ROME - The embassies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in Italy kick off the "Be smart be equal" project, a cycle of events in 2021 focused on equal opportunities a

  BENGHAZI - "The reopening of the Italian Consulate in Benghazi is imminent," announced Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio after a meeting at the Farnesina with Najla El Mangoush,

 ROME – A UN security officer working for FAO has defended his Italian boss against charges of cronyism and issued a thinly-veiled death threat against Italian Insider, saying on Twitter that an ar

 ROME – Western diplomats are outraged that FAO DG Qu Dongyu has turned the UN agency, as foreign envoys see it, into a small-scale “Wuhan on the Tiber” using Covid to continue to prohibit diplomat

 ROME -- The widow of Senator John McCain, from Arizona, is under consideration for appointment by the Biden administration as US Ambassador to the FAO and WFP, d

  ROME - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has fired back at Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who in a press conference last week ca

 ROME – At least two of five FAO security guard team leaders promoted by the ambitious former Carabinieri colonel in charge of securing the sensitive UN agency cannot speak English and would be una

 ROME -- Experienced security guards at the FAO with firearms and language training are being passed over for promotion by the UN agency's management services dir

  ROME - Liliana Segre, the Italian Senator for Life, has announced that she will be appearing in the Senate on Wednesday to vote for Italian citizenship for Patrick Zaki.

  ANKARA - Italy's relationship with Turkey took a turn for the worse last night - with the Turkish government summoning the Italian ambassador in Ankara - after Mario Draghi called Turkish Preside

 ROME – The resilient French FAO Deputy Director General, Laurent Thomas, has come under fire from diplomats and staff associations at the UN agency for creating

  VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis marked Easter Sunday by urging the international community to give priority to Covid-19 vaccines and denounced the ‘scandalous’ purs

 ROME – Fierce competition has erupted for the position of independent chairman of the FAO Council to be elected by the upcoming 2021 plenary Conference of the po

  ROME – A move by Western countries to curtail the powers of Director General Qu DongYu at the next plenary Conference jamboree of the UN agency has failed, dipl

 ROME – Diplomats and spooks of key FAO member countries, starved of informal information, have been holding inconclusive meetings on the future of the UN agency prior to formal meetings leading up

  ROME - It has been announced that an additional £1 million of funding has been pledged to charities and voluntary organisations across Europe supporting vulnerable UK Nationals applying for resid

 ROME – The arrival in Beijing of American educated Honduran national Carlos Watson as the new FAO Representative in China has reinforced fears among Western diplomats that FAO Director General Qu

  ROME - An officer of the Italian Navy has been arrested by Carabinieri ROS investigators in flagrante for passing state secrets to a Russian officer working at the Russian Embassy in Rome, offici

 ROME – The head of security at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Piergiorgio Trentinaglia, has blocked the UN agency’s 52 security guards from futu

 ROME – The Italian Ambassador assassinated in the Congo while, riding in a WFP convoy had asked the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome for more protection but the

  ROME -  Over 29 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine “ready to leave for the United Kingdom” have been discovered in the Catalent factory in Anagni, near Rome.

 ROME – The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said that it ‘summarily dismissed’ a senior manager who was found guilty of sexual harassment as well as of obstructing an investigation whil

  NAYPYITAW – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today warned of rising food and fuel prices as the current political unrest in Myanmar starts to impac

 ROME – Amid widespread bloodletting at the FAO, as Chinese director general Qu Dongyu ruthlessly consolidates his position, the future of Republican-backed Deputy Director General Beth Bechdol evi

 ROME -- Three FAO assistant director generals,Hiroto Mitsugi from Japan, Bukar Tijani from Nigeria and glamorous Ms Dilek Macit from Turkey have been forced to resign from their lucrative sinecure