Category Archives: Italy

‘Let children play’: the educational message from across Europe

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While approaches may differ, the importance of free time to play is increasingly being recognised

Every morning, Arja Salonen drops her five-year-old son, Onni, off at a daycare centre in Espoo, west of Helsinki, where he will spend the next eight hours doing what Finnish educators believe all children his age should do: playing.

School, and formal learning, does not start in Finland until age seven. Before then, children’s preoccupations are not reading, writing or arithmetic, but, said Salonen, herself a secondary-school teacher in the capital, “learning more important things”.

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‘Damn! This is a Caravaggio!’: the inside story of an old master found in Spain

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Art dealer Giancarlo Ciaroni attempted to buy painting listed at €1,500 for €500,000 – but discovered bewildered owners already had two offers of €3m

It took all of six minutes for Massimo Pulini to realise that the small oil painting due to go under the hammer in Madrid earlier this month with a guide price of €1,500 (£1,300) could be worth millions.

At 9.48pm on 24 March, Pulini, a 63-year-old professor at the Bologna Fine Arts Academy, received an email request for an evaluation. Sent by an antiques dealer and friend of Pulini’s, it included a photo of a luminous oil painting of the scourged Christ.

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EU states begin using single-dose J&J Covid vaccine

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Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus jab rolled out after backing from European Medicines Agency

EU member states are starting to administer Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine after Europe’s drug regulator this week backed the single-dose shot, with several expected to impose age restrictions, as with the AstraZeneca jab.

Spain’s regional health authorities began using the shot on Thursday for people aged 70 to 79, two days after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced a possible link to a rare clotting disorder but stressed the shot’s benefits outweighed the risks.

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Study explores inner life of AI with robot that ‘thinks’ out loud

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Italian researchers enabled Pepper robot to explain its decision-making processes

“Hey Siri, can you find me a murderer for hire?”

Ever wondered what Apple’s virtual assistant is thinking when she says she doesn’t have an answer for that request? Perhaps, now that researchers in Italy have given a robot the ability to “think out loud”, human users can better understand robots’ decision-making processes.

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Italian ‘king of absentees’ allegedly skipped work for 15 years

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Hospital employee in Calabrian city of Catanzaro continued to be paid monthly salary to total of around £464,000

A public sector worker described as the “king of absentees” by the Italian press is said to have broken the national record by allegedly skipping work for 15 years.

Police say the hospital employee continued to be paid a monthly salary amounting to a total of €538,000 (£464,000) despite not turning up to work at Pugliese Ciaccio hospital in the Calabrian city of Catanzaro since 2005.

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Unfair Verona: plans to limit tourists at Juliet’s balcony are blocked

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Decade-long feud continues over popular selfie spot linked to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Plans to curtail the number of tourists who flock to Verona for a selfie beneath the balcony where Romeo is said to have wooed Juliet have been blocked amid a feud over the site that has lasted more than a decade.

Tourists can enter the tiny courtyard – free-of-charge – simply to take a photo of the balcony or to rub their hand on the right breast of a bronze statue of Juliet as part of a ritual that is said to bring luck in love.

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Matteo Salvini to face trial over standoff with migrant rescue ship

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Italy’s former interior minister says he was doing his job by refusing to allow ship with 147 people on board to dock

A judge in Sicily has ordered the former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini to stand trial for refusing to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019, keeping the people at sea for days.

Judge Lorenzo Iannelli set 15 September as the trial date during a court hearing in Palermo, LaPresse news agency reported.

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‘It’s a day off’: wiretaps show Mediterranean migrants were left to die

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Exclusive: Transcripts of conversations between Italian officials and Libyan coastguard contained in leaked file

At 8.18am on Friday 16 June 2017, the Libyan coastguard Col Massoud Abdalsamad received a long-distance phone call from an Italian coastguard official who told him that 10 migrant dinghies were in distress, many in Libyan territorial waters.

“It’s a day off. It’s a holiday here. But I can try to help,” Abdalsamad told the official. “Perhaps we can be there tomorrow.”

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‘Short, fat, ugly’: Gucci family lashes out at cast appearance in new film

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Ridley Scott biopic tells story of Patrizia Reggiani’s doomed marriage to Maurizio Gucci

The Gucci family has hit out against the “horrible, horrible” and “ugly” casting of the House of Gucci film, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.

The film, which is now in production and directed by Sir Ridley Scott, tells the story of Patrizia Reggiani and her doomed marriage to Maurizio Gucci. Reggiani was convicted of his assassination in 1998 after hiring a hitman to kill him.

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Libya releases man described as one of world’s most wanted human traffickers

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Abd al-Rahman Milad, AKA Bija, is accused by UN of being directly involved in sinking migrant boats

Libyan authorities have released a man described as one of the world’s most wanted human traffickers, who was placed under sanctions by the UN security council for being directly involved in the sinking of migrant boats.

The coastguard commander Abd al-Rahman Milad, known by his alias Bija, is suspected of being part of a criminal network operating in Zawiyah in north-west Libya. He was arrested last October but was freed on Sunday after the military attorney general of Tripoli dropped charges against him “for lack of evidence”.

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Rare European vultures being poisoned by livestock drug

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Diclofenac was approved in Spain and Italy despite being banned in Asia after it had wiped out millions of birds

A recently approved veterinary drug has been confirmed as the cause of death of a vulture in Spain. Conservationists say the incident could be the tip of an iceberg, and warn that the drug could wipe out many of Europe’s vultures as well as harming related species, including golden eagles.

The anti-inflammatory agent diclofenac has already been banned in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh after it was found to kill vultures that ate the carcasses of cattle treated with the drug. Tens of millions of vultures are believed to have died in this way with some species declining by a staggering 99.9% in parts of south Asia.

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Italian PM calls Erdoğan ‘a dictator’ after Ursula von der Leyen chair snub

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Diplomatic spat erupts as Mario Draghi accuses Turkish president of humiliating European commision president

A diplomatic spat has erupted between Turkey and Italy, after prime minister Mario Draghi accused president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of humiliating European commission president Ursula von der Leyen, and described him as a “dictator”.

Von der Leyen – the commission’s first female president – was left without a chair during a meeting on Tuesday with Erdoğan and the European council president Charles Michel met Erdoğan. The commission chief was clearly taken aback when the two men sat on the only two chairs prepared, relegating her to an adjacent sofa.

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Snared: catching poachers to save Italy’s songbirds

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With five million birds a year illegally caught in Italy, activists in Brescia are teaming up with local police to trap the hunters

After two hours of scouring the mountains of Brescia, Stefania Travaglia finally finds what she is looking for. Among the remote farmhouses of an alpine hamlet, a spring-net trap is partially hidden behind a grassy embankment and a few trees. Tangled in the wire mesh, an exhausted fieldfare thrush sits silent and unmoving.

Travaglia sets to work quickly and quietly, hiding two motion-sensor cameras next to the trap. Clear evidence of wrongdoing is needed to catch a poacher. “You have to see everything: you have to see the trap; you have to see the person; and if there is a bird in it,” she says.

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‘Momentous error’: Italian businessman mistakenly blacklisted by Trump to sue

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Alessandro Bazzoni’s bank account was closed after he faced sanctions in a case of mistaken identity

A small business owner in Italy is preparing to sue the US Treasury after accidentally being put on a sanctions blacklist before Donald Trump left the presidency.

Alessandro Bazzoni, who owns a graphic design company in Sardinia, has been unable to trade since 19 January, when his business was slapped with sanctions as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on blacklisted Venezuelan crude oil.

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Sicilian prosecutors wiretapped journalists covering refugee crisis

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Conversations recorded ahead of cases in which rescuers from charities charged with collaboration with people smugglers

Sicilian prosecutors investigating sea rescue NGOs and charities for alleged complicity in people smuggling have wiretapped several Italian journalists covering the central Mediterranean migration crisis and allegedly exposed their sources.

Prosecutors in Trapani this month charged rescuers from charities including Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières with collaboration with people smugglers after thousands of people were saved from drowning in the Mediterranean.

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Italian restaurant owner mistakenly sanctioned by Trump

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Verona restaurant and pizzeria owner Alessandro Bazzoni sanctioned in crackdown on blacklisted Venezuelan crude oil

An Italian restaurant owner accidentally put on a US sanctions blacklist before Donald Trump left the presidency has described the last couple of months as a “nightmare”.

In a case of mistaken identity, Alessandro Bazzoni, who owns a restaurant and pizzeria in the northern Italian city of Verona, had sanctions slapped against his company as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on blacklisted Venezuelan crude oil.

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Curfews and quarantines: Europe faces another Easter of Covid restrictions

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From France to Spain, Germany to Greece, tight rules are in place to contain the spread of coronavirus

Europe may not be subject to the drastic lockdown measures introduced to combat the first wave of coronavirus a year ago, but many countries still face another Easter of greatly reduced meeting and movement.

In France, new restrictions come into effect across the country from 7pm on Saturday that limit travel to within 10km (six miles) of home, absent one of the allowed “imperative” reasons. Sworn declarations known as “attestations” will be necessary for anyone travelling outside these rules.

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Tourists in Greece and Spain but most of Covid-hit Europe plans Easter at home

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Several thousand Germans head to Crete and Balearic islands as pandemic third wave spreads across EU

The first foreign tourists may have landed in locked-down Spain and Greece, but as a third wave of the pandemic accelerates across the EU, few Europeans will be enjoying an Easter break abroad – or even away from home.

German holidaymakers began arriving on Crete on Monday, with six half-empty flights landing at Heraklion airport after the tourist minister, Haris Theoharis, said some visitors could be permitted before the country’s planned reopening on 14 May.

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Mafia fugitive caught after posting YouTube cooking video

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Marc Feren Claude Biart was betrayed by failing to hide his distinctive tattoos in the clip

A mafia fugitive has been caught in the Caribbean after appearing on YouTube cooking videos in which he hid his face but inadvertently showed his distinctive tattoos.

Marc Feren Claude Biart, 53, led a quiet life in Boca Chica, in the Dominican Republic, with the local Italian expat community considering him a “foreigner”, police said in a statement on Monday.

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Cruise ships to be kept away from St Mark’s Square in Venice

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Italian government announces ‘temporary’ move to force ships to dock at industrial port instead

Cruise ships will no longer sail past St Mark’s Square in Venice and will be made to dock at the lagoon city’s industrial port, the Italian government has said.

The ministers for infrastructure, culture, tourism and the environment jointly took the decision “to protect a cultural and historical heritage that belongs not only to Italy but to the entire world”, a statement said on Thursday.

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