ROME – Minister of Labour and Economic Development Luigi Di Maio took a swipe at the European Union’s directive on copyright, featuring two articles that could censor the web, representing “a serious danger” as he plans to provide 30 minutes of free internet each day, political sources said. Ratcheting up the government’s Eurosceptic rhetoric, the leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement also threatened to introduce tariffs to protect Italian goods.
Lily Begg
ROME - Six policemen and an employee of the public prosecutor’s office have been arrested on account of “corruption and revealing confidential information” on Tuesday.
26 Jun 2018
Archie Farquharson
VATICAN CITY – French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Rome on Tuesday for an audience with Pope Francis, with discussions centred around migration, climate change and secularism, but will not visit the Italian government, political sources said.
Macron, who was accompanied by with wife Brigitte, was welcomed into Saint Peter’s Square by the Swiss Guard before he was greeted by the pontiff at the Apostolic Palace.
26 Jun 2018
Lily Begg
NAPLES - Islamic State militant Sillah Osman was arrested by the anti-terrorism Special Operations department in Naples on Monday, intercepting a planned terrorist attack.
25 Jun 2018
Gianfranco Nitti
ROME – Over 90 percent of accommodation in Taranto was sold out for the Medimex weekend (from June 7 to 10, 2018). This is confirmed by the bookings made on the main hospitality sites (Booking and Airbnb) and monitored by the PugliaPromotion Observatory, which measures a 10 percent increase in arrivals compared to the same period of the previous year; a variation calculated on about 20 structures of the city that have already transmitted data on the movement of customers through SPOT (Puglia System for the Tourist Observatory).
25 Jun 2018
INSIDER NEWSDESK
ROME – The League and its centre-right allies made sweeping gains in local election results announced Monday, capturing control of a rash of city councils in the traditional ‘red belt’ region of Tuscany including Pisa, Siena and Massa, political sources said.
Michele Conti, a centre-right candidate for the League, Forza Italia and Brothers of Italy, became the new mayor of Pisa, defeating the PD’s Andrea Serfogli, amid low turnouts across the board at 47.61 percent, falling around 13 percentage points.
25 Jun 2018
Archie Farquharson
VATICAN CITY – Returning from Geneva on Friday, having met with the leaders of Christian Churches, Pope Francis spoke about the urgent need for European countries to provide aid through the Marshall Plan to African countries with high emigration rates, papal sources said.
Praising the migration project currently being carried out by German Chancellor Angela Merkel alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, the pope hoped that unified efforts, offering direct support to African nations, would drastically reduce the huge migratory flows.
22 Jun 2018
Lily Begg
ROME - Mediatrends America hosted the ‘Climate Change and Energy in South America’ conference on Friday where the Food and Agriculture Organisation presented the troubling recently-published statistics and reports from the continent.
The FAO special advisor, Fernando Ayala, addressed four main topics at the conference: global warming, water, famine and oil, and in particular, how they all have an effect on food security in South America.
22 Jun 2018
Archie Farquharson
ROME – Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio announced on Friday that eight hours of unpaid labour would be required in order to qualify for the citizens’ income as he prepares to launch his ‘Dignity’ decree next week, political sources said.
Speaking at the Italian Labour Union (UIL) Congress on Friday, Di Maio stressed that the purpose of the citizens’ income was “not to give money to someone to sit on the sofa but to say frankly: you have lost your job - your sector is finished or has changed - now you need a path to retrain and be reintegrated into new sectors.”
22 Jun 2018