Italy

ROME – Police arrested six people Monday, including three serving Naval officers, on charges of running a 7 million euro scam to sign off deliveries of petrol to a ship which sank in 2013.

NAPLES – Meridiana and Iberia have announced an extension of their code-sharing agreement to cover the Italian airline’s new Madrid-Naples route.

ROME – Officials gathered this week to discuss the next phase of a programme that is trying to promote cross border co-operation in the Mediterranean.

PALERMO – Police have discovered a haul of counterfeit one and two euro coins totalling some 556 thousand euros, the Palermo prosecutor’s office announced Friday.

ROME – Conor Fitzgerald, an acclaimed writer of crime novels set in the bel paese, told the Italian Insider why it is that Italy makes such a good setting for the genre.

ROME - The Italian aerospace engineering company Finmeccanica has finalised a deal with the US to service their F-35 jets in operation in Europe, it was announced on Thursday.

ROME – Several protestors were arrested in Milan Friday as student demonstrators clashed with police and a group of protestors dressed as Father Christmas targeted Pirelli headquarters.

ROME – The mafia scandal continued to unfold on Thursday, as arrests linked the Roman gang to the ‘ndrangheta, and the Democratic Party was heckled and accused of collusion in Parliament.

ROME – Chiara Insidioso Monda, 20, has awoken from an 11-month coma after being beaten and buried alive by her boyfriend, hospital officials said Friday.

LAMPEDUSA – The Italian coast guard has discovered an inflatable raft 100 miles off the coast of Lampedusa, officials announced Friday, rescuing some 76 people but discovering 17 bodies.

GROSETTO – Francesco Schettino, captain of the Costa Concordia resumed his testimony on Wednesday following indications from the prosecution that they would seek the maximum sentence of 22 years.

Rome -Former Mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno has been placed under investigation on suspicion of involvement in a mafia style organisation using public funds in the capital that has led to 37 arrests

ROME – The drawn out fight of foreign lecturers for equal rights in Italy has been revived by the revelation of an error by the European Commission in its approval of the shameful Gelmini law.

ROME – Fabrizio, a 50-year-old Sicilian doctor has become the first Italian to become infected with Ebola, and is to be transported to Rome for treatment, Italian officials confirmed on Monday. 

FLORENCE - The seventh edition of the BTO “Buy Tourism Online” conference is due to start on Dec 2 at Fortezza da Basso in Florence.

ROME – Samantha Cristoforetti has fulfilled her dream of becoming the first Italian woman in space after she travelled to the International Space Station on Monday.

ROME – Prime Minister Renzi has denounced the choice of Italy’s two biggest trade unions, the CGIL and UIL, to stage a strike on Dec 12 against the Jobs Act labor reform.

MILAN – A two-year investigation into the ‘Ndrangheta organised crime syndicate which culminated in 40 arrests on Tuesday managed to record a notorious “swearing in ceremony” for the first time. 

ROME - The Emiglia Romagna civil protection agency has warned that severe overflowing from the water basins of several large rivers is likely.