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/ 28 September 2007
A hospital error mixing up the X-rays of two similarly named patients led to the death of one of them after her perfectly healthy kidney was removed, the Italian press reported on Friday. The 54-year-old woman died of a likely embolism on Thursday, two days after undergoing the unnecessary operation, the reports said.
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/ 24 September 2007
Two Italian soldiers kidnapped in western Afghanistan last week were freed in a raid by Nato-led forces early on Monday, Italy’s Defence Ministry said. The soldiers were wounded during the raid to free them, one of them seriously, the ministry said, adding that they had been taken to a hospital.
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/ 17 September 2007
Venice Mayor Massimo Cacciari wants to step up his war on pigeons, going so far as to outlaw wedding parties from throwing the traditional handful of rice at newlyweds, Italian media reported on Monday. The daily <i>La Repubblica</i> said the draft ordinance would prohibit the throwing of rice outside the Palazzo Cavalli wedding hall.
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/ 14 September 2007
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Friday that his government would observe a ceasefire in Darfur after peace talks start next month, on a visit to Rome that has drawn criticism in Italy and abroad. He urged Europe to pressure rebel leaders to attend talks with Khartoum due to start on October 27 in Libya.
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/ 10 September 2007
Asafa Powell cruised to victory in the 100m final of the Rieti IAAF Grand Prix in Italy on Sunday after breaking his own world record in his heat. The Jamaican set the record of 9,74 seconds and then was back on the track about 90 minutes later to run 9,78 in the final.
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/ 9 September 2007
Double world champion Fernando Alonso led a McLaren one-two in the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday to cut team mate Lewis Hamilton’s lead to three points with four races remaining. Hamilton (22) had another highly impressive afternoon but the British rookie was doomed to follow in the Spaniard’s slipstream.
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/ 9 September 2007
It began with bread. And that is how it ended. Shortly after 4pm, on a sun-filled autumn day, the voices of Luciano Pavarotti and his father, the baker Fernando, ”who had a voice perhaps more beautiful than mine” filled the 12th century cathedral of Modena as they sang together Cesar Franck’s hymn, Panis Angelicus (Bread of Angels).
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/ 6 September 2007
The Italian tenor in full cry is what we mean when we say opera, which remains, in that sense, a man’s world. The names of Caruso, Gigli, Pavarotti are code for operatic achievement, while the legendary divas they partnered only register with opera fans.
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/ 6 September 2007
Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti, hailed by many as the greatest tenor of his generation, died in the early hours of Thursday, his manager Terri Robson said. ”Luciano Pavarotti died one hour ago,” Robson said in an SMS to Reuters. He was 71. He shot to fame with a stand-in appearance at London’s Covent Garden in 1963 and had soon had critics gushing about his voluminous voice.
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/ 4 September 2007
Two very different movies about the Iraq war are among the favourites for awards at this year’s Venice film festival as it passes the halfway stage, and an unusually high number of male leads have stood out. For pure shock value, Brian De Palma’s Redacted wins hands down, stunning audiences with an uncompromising reconstruction of the real-life rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl.
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/ 4 September 2007
Like many farmers, Martin Busin works from dawn till nightfall, but he still needs the help of his cafe-au-lait cow, Miss, to bring in tourists to keep afloat his smallholding in Italy’s mountainous Alto Adige region. With little farming land and over a million high-cost small farms, Italy started opening farms to tourists in the mid-1960s.
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/ 4 September 2007
I’m Not There, a biopic of folk icon Bob Dylan in which he is conspicuously absent but omnipresent, should ”wash over you like a dream”, the film’s director, Todd Haynes, said on Tuesday. Viewers should not ”get too bogged down in the literal connections to Dylan and let it take you somewhere”, Haynes told reporters.
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/ 3 September 2007
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon headed for Sudan on Monday to lay the groundwork for a solution to the festering Darfur conflict through talks and deployment of thousands of peacekeepers. Ban will seek commitment to his plan from Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and visit a refugee camp in the western Sudanese Darfur region.
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/ 2 September 2007
Australian rider Casey Stoner took another stride towards his first world championship title by outclassing the field to claim his third consecutive MotoGP victory in Misano, Italy, on Sunday. The Ducati rider started from pole position for the San Marino Grand Prix and left most of his rivals in his wake.
Italian police on Thursday arrested 40 suspected Mafiosi at the centre of a mob feud police blame for the execution-style killings of six Italians in Germany. Camouflage-clad police backed by helicopters swooped into the southern Italian mountain village of San Luca, the epicentre of a 16-year-old feud inside the Calabrian underworld organisation.
Slavia Prague reached the Champions League group stages for the first time on Wednesday after a 3-1 aggregate victory knocked out Ajax Amsterdam. Belgian titleholders Anderlecht also succumbed in the third qualifying round, losing 2-0 at home to Fenerbahce amid violent crowd scenes.
Watching thousands of tourists stroll through Venice’s Saint Mark’s Square, steward Giovanna is ready to step in at the first sign of unacceptable behaviour — picnics, bare torsos or discarded food wrappers. Speaking languages ranging from Chinese to Polish, Giovanna and six other women have been deployed by the lagoon city to improve decorum and cleanliness in the square Napoleon called ”the drawing room of Europe”.
Opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti has been admitted to hospital in northern Italy, a hospital spokesperson said on Thursday. The spokesperson said Pavarotti had been taken to the Policlinico of Modena hospital on Tuesday for medical checks and has been there since.
A Sicilian mother took away her 61-year-old son’s house keys, cut off his allowance and hauled him to the police station because he stayed out late. Tired of her son’s misbehaviour, the pensioner in the central Sicilian city of Caltagirone turned to the police to ”convince this blockhead” to behave properly, La Sicilia reported on Thursday.
Director Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the last great figures in Italian cinema, has died at the age of 94, Ansa news agency reported July 31, quoting his family. Antonioni, who made only about 20 films, died at his home on July 30, the report said.
Italy joined Ferrari on Friday in condemning the decision not to punish McLaren for the spying controversy that has gripped Formula One. The International Automobile Federation said on Thursday that although McLaren had Ferrari data in their possession, there was insufficient evidence that they gained from it.
Italian cycling fans believe making doping legal is the best way to save their troubled sport, according to a popular survey on Wednesday. The Astana team pulled out of the Tour de France on Tuesday after Kazakh rider Alexander Vinokourov tested positive in the latest in a string of doping scandals to rock cycling.
South-eastern Europe was a tinderbox on Wednesday in the grip of an unrelenting heatwave that has claimed hundreds of lives as wildfires swept southern Italy and bit into a national park in Slovakia. Southern Italy is sweltering under a heatwave that has brought temperatures often exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.
The former Ferrari employee at the centre of the Formula One espionage saga says he is ready to name names in a bid to prove his innocence. Nigel Stepney has been the subject of an investigation by Italian police after being accused of supplying McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan with secret technical information on the Italian team.
South African amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius has been given the all-clear to compete with able-bodied athletes in the Rome leg of the IAAF Golden League Series on Friday, with a view to earning his ticket to next month’s World Athletics Championships in Osaka.
Amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, known as the world’s ”fastest man on no legs”, is understandably nervous ahead of his first race abroad against able-bodied athletes, due to take place in Rome on Friday. But how he races, scientifically speaking, could be far more important than who crosses the finish line first.
Italy defender Marco Materazzi is taking legal action against three British newspapers over their reporting of the incident in last July’s World Cup final when he clashed with Zinedine Zidane, the BBC reported on Thursday. Zidane responded to verbal provocation by Materazzi by headbutting him to the ground.
Bags of blood. A code name taken from his dog, Birillo. A year of secrets and lies. It all came back to haunt Ivan Basso on Friday when he received a maximum two-year ban for doping. The 2006 Giro d’Italia champion became the first high-profile rider suspended for the recent scandals rocking cycling.
A man was arrested before dawn on Wednesday as he drove his Toyota Celica down the Spanish steps, one of Rome’s most popular tourist spots where visitors are usually banned from drinking and singing, let alone driving. Photographs showed police surrounding the sports car as it neared the bottom of the sweeping 18th-century staircase.
Valentino Rossi won the Italian Grand Prix for the sixth consecutive time on Sunday and moved within nine points of MotoGP series leader Casey Stoner. It was the second victory this season for Rossi, who also won the Spanish GP in March. Riding a Yamaha, Rossi timed 42 minutes, 42,385 seconds over 23 laps on the Mugello circuit.
Versatile Italian Danilo di Luca beat some of the world’s best climbers to extend his race lead after a thrilling 15th stage of the Tour of Italy at Auronzo on Sunday. Italian Riccardo Ricco won the monumental stage in the Dolomite mountains after being prodded over the finish line by his Saunier Duval teammate Leonardo Piepoli.
Stefano Garzelli beat Gilberto Simoni in a sprint to win the 14th stage of the Tour of Italy on Saturday, while Danilo di Luca retained the overall lead. Garzelli covered the 192km leg from Cantu to Bergamo in an unofficial time of four hours, 58 minutes and 34 seconds. Simoni was second in the same time.