Colleen Barry

While chariots for daily life or the transport of agricultural products have been found at Pompeii, the new find is the first ceremonial chariot unearthed in its entirety.

Italy has become the first western developed nation to idle most of its industry to halt the spread of the coronavirus, a potential cautionary tale for other governments.

Some 400 migrants have been rescued and 25 bodies recovered after a fishing boat carrying an estimated 600 capsized on Wednesday in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya, an Italian Coast Guard official said.

A ship crew with experience plucking migrants from unseaworthy smuggler's boats had arrived soon after the distress call went out. But then the fishing trawler's navigator made a maneuver that would seal the fate of the 850 people crammed inside: Instead of easing up alongside the merchant ship, he rammed it.

Even as the search continued for victims of the weekend disaster, coast guard ships rushed to respond to new distress calls on the high seas — two off Libya and a third boat that ran aground near Greece.

The Italian navy said Friday it boarded and took control of a Sicilian fishing boat that had been seized earlier in the day by armed men off the coast of Libya.

The feared drowning of 400 migrants in a shipwreck this week in the Mediterranean Sea — one of the deadliest such tragedies in the last decade — raised alarms Wednesday amid an unprecedented wave of migration toward Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

A man on trial for fraudulent bankruptcy opened fire in Milan's courthouse Thursday, killing his lawyer, a co-defendant and a judge before being captured nearly 25 kilometers away as he fled on a motorbike, officials said.