Italian News 17th May

Research into the body clock reveals that only 3% of Italians are able to wake on time without an alarm clock. 16% use one occasionally and fully 81% use one all the time. No research yet as to why they are still always late for appointments.


Terravision, which operates a bus service from Rome’s Ciampino airport to the city centre for passengers on low-cost airlines has had its fleet of 12 buses impounded by police for not having a valid licence. In some cases officers boarded the vehicles ordering off the passengers and their luggage. Terravision contests the claim.


Researchers in Turin were startled to find DNA traces of the Tuber indicum, a Chinese truffle, on tree roots in Italy. The Chinese truffle looks the same as the black Italian truffle, but has no taste or smell and grows more aggressively than either the black or white Italian versions and if the spores have spread it could usurp them. The spoors had been impregnated into plants and sold to truffle cultivators as the real thing.


Italy has the world’s lowest birth rate at 1.2, against a European average of 1.5 and the necessary rate for population replacement of 2.1

The Cassation Court has upheld a conviction and 150 euro fine under Italy's law against noxious emissions against a woman who owned 30 cats and dogs and allowed them to foul her garden.

Sultry Italian screen goddess Monica Bellucci has won a Gerard, the French equivalent of the American Golden Raspberry Awards for ''worst achievements in film'', for her role in Le Deuxieme Souffle, not a cookery programme but a film noir ‘The Second Wind’.


The North Eastern region of Trentino-Alto Adige will hold a three-day conference on living with brown bears, in an effort to stem the fears of local residents. ''Bears are appearing more and more frequently, worrying villagers and farmers. They tend to divide public opinion,'' said organisers. Bears were reintroduced into the border regions without any agreements with neighbouring countries and several have been killed.

Italian scientists in Cremona have created the world's first pigs to be born without the antigen that causes humans to reject transplanted animal organs.

Italian Yacht building is undergoing a boom. Fashion Yacht Italia & C. group have produced the Fashion 68, the first model made with gold leaf flooring in the interior, and will open The Fashion Yacht Cafe' in Livorno in October, to give everyone the opportunity to experience dinner on board a yacht.

Italy has got its first TV news show in Romanian. The show goes out each Friday on a local station in Turin, which has about 60,000 Romanian immigrants.

The head of Venice city council's 'urban decorum' office has appealed to people to stop the graffiti on historic buildings and monuments. Augusto Salvadori said the council could no longer put up with the costs required for such clean-up operations.


The urban decorum office also sends volunteer patrols of 'guardian angels' round the city to prevent ''indecorous behaviour'' among the 20 million tourists the city receives each year, which includes sitting on the pavement, eating sandwiches or going bare-chested. Other moves include banning the feeding of pigeons, a crack-down on street artists, laws to stop the sale of fast food in St Mark's Square and plans to fine beggars up to 500 euros and confiscate their day's takings.

Work to stabilise Venice's famous bell tower in St Mark's Square has come to a halt after builders hit archaeological remains while digging a drain for the workmen's toilets.


Half of Italian men between the ages of 30 and 50 have made an appointment with a specialist to discuss having plastic surgery. Only around 20-30% go through with the process, however. The most requested procedures are reabsorbable fillers, laser depilation, botox treatments and lip retouching.

The rubbish crisis in Naples and the Campania region has resulted in a 650,000 drop in tourist numbers and a loss of earnings of around 64 million euros. On Friday traffic in Naples city centre was blocked by some 5,000 tonnes of rubbish, and firemen were called out on 60 occasions on Thursday night as desperate residents set fire to rubbish mountains.

Italy's greatest clown, Carlo Colombaioni, who worked on several Fellini films, has died in France at the age of 75.


His successor, Silvio Berlusconi, has announced that the new government will have 37 under-secretaries but no junior ministers. The government has won a vote of confidence in the Senate and so is all set to race ahead with the political programme just a month after being elected.