Yes. We have built in Cross Site Scripting (XSS) security in the new MySQLi code. It will automatically encode html entered to prevent malicious attempts by hackers to inject code or script onto your page. In order to disable the protection you can manually update your column reference from:
<?php echo $rsNewsProducts->getColumnVal('desc_ita_news'); ?>
to:
<?php echo $rsNewsProducts->getColumnVal('desc_ita_news',false); ?>