Category Archives: Italy

Italy sends first asylum seekers to Albania under controversial pact

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Men from countries deemed safe are transferred to Albania to have asylum claims processed

The first people to be intercepted at sea by the Italian navy under a controversial migration deal with Albania are on their way to the Balkan nation to have their asylum claims processed.

As part of the pact signed off by Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a navy ship set off on Monday and is due to arrive at the port of Schëngjin on Wednesday morning. The interior ministry confirmed on Monday night that 16 men – – 10 Bangladeshis and six Egyptians – who it said had arrived from Libya and were rescued on Sunday in international waters by the Italian coastguard were on board.

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Enrico Berlinguer: the 1970s communist hero inspiring Italy’s youth – and the far right

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Italian PM Giorgia Meloni among those admiring Berlinguer as new film and exhibitions celebrate his role as a unifier

Enrico Berlinguer was a giant of the Italian left in the 1970s and 80s, coming close to leading the Communist party into government through a “historic compromise” with the country’s Christian Democrats, and championing “Eurocommunism”, a liberal, anti-Stalinist version of Marxism that briefly swept the continent.

But his death 40 years ago, and the collapse of Europe’s communist parties in the late 1980s, eclipsed Berlinguer’s legacy, and Italy has since moved across the political spectrum, electing the far-right Giorgia Meloni as prime minister in 2022.

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Italian migration centres open in Albania under controversial deal

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Fears agreement will set dangerous EU precedent with up to 3,000 men a month held during asylum processing

Italy has formally opened two centres in Albania where it plans to hold men who are intercepted in international waters while trying to cross from Africa to Europe.

The Italian ambassador to Albania, Fabrizio Bucci, said the centres were ready to accommodate people while their asylum applications were processed, but could not say when the first ones would arrive. “As of today, the two centres are ready and operational,” Bucci told journalists at the port of Shëngjin on Albania’s Adriatic coast where the people picked up will land.

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Bella Ciao: a brief history of the resistance anthem sung to Viktor Orbán

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A look at the origins and appeal off the song MEPs used to serenade the Hungarian PM in Strasbourg

“This is not Eurovision,” said the speaker of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, as she tried to silence leftwing MEPs greeting the visiting Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, with a rowdy rendition of the classic anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao.

The bang-your-fists-on-the-table motif at the heart of this earworm of a ditty – whose title means “Goodbye, beautiful” – may indeed sound like something cooed through dry fog by a spandex-clad blond at the European song contest. But the story it tells reaches far deeper into the continent’s history than the annual kitsch music extravaganza, telling an age-old tale of the left’s determined struggle against political oppression.

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Danish family seek to return Etruscan objects bought from boot of car in Italy

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Bent Søndergaard’s children say they want to carry out ‘his final wishes’ and send back antiquities he bought in 1960s

Their father bought the antiquities, a haul of dirt-encrusted Etruscan objects handed to him from the boot of a car, while on holiday in Italy in the 1960s. For decades they remained in the loft of the family home in Denmark, exasperating his wife and perplexing his children.

Now, inspired by a growing movement of people choosing to return antiquities apparently looted or illegally excavated from their countries of origin, his children are trying to give the items back to Italy.

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‘I hope God gives me the strength to make more movies’: Scorsese addresses retirement rumours

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Director tells press conference he has ‘more films to make’ after long-planned Frank Sinatra biopic and adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s A Life of Jesus both get delayed

Martin Scorsese has denied he is planning to retire, telling a press conference in Italy that he has “more films to make” after reports surfaced in September that two long-planned projects had been postponed.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese, 81, was speaking before an award ceremony in Turin and countered rumours he was no longer making films. “I’m not saying goodbye to cinema at all … I still have more films to make, and I hope God gives me the strength to make them.”

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Interpol campaign to identify remains of women in Europe expands to 46 cases

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Police forces in France, Italy and Spain join cold-case initiative after launch last year of Operation Identify Me

Police have expanded a cold-case campaign aimed at identifying dozens of women who were murdered or who died in suspicious circumstances across Europe, taking in three new countries and more than doubling the number of cases.

The international policing organisation Interpol said on Tuesday that forces from France, Italy and Spain had joined those in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, which last year launched Operation Identify Me to help name 22 female victims.

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Mike Lynch died from drowning, Bayesian yacht inquest hears

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Tycoon’s daughter’s cause of death still under investigation after vessel sank in August

The millionaire tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s cause of death has been recorded as drowning after the Bayesian superyacht disaster but his daughter’s cause of death is still under investigation, an inquest has heard.

Seven of the 22 people onboard the Bayesian died when it sank in a storm in August. On Friday, inquests into the deaths of the four British nationals – 59-year-old Lynch, his daughter, Hannah, 18, and Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, 71 and 70 – were opened and adjourned at Ipswich coroner’s court.

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Vatican bank fires man and woman who flouted staff marriage ban

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Newlyweds nicknamed ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Italian media had both refused to resign so other could keep job

A man and woman have been fired from their jobs at the Vatican bank because they flouted a ban on marriage between employees.

The young couple, nicknamed “Romeo and Juliet” by the Italian media, got married in August, after the bank imposed a rule banning marriage between employees aimed at preventing nepotism.

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Harry’s Bar owner sues Venice city council over waves from speeding boats

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Arrigo Cipriani says waves from vessels that ignore speed limits on Giudecca canal are leaving diners with wet feet

The Harry’s Bar culinary empire is as synonymous with Venice as its canals, inventing the bellini cocktail and hosting noted guests including Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway and Charlie Chaplin during its 93 years in business.

But the lapping of the city’s waters has proved too much for the owner, Arrigo Cipriani, who is suing the city’s council and port master’s office because the feet of his well-heeled customers keep getting soaked by waves from speeding boats.

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Valentino steals the show in Paris with Alessandro Michele at the helm

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Ex-Gucci star brings 70s haute bourgeoisie ladies in trailing chiffons and Gen Z boys in tattoos and pearls to the runway

Valentino was the hottest ticket of this Paris fashion week, and the show had a sense of occasion to match.

A vast floor was laid with smashed mirror tiles, glittering like a ballroom after an earthquake. Five hundred armchairs and a smattering of glowing lamps lay beneath a shroud of white sheets, as if a grand house had been locked up for a long winter. The house of Valentino was shaking off the cobwebs for a new era and hitting the dancefloor.

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Melting glaciers force Switzerland and Italy to redraw part of Alpine border

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Two countries agree to modifications beneath Matterhorn peak, one of Europe’s highest summits

Switzerland and Italy have redrawn a border that traverses an Alpine peak as melting glaciers shift the historically defined frontier.

The two countries agreed to the modifications beneath the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe, which straddles Switzerland’s Zermatt region and Italy’s Aosta valley.

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Milan appeals against ‘grotesque’ move to rename airport after Berlusconi

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City authorities take case to Lombardy regional court in effort to block initiative by Matteo Salvini

Milan council has appealed against a “grotesque” move to rename the city’s main airport after the scandal-tainted late former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The council approved a resolution to take the case to the Lombardy region’s administrative court after the initiative to rename Malpensa was accelerated by Matteo Salvini, the transport minister in Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government.

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Cinema in mafia boss’s Sicily hometown refuses to show film of his life

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Venue owner says Sicilian Letters, about the Cosa Nostra leader Matteo Messina Denaro, ‘doesn’t interest me’

The owner of the only cinema in Castelvetrano, the Sicilian hometown of the notorious Cosa Nostra mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, has refused to screen a film based on his life.

Denaro died of cancer in September last year, nine months after he was arrested following 30 years on the run.

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Anti-immigration mood sweeping EU threatens its new asylum strategy

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The bloc’s migration pact, finally agreed after a decade of talks, is already in peril as states outdo each other in efforts to get tough

In 2015, when more than 1.3 million people headed to Europe, mostly fleeing a brutal war in Syria, the response of Germany’s then chancellor, Angela Merkel, was to say “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”), and open the country’s borders.

Less than a decade later, and faced with a flow of irregular arrivals less than 10% of what it was at the peak of the bloc’s migration crisis, EU capitals are increasingly saying, “No, we can’t”. Or, perhaps more accurately, “We won’t”.

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Italy revives policy of failing badly behaved pupils to ‘bring back respect’

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‘Grades for conduct’, similar to a law introduced by Mussolini, aims to tackle rising aggression towards teachers

Italy has reinstated a measure to fail badly behaved pupils as concerns grow over aggression directed at teachers.

The “grades for conduct” policy, similar to a measure first introduced by Benito Mussolini’s fascist government in 1924, is part of an education bill that was approved in parliament on Wednesday, and gives schools the power to fail students based purely on their behaviour.

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Demonstrations being held in Italy against ‘repressive’ security bill

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Bill by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government comes down hard on climate activists and migrants

Demonstrations are being held across Italy on Wednesday evening in protest against a new security bill described as “repressive” and “dangerous for the country’s democracy”.

The 24 laws contained in the bill, which passed its first hurdle in the lower house of parliament last week and now needs approval in the senate, is the latest attempt by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government to get tough on law and order. It comes down especially hard on climate activists and migrants.

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UK economy to grow faster than Japan, Italy and Germany this year, says OECD

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Forecast upgrades UK to joint second after US but it is still expected to have highest inflation among G7 countries

The global economy is “turning a corner”, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which has upgraded the UK’s growth forecast for this year to faster than that of Japan, Italy and Germany.

The OECD’s latest outlook ranked Britain joint second among the G7 developed countries in its latest outlook for the world economy. However, the UK is still expected to have the highest inflation in the group.

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Meloni-themed restaurant opens near asylum-seeker camp in Albania

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Trattoria Meloni contains 70 portraits of Italian PM and is near site where arrivals to the EU are processed

A restaurant dedicated to Giorgia Meloni has opened in the vicinity of a camp in Albania where the asylum claims of people who seek to enter the EU by sea will be processed as part of a controversial pact promoted by the Italian far-right prime minister.

Trattoria Meloni, a seafood restaurant in the northern port of Shëngjin, was opened by Gjergj Luca, a restaurant owner who is close to the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama.

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Elon Musk to present Atlantic Council global citizen award to Giorgia Meloni

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Choice of recipient and presenter causes anger at council as Italy’s far-right PM renews links with Trump allies

Elon Musk is to present Giorgia Meloni with the Atlantic Council’s global citizen award in New York, as Italy’s far-right prime minister resurrects links with allies of Donald Trump before the US presidential elections.

Meloni will receive the prize during a gala dinner on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in recognition of her “groundbreaking role as Italy’s first female prime minister, her strong support of the European Union and the transatlantic alliance, and her 2024 chairmanship of the Group of Seven”.

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