ROME - Italian deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini publicly supported the coalition agreement between his League party and the 5 Star Movement (M5S) before going on to issue a warning to his governmental partners that the relationship would have to be reassessed unless swift policy changes were made.
INSIDER NEWSDESK
CAMPOBASSO - Specialist military doctors are set to be brought in in hospitals across Molise due to a severe shortage of medical staff in the reason, according to Health Commissioner Angelo Giustini.
Giustini said that the military clinicians could start working as early as Wednesday and may be employed for up to, and in some cases more than, five months such is the scarcity of medical professionals in the Adriatic region. Giusitini added that it was only with this military support that the citizens’ right to health access could be ensured.
4 Jun 2019
INSIDER NEWSDESK
VENICE - MSC Cruises, the company whose vessel crashed in the Giudecca Canal injuring four people, has confirmed that the ship’s captain and pilot are among the six officials to have been placed under investigation following the incident.
Venice’s Public Prosecutor has opened an inquiry into the accident to assess whether the ship’s commanders failed to comply with safety regulations. The ship’s rudder and black box have been impounded as part of the investigation.
4 Jun 2019
Gabriel Barrie
ROME – The man whose job it is to promote work done by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) recently came to the Foreign Press Association. With a background in journalism, it was brave of him to lay a familiar but cutting charge at the feet of the assembled media: we don’t cover humanitarian disasters. We’re not interested in them.
4 Jun 2019
INSIDER NEWSDESK
ROME — A Kuwaiti diplomat and chargé d’affaires has asked for a ’50 percent’ cut of money owed to the Italian Insider by the Kuwaiti Embassy, which has refused to pay for years for work the Embassy commissioned from the newspaper’s journalists for a special report on Kuwaiti-Italian relations.
3 Jun 2019
Insider reporters
ROME - The British Embassy in Italy commemorated the centenary of the death of two RAF pilots, who were tragically killed in an airplane crash at Rome’s Centocelle airport while transporting TE Lawrence from Europe to Cairo on May 17, 1919. The fatal crash is a little-known episode in the otherwise well-documented life of the mastermind behind Middle Eastern policy during the First World War who cheated death on the outskirts of Italy’s capital.
3 Jun 2019
JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME — FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva is plotting to retain effective control of the UN agency by negotiating with China to remain a high level consultant while Beijing’s candidate to succeed the Brazilian honcho at the poverty-busting organisation, Qu Dongyu, would be a mere figurehead, diplomatic sources say.
“A Chinese DG will indeed be the death knell of a once important and prominent UN organization,” a seasoned diplomatic source said.
3 Jun 2019
INSIDER NEWSDESK
VENICE - The mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, has said that cruise ships must be re-routed away from the centre of the lagoon city after a 13-deck holiday liner crashed into a dock and a moored boat, injuring five people on Sunday morning.
Brugnaro, who has repeatedly called for cruise ships to be banned from passing through the Giudecca canal near St Mark’s Square, called on relevant authorities to re-assess the routes taken by such vessels and implement changes with immediate effect.
3 Jun 2019
Edwin Audland
VERONA - Richard Carapaz became Ecuador’s first grand tour champion as he crossed the 2019 Giro d’Italia finish line in the coveted maglia rosa, welcomed into the Verona Arena by the deafening cheers of hundreds of his compatriots and the dizzying blur of yellow, red, and blue flags.
Carapaz was unable to control his emotion, stooped over his handlebars head in hands and visibly moved as the reality of his achievement sunk in and the weight of an expectant nation dissipated and became adulation.
3 Jun 2019