ROME - A low-level currency war has been simmering away since the autumn. The growing fear now is that it is about to go nuclear. The start of 2013 has proved to be buoyant.

 MILAN– Imperius Europe is expanding in Italy with the opening of a Milan office as it markets innovative new investment products for expatriates and Italians.

 ROME-- Lance Armstrong's admission of guilt got people talking about performance enhancing drugs but other successful athletes likely will be discovered frauds before the storm blows over.

ROME - Oscar-prediction rages as English cinemagoers have a handful of Best Picture nominees to choose from.

ROME – Glamour actress Gina Lollobrigida has made a complaint against her ex-fiancé who she claims married her by proxy and without her consent.

ROME– The World Food Programme has defended an increase of some 24,000 euros in the housing allowance of the UN agency’s executive director, Ertharin Cousin, taking it up to 160,000 euros a year.

ABOARD THE TRANS SIBERIAN EXPRESS -- I am sitting in the somewhat dated but cosy Restaurant Car as we speed across the forested plain between Krasnoysk and Irkutsk on the Trans Siberian railway.

ROME - On Sunday evening the lights on the Colosseum were turned off as part of Rome’s contribution to the Day of Memory.

ROME – On Sunday night Brendan Lynch, 26, prop for Rome’s Capitolina and employee at the FAO, was killed in a motorbike accident on the Roman ring road.

ROME -- It was grey and cloudy as we picked our way down the gangway of our flight from Sicily to Rome, feeling the urge to turn on the lights that grips Romans landing in London from il bel paese.

FLORENCE - During a large part of the middle ages, the gold coin of Florence, the Florin, was the major European currency.

ROME - Pier Paolo Pasolini was a essentially a poet, a film director and a journalist. To Italy, he was a scandalous figure.

Italian lawyer Giandomenico De Tullio  presents the legal ins and outs of investing in off-plan properties in Italy.

 DETROIT, Michigan - On route back to Rome after the holidays, I caught up with an old friend in Detroit where one of my favourite new folk bands, The Flutter and Wow were performing in a local pub