Category Archives: Italy

British state ‘covered up plot to assassinate King Edward VIII’

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Historian says papers challenge official version that George McMahon was a fantasist

It has all the hallmarks of a 21st-century political thriller, including a plot to assassinate a controversial monarch, an MI5 double agent, and claims of a high-level cover-up.

In 1936, an MI5 informant called George McMahon tried to assassinate King Edward VIII as he rode his horse near Buckingham Palace. Just as he was taking aim with a revolver, a woman in the crowd grabbed his arm and a policeman punched him, causing the weapon to fly into the road and strike the monarch’s mount.

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Clashes near Naples as cluster of Covid-19 cases puts five buildings in lockdown – video

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Residents have clashed in a coastal town near Naples after five large blocks of flats were put under a strict 15-day lockdown. More than 40 people living there had tested positive for Covid-19. The Italian army was deployed to the area in the small town of Mondragone after some people broke the lockdown to go to work. Residents also protested against the lack of information, and racism towards a Roma community involved in seasonal fruit-picking 

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Italian team covers glacier with giant white sheets to slow melting

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Every summer, the Presena glacier in northern Italy is protected from the sun with huge reflective tarps

A vast tarpaulin unravels, gathering speed as it bounces down the glacier over glinting snow. Summer is here and the alpine ice is being protected from global warming.

In northern Italy, the Presena glacier has lost more than one third of its volume since 1993.

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‘I just need a connection’: the refugees teaching languages across borders

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A unique platform lets teachers from Venezuela to Syria to Burundi earn a living teaching their language online

Louisa Waugh and Ghaith Alhallak have met for language lessons in seven countries. “We counted it up the other day,” says Waugh, recalling the list of places from which she has video-called Alhallak: Britain, Mali, Senegal and Greece. Alhallak has answered from Lebanon, France and Italy, where he is now studying for a master’s degree in political science at the University of Padua.

“You just need a connection,” he says.

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Family of Giulio Regeni ‘betrayed’ by Italian PM over arms sale to Egypt

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Murdered student’s mother and rights groups condemn $1.2bn deal approved by Giuseppe Conte

Rights groups and the family of the murdered Italian student Giulio Regeni have heavily criticised an arms deal between Italy and Egypt worth an estimated $1.2bn (£960m).

Regeni’s mutilated body was found by the side of a major road on the outskirts of Cairo in early 2016. His murder remains unsolved, but there are widespread suspicions that he was abducted, tortured and killed by Egyptian security forces.

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Germany and France reopen borders as Europe emerges from lockdown

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Spain to reopen borders on 21 June but other countries are adopting more targeted approach

France and Germany became the latest European countries to reopen their borders as the continent emerges from its three-month Covid-19 lockdown.

Speaking on Sunday evening, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said the country’s Schengen borders would be open from Monday and its non-EU borders from 1 July.

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Milan mayor refuses to remove defaced statue of Italian journalist

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BLM protesters targeted monument to Indro Montanelli, who admitted buying 12-year-old Eritrean girl

Milan’s mayor has rejected calls to remove a statue from a public park of an Italian journalist who acknowledged having bought a 12-year-old Eritrean girl to be his wife during Italy’s colonial occupation in the 1930s.

Giuseppe Sala said in a Facebook video that he was perplexed by “the lightness” with which Indro Montanelli had confessed to buying the child from her father, in a widely circulated video of a 1969 talkshow appearance, but said “lives should be judged in their totality” and he believed the statue should stay.

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At least 35 people dead as migrant boat sinks off Tunisia

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Boat carrying 53 people trying to reach Italy sank last week, reports say

At least 35 people have died after a boat carrying dozens of people sank last week off the coast of Tunisia, according to local officials.

According to an initial reconstruction of events, the boat, carrying 53 people mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, had left the Tunisian coast from the city of Sfax, aiming to reach Italy. The shipwreck occurred between 4 and 5 June off the Kerkennah Islands, said investigators, and authorities were alerted on 9 June by fishermen who first spotted the floating bodies.

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‘The older I get, the less I fear’: meet the Italian Larry David

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A decade after his two much-loved comedies about the vicissitudes of ageing, director Gianni Di Gregorio explains why, against his own expectations, he had to make another

In 2000, after a decade of caring for his ailing mother in her large flat in Rome, Gianni Di Gregorio wrote a comedy about a bloke called Gianni who looks after his 93-year-old mother in a large flat in Rome. No one was interested in the story, in which the unemployed bachelor ends up running around after a cohort of old ladies whose spirit and vigour remain undimmed despite various ailments. Everyone thought he was crazy: who would be interested in a funny film about four old women and a middle-aged bloke?

Related: Gianni Di Gregorio: The incidental director

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Global report: China hails coronavirus response as world death toll tops 400,000

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Beijing denies cover-up or delay, while countries easing lockdowns face spike in cases

The number of confirmed deaths from coronavirus globally has topped 400,000, as the Chinese government released a report lauding its own response to the pandemic that emerged in the city of Wuhan six months ago.

As more countries prepared to continue easing their lockdowns from Monday, Singapore’s prime minister warned the city-state’s citizens that they were entering a tougher world of slowing demand and travel restrictions for the foreseeable future.

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Spain rekindles a radical idea: a Europe-wide minimum income

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Podemos leader enlists Portugal and Italy to lobby for policy as depression looms for coronavirus-ravaged southern Europe

It’s been proposed, probed and pushed to the margins of the European Union for more than two decades. Now, as Europe reels from tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths and millions of lost jobs in the worst recession for generations, ministers from Spain, Italy and Portugal say the time has come to revive a radical idea: a pan-EU minimum income.

“This is the moment for debates about social protection,” Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s deputy prime minister for social rights and leader of Podemos, told the Guardian. “Anyone who finds themselves in a vulnerable situation should have access to protection mechanisms that allow them to fill their fridge and care for their family.” 

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Global report: Germany eases travel ban and cafe culture returns to Paris

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Elsewhere, Italy’s president warns Covid-19 ‘is not over’, and former UK PMs join calls for a coordinated global response

Germany lifted its blanket European travel ban as coronavirus lockdowns across the EU continued to ease, with officials saying new cases in western Europe were now in steady decline.

Parisians reclaimed their cafe terraces and Berliners took back their bars as normal life inched closer to returning in many parts of the continent.

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‘We can’t relax’: Europeans face up to life after lockdown

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From Spain to Denmark, even those who have coped with coronavirus are aware the world has changed dramatically

Her customers may be back and there are, miraculously, more of them. Spring is here; the sun is out. No one wants to dwell on what happened; everyone wants to pick up their lives again, same as before.

“But still,” says Sophie Fornairon, “things have changed.”

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Coronavirus news live: no new Covid-19 deaths in Spain for first time since March

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Pakistanis urged to ‘live with the virus’; employee in Israeli prime minister’s office tests positive for Covid-19; Czech Republic will welcome foreign travellers from 15 June

UK ministers have been accused of not taking seriously the threat posed to black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) Britons by Covid-19, after it was reported that the release of an official review of the issue had been delayed over fears of potential civil unrest.

According to Sky News, officials are concerned about the effect the publication could have amid global anger over the death of George Floyd, an African American man who pleaded for air as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck.

Related: Ministers accused of not taking Covid-19 threat to BAME Britons seriously

Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

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Global report: fears of coronavirus surge from US protests as world cases hit 6m

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The pope warns that people are more important than economies as countries ease lockdowns

Global coronavirus infections have passed the 6 million mark as Latin America hit the grim milestone of 50,000 deaths with Brazil alone accounting for half of those fatalities.

With at least 369,000 deaths confirmed worldwide since the pandemic began in China in January – and that number believed to be an underestimate – Brazil’s virus death toll of 28,834 has now surpassed that of France with the country reporting 33,274 new infections in the past 24 hours.

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Leaning Tower of Pisa among sites in Italy to reopen after lockdown

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Strict safety measures in place, as Colosseum and others also prepare to welcome visitors again

Some of Italy’s most famous cultural sites are coming back to life after being closed for more than three months as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened on Saturday, the Colosseum and Vatican Museums will welcome visitors again from Monday and Florence’s Uffizi gallery from Tuesday.

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Italy considers charges over Malta’s ‘shocking’ refusal to rescue migrants

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Foreign ministry condemns Valletta for not abiding by international rules and ordering stricken boat to Sicily at gunpoint

The Italian government  has confirmed that Malta’s armed forces turned a migrant boat away at gunpoint from Maltese waters, after giving them fuel and the GPS coordinates to reach Italy.

Police in Sicily are investigating and the prosecutor’s office may open an investigation against Malta in the next few days. Maltese officers risk being charged with aiding illegal immigration. 

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Global report: EU countries block hydroxychloroquine, South Korea fears new spike

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France, Italy and Belgium respond to safety fears around drug; UN issues food insecurity warning for Africa; mosques reopen in Syria

France, Italy and Belgium have all taken steps against the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating patients with Covid-19 as safety concerns over the drug, touted by Donald Trump and Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, continue to grow.

Paris on Wednesday revoked a decree allowing doctors to use the drug with severely ill coronavirus patients, while the Italian and Belgian medicine agencies either suspended or warned against its use except in clinical trials.

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Ancient Roman mosaic floor discovered under vines in Italy

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Pristine ‘archaeological treasure’ near Verona may date to 3rd century AD, say experts

A perfectly preserved ancient Roman mosaic floor has been discovered near the northern Italian city of Verona.

Archaeologists were astonished by the find as it came almost a century after the remains of a villa, believed to date to the 3rd century AD, were unearthed in a hilly area above the town of Negrar di Valpolicella.

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