ROME — While France and Belgium debate the merits of a ban on the burka, the Northern League mayor of the Italian town of Novara has forged ahead with a by-law forbidding the wearing of clothes that conceal a person’s identity and levying a €500 (£430) fine on the first person found violating it.
angus campbell
CASTELLAMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – I have to thank Bonelli’s Eagle for my spending the night inside the Zingaro Nature Reserve near Trapani, on the western tip of Sicily. Though not a rabid bird watcher, I am infatuated by birds of prey and the discovery that the Bonelli breeds there regularly got me onto the phone and into the car to the Reserve’s offices at Castellamare del Golfo in a flash (I live close by).
1 May 2010
Philip Willan
ROME — Anger over corruption and nepotism in the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiev contributed to the violent unrest that broke out in the central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan earlier this month. A key figure in money-laundering allegations involving Italian telecom companies Fastweb and Telecom Italia is a well-connected U.S.
13 Apr 2010
Paul Scaglia
The recent earthquake that struck Italy is a vivid example of the deadly consequences corruption in a government can have on a population. With a long history of earthquakes in her past, the Italian state failed to protect its citizens by enforcing anti-earthquake regulations that were passed by the government following the 1980 Naples earthquake that killed over 2,500 people.
9 Apr 2010
Insider reporters
Erich Kusch, a distinguished Rome-based foreign correspondent and broadcaster who in 1961 became the first German to reach the South Pole, has died after a long illness at age 79. He was six times president of Italy’s Foreign Press Association and a key figure in post-war German-Italian relations.
26 Feb 2010
John Phillips
SANT'AMBROGIO DI VALPOLICELLA - Outraged Italian wine producers led by the poet Dante Alighieri’s direct descendant are up in arms against plans to build a massive waste re-cycling plant with a 310 ft high chimney in the heart of the idyllic Valpolicella vineyards near Verona , where the grapes for hallowed Amarone wine are nurtured.
7 Aug 2009
Philip Willan
Rome—When John Paul II became pope in 1978 he inherited a number of relationships that would later prove embarrassing for the Vatican. Entanglement with dubious financiers such as Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi, would bring lasting discredit on the Catholic Church.
2 Jul 2009
Philip Willan
ROME — Licio Gelli, the head of the secret Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge, had reason to feel satisfied as he celebrated his 90th birthday April 21. Lucid and in apparently good health, he has been courted by the media, is the subject of a new book and tv series and may be the protagonist of a mooted Hollywood movie entitled “The Conspirator”. His eminent P2 brother, Silvio Berlusconi, is Italian prime minister, implementing many elements of Gelli’s political programme. A job well done, one might think.
2 Jul 2009
Insider reporters
At least two ships carrying hundreds illegal immigrants trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa have sunk off the Libyan coast in one of the worst tragedies of its kind in the Meditteranean, Libyan coast guard officials said.
31 Mar 2009