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An Italian accountant whose son bought her a raffle ticket as a Christmas present won a Pablo Picasso oil painting valued at €1m ($1.1m) in a charity draw on Wednesday. Organizers valued the painting, Nature Morte, or Still Life, as being worth $1.1m. The 51,140 tickets sold online for €100 ($109) each. Proceeds are going to provide water for villagers in Madagascar and Cameroon.
The Italian government has announced measures to ease the country’s lockdown as the country appears to be regaining control from the coronavirus pandemic. Italian authorities reported 260 deaths linked to COVID-19 on Sunday, the fewest daily deaths since 14 March. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that manufacturing and construction companies would be able to resume business from Monday 4 May, with retail trade reopening a fortnight later on 18 May.
Coronavirus has killed more people in Italy than in any other country, after deaths there rose by 427 in a day. The number of deaths now stands at 3,405, which is more than in China where the virus originated last year. A lockdown imposed on 12 March in Italy has been extended beyond the original 25 March end date. Nearly all Italians have been told to stay at home.
Italy has recorded 368 new coronavirus deaths – its largest number of fatalities in a day since the start of the outbreak. A total of 1,809 people with COVID-19 have now died in the country, which is the hardest-hit by the virus in Europe, as the number of cases rose to more than 24,700. It comes after Spain saw its number of coronavirus deaths more than double in a day to 288.
At least 631 people have now died from coronavirus in Italy – an increase of 168 in a single day. The 36% rise is the biggest since the COVID-19 contagion first came to light there on 21 February. Almost a thousand extra cases of coronavirus were recorded in 24 hours – reaching 10,149. The head of the country’s civil protection agency said 877 people were in intensive care – up from 733 on Monday.
Italy will be placed on lockdown amid the ongoing spread of coronavirus, the country’s prime minister said. That’s a massive expansion of yesterday’s lockdown order for Lombardy, a large region in northern Italy that includes Venice and Milan. People are no longer allowed to assemble in public; movie theaters, gyms, and pubs will be closed; and sporting events, funerals, and weddings will be canceled.
Italy is shutting all schools and universities in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus. Italian authorities say 107 people have died and 3,089 have been infected, making it by some distance the worst-affected European nation. Announcing the move, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said the country’s health service risked being overwhelmed. All sports events will also be played behind closed doors until 3 April.
The leader of Italy’s popular populist party, Senator Matteo Salvini, has lost his legal immunity from a criminal investigation and potential trial over his 2019 treatment of a group of migrants. Salvini was accused of abusing his powers last July, when as interior minister he prevented 131 migrants from disembarking an Italian coastguard boat at the port of Catania, Sicily, as he waited for European Union states to agree to take them in.
Two people died and dozens were injured after a high-speed train derailed in Italy’s Lodi province early on Thursday morning, Italian authorities said. The crash happened in the town of Casalpusterlengo, some 30 miles southeast of Milan in the north of the country. The train’s two conductors were killed and 28 people were injured, according to the Italian fire brigade.
Around 54,000 people were evacuated from an Italian city as experts worked to defuse a British Second World War bomb, authorities have said. The evacuation in the southern Italian city of Brindisi on Sunday saw more than 60% of the city’s residents forced to vacate a “red zone” in a radius of 1,617 meters (5,305ft) from where the bomb was found.