Good morning from the Today.it editorial team. Here’s Start, the news you need to know to start the day: it’s Wednesday 24 April 2024.
ABORTION BLITZ. Without any parliamentary discussion, with a blitz on an armored measure, the Meloni government, instead of strengthening the counseling centers, explicitly brings in the anti-abortion associations. A strong political choice. Ok also from the Senate. We know nothing about who, how and what these associations do inside the clinics. An unacceptable vagueness on such a delicate topic. Abortion is a very painful choice for every woman. Many already have to travel outside the province or region to have an abortion, due to the spread of objecting doctors, 8 out of 10 in certain areas. In public centers where people turn to obtain the medical certificate to access voluntary termination of pregnancy in hospital, they risk finding themselves faced with associations that compare abortion to murder and offer money to keep the baby.
“KHARKIV UNINHABITABLE”. Biden declares that the US “will start sending weapons to Ukraine this week”, after Congress voted on aid (for 61 billion) to Kiev. Kharkiv, with one and a half million inhabitants before the war, is attacked relentlessly with missiles and drones. The raids kill civilians and devastate energy infrastructure: thousands of people are already in the dark. For Zelensky “there is a clear intention to make the city uninhabitable”. The intense raids would aim to force civilians to leave their homes en masse. Strong doubts as to whether the Kremlin troops will ever have the ability to attack by land with a real offensive. But Kharkiv will always be at risk, it is 30 kilometers from the border. “It is their priority, because Putin cannot forgive the fact that a Russian-speaking city did not want to become part of the Russian world”, those in the know have been saying for months. Keeping an eye on Kharkiv is a good way to understand how it is going the war in Ukraine.
SWINE FEVER. “Either we treat it as an emergency or we don’t get out of it.” The Parma Ham Consortium fears swine fever. The virus has been causing alarm in the pig sector for years. Humans are not infected, but the findings of infected wild boar carcasses are increasing, ever closer to countries famous in the world for the production of cured meats. On April 17, the EU expanded the “restricted zones”. Already, 15 factories will no longer be able to export to Canada. We need to stem infections among wild boars (even by hunting them en masse): if the virus passes through pig farms there is a big risk. As a precaution, in the area, citizens are already being invited “when returning from an excursion, before getting back into the car and returning home, to change their shoes and put them in a bag and then clean them carefully”. If an infected carcass is found 15 kilometers from a sausage factory, restrictions are triggered. In the future, the risk of repercussions on employment is dramatic. There is a billion-euro supply chain on a razor’s edge. There is very little talk about it, as if it were a hyperlocal problem. It is not.
BALTIMORE COLLAPSE. The city of Baltimore is suing the operators of the container ship that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six people. The Dali was “clearly unseaworthy”. “None of this should have happened,” lawyers representing the mayor and city council argued. The ship had already encountered, without doing anything, problems with the electrical supply of the containers that same morning, but it had set sail anyway. She had “an incompetent, careless, untrained crew.” The accident was the direct result of “carelessness, negligence and recklessness”. It will be a no-holds-barred legal battle: compensation claims will run into the billions for the costs of replacing the bridge, diverting traffic, cleaning up the Patapsco River and recovering lost revenue associated with disruptions to the Port of Baltimore.
WEATHER 25 APRIL. Until April 26th there will still be scattered rain, thunderstorms and, given the low temperatures, even snowfall on the mountains. Tomorrow there will be precipitation only in the internal areas of the central-southern regions and in the afternoon. The wave of anomalous cold that has brought a drop of over 20 degrees to Italy in about a week will last at least until today. More spring-like temperatures expected for the long weekend of April 25th, except in the Northwest. Today yellow alert for bad weather in Basilicata, Calabria, Campania and Lazio.
I would also like to point out briefly:
BONUS 100 EUROS. The government’s green light for the Irpef-Ires legislative decree has been postponed until next week, which provides for an allowance of up to 100 euros in the thirteenth wages of workers with an income of up to 28 thousand euros with a spouse and at least one child, even if born out of wedlock, adopted or entrusted.
240 EUROS IN SUPERMARKETS. The 220 thousand workers in modern and organized distribution also receive an increase of 240 euros. After the contracts of Confcommercio, Confesercenti and Distribuzione cooperative were renewed, yesterday Federdistribuzione reached the agreement for the renewal of the national collective labor agreement with the trade unions.
ALL AGAINST THE PACT. Italy had approved the agreement on the new budget rules in 2023, considering it a step forward compared to the previous rigid discipline. But yesterday our parties, both majority and opposition, in the European Parliament voted against the new stability pact, which envisages bringing a deficit back to 3% for all EU countries and a debt to 60% of GDP. Thus, the green light is given to a bit of Eurosceptic propaganda towards the June vote.
BEATINGS IN JUVENILE PRISON. “Screams, beatings, bruises. The marks of the amphibians on the neck. 20 of them arrived together.” The boys detained in the juvenile prison in Milan told the facility’s psychologists about the torture suffered by the prison officers which led to the arrest of 13 policemen. Five officers – all between 25 and 35 years old and mostly first-time officers – defended themselves before the investigating judge yesterday, saying they felt “abandoned” and “incapable of managing the situations”.
MIGRANTS SENT BACK TO RWANDA. The disputed Rwanda plan, waved like a pre-election flag by Sunak’s conservative British government, with the commitment to transfer to Africa for dissuasive purposes quotas of asylum seekers landed illegally in England, has been law in the United Kingdom since yesterday. Barring new organizational obstacles, the first flights will be available in “10-12 weeks”.
GAZA IS HUNGRY. Parachuting humanitarian aid from the sky is one of the solutions that many countries, starting from Jordan and the USA, have devised to get food and medicines to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, thus bypassing the obstacle of the slowdown of trucks at the Rafah crossing . The launches continue, even amid the rubble of northern cities destroyed by Israeli raids. People rush to collect humanitarian aid packages.
ITALIANS ARRESTED IN EGYPT. Two Italian citizens of Egyptian origins were arrested yesterday in Cairo while taking part in a demonstration on human rights violations in the Gaza Strip and Sudan. Mohammed Farag and Lina Aly were arrested together with some members of Egyptian civil society.
DEAR COFFEE. The adverse weather conditions in Brazil, the euro-dollar exchange rate: with each increase in price, between production crises and increasingly higher transport costs, the cup of coffee is increasingly salty. The rises in prices could lead to new increases in prices both at bars and in supermarkets in the coming weeks. In some cities it is already close to 1.40 euros at the counter.
OLD ITALY. If in 1951 there were 31 elderly people for every 100 young people, on 1 January 2024 there would be 200 elderly people for every 100 young people. According to Istat projections, continuing with this trend, in 2050, for every 100 young people there will be more than 300 elderly people.
PANDORO FERRAGNI. The queen of influencers, Chiara Ferragni, and Pink Christmas, the Balocco pandoro that was supposed to support the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin, were misleading advertising. This is what the first civil section of the Turin court ruled, which accepted part of the appeal presented by the associations: “Unfair commercial practice”.
Have a nice day on Today.it.
Tags: Meloni blitz abortion city Putin uninhabitable truth ship destroyed bridge Baltimore problem Italian ham news start day
