Italians have a last chance to vote on Monday in a two-day parliamentary election that could restore conservative billionaire Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister of a country on the brink of recession. Many Italians doubt, however, that Italy’s 62nd government since World War II will revive the economy.
Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday appealed to Italian voters to give him a huge majority at the general election on Sunday and Monday. He said that ”to really govern” he needed a margin of at least 20 seats in the Senate, the Upper House of the Italian Parliament. That would allow him ”to take, if necessary, difficult and unpopular decisions”.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney gave Manchester United a clinical 2-0 win at AS Roma on Tuesday in the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal. Portugal forward Ronaldo soared inside the area six minutes before the break to head home a Paul Scholes cross after Rooney had skipped away from Philippe Mexes.
Brazilian Formula One driver Felipe Massa this week vowed to bounce back from his fruitless start to the season. The Ferrari man retired from the first two Grands Prix of the season in Australia and Malaysia and already trails Great Britain’s Championship leader Lewis Hamilton of McLaren by 14 points.
With a solitary win over regular wooden-spoon rivals Scotland, Nick Mallett did not disappoint in his maiden Six Nations as Italy coach, but he did not surpass expectations either. Results-wise, the campaign is a step back from last season, when the Azzurri secured their best showing of two wins under his predecessor Pierre Berbizier.
A court in Sicily has ruled that an accused Mafioso can be put under house arrest because he is too fat for any Italian jail. Salvatore Ferranti, who weighs 210kg, was allowed to go home after spending six months in four Italian prisons, his lawyer said, confirming a local newspaper report.
Inter Milan’s ill discipline cost them again as Liverpool won 1-0 at the San Siro on Tuesday to progress to the Champions League quarterfinals 3-0 on aggregate. Nicolas Burdisso was sent off just five minutes into the second half of the second-round, second-leg tie to scupper the Italian champions’ hopes of reaching the next round.
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/ 24 February 2008
”It’s me,” the man said. ”I’m the real Pasquale Condello.” I Cacciatori, the Hunters — the Carabinieri’s specialist man-trackers entrusted with the last stage of the operation to net ”The Supremo” — had left nothing to chance. They were convinced the 57-year-old mobster lived in one of 12 flats on the outskirts of Reggio Calabria.
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/ 11 February 2008
Italy’s South African coach Nick Mallett said he was frustrated by his side’s two crucial first-half mistakes that cost them a first-ever victory over England. Italy lost 23-19 at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico in the Six Nations on Sunday in a match where they came as close as ever to beating England in 14 attempts.
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/ 6 February 2008
Italy’s president dissolved Parliament on Wednesday and the caretaker government prepared to call a snap election, likely in mid-April, that could mark a return to power of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. President Giorgio Napolitano’s bid for cross-party support to reform Italy’s messy voting rules before a fresh election met stiff resistance from Berlusconi.
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/ 30 January 2008
South African ”Bladerunner” Oscar Pistorius vowed in an interview with Italian television on Tuesday to continue his fight to have an Olympic ban overturned. The disabled sprinter, who runs with carbon-fibre blade attachments, wants to be allowed to compete in the normal Olympics as well as the Paralympics.
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/ 28 January 2008
Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius has virtually given up his fight to compete at the Beijing Olympics and is focusing his efforts on running at the 2012 London Games. The International Association of Athletics Federations ruled on January 14 that the South African was ineligible to compete at the Olympics.
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/ 25 January 2008
Italy’s president will hold crisis talks with political leaders on Friday to see whether he can avoid calling snap elections after a no confidence vote forced Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s government to resign. Prodi stepped down late on Thursday after losing, as expected, the vote in the Senate.
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/ 16 January 2008
The prankster who poured red dye into the waters of Rome’s landmark Trevi Fountain was at it again on Wednesday when he targeted another of the city’s landmarks — dropping thousands of coloured plastic balls down the Spanish Steps. Graziano Cecchini said he had released more than 500 000 balls down the steps.
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/ 16 January 2008
Placido Domingo says he’s always longed to lead his country in a national anthem that unites Spaniards — but acknowledged on Wednesday that he’ll have to wait a little while longer. The Spanish tenor was to premiere the new lyrics of his country’s anthem — a military march long performed without words — later this month.
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/ 15 January 2008
Sicily’s Mafia rakes in more than €1-billion a year through extortion, according to a study to be published on Friday. Between 2002 and 2006, the Cosa Nostra earned more than €6-billion from Sicilian businesses forced to pay ”pizzo”, according to extracts of the study published on Tuesday.
Ferarri’s new Formula One boss, Stefano Domenicali, is keen to put last season’s spy scandal behind him and look to the future. ”For the good of the sport we need to look forward; the past is the past,” he said in Italy at his first press conference as Ferrari Formula One chief, although admitting the spy scandal would be difficult to completely forget.
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/ 30 December 2007
Tens of thousands of people are expected to take part in a giant New Year’s kiss in front of St Mark’s Basilica in the romantic Italian city of Venice, authorities said this week. "New Year 2008 in Venice will become the New Year of love," the Venice municipality said on its website.
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/ 19 December 2007
An Italian court has ruled that a couple could not name their son Friday and ordered that he instead be called Gregory after the saint whose feast day he was born on. ”I think it is ridiculous they even opened a case about it,” said the family’s lawyer, Paola Rossi.
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/ 5 December 2007
Celtic manager Gordon Strachan insisted it was the overall result and not the performance that mattered after Celtic sneaked into the Champions League knock-out stages despite a 1-0 defeat at the hands of AC Milan. Veteran forward Filippo Inzaghi scored his 63rd goal in European competition to break the great Gerd Muller’s long-standing record.
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/ 5 December 2007
Italy is the dream destination of exchange students, but student photos of drunken antics exposed by media coverage of a British girl’s murder last month have cast a sobering light on their lifestyle. After the murder of Meredith Kercher in the university town of Perugia, the media discovered a trove of material posted by Perugia students and friends on the web.
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/ 30 November 2007
Italian police burst into the room of a suspected Mafia mobster in Sicily and arrested him as he watched a television show about the arrest of a Mafia boss, investigators said on Friday. Police said Michele Catalano was watching the concluding chapter late on Thursday of the TV mini-series The Boss of Bosses when he was detained.
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/ 28 November 2007
A rooster crowing at the break of dawn has earned his owner a €200 fine in an Italian court after neighbours complained it was waking them up too early. Ansa news agency reported on Wednesday that the rooster’s owner in Bolzano province would appeal the sentence on the grounds that he needs at least one rooster to breed chickens.
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/ 12 November 2007
A police officer who supposedly killed a soccer fan was placed under investigation on Monday for manslaughter, news reports said, a day after the shooting led to riots across Italy and forced the suspension or postponement of three matches. Authorities detained four people on Monday for taking part in the violence in Rome.
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/ 12 November 2007
A policeman accidentally shot dead a soccer fan on Sunday during a confrontation between supporters of rival clubs in Italy, police said. The shooting took place after Lazio and Juventus supporters clashed at a motorway restaurant near the Tuscan city of Arezzo.
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/ 5 November 2007
Italian police on Monday arrested Salvatore lo Piccolo, who is suspected to have become the new head of the Sicilian Mafia following the 2006 arrest of the former ”boss of bosses” Bernardo Provenzano. In a morning operation, about 40 police officers surrounded and then raided a villa near the Sicilian capital, Palermo.
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/ 25 October 2007
An advertising campaign to counter discrimination against gays has stirred up passions in Italy, using a poster that shows a newborn with the word ”homosexual” written on his wristband. ”Sexual orientation is not a choice,” reads the slogan on the poster that was going up all across the central-northern Tuscany region.
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/ 15 October 2007
More than 150 countries are scheduled to observe World Food Day on Tuesday by kicking off a series of events including sports contests and a global candlelight vigil, the Food and Agriculture Organisation has said. This year’s World Food Day theme is The Right to Food.
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/ 15 October 2007
Turin’s bid to rebrand itself as a tourist destination reached a climax with the opening of the Venaria Reale, an exquisite Baroque palace that has been compared with Versailles. The former residence of Italy’s Savoy royal family is Europe’s biggest cultural restoration project and officials hope it will add further gloss to the northern city that hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics.
A priest who openly professed his love for a parishioner has been defrocked by the Italian Catholic Church despite an overwhelming show of support from his congregation, press reports said on Tuesday. Padua Bishop Antonio Mattiazzo issued a decree on Monday forbidding Don Sante Sguotti to hear confession in Monterosso, near the northern city of Padua.
He lit the imagination of countless youngsters with tales of derring-do — of submarines that explored the depths of the oceans, of adventurers who crept to the centre of the Earth, of doughty pioneers who travelled to the Moon. More than a century after his death, Jules Verne is about to get a double recognition from the space community that he indirectly helped create.
Former South Africa coach Nick Mallett was on Wednesday named as the new man in charge of the Italian national side, the country’s rugby federation announced. Mallett succeeds Pierre Berbizier, whose time at the helm of the Azzurri came to an end with Italy’s first-round elimination from the World Cup in France.