him publishing a first-author paper in an academic mathematics journal in January 2020. Initially, my father, Umberto Cerruti, a number theorist who was a professor of mathematics at the University of Torino, Italy, agreed to help Havens simply because we asked him. My father thought that Havens was likely one of the many cranks that fall in love with numbers...

When Covid-19 came to Europe it was Italy that was hit first - and hit hard. Little help came from its European neighbours in those first weeks in February and March, as hospitals in the north were overwhelmed. As Italy counts its 31,000 dead, concern is mounting over the economic impact too, and there are signs of a rise in the number of Italians losing faith in the EU. The Treaty of Rome launched the then European Economic Community in 1957, with Italy a founding member. "I have changed my mind a little on Europe. We are facing an absolute...

"Wear your mouth cover, Its a sign of your surrender" Gavin Seim For Liberty Facebook Post 5/12/2020 "Under instructions to enforce social distancing, maintain proper hygiene and have children grade four and up wear face masks, it was up to municipalities to decide when each school in its jurisdiction was full prepared to open, Netanyahu said" In Israel children are allowed to go back to school at all grade levels starting Sunday the details of restrictions remind us that masks prevent complete breathing and cut off air from people of all ages. Small children will not be required to wear...

A PREGNANT nurse was raped by an illegal migrant as she headed home from the front line treating coronavirus patients, it's reported. The 48-year-old was targeted while waiting at a bus stop shortly after leaving work at around 3pm on Sunday afternoon in Naples, Italy. Italy: Illegal Muslim migrant rapes pregnant coronavirus care nurse as she waits for bus after work It is no secret that mass Muslim migration has brought numerous woes upon the European Union, prompting former Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini to declare that his efforts to stop suicidal immigration were about “saving Europe from Islam.” Last...

While sorting through a gigantic pile of my deceased father's old papers, I found a newspaper clipping with the title: How Lincoln tried to enlist Garibaldi. What? I had never heard this tale before, so I immediately stopped to read the brief article. It began as follows: An argument which has raged for more than a century over rumors that a hard-pressed Abraham Lincoln appealed to Giuseppe Garibaldi to save the Union in the American Civil War appears to have been settled after the discovery of documentary proof in Garibaldi's own handwriting. The article then goes on to say that...

According to Prof Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s minister of health, the country’s mortality rate is far higher due to demographics – the nation has the second oldest population worldwide – and the manner in which hospitals record deaths. But Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may also appear high because of how doctors record fatalities. “The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus. “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of...

The flight from Italy was one of the last arrivals that day at the Stockholm airport. A Swedish couple in their 50s walked up and loaded their skis into Razzak Khalaf's taxi. It was early March and concerns over the coronavirus were already present, but the couple, both coughing for the entire 45-minute journey, assured Khalaf they were healthy and just suffering from a change in the weather. Four days later, the Iraqi immigrant got seriously ill with COVID-19. Still not able to return to work, Khalaf is part of the growing evidence that those in immigrant communities in the...

Almost the entire population of Italy, it seems, spent the last week of June watching a boat arrive from across the Mediterranean. It was the Sea-Watch 3, a Netherlands-registered ship funded by progressive philanthropists and captained by Carola Rackete, a 31-year-old German climate-change activist. Rackete radioed that she was carrying 42 African refugees rescued at sea who were in desperate health. Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini holds that such ships rendezvous with traffickers just off the Libyan coast, and are really less interested in rescuing sailors than in transporting illegal immigrants to Europe en masse. “Taxis,” he has called them....

Italian researchers have revealed plans to test a vaccine on humans after claiming their jab is the 'first in the world' to neutralise the virus. Scientists gave mice the jab - which is being developed by Rome-based Takis Biotech - and took the antibodies they made in response. Antibodies are substances produced by the immune system to remember how to fight off a specific infection, and are vital for immunity. Preliminary results from lab tests showed the antibodies created in test mice were able to stop human cells being infected with the coronavirus. Takis chief executive Luigi Aurisicchio revealed the...

The European Union’s response to the novel coronavirus is a sight to behold. For decades, the EU has linked the promotion of its progressive ideology and the construction of its supranational institutions to a vibrant promise. The ideology and institutions were supposed to lead to a more open and unified Europe that looks after the welfare of its citizens at home and matches the international power of Russia, China, and the United States. The coronavirus crisis has exposed this grand vision as a fairy tale. The fiasco began in February, when Italy appealed to the EU’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre,...

...According to data released by the NHS, being overweight raises the chances of dying in hospital from the illness by 40 per cent. Having a body mass index of between 30 and 34 makes a person almost twice as likely to be admitted to ICU as someone with a BMI under 30. For those with a BMI of 35 or more, the likelihood is nearly four times higher...As the UK has the highest proportion of seriously overweight people in Europe, this is of grave concern. Yesterday, an NHS report said 67 per cent of men and 60 per cent of...

An Italian pharmacology scholar has claimed that COVID-19 damages the hemoglobin, thus impairing the ability of red blood cells to transport oxygen throughout the body, affecting the lungs and leading to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). In an explanation of her thesis to The Jerusalem Post, Annalisa Chiusolo said that her theory provides the answers to several questions about the novel coronavirus, including the higher vulnerability demonstrated by men, particularly diabetics, to becoming seriously ill from the virus, as well as the lower rate of COVID-19 infection among pregnant women and children. Chiusolo believes that understanding this mechanism can pave...

Europe’s top coronavirus hot spots are preparing to lift lockdown measures after seeing the biggest dip in daily new confirmed cases and deaths in weeks. Italy, Spain, and France have all recorded their lowest daily spike in fatalities to date. On Monday, Italy recorded just 174 coronavirus-related deaths within a 24-hour period – the lowest daily increase in two months, Sky News reported. Spain’s 164 new death count was the lowest daily increase since mid-March. In France, 135 deaths were recorded overnight. Italy Italy, the first country in the world to implement a nationwide lockdown on March 10, is allowing...