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Florence court of appeal upholds guilty verdicts for American and Italian accused of killing British student in 2007 Kevin Rawlinson Mark Smith ...

Aquila. The men took the police to the site where they had dumped the reliquary, but the cloth stained with the blood of the pope, who died in 2005, was no longer inside, Corriere said. Police were interrogating the men, who they believed to be drug addicts, and searching their apartment, Corriere said. A small crucifix stolen along with the reliquary from the church of San Pietro della Ienca last...

four-month-long second appeal. Both have protested their innocence for years. After nearly 12 hours of deliberations, a packed, silent courtroom heard Judge Alessandro Nencini sentence Knox to 28 years and six months in jail – more than her original conviction – while Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years. Lawyers for both vowed immediately to take the case to Italy's highest appeals court, and their...

s decision to uphold conviction for murder of Meredith Kercher described as 'mind-boggling' by family Amanda Knox's parents said there was "no way" that their daughter would return to Italy to serve her sentence for the 2007 murder of the British student Meredith Kercher, adding that they were stunned by the verdict that upheld their daughter's conviction. On Thursday night, after almost 12 hours of...

s murder Raffaele Sollecito, Amanda Knox's Italian former boyfriend, has been detained by police close to Italy...

Follow how the reaction unfolded after an Italian court's decision to reinstate convictions for the murder of Meredith Kercher against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito Matthew Weaver ...

Lyle and Stephanie Kercher, the siblings of murdered British student Meredith Kercher, speak to reporters ...

s former boyfriend is said to have told police he crossed border into Austria before returning to Italy Raffaele Sollecito, Amanda Knox's Italian former boyfriend, was in a police station in Udine in the north-east of Italy on Friday morning, after being found in a hotel close to the Austrian border. "He is here with us," a senior police officer told the Guardian. Sollecito faces a 25-year prison sentence...

s sister Stephanie says they are still on 'journey to the truth' and may never know what happened to her Relatives of the murdered British student Meredith Kercher have welcomed a decision by an Italian appeal court to uphold convictions against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for her killing, but say they are still "on a journey to the truth" and may never know what really happened to her. Speaking...

Aquila, east of Rome, said they found the relic in the garage of two men who were detained for having stolen its gold and glass case last weekend . The case, or reliquary, was recovered on Thursday. Bishop Giovanni D'Ercole said he had pieced together the reliquary and the cloth. The recovered piece of fabric was missing just a few filaments of cloth and gold thread, he said. "I think John Paul [II]has...

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s ruling and what happens next Why did Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have their murder convictions upheld on Thursday night? Hadn't they already been cleared? In 2011, the appeal court in Perugia overturned the pair's convictions for murdering Meredith Kercher. The convictions had been handed down by a first-grade court in 2009. So scathing was the judges' reasoning for the acquittal that Knox...

Andrew Gumbel: Meredith Kercher murder trial has shown Italian justice system to be more concerned in saving face than looking at the evidence Andrew Gumbel ...

s reinstatement of guilty verdict was wrong and that she is determined to clear her name Amanda Knox has said she will fight "until the very end" after being found guilty for a second time of the murder of Meredith Kercher, and that she would not return to Italy to serve her sentence. "I'm going through waves of emotion in response to it [the verdict]," she said. "My first reaction was, no, this is...

for those who don't have the time or desire' They are arguably the twin plagues of life in Italy in 2014: mass unemployment and long waits for the most basic of bureaucratic tasks. One man, though, has come up with a way of simultaneously combatting one problem and exploiting the other – by becoming a professional, €10-an-hour queuer. "Bureaucracy in Italy is deadly," Giovanni Cafaro told Italian newspaper...

s time for Superpope. In the same week that he became the first pontiff to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine , Pope Francis has appeared in cartoon form on a building near the Vatican, his right fist clenched ahead of him in classic Superman style. He is carrying a black briefcase bearing the word valores , Spanish for values, containing a scarf bearing the blue and red colours of...

s drinkers knocked back 1,865bn bottles of vin rouge last year, an increase of 136% over five years, making the country the leading market for red wine. However some experts say the boom, which has led to increasing interest from Chinese buyers in French vineyards, is more a matter of cultural sensibilities than taste. The colour red is considered lucky in China and is also affiliated with the Communist...

s Ministry of Defence worth a total of about €910m (£760m), the Italian defence group said on Wednesday. One contract concerns the conversion of 25 AW101 Merlin helicopters for maritime operations, Finmeccanica said in a statement. These will replace Britain's Sea King Mk4 helicopters that will go out of service in 2016. Under the second contract, AgustaWestland will provide support and maintenance...

Europe's most active volcano, Mount Etna in Italy, erupts on Sunday, sending lava streaming down its sides ...

s former private secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, gave the local Abruzzo community some of the late pontiff's blood as a token of the love he had felt for the mountainous area. It was put in a gold and glass circular case and kept in a niche of the small mountain church of San Pietro della Ienca, near the city of L'Aquila. Corrieri said on Monday the incident felt more like a kidnapping than...