Europe, Italy | featured news

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 200 points just before midday Wednesday after Italy's borrowing costs soared, a sign that Europe's debt crisis had spilled into the third-largest economy in the euro bloc.

Italian borrowing costs reached breaking point on Wednesday after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's insistence on elections instead of an interim government opened the way to prolonged instability and delays to long-promised economic reforms.

It is up to Silvio Berlusconi to keep Italy from becoming another Greece and plunging the world into an even more devastating financial crisis.

The country that seems to crop up more and more in the current eurozone discussions is Italy, but why should it be affected by the Greek crisis?

The global "Day of Rage" against the world's financial system won some limited sympathy from political and economic leaders on Sunday, after protests that were peaceful everywhere but Italy.

Fitch on Friday cut Spain's credit ratings by two notches, just a few minutes after downgrading Italy, saying the intensification of the euro zone debt crisis has had a negative impact in the entire region.

Samsung Electronics said it would try to stop the sale of Apple's iPhone 4S in France and Italy, aiming to use the product's rollout as leverage against Apple in a broader fight over the design of smartphones and tablet computers.

Moody's Investors Service on Tuesday cut Italy's bond ratings by three notches, saying it sees a "material increase" in funding conditions for euro zone countries with high levels of debt.

American Amanda Knox will tell an Italian court she did not murder her British roommate during a frenzied sex game that turned violent when she makes her final plea to judges on Monday to overturn her 26-year jail sentence.

The Italian League where Kobe Bryant is close to playing is not quite like the NBA in a lot of ways. One is the scheduling — as in it’s not set yet. The league is set to tip-off Oct. 9 but the schedule is still being reworked because Venezia was just being added as the league’s 17th team.