Naples

Italians celebrated the European Championship soccer title as a new beginning not only for their youthful national team but for a country that's been yearning to return to normalcy after being hit hard and long by the coronavirus pandemic.

The central-western city of Cluj-Napoca is in the top of Romania and Europe regarding high concentrations of NO2 (nitrogen dioxide - emissions resulted from auto pollutants) registered in the month of May, according to a ranking made by Airly, the company who monitors air quality.

A German-born archaeologist has been chosen to be the next director of Pompeii, which is still revealing its ancient mysteries centuries after a volcanic eruption destroyed the Roman city and is one of Italy's most popular tourist sites.

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini announced on Feb. 20 that Gabriel Zuchtriegel won out over 43 other candidates for the job.

More than 200 ancient coins were returned on Jan. 21 to a museum in southern Italy by a priest who was told about the theft in confession.

The unnamed penitent, presumed to be the thief himself, asked the priest to return the loot to the Paestum archaeological park near Naples.

Tons of earth, asphalt, rocks and several cars parked there crashed into the abyss.
AGI news agency informs that there are firefighters on the spot, who, along with search dogs, are trying to determine whether there are people among the collapsed material and vehicles. For now, there is no information on the injured or possibly missing.

Germany plans to lift a travel ban for European Union member states plus Britain, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland from 15 June provided coronavirus infection levels in those countries allow it to do so, government sources said.

A further condition is that the countries concerned open their borders to holidaymakers, the sources said.

Italy reopens to travellers from Europe on June 3, three months after the country went into coronavirus lockdown, with all hopes pinned on reviving the key tourism industry as the summer season begins.    

Ahead of the Colosseum and Pompeii, the towering Greek temple complex at Paestum near Naples is the first Italian archaeological site to reopen to tourists after the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

The global coronavirus death toll topped 100,000 on April 10 as Easter celebrations around the world kicked off in near-empty churches with billions of people stuck indoors to halt the pandemic's deadly march.

More than 870 people have died in Germany from the new coronavirus, and the number of those infected has exceeded 70,000, according to the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases.

Over the past 24 hours, 140 deaths from the COVID-19 virus have been reported in the country. With this, the total number of deaths has reached 872.