ROME – IFAD President, Alvaro Lario, was quoted on Saturday as saying he strongly denies a “defamatory” Italian Insider report that he had an affair with one of his female employees who was promoted meteorically to a director level position with the connivance of the agency’s managing director.

 “I categorically refute the defamatory statements made about my personal life and others, which are false and harmful to all who were affected as well as this institution,” Lario was quoted as saying in a statement released by his office.

 ROME -- Less than an hour’s flight from Rome, on the opposite shore of the Adriatic, a popular movement is unfolding that should concern Europe as a whole.

 Yet it is being met with near silence.

 In Albania, the country with which Italy has signed one of Europe’s most significant and controversial migration agreements—thousands of people have been taking to the streets for weeks, protesting what they describe as an unsustainable, opaque, and deeply unfair model of development.

HERCULANEUM – In an era of over-tourism, Archeoclub D’Italia, an association dedicated to bringing together scholars, local Italian historians and archaeologists, has been working behind the scenes to put together a new series of tourist itineraries to shine a light on the lesser-known regions of Italy, in a bid to reduce the strain that the millions of visitors per year brings to inhabitants of cities like Rome and Naples. 

 ROME – IFAD’s embattled Managing Director, Carola Alvarez, called an urgent staff meeting of her Office of Development Effectiveness at the UN agency Tuesday to try and refute disclosures by the Italian Insider over multiple allegations of harassment against her and her involvement in the appointment of President Alvaro Lario’s alleged lover to a director level position she created for herself, IFAD sources said.