Italian News

Vicenzo Barlotti, a surgeon from Capaccio Scalo, has sued the Italian State on the grounds that his patients are uncivil. He clams 2 million euros to rebuild his life after the great suffering, disorder and degradation in which he was constrained to live.

Extensive testing on nearly 1,000 buffalo herds has ensured that buffalo mozzarella is once again completely safe to eat, outgoing Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro has said.

Italy was responsible for almost a quarter of all workplace deaths within the European Union with 918, compared to Germany 678, Spain 662, France 593 and Britain (where almost no mozzarella is eaten at work) 209.

Unexpectedly, the Italian Tax Office put the details of all Italian taxpayers on the internet, a move described by the outgoing minister as ‘in the spirit of openness’. Beppe Grillo commented ''madness, pure madness. After the pardon which emptied the nations' jails, this imbecile outgoing government is offering criminals information on taxpayers' incomes and giving them their addresses''. After a day the privacy watchdog ordered the information to be removed.

But not before we discovered that out of a total of 40.74 million Italians filing tax returns, over 22 million (more than half) declared an income of between 1,200 and 1,300 euros a month (£11,160 - £12,180 p.a.). Just over 300,000 declared earnings of over 100,000 euros (£78,000) a year, equal to 0.74% of tax payers. More than half of Italian companies claimed to have broken even or declared losses.

The Tuscan city of Capannori claims to have the world’s highest rates of recycling and is aiming for ‘zero garbage by 2020’.

A survey of 13,000 people in nine countries found that just 14% of Italians were able to correctly answer basic questions relating to the Bible. Among questions frequently failed: whether Jesus helped write the Bible, whether the Gospels were part of the Bible and whether Moses or Paul appeared in the Old Testament.
More correct answers were given by Poland at 20%, but even fewer by France (11%) and Spain (8%). 27% of Italians said they had read a passage from the bible over the last year, against 75% in the USA. 79% of Italians thought God was watching over them, similar to Poland and Russia, slightly lower than in the US (86%), and far more than in France (47%). There again, God isn’t watching over France.

88% of Italians claim to be catholic.

The latest 31 recruits to join the Swiss Guards, the Vatican's private army, will swear their oath of allegiance on May 6th, anniversary of the heroic deaths of 147 guards defending the Medici pope Clement VII during the Sack of Rome by Emperor Charles V in 1527.
The Swiss Guard was founded in 1506 by Pope Julius II, and numbers 110. Most will take their oath in German, while 11 will do so in French, one in Italian and one in Ladin, the Romansh language spoken in the Engadine.

Rome’s third Film Festival may be different to the first two. Founded by Walter Veltroni, the outgoing mayor, who was a film buff, it is thought by the new mayor to be a waste of money, celebrating Hollywood A-listers rather than the Italian film industry.

Southern Italy's Paglicci Cave, one of the most important Stone Age sites in Europe, may soon collapse if repairs are not made, archaeologists have warned. The Paleolithic settlement in Puglia's Gargano peninsula is thought to have been continually inhabited by early man between 200,000 and 11,000 years ago.

The Pope failed to make Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Those who did make it include the Dalai Lama, the Patriarch of Constantinople, George Clooney, Andre Agassi, Mariah Carey and Miley Cyrus, an actress.

The saga of Venice’s pigeons continues: after the ban on feeding them was extended to St Mark’s Square, animal rights campaigners have stepped in after two days to distribute 30 kilos of birdseed to the hungry creatures. There had been 19 licensed birdseed sellers in St Mark’s Square alone.

The Rome mayoral race was won by Giovanni Alemanno, 50, an environmental engineer from Bari. Alemanno was formerly head of Fronte della Gioventù, the youth movement of the fascist Italian Social Movement MSI. He is a former agriculture minister, praised for his opposition to genetically modified organisms, his efforts to boost the export of Italian quality foods and his defence of authentic national products against foreign counterfeits.
The main subject of debate in the election was the high levels of petty crime popularly believed to be committed by camps of illegal immigrants along the banks of the Tiber.

Former foreign minister Gianfranco Fini has been appointed House Speaker. The former fascist leader of AN is the first right winger to hold the post since the war.

Italy's new government will be up and running within two weeks, Premier-elect Silvio Berlusconi said on Tuesday, making just under a month since the election. There are unconfirmed reports that the new governmental team will contain ‘zero garbage by 2020’