Interior minister sends extra police to Taranto where convicted murderer, his partner and her son were killed Italy's interior minister has ordered 60 police reinforcements into southern Italy after an apparent mafia hit in which assailants opened fire on a car carrying three boys, killing a two-year-old. Angelino Alfano described the hit as a "settling of scores" and pledged that the reinforcements...
Studio claims no meeting was scheduled between the Pope and the star and director of biblical blockbuster Noah Ben Child ...
The Giants of Monte Prama, inscrutable avatars of a lost civilisation, see the light after years of reconstruction work Some of the most mysterious statues from antiquity are finally to go on permanent display this week – 40 years after they were discovered by a ploughman on the Italian island of Sardinia. The Giants of Monte Prama include statues of archers, wrestlers and boxers carved in sandstone...
Former 'man of honour' in Cosa Nostra to avoid jail in Italy for 1999 conviction after being freed from London prison The fugitive mafia boss Domenico Rancadore is to walk free from a London prison after winning his battle against extradition to Italy. Rancadore, 65, was wanted in Italy over his conviction in 1999 of associating with the mafia between December 1987 and 13 April 1995. The mobster,...
Police hope advances in DNA testing will help find match from partial fingerprint on frame once containing Portrait of a Woman More than 17 years since it was stolen from a gallery in northern Italy, Gustav Klimt's Portrait of a Woman is reportedly once again the subject of a police investigation after technological advances allowed for the case to be reopened. The oil painting, believed to date from...
Neapolitan native Paolo Sorrentino given honorary citizenship of capital city after La Grande Bellezza's triumph at the Oscars The Italian capital has bestowed honorary citizenship on film director Paolo Sorrentino after The Great Beauty – in which Rome is used as a huge, mesmerising film set – triumphed at the Oscars. Rome's mayor Ignazio Marino said Sorrentino – originally from Naples – deserved...
• Quins prop replaced after wife goes into labour • Matt Mullan called up to replacements' bench Mako Vunipola has been drafted in to start at loosehead prop in England's final Six Nations championship game against Italy after Joe Marler's partner went into labour. The Harlequins forward Marler did not fly out to Rome with the rest of England squad on Thursday, so as to attend the birth of his first...
Petitions fight against closure of famous Italian cafe, which has hosted everyone from Sophia Loren to Madonna Woody Allen has filmed there; Julia Roberts was filmed there. Pope John Paul II, so the owners say, once popped in for breakfast. Its ivy-clad walls and sunlit terrace made for people-watching have drawn Italian creatives and Hollywood stars to the Antico Caffè della Pace for decades. The...
In his first 12 months Pope Francis has done all that one man can do. The challenge now is to ensure his successor cannot undo all his progress In his first year in office, Pope Francis has transformed the image of the papacy. His demonstrative lack of ostentation has been an extraordinary contrast with almost all his predecessors. From the moment he signed out of his own hotel room after being elected...
Provocative Dutch practitioner finally accepts offer to curate biannual exhibition, declaring it will 'sever all connections with contemporary architecture' "Without the balcony, the history of the world would have looked completely different," says Rem Koolhaas. Behind him hangs an image that depicts a chequerboard of dictators and despots, revolutionaries and royals, variously waving, declaiming...
Italy's lower house has approved the new prime minister's flagship constitutional change aimed at ending political gridlock The lower house of the Italian parliament has approved the prime minister's flagship electoral reform law as the country edges towards a new voting system aimed at avoiding the political gridlock that paralysed it last year. Matteo Renzi, 39, who ousted his predecessor and party...
'Miracle' mineral traps ammonium to lessen odour of pig slurry and reduce greenhouse gas emissions Chabazite is a remarkable mineral. It saved Parma ham a few years ago and may provide a way to combat the proliferation of green algae along the coast of Brittany, France. A pilot scheme is due to start soon near Cap Fréhel , focusing on the drainage basin of the river Frémur. Chabazite belongs to the...
A notorious veterinary drug that killed millions of vultures in India is now on sale in Europe Adam Welz ...
s David has suffered arguably his greatest indignity to date. To the horror of many in the Italian cultural establishment, the world-famous marble statue has been pictured in an advertisement cradling not a slingshot but an American-made rifle. An image of David brandishing an AR-50A1 sold by ArmaLite, a 60-year-old Illinois-based small arms engineering company, has provoked such ire in Italy that...
s record unemployment, has been criticised as retrograde, unworkable and potentially counterproductive by some critics. But it has, in some quarters at least, refocused debate on what the eurozone's third-largest but arguably most sluggish economy could do to combat gender stereotypes and boost a female employment rate that is the EU's second lowest. Giulia Bongiorno, a lawyer and former centre-right...
s book suggests the entire fashion industry is a dangerous trick, and needs to be overturned Setting up the terms of her polemic against the fashion industry, Tansy Hoskins defines fashion in utilitarian terms as "changing styles of dress and appearance adopted by groups of people", and the industry as one in which there is "a shrinking distinction between high fashion and high street fashion"....
s commitment to stay an opposition force "for ever" – or at least, he says, until the Five Star Movement gains 51% of the vote at an election – is clearly paying off. But why? The Five Star Movement's position on Europe is a factor. From the economic point of view, it argues that the euro is harmful because it has favoured big banks at the expense of small investors. Moreover, European bureaucracy...
s nuanced book investigates an unholy alliance between fascism and the Catholic church In 1938, Pope Pius XI addressed a group of visitors to the Vatican. There were some people, he said, who argued that the state should be all-powerful – "totalitarian". Such an idea, he went on, was absurd, not because individual liberty was too precious to be surrendered, but because "if there is a totalitarian...
idealisation' as Vatican prepares to celebrate anniversary of his election He has graced the cover of Rolling Stone, been depicted as a street-art superhero and is greeted by crowds of adoring fans wherever he goes. But Pope Francis has told a newspaper he has had enough of the hero worship that has accompanied his year-long papacy, describing it as offensive and insisting he is just "a normal person"....
fit and proper' rule if found guilty The proposed takeover of Leeds United by the Cagliari owner Massimo Cellino could collapse this month if Cellino is found guilty in a Sardinian court of failing to pay tax which prosecutors allege was due on a yacht he took to Italy from the US. Cellino, who has a 2001 conviction for false accounting and is under investigation for alleged misuse of public funds...