Italy slams Economist ‘Welcome to Britaly’ cover for rehashing stereotypes

Weekly newspaper describes Britaly as ‘country of political instability, low growth and subordination to markets’

Italy’s ambassador to the UK has criticised the Economist for rehashing old stereotypes after featuring Liz Truss dressed as a centurion and holding a fork of spaghetti under the headline “Welcome to Britaly” on the cover of its latest edition, which focuses on Britain’s political mayhem.

Truss, who resigned as prime minister on Thursday after just 45 days in office, is also holding a pizza-shaped shield, with a union jack design and one slice eaten.

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Italian senator renews anti-abortion foetus rights proposal

Maurizio Gasparri has higher chance of success this time after rightwing coalition’s election victory

An Italian senator has submitted a proposal for an amendment to Italy’s civil code that would recognise a foetus as a human being, which if passed into law could enable pregnancy terminations to be classified as murder.

Maurizio Gasparri, a politician with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, which is part of the government led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy – a party with neofascist origins – expected to be sworn in next week, unleashed a barrage of criticism from members of the opposition when he presented his “rights of the unborn child” proposal to the senate.

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Berlusconi said he received vodka from Putin for birthday, reports say

La Presse agency publishes audio suggesting 20 bottles arrived for 86th birthday after pair ‘re-establish’ ties

Silvio Berlusconi has allegedly said Vladimir Putin gave him 20 bottles of vodka for his birthday after he “re-established” relations with the Russian president.

Berlusconi turned 86 on 29 September, four days after a coalition including his Forza Italia party won the general election.

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Coffins left hanging in air after second Naples cemetery collapse this year

Critics blame poor management of cemeteries in Italian city as collapse at Poggioreale cemetery exposes at least a dozen coffins

At least a dozen coffins have been left dangling in the air after the collapse of a four-storey building containing burial niches at the oldest cemetery in Naples.

It is the second such incident at the site this year, with critics blaming the poor management of cemeteries in the southern Italian city.

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What are European countries doing to cut power consumption?

Governments across the continent have announced a range of measures to tackle any energy shortages this winter

Paris is switching off the Eiffel Tower lights an hour early, Milan has turned off public fountains, and Hanover is offering gym users cold rather than hot showers in an effort to combat potential energy shortages this winter.

At the same time, the public are being encouraged to do their bit by avoiding using household appliances between 4pm and 7pm, stock up on blankets and slow down their driving.

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Italy: Berlusconi calls Meloni ‘patronising’ and ‘bossy’ as relations fray

Three-time former PM’s outburst comes as their parties scramble to form a coalition government

Silvio Berlusconi has described Giorgia Meloni, who is poised to become Italy’s prime minister, as “patronising” and “bossy” as the fragile dynamic between the pair unravels as they scramble to form a government.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-fascist roots, won the biggest share of the vote in general elections on 25 September, helping to secure the largest majority of any coalition government in Italy since 1994.

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Uffizi Galleries sue Jean Paul Gaultier over use of Botticelli images

Any use of Italy’s publicly owned art to sell merchandise requires permission and payment of a fee

Italy’s Uffizi Galleries are suing the French fashion house Jean Paul Gaultier for damages that could exceed €100,000 (£88,000) after the company’s allegedly unauthorised use of images of Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece The Birth of Venus to adorn a range of clothing products, including T-shirts, leggings and bodices.

The matter came to light earlier this year after the Uffizi in Florence was notified of the garments being advertised by Jean Paul Gaultier on its website and social media.

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Franca Fendi, inheritor of Italian fashion house, dies aged 87

Fendi and her sisters took luxury brand to new creative heights by bringing in Karl Lagerfeld in 1960s

Franca Fendi, one of the five sisters who inherited a small Roman leather goods workshop and together transformed it into a luxury fashion house, has died in Rome on Monday. She was 87.

Born in 1935, she participated from a young age in the management of the company that from the 1960s onwards, under the guidance of the sisters, became a global luxury powerhouse famed for its reimagining of the classic fur coat.

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Co-founder of collapsed energy firm Bulb hopes to expand battery business

Loss-making venture led by Amit Gudka eyes continent as countries move towards using renewable power

The co-founder of collapsed energy supplier Bulb is planning to expand his loss-making battery storage venture into Europe as the energy crisis escalates.

Amit Gudka hopes to develop Field Energy, the business he set up after leaving Bulb in February 2021, on the continent as countries attempt to switch toward renewable power.

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Italy election: far-right Brothers of Italy set to take power; Russia ready for ‘constructive relations’ with party – as it happened

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party set to lead a coalition; Kremlin welcomes what it calls ‘more constructive’ parties leading Italy. This live blog is now closed

Read this analysis from our Rome correspondent, Angela Giuffrida:

Giorgia Meloni has spent three decades fighting her way to the top of Italian politics. But despite her political prowess, the 45-year-old from Rome, whose strong will and determination has drawn comparisons to Margaret Thatcher, has limited government experience.

If Meloni is confirmed as prime minister over the next few weeks, she will be in charge of steering Italy through one of its most delicate periods, dealing with mammoth challenges from the energy crisis and high inflation to a possible recession and a winter wave of Covid-19.

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‘We need to unite against this nationalism’: Italians air fears after victory for populist right

Observers expect Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini to float policies inimical to migrants, LGBT rights and abortions

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League, has promised that his alliance with Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy will deliver a long-lasting government as Italians began to digest the outcome of an election that delivered the country’s most rightwing government since the end of the second world war.

Final results on Monday gave the coalition control of both houses of parliament with 44% of the vote and confirmed the swing in the balance of power in the Italian far-right towards Meloni after her party made spectacular gains in the League’s northern strongholds of Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia.

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Italian lawyer vows to fight gender-segregated electoral voting queues

LGTBQ+ activists denounce discrimination at polling stations in Sunday’s general election

A lawyer has pledged to fight in court a decades-old Italian election law that in widespread implementation on Sunday led to thousands of voters, including trans people, being forced into gender-segregated queues.

Hundreds of LGTBQ+ activists denounced discrimination at polling stations in Sunday’s general election. Many told of their experiences on social media, citing how the binary queues failed to consider the “complexity of thousands of voters in Italy whose identity cards do not reflect their gender” and forced them to publicly identify themselves as trans people.

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Italy general election 2022: exit poll shows victory for far-right – as it happened

Giorgia Meloni and far-right Brothers of Italy in line to form new coalition with right getting 41-45% of the vote, while left alliance has 25-29%

Roberto Saviano, the Italian essayist and author of Gomorrah, has written in the Guardian this weekend that “Meloni appears the most dangerous Italian political figure not because she explicitly evokes fascism or the practices of the black-shirted squadristi (militia), but because of her ambiguity.”

For more of that ambiguity, compare and contrast these two videos.

The Italian right has handed fascism over [to] history for decades now, unambiguously condemning the suppression of democracy and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws.

Yes to the natural family. No to LGBT lobbies. Yes to sexual identity. No to gender ideology. Yes to the culture of life. No to the abyss of death.

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Italy elections: exit polls point to victory for coalition led by far-right Giorgia Meloni

The leader of the Brothers of Italy party appears set to become country’s first female PM

Italy election results – Live

A coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy is set to form the country’s most rightwing government since the end of the second world war after exit polls gave it a clear majority.

With full results due on Monday, the far-right party leader is set to become Italy’s first female prime minister – and a model for nationalist parties across Europe as she heads one of the EU’s six original member states.

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Italian election 2022: live official results

Early official results from the Italian interior ministry confirm exit poll suggestions that the rightwing coalition led by Brothers of Italy could win enough seats to form a government

Follow the live blog

The vote was triggered when the Five Star Movement abruptly withdrew its support for Mario Draghi’s technocratic government, but an election was due next year in any event.

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Pope urges Italians to help migrants as far right tipped to win election

Francis said migrants and refugees should be able to ‘live in peace and with dignity’ at open-air mass in Matera

Pope Francis has urged Italians to help migrants as voting proceeded in a general election widely expected to bring an anti-immigration rightwing coalition into power.

Speaking at the end of an open-air mass in the southern Italian city of Matera, the pope recalled that Sunday coincided with the Catholic church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees. “Migrants are to be welcomed, accompanied, promoted and integrated,” he told the assembled faithful.

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Italy: internal rivalry could threaten the stability of a Meloni-led coalition

Matteo Salvini has described Giorgia Meloni as a ‘pain in the ass’, while Silvio Berlusconi is rumoured to be unsupportive

Giorgia Meloni has spent three decades fighting her way to the top of Italian politics. But despite her political prowess, the 45-year-old from Rome, whose strong will and determination has drawn comparisons to Margaret Thatcher, has limited government experience.

If Meloni is confirmed as prime minister over the next few weeks, she will be in charge of steering Italy through one of its most delicate periods, dealing with mammoth challenges from the energy crisis and high inflation to a possible recession and a winter wave of Covid-19.

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Italy braces for sharp move to the right after election voting closes

Giorgia Meloni, who leads Brothers of Italy, looks likely to become the first woman to head a government

Italians were braced for seismic change on Saturday, on the eve of an election forecasted to hand Italy the most rightwing government since the second world war.

Giorgia Meloni, the head of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, is widely tipped to become the country’s first woman to head a government.

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Berlusconi claims Russians ‘pushed’ Putin into Ukraine war

Italian former PM’s party is part of coalition expected to win Sunday’s general election

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s three-time former prime minister, whose party is forecast to return to government after the general election on Sunday, has sparked a row after defending the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over the war in Ukraine.

The 85-year-old billionaire told Italian TV that Putin, an old friend of his, was pushed to invade Ukraine by the Russian people and by ministers who wanted Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration replaced with “decent people”.

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Brothers of Italy suspends candidate after online post praising Hitler found

Election candidate for the rightwing party had called Hitler a ‘great statesman’ in a 2014 Facebook post

The far-right Brothers of Italy party has suspended an election candidate after it was discovered he had praised Adolf Hitler and described the group’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, as a “modern fascist”.

Calogero Pisano, a coordinator for Brothers of Italy in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, wrote on Facebook in 2014 that the Nazi leader was “a great statesman”.

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