Ex-footballer reportedly struck on the head with butt of a gun and detained in a room while Italy game was on TV
The Italian football legend Roberto Baggio was robbed and beaten at gunpoint in his home on Thursday while watching the Italy-Spain match in the European Championship with his family.
A group of at least five armed individuals forcibly entered the villa in Altavilla Vicentina, located in northern Italy, at 10pm local time.
Continue reading...‘Extraordinary and unique’ ancient beach that was destroyed in AD79 disaster resurrected in southern Italy
An ancient Roman beach that was buried by the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius has reopened to the public at Herculaneum archaeological park in southern Italy.
The beach has been reinstated after conservation work in recent years restored its original level, including bringing back sand, which is aimed at giving visitors the experience of walking along the beach almost as it was before the eruption.
Continue reading...The house’s menswear show drew on youthful spirit, while Fendi got ready to mark 100 years with a new crest
They have been been ridiculed as snowflakes and “too woke” by some, but Prada’s co-creative designers think gen Z are a generation to be celebrated.
Speaking backstage after their latest menswear show, which took place on Sunday afternoon at the Prada Foundation in Milan, Miuccia Prada said: “Youth is the future. It is hope. We wanted to do something that would express youthful optimism because the times are so bad.”
Continue reading...Authorities caught up with woman alleged to have sailed dinghy to off-limits shore after she posted videos about it
A Dubai-based influencer has been fined €1,800 for trespassing on an off-limits pink-tinged beach in Sardinia before sharing a series of video clips and photos of her escapade on social media.
The woman arrived by dinghy on the shore of Spiaggia Rosa, a beach famous for its pink sand on the tiny Sardinian island of Budelli, allegedly ignoring all the prohibition signs, according to reports in the Italian press.
Continue reading...UK prime minister says he sees ‘eye-to-eye’ with his Italian counterpart on issue of migration
Rishi Sunak has praised his “fantastic” Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, as he announced the launch of a G7 coalition to tackle people-smuggling.
The prime minister, who is in Puglia in Italy for the G7 summit, said he and Meloni saw “eye-to-eye” on the issue and had spearheaded efforts to tackle it since they were elected.
Continue reading...More than 100 comics from around the world including Jimmy Fallon and Chris Rock visited the pontiff on Friday
Pope Francis said that laughing at God “is not blasphemy” as he met more than 100 comedians from around the world at the Vatican on Friday, encouraging them to use their powerful gift of humour to spread laughter “in the midst of so much gloomy news”.
The pontiff, himself prone to the odd quip, invited comedians including Jimmy Fallon, Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Stephen Merchant to the audience at the Apostolic Palace as part of his attempt to engage with contemporary culture.
Continue reading...Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy hold a joint press conference just over two hours behind schedule
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni has just arrived at the venue.
This is the scene at the Borgo Egnazia resort as G7 leaders are scheduled to begin arriving.
Continue reading...Giorgia Meloni appears to recoil from UK PM, who has no formal bilateral meetings with other G7 leaders on day one
Rishi Sunak has insisted he was not being snubbed by other leaders after his first day at the G7 summit ended without any bilateral meetings with his counterparts and he had an awkward encounter with Giorgia Meloni.
Meloni, the Italian prime minister who is one of Sunak’s closest international allies, appeared to recoil from him after they embraced on his arrival in Puglia for the G7 leaders’ summit on Thursday.
Continue reading...Work by 16th century master is expected to fetch between £15m and £25m when it goes on sale at Christie’s
A highly coveted painting by the Renaissance master Titian that was stolen in 1809 then again in 1995 – after which it was discovered in a plastic bag at a London bus stop – is being put up for auction in July.
The Venetian painter is believed to have created Rest on the Flight into Egypt in 1508 when he was barely 20. Painted on a 2ft wide wooden panel, the painting depicts the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus as an infant with Joseph looking on.
Continue reading...US wants show of strength with planned sanctions for helping Russia, but group will also discuss migration, Middle East and AI
A dramatic expansion of entities exposed to US sanctions for helping the Russian economy and an EU-led $50bn loan to ease the financial burden on Ukraine will be at the centre of discussions at a summit of the leaders of wealthy G7 nations in Puglia, Italy, starting on Thursday.
The leaders, facing unprecedented challenges from discontented electorates, will be under heightened pressure to provide concrete results as their three days of discussion range across an interlinked agenda encompassing the war in Ukraine, migration, Africa, the Middle East, the climate crisis and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).
Continue reading...European Conservatives and Reformists party includes members such as Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Law and Justice
Reaction to Emmanuel Macron’s shock election announcement continues to roll in.
Celine Bracq, director general of the Odoxa polling agency, told the AFP news agency it was a “poker move” at a time when there is a “strong desire on the part of the French to punish the president”.
It’s something extremely risky. In all likelihood, the National Rally, in the wake of the European elections, could have a majority in the National Assembly and why not an absolute majority?”
The most likely outcome is more fragmentation, more deadlock and chaos. A complete paralysis.”
Continue reading...Antonio Soprano says he was told to walk to a McDonald’s for food as there was none at Sevington
An Italian lorry driver has described the UK’s new post-Brexit controls as a “mess” after his lorry was held at a government-run border post for more than two days.
Antonio Soprano, 62, who was stopped while bringing plants into the country from central Italy, said he was offered nothing to eat during his 55-hour ordeal and instead was told by border officials that he should walk to a McDonald’s more than a mile away to get a meal.
Continue reading...Mainstream groups hold on to majority in European parliament but far right gains weaken governments in France and Germany
So in the end, with a couple of alarming wobbles, the centre held. As polls predicted, the mainstream pro-EU alliance of centre-right, centre-left, liberal and Green parties in the European parliament hung on, quite comfortably, to its majority.
Europe’s national conservative and far-right forces made big gains, ending up with just under a quarter of MEPs in the 720-seat assembly – their highest tally ever. But they did not do uniformly well, and in some places fared worse than forecast.
Continue reading...Emmanuel Macron makes shock decision as far-right make huge gains in France and across continent
Ursula von der Leyen, who is seeking a second five-year term as head of the European Commission, has cast her vote and is urging others to do the same.
Much is at stake for the German centre-right politician, as the European parliament, which sits in Brussels and Strasbourg, will also have the final say on whether she gets a coveted second-term as European Commission president, one of the most powerful positions in European politics.
Continue reading...Voters in most EU member states called to polls on Sunday, as far-right parties expected to gain record number of seats
Hundreds of millions of voters go to the polls on Sunday in European parliament elections that are expected to tilt the assembly further to the radical and far right, shaping the continent’s future course.
Voters in most EU member states, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, are called to the polls on Sunday, the final day of a four-day election cycle that began in the Netherlands on Thursday.
Continue reading...Figurine sits in front garden of family that previously claimed to have seen tears of blood from another statue
In the front garden of the Gregori family home on the outskirts of Civitavecchia, a port city close to Rome, is a well-curated grotto containing a tiny, rusting statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by plants and flowers. The figurine was bought from a souvenir shop at the Catholic pilgrimage site in Medjugorje, Bosnia.
In late April, as a group of pilgrims huddled around the grotto to pray, the statue purportedly exuded a scented oil. It was not the first time it was said to have sweated oil, but the moment, filmed by some of those present and shared on social media, reignited fascination in Italy over claims of the supernatural, pitting believers against naysayers. The story was all the more intriguing because the Gregoris were the protagonists of another mysterious weeping statue case in the mid-1990s.
Continue reading...American says she is ‘sad but determined’ after Italian court upholds her conviction
Amanda Knox has said an Italian court’s decision to uphold her slander conviction for wrongly accusing a bar owner of murdering the British student Meredith Kercher was “unfair and incorrect” and vowed to continue her fight against “this injustice”.
Knox, 36, left through a back exit of a Florence appeals court on Wednesday and cancelled a planned press conference after judges rejected her appeal to have the conviction dropped.
Continue reading...Knox hoped conviction for wrongly accusing bar owner of murdering Briton Meredith Kercher would be dropped
A Florence court has upheld a slander conviction against Amanda Knox for wrongly accusing a bar owner of murdering the British student Meredith Kercher.
The American, 36, had asked for the conviction to be dropped, saying she had returned to Italy in the hope of “clearing my name once and for all of the false charges against me”.
Continue reading...Correspondent scoops ‘Italian Pulitzer’ for ‘exceptional work’ reporting on Ukraine and Israel-Gaza conflict
The Guardian international correspondent Lorenzo Tondo has been awarded the Premiolino, one of Italy’s oldest and most prestigious journalism prizes, for his reporting on the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Tondo, 42, who joined the news organisation in 2016 and covers Ukraine, the Middle East and the migration crisis around the Mediterranean, is the first Italian journalist working for a foreign publication to win the award, known as the “Italian Pulitzer”.
Continue reading...Two-thirds of Ingria near Turin are competing for positions including a mother and son in rival camps
The last time Igor De Santis ran for mayor in Ingria, a tiny village surrounded by forests and mountains near Turin, he won an easy landslide victory. But he faces a tough challenge in his bid for a fourth mandate, after his mother joined a rival camp.
Ingria, one of the smallest villages in Italy, is home to 46 inhabitants. A further 26 people, registered to vote from abroad, make up the electorate.
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