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Mystery Deepens In Italy On How The Coronavirus Is Spreading – Alleged Patient Zero Tests ‘Negative’; China Pushes Factories To Reopen, Risking Renewed Virus Spread

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By The Straits Times. Italy raced … to contain the biggest outbreak of coronavirus in Europe, sealing off the worst affected towns and banning public gatherings in much of the north as the number of those infected jumped above 100.

An elderly cancer patient became the third person known to be infected with the coronavirus to die, health officials said on Sunday. The woman had been in hospital in Crema, located in Lombardy, where most cases of infections have been reported. . .

Health authorities are struggling to work out how the outbreak started. The first cases were announced only on Friday and doctors do not know its source.

Initial suspicion in Lombardy fell on a businessman recently returned from China, the epicentre of the new virus, but he has tested negative. In Veneto, doctors tested a group of eight Chinese visitors who had been to the town that was home to the first fatality, but again, they all tested negative.

“We are (now) even more worried because if we cannot find ‘patient zero’ then it means the virus is even more ubiquitous than we thought,” Zaia said. (Read more from “Mystery Deepens In Italy On How The Coronavirus Is Spreading – Alleged Patient Zero Tests ‘Negative’” HERE)

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China Discharges 22,888 Recovered Patients Of Coronavirus Infection

By The Jakarta Post. A total of 22,888 patients infected with the novel coronavirus had been discharged from hospital after recovery by the end of Saturday, the Chinese health authority said on Sunday.

Saturday saw 2,230 people walk out of hospital after recovery, the National Health Commission said in its daily report. (Read more from “China Discharges 22,888 Recovered Patients Of Coronavirus Infection” HERE)

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China Pushes Factories To Reopen, Risking Renewed Virus Spread

By Bloomberg. China is trying to get people back to work, risking a renewed spread of the coronavirus.

Central and local governments are loosening the criteria for factories to resume operations as they walk a tightrope between containing a virus that has killed more than 2,400 people and preventing a slump in the world’s second-largest economy.

The rush to restart has been propelled by China’s leader Xi Jinping and top leaders, who are urging companies to resume production so the country can continue to meet lofty goals for growth and economic development in 2020. At stake are the fates of millions of Chinese businesses facing collapse because of the shutdowns, and the ability of companies across the globe from Apple Inc. to Nissan Motor Co. to access crucial components.

Officials in China’s provinces have taken up Xi’s call, with one region after another relaxing rules that had kept more than half the nation’s industrial base idle following the Lunar New Year holiday. After weeks of empty streets and shuttered shops, signs of life are emerging along the manufacturing belt in the country’s coastal regions. (Read more from “China Pushes Factories To Reopen, Risking Renewed Virus Spread” HERE)

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WWII Bomb Forces 10,000 to Evacuate City

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More than 10,000 people were forced to evacuate the northwestern Italian city of Turin on Sunday as bomb experts worked to defuse a 70-year-old World War II bomb.

Residents in the central part of the Italian city were told to evacuate a “red zone” in the city’s historic district, while another 50,000 in an outer perimeter were advised to leave their homes in advance or remain inside during the operation.

The 500-pound bomb, which contained 140 pounds of dynamite, was dropped by British forces on the city 70 years ago, authorities said, according to The Local. . .

She added that a detonator at the tail end of the device required deactivating and was the reason for the operation, according to the BBC.

On Sunday afternoon, local media reported the operation to decommission the bomb was completed faster than expected and residents within the two impacted zones were allowed to go back home. (Read more from “WWII Bomb Forces 10,000 to Evacuate City” HERE)

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Emotionless Judge Ignores Pope, Blocks Parent from Taking Sick Baby to Vatican Hospital

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A British judge rejected a desperate family’s plea to transport their ill child to Italy for treatment, telling the parents of 23-month-old Alfie Evans that his Tuesday ruling “represents the final chapter in the life of this extraordinary little boy.”

Evans’ parents, Tom and Kate Evans, have fought long and hard for many months to prevent his life support from being turned off, and even Pope Francis and Italian authorities intervened to help the toddler with a degenerative neurological condition. The parents sought to bring Evans to the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital for treatment, but the current hospital refused to grant the transfer. . .

Evans claims hospital staff haven’t allowed the boy to eat any food in almost 24 hours, and he’s worried they’ll starve the child. He says the hospital claims it would take three days to discharge the boy.

Before Tuesday’s emergency ruling, the U.K. Supreme Court had ruled that the child should remain at the hospital. The family’s appeal was rejected as “inadmissible” by the European Court of Human Rights.

While medical professionals have been unable to identify Evans’ exact brain condition, they said he remains in a “semi-vegetative state.” Evans is currently at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, and several court rulings have blocked the parents from moving their child. (Read more from “Emotionless Judge Ignores Pope, Blocks Parent from Taking Sick Baby to Vatican Hospital” HERE)

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Allegations About 40 Homosexual Priests Surface at Vatican

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The archdiocese of Naples says it has sent the Vatican a 1,200-page dossier compiled by a male escort identifying 40 actively gay priests and seminarians in Italy.

In a statement on the diocesan website, Cardinal Cresenzio Sepe said none of the identified priests worked in Naples. But he said he decided to forward the file to the Vatican because “there remains the gravity of the cases for which those who have erred must pay the price, and be helped to repent for the harm done.”

The dossier, containing WhatsApp chats and other evidence, was compiled by a self-proclaimed gay escort, Francesco Mangiacapra. He has told Italian media that he outed the priests because he couldn’t stand their hypocrisy any longer. (Read more from “Allegations About 40 Homosexual Priests Surface at Vatican” HERE)

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Pope Warns Mobsters: Hell Awaits

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Photo Credit: AP / Andrew MedichiniPope Francis has a warning for Italy’s mobsters: They will go to hell if they don’t repent and renounce their “blood-stained money and blood-stained power.”

The pontiff on Friday delivered his most forceful denunciation yet of organized crime. The occasion was a prayer vigil at a Roman church for relatives of innocents killed by the mafia, during which the names of 842 victims were read aloud as a somber Francis looked on.

After voicing his solidarity with the family members, Francis said he couldn’t leave the service without speaking to those not present: the “protagonists” of mafia violence.

Addressing these absentee mafiosi, Francis was unsparing:

“This life that you live now won’t give you pleasure. It won’t give you joy or happiness,” he said. “Blood-stained money, blood-stained power, you can’t bring it with you to your next life. Repent. There’s still time to not end up in hell, which is what awaits you if you continue on this path.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Amanda Knox Conviction in Italy Could Spur Lengthy Extradition Fight

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/ANDREW KELLYItaly’s conviction of Amanda Knox for the murder of her British roommate when the two were exchange students together could spur a drawn-out fight over extradition in the United States, where supporters contend she is the victim of a faulty foreign justice system.

If Knox’s conviction is ultimately confirmed pending further appeals, her lawyers are expected to argue that the United States cannot send her to Italy in part because of U.S. constitutional guarantees against “double jeopardy,” although some experts say that could be a tough case to prove.

Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty on Thursday for the second time in the 2007 stabbing death of Meredith Kercher, in a retrial that reversed an earlier appeal judgment that cleared her.

Knox, who spent four years in an Italian jail before returning to the United States in 2011, was sentenced to 28 years and 6 months but will not face jail time pending further appeals in Italy. Knox did not attend the trial and would have to be extradited to serve her sentence.

“She has powerful legal arguments that she can use to fight extradition, or the U.S. can use to deny extradition,” said Sean Casey, a New York-based former federal prosecutor. “Under the law, the Constitution trumps a treaty.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Computer Security Vanishing: Hackers Exploit Vulnerabilities for NSA, Governments

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Photo Credit: Gianni CiprianoOn the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, two Italian hackers have been searching for bugs — not the island’s many beetle varieties, but secret flaws in computer code that governments pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn about and exploit.

The hackers, Luigi Auriemma, 32, and Donato Ferrante, 28, sell technical details of such vulnerabilities to countries that want to break into the computer systems of foreign adversaries. The two will not reveal the clients of their company, ReVuln, but big buyers of services like theirs include the National Security Agency — which seeks the flaws for America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons — and American adversaries like the Revolutionary Guards of Iran.

All over the world, from South Africa to South Korea, business is booming in what hackers call “zero days,” the coding flaws in software like Microsoft Windows that can give a buyer unfettered access to a computer and any business, agency or individual dependent on one.

Just a few years ago, hackers like Mr. Auriemma and Mr. Ferrante would have sold the knowledge of coding flaws to companies like Microsoft and Apple, which would fix them. Last month, Microsoft sharply increased the amount it was willing to pay for such flaws, raising its top offer to $150,000.

But increasingly the businesses are being outbid by countries with the goal of exploiting the flaws in pursuit of the kind of success, albeit temporary, that the United States and Israel achieved three summers ago when they attacked Iran’s nuclear enrichment program with a computer worm that became known as “Stuxnet.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Italian Praised for Saving Jews Is Now Seen as Nazi Collaborator

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Photo Credit: NY Times

Photo Credit: NY Times

He has been called the Italian Schindler, credited with helping to save 5,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Giovanni Palatucci, a wartime police official, has been honored in Israel, in New York and in Italy, where squares and promenades have been named in his honor, and in the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II declared him a martyr, a step toward potential sainthood.

But at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the tale of his heroic exploits is being removed from an exhibition after officials there learned of new evidence suggesting that, far from being a hero, he was an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator involved in the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz.

A letter sent this month to the museum’s director by the Centro Primo Levi at the Center for Jewish History in New York stated that a research panel of more than a dozen scholars who reviewed nearly 700 documents concluded that for six years, Palatucci was “a willing executor of the racial legislation and — after taking the oath to Mussolini’s Social Republic, collaborated with the Nazis.”

The letter said that Italian and German records provided no evidence that he had helped Jews during the war and that the first mention only surfaced years later, in 1952. Researchers also found documents that showed Palatucci had helped the Germans identify Jews to round up.

Read more from this story HERE.

Italy Halts Austerity Plan Leaving EU In Turmoil

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Photo Credit: Max RossiThree years of German-led austerity and budget cuts aimed at saving the euro and retooling the European economy was left facing one of its biggest challenges as Italian voters’ rejection of spending cuts and tax rises opened up a stark new fissure in European politics.

The governing stalemate in Rome and the vote in the general election – by a factor of three to two – against the austerity policies pursued by Italy’s humiliated caretaker prime minister, Mario Monti, meant that the spending cuts and tax rises dictated by the eurozone would grind to a halt, risking a re-eruption of the euro crisis after six months of relative stability.

Fears that the deadlock will lengthen Italy’s near two-year recession and spill over into the rest of the eurozone hit markets across Europe. The Italian banking sector fell 7% in value, dragging the main MIB stock market index 4% lower.

The market turmoil in Milan spread to Germany, France and the UK, with domestic banks among the biggest fallers. Deutsche Bank saw almost 5% knocked off its value, while Barclays suffered a 4% decline. The FTSE 100 fell 1.4%. The German Dax slumped more than 2% and the Paris Cac was down 2.75%.

The cliffhanger vote saw the maverick comedian Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star movement take almost one in four of the votes and the political revival of the ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. But the narrow victor, Pier Luigi Bersani, on the centre-left, claimed the mantle of the premiership, although it was unclear if he would be able to form a government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Forget Spain, Now Italy Seen As Needing Bailout

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Even as markets have been focused on a potential bailout for Spain, analysts say Italy, which is heading for a protracted recession, may also need aid in 2013.

Although Mario Monti’s technocrat government forecasts the Italian economy will decline only marginally in 2013, analysts at Citi predict a steeper contraction of 1.4 percent, after a 2.3 percent fall this year. Meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development lowered its 2013 estimate for Italy on Tuesday to a one percent contraction.

On top of the economic weakness is growing political uncertainty. Monti’s term ends next year and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has lashed out at the government’s austerity measures, has hinted he may run for election again.

“We still see as our baseline scenario that Italy will likely be forced to ask for an international bailout at some point in 2013,” said Citi Analyst Giada Giani in a report on the country.

“Italian economic fundamentals have not really improved, despite some improvement in market conditions. The negative feedbacks from fiscal austerity on growth have been severe, as the ability of the private sector to absorb fiscal tightening by lowering its saving rate is limited.”

Read more from this story HERE.