ROME – MPs from the Five Star Movement cracked open the champagne after parliament finally approved a bill to slash the sky-high pensions in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, political officials said on Friday.

 It’s a good bye to the “Vitalizi”, or Italy’s huge pensions that previous members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate had voted in for themselves. The speaker of the Chamber, Roberto Fico, approved the new act which will recalculate the allowance from Jan. 1, 2019.

 L'AQUILA -- Nine years have gone by since the violent earthquake that razed much of the capital of the Abruzzo region to the ground. After the initial flurry of activity on the part of the Italian government and the world press, a tomb-like silence seemed to fall on the city, doomed, it appeared, to languish among the ruins of its once proud and monumental historic centre. Recovery was held up by endless obstacles, debates, bureaucratic difficulties and the sheer staggering complexity of the work that needed to be done.