S. Korea, a nation which has as its national dish rotten cabbage fermented with chilli, has banned imports of Italian buffalo mozzarella.
The European Commission has announced it is satisfied with Italian action on the mozzarella dioxin scare. Dioxin levels just over the legal limit are thought to be from cattle feed, the chemicals coming from illegal mafia dumping in the countryside. The public are assured mozzarella in the shops is safe to eat. The same cannot be said of kimchi.
Police have closed down a circus in southern Italy where two teenage Bulgarian girls were forced to swim with piranhas and lie covered with snakes and tarantulas in front of a paying audience.
Dr Lina Carcuro, a medical practitioner and participant in Italy's Big Brother house, has been seen by millions of Italians having sex with another contestant, a Milanese businessman who was engaged to another woman. The Naples medical association is considering striking her off for failing to observe "decorous conduct". The scene was broadcast in full on Berlusconi's pay-per-view channel.
Some 3,000 visitors a year are to be allowed on to Montecristo, the Tuscan island at the heart of Alexandre Dumas's famous book. The island is a wildlife reserve with a unique snake, the Montecristo viper.
Police in Ancona are trying to trace a bearded man who allegedly hypnotised a supermarket cashier into handing over 800 Euros without her realising what was happening.
A thief who stole the five-tonne safe from a fast food restaurant in Casamassima using a forklift, was crushed to death when it fell on him
Agip and Esso petrol stations in the Arcella area of Padua have installed machines distributing sex toys and hardcore DVDs to passing drivers. You have to insert your ID card to get the DVDs. It is not known how popular the scheme will be.
Italy is Europe's second market for heroin, after Britain.
The small Socialist Party has put pictures of Jesus in its adverts claiming he was the first socialist in history. The move does not have the support of the Church since the party is opposed to public funding for private Catholic schools and campaigns for more liberal laws on assisted fertility and the rights of gay couples.
Work has begun in Venice to fit a titanium belt to the bell-tower in St Mark's Square. Experts were called in after a survey revealed the 99-metre bell-tower is sloping by seven centimetres. Surveyors also reckon the foundations of the tower are cracking by a millimetre a year.
The people of Lucca buy some 5,000 litres of unpasteurized milk per week from automatic distributors set up in the town.
An anti-Mafia street market in Palermo is set to tour the squares of Italy's largest cities in the latest bid to persuade shopkeepers and businessmen to stand up to mobsters demanding protection money. Only food produced by businesses who have refused to pay the 'pizzo' is on sale at the market,
Thousands have queued in the rain to see Augustus's House on Rome’s Palatine Hill, on view for first time in 25 years.
Having been baptised by the Pope over Easter, former Muslim Magdi Allam, a prominent Italian journalist, wrote an article denouncing Islam as intrinsically violent. His views have been rejected by the Vatican. Mr Allam lives under 24 hour police protection.
Italy’s first large scale event dedicated to coffee, from bean selection to roasting to brewing, Caffestival, will take place in the Umbrian town of Spello in May.
Alano Maffucci, one of the people investigated for having an account in Liechtenstein, has declared that it must be someone else with the same name
Electricity generators claim that changing the hour on Sunday will save 84 million euros, some €1.40 per person
Opinion polls are banned in Italy for a fortnight before the elections. The last ones suggest Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) coalition ahead of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) but it may not be enough to win a majority in the Senate, following rule changes made last time by Berlusconi himself.
Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatry lecturer at Pisa University believes she has discovered brain mechanisms that make people want to continue gambling even when the odds are against them and the consequences are disastrous. She is thought to have been studying the campaign of the Democratic Party.
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