Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

Proceeds from levy on interest rate income will be used to help mortgage holders and cut taxes

Italy has announced a one-off 40% windfall tax on local banks that have been accused of reaping billions in extra profit from rising interest rates.

The Italian government, which approved the surprise tax in a cabinet meeting on Monday night, said it planned to use the proceeds to support mortgage holders and cut taxes, at a time when rising rates have put extra pressure on households.

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Italian official rebuked for proclaiming innocence of Bologna terrorists

Marcello De Angelis, a communications chief for the Lazio region, said he knew the trio were not involved in the 1980 explosion

A senior regional official in Italy who used to be a member of a neofascist group has sparked anger after attempting to clear the names of three people convicted of one of the country’s worst terrorist attacks.

Marcello De Angelis, the communications chief of the Lazio region, made the remarks days after Italy marked the 43rd anniversary of the bombing of Bologna train station, in which 85 people were killed and more than 200 were injured.

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Bodies of woman and toddler found after migrant boats sink off Lampedusa

Italian coastguard says two bodies recovered, amid reports of at least 30 people missing from two vessels that sailed from Tunisia

The bodies of a woman and toddler were recovered by the Italian coastguard after two shipwrecks overnight off the southern island of Lampedusa.

Fifty-seven people were rescued and more than 30 were believed to be missing as of Sunday afternoon in what was described as “more tragic news” regarding those making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean in search of refuge in Europe.

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Italian fugitive caught after passion for football betrays his location

Vincenzo La Porta spotted in a photo of fans celebrating in Corfu after Napoli won Italy’s league championship

Love for his Naples football team betrayed the hideout of a longtime fugitive, who was captured while riding a moped on a Greek island, Italian police have said.

Naples-based Carabinieri paramilitary police said Vincenzo La Porta, who was on Italy’s list of 100 most dangerous fugitives, was spotted in a photo of fans in a restaurant in Corfu, who were celebrating after the Napoli football squad clinched Italy’s top league championship a few weeks ago.

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Bloomsbury USA president dies in speedboat collision in Italy

Adrienne Vaughan was on family holiday and reportedly fell overboard when speedboat collided with a sailboat

Adrienne Vaughan, the 45-year-old president of the US branch of the Bloomsbury publishing house, has been killed after a collision between a speedboat and a 45-metre sailboat on Italy’s Amalfi coast.

Vaughan was on holiday in Italy with her husband and two children when the collision happened on Thursday.

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Italy’s ‘Attenzione pickpocket!’ social media star found to have far-right links

Monica Poli, a social media star for challenging petty thieves, is a councillor for Lega, which backs anti-Roma policies

Her bellowing cry – “Attenzione pickpocket!” – has turned her into a social media superstar, with videos featuring her crusade against petty crime racking up millions of views, spawning a trove of flattering news profiles and even a handful of dance tracks that riff on her signature catchphrase.

This week, however, it emerged that Monica Poli, TikTok’s celebrated citizen vigilante who publicly shames pickpockets by alerting tourists to their presence, is a councillor for Italy’s far-right Lega (League) party. Led by Matteo Salvini, the party has long been linked to draconian policies and incendiary rhetoric targeting asylum seekers, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community.

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Italian PM Giorgia Meloni sues Placebo singer for calling her ‘fascist racist’

Calls for overhaul of defamation laws in Italy after legal action brought against Brian Molko

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is suing Placebo frontman, Brian Molko, for defamation after publicly calling her “racist” and “fascist”, according to local media reports.

Molko made the comments during a performance by the band at the Sonic Park festival in Stupinigi outside Turin in July. “Giorgia Meloni, piece of shit, fascist, racist,” he appeared to shout in Italian in footage posted on social media by fans who attended the gig.

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Italian singer Baby K decries selfie ‘madness’ after being hurt by fan

Artist forced to cancel summer tour after being ‘charged at’ by woman at the end of concert

The Italian singer Baby K has hit out against the “madness” of selfies and called for greater protection for artists after she was injured by a fan and forced to cancel the rest of her tour.

In a video posted on TikTok, she said she suffered “breast trauma” after being “charged at” by a woman at the end of a concert on Monday in Teramo, Italy, as a crowd of fans surged around her for selfies.

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Four Tunisians arrested for piracy over engine thefts from migrant boats

Men held in Sicily accused of intercepting vessels and demanding cash, phones and vital engines

Police in Italy have arrested four Tunisians on charges of piracy, accusing them of intercepting migrant boats in the central Mediterranean and stealing their engines, leaving the vessels adrift.

Investigators said the four men would identify boats carrying asylum seekers to Europe and, with the help of other vessels, blockade them in international waters off the Tunisian coast, before boarding them to rob the passengers of money and phones and the boat of its valuable engine.

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Italy seeking to leave ‘atrocious’ China Belt and Road plan without harming ties – minister

‘Improvised and atrocious’ decision in 2019 made Italy the only major western member, says Guido Crosetto, the defence minister

Joining China’s vast Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was an “atrocious” decision, Italy’s defence minister has said, and the issue was how to leave it without damaging ties with Beijing.

Guido Crosetto said in an interview published on Sunday that the move made four years ago under a previous government had done little to boost exports, while Chinese exports to Italy had soared.

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Emperor Nero’s lost theatre found under site of hotel in Rome

Archaeologists hail ‘exceptional finds’ at venue whose existence was previously known only from mentions in ancient texts

The ruins of Nero’s Theatre, an imperial theatre referred to in ancient Roman texts but never found, have been discovered under the garden of a future Four Seasons hotel, steps away from the Vatican.

Archaeologists in Rome have excavated deep under the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere since 2020 as part of planned renovations on the frescoed Renaissance building. The palazzo, which takes up a city block along the broad Via della Conciliazione leading to Saint Peter’s Square, is home to an ancient Vatican chivalric order that leases the space to a hotel to raise money for Christians in the Holy Land.

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Italian parliament approves bill to criminalise surrogacy abroad

Surrogacy is already illegal in Italy, while IVF is only available for heterosexual couples

The Italian parliament has approved a bill criminalising people who go abroad to have children via surrogacy, a measure described as “a disgrace”.

The bill, passed in the chamber of deputies with 166 votes in support and 109 against, is aimed only at Italians and envisages fines of up to €1m (£856,690) and jail terms of up to two years for those who break it.

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‘Like a blowtorch’: Mediterranean gripped by wildfires as blazes spread in Croatia and Portugal

‘There is no magical defence mechanism,’ says Greek prime minister as fires burn in northern Africa and southern Europe

Wildfires were burning in at least nine countries across the Mediterranean as blazes spread in Croatia and Portugal, with thousands of firefighters in Europe and north Africa working in extreme heat to contain flames stoked by high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds.

High temperatures and parched ground sparked wildfires in countries on both sides of the Mediterranean, with at least 34 people killed in Algeria, where 8,000 firefighters on Tuesday battled blazes across the tinder-dry north. Fires burned in a total of 15 provinces, leading to the evacuation of more than 1,500 people.

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Storms and wildfires kill seven in Italy as extreme weather continues

Three people killed in Sicily fires and four in northern storms as hundreds forced to flee homes

Seven people have died in the past 24 hours as two extreme weather events split Italy between wildfires in the south and violent storms in the north.

Fires in Sicily caused the temporary closure of Palermo airport after temperatures in the city climbed to 47C on Monday.

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Venice film festival picks starry films despite actors’ strike

Hollywood films vying for Golden Lion include Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, with non-competition films by Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater

The Venice film festival appears to have largely shrugged off issues caused by non-attendance of Hollywood actors due to the Sag-Aftra strike as it unveiled its lineup for its 2023 edition.

Venice has traditionally functioned partly as a platform for major American releases looking for strong positioning in the autumn awards season, and it has already seen its originally announced opening film Challengers, a tennis drama starring Zendaya, drop out after it was forced to delay its release date.

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How brutal heat is breaking records everywhere from the US to Japan

Temperatures reached as high as 53.3C in the US and flooding hit South Korea and India

A remote township in the north-western region of Xinjiang set a Chinese record of 52.2C (125.9F) on Sunday – in a country that was battling -50C weather six months ago. Sanbao is in the Turpan Depression, an arid basin of sand dunes and dried-up lakes where 50.3C was recorded in 2015. Beijing topped its record for high-temperature days in a year on Tuesday, with 27 days above 35C. The temperature in its southern suburbs soared even higher on Wednesday to 36.3C.

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Stolen Christopher Columbus letter found in Delaware returned to Italy

Columbus wrote the letter to King Ferdinand of Spain in 1493 about his findings after the ‘discovery’ of the Americas

The US has returned a rare 15th-century original edition of a letter written by Christopher Columbus to Italy, the federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency has announced.

The letter, valued at over $1.3m, was revealed to have been stolen some time between 1985 and 1988, likely from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the historic public library in Venice.

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Thursday briefing: What’s behind Europe’s extreme heat – and the risks ahead

In today’s newsletter: How countries have responded to record-breaking temperatures – and what it will take to change minds and policy

Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition

Good morning.

When the temperature in Sicily is approaching 50C, you know something is wrong.

New Zealand | Two people died and six people were injured after a shooting at a building site in Auckland city centre, hours before the Women’s World Cup is due to start. The gunman was also dead. New Zealand’s PM, Chris Hipkins, said the World Cup would proceed as planned.

Politics | Almost 200,000 families living under Labour-run councils are affected by the two-child benefit cap, a Guardian analysis has revealed. Keir Starmer’s decision not to scrap the policy if Labour wins power has led to attacks from anti-poverty campaigners and disquiet from senior figures in the party.

Health | MPs have urged the government to introduce restrictions on the packaging and marketing of disposable vapes to tackle the “alarming trend” of children using these addictive products. The health and social care committee said there should be restrictions on how e-cigarettes are sold, in line with those applied to tobacco products.

Slavery | Caribbean countries are considering approaching the UN’s international court of justice for a legal opinion on demanding compensation from 10 European countries over slavery, as the fight for reparative justice is stepped up. Ralph Gonsalves, the current leader of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, said he is also looking for an apology from the British government and expressed disappointment in Rishi Sunak’s lack of engagement in the matter.

Strikes | A strike by train staff in the RMT union will severely affect rail services across Britain in the next week. About 20,000 RMT members at 14 train operators will strike for 24 hours on Thursday and again on Saturday, coinciding with the end of a week-long overtime ban by train drivers in the Aslef union. The 10 days of transport disruption will coincide with the peak summer holiday getaway weekend.

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Strike threats in Italy and stoppages in Greece as workers struggle with heat

Parts of Sicily reach almost 47C and Spanish coastal water temperatures hit new high for mid-July

Temperatures reached almost 47C in southern Italy on Wednesday and factory workers threatened to strike over the extreme heat, while wildfires continued to rage in Greece and temperatures in coastal waters around Spain broke records.

In Sicily, where the European record of 48.8C was registered in August 2021, the mercury climbed to almost 47C in the area between Mazara del Vallo, in the province of Trapani, and Sciacca, in Agrigento province, according to data from ilMeteo.it. Temperatures in Sardinia reached 46C while Rome – where there were energy blackouts on Tuesday due to pressure on the grid believed to be from air conditioners – peaked at 38C.

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Tony Blair sought to avoid reports of ‘snuggling up’ to Berlusconi, files show

Envoy urged No 10 to exploit opportunities presented by tycoon’s premiership while ‘holding our noses’, archives reveal

Tony Blair sought to avoid unwelcome headlines suggesting he was “snuggling up” to Silvio Berlusconi by not inviting media lobby correspondents to a UK-Italy summit in Rome, newly released documents reveal.

Before the February 2002 bilateral, Britain’s ambassador to Rome, John Shepherd, told the government it had a “real opportunity” to exploit the Italian prime minister’s “orientations in Europe in support of UK interests, holding our noses and staying alert to the risks as we do”.

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