Italy News

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - The following is a city-by-city guide to some of Italy's art exhibitions:

BRESCIA - Museo di Santa Giulia: Inca, Origins and Mysteries of the Civilisation of Gold; 250 artefacts, December 4-June 27.

CALDAROLA (MACERATA) - Palazzo dei Cardinali Pallotta: reassembled collection of 17th-century cardinal; 60 works by artists including Caravaggio, Guercino, Guido Reni, Mattia Preti, Carlo Maratta, Annibale Carracci, Ludovico Carracci and Elisabetta Sirani; until November 12.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - A film allegedly slandering the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini will be the subject of a Rome court hearing on Monday in an attempt to block its release in late November.

Alessandro Mussolini, an MP with Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, has asked judges to keep "Francesca" from coming out unless the producers cut dialogue in which she is referred to as "a whore".

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Two more victims of the H1N1 flu virus on Friday brought the death toll in Italy to 30 according to the Italian health ministry

Doctors said that both of the victims, a 55-year-old man near Venice and a 9-year-old girl in Campobasso, had serious health problems before coming down with the flu.

With over 13 people dying with the virus since Monday, this has been the deadliest week since Italy's first flu death in September.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Italians are pessimistic about the economy, but slightly less so than the year before, according to a new lifestyle study published Friday.

The study by national statistics bureau Istat showed that 50% of Italians felt worse about their economic situation in 2009, 5% less than in 2008.

Around 44% said their outlook had not changed at all, up from 39% last year.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Illegal immigrants trying to reach Italy pay an average of 2,000 dollars to human traffickers who ferry them across the Mediterranean, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said on Friday.

"Of the many sorts of organised crime, including arms and drug trafficking, human trafficking is one of the most profitable. On average, an illegal immigrant pays 2,000 dollars to reach Italy from Africa," Maroni told the Foreign Press Association in Rome.

(ANSA) - Milan, November 6 - Tensions between the Italian government and the judiciary affect the ratings international agencies put on Italy's debt, according to an official from Moody's Investors Service.

"Tensions between the executive and the judiciary are a typically Italian phenomenon, it exists nowhere else, and it raises questions and needed to be addressed in assigning ratings," explained Alexander Kockerbeck, Vice President-Senior Credit Officer in Moody's Sovereign Risk Group.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Italians today have happy home lives, but not enough free time according to a new lifestyle survey published Friday by national statistics bureau Istat.

Over nine in ten of Italians polled said they had a ''good'' relationship with their families, while over a third said their relationships were "very good".

Domestic bliss was most common among the 25-44 age bracket, more than 35% of whom they led "very happy" home lives.

(refiling with new photo).

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Italy on Friday approved the last key start-up funds for a much-heralded bridge connecting Sicily to the Italian mainland.

Some 1.3 billion euros were earmarked for work on the bridge, a long-cherished project of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, which is expected to start by the end of the year.

Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa, who is from Sicily, said "today is a particularly important day in Italian history".

"My grandfather spoke of a bridge like this as something that would bind Sicily and Calabria. He saw it as a sort of redemption for our island".

"Many years have gone by but the time has now come".

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Italy is no longer just a base to recruit Islamist terrorists or to finance their operations abroad but is now itself a target of attacks, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said on Friday.

"Up to now, Islamist terrorist cells gathered funds and worked to recruit members to carry out attacks abroad," Maroni told members of the Foreign Press Association in Rome.

The minister said the situation had changed after an attack on a Carabinieri station in Milan last month.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - A Rome man who died of injuries and dehydration after a week in police custody suffered his injuries before arriving in prison, infirmary doctors said Friday.

Testifying before a parliamentary committee probing the death of 31-year-old Stefano Cucchi, three doctors at Rome's Regina Coeli prison said Carabinieri police brought him into custody on October 16 with "severe bruises on his face, a spine injury and a possible concussion".

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Italy on Friday approved the last key start-up funds for a much-heralded bridge connecting Sicily to the Italian mainland.

Some 1.3 billion euros were earmarked for work on the bridge, a long-cherished project of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, which is expected to start by the end of the year.

Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa, who is from Sicily, said "today is a particularly important day in Italian history".

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - The Italian government on Friday appointed a special commissioner to be in charge of the main power plant on the island of Capri.

The commissioner, electricity power grid company GSE's CEO Nando Pasquali, will have until the end of 2010 to restructure the facility and have it run on environmently-friendly fuels.

"The decision was made in accordance with the requests made by the Region of Campania and the people and local governments of Capri," the industry ministry said in a statement.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Friday that Italy's economy in September showed the strongest signs of recovery in the 30-nation group for the second month in a row.

The OECD said its composite leading indicators (CLIs)for September was up 1.3 points over August and 3.4 points from September 2008, and while the monthly increase for Italy was also 1.3 points, it soared 10.8% for the year.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - A landmark European Court ruling against crosses in classrooms doesn't oblige Italy to take them down, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Friday.

"It is not a coercive sentence and there's nothing stopping us keeping the crucifixes in the classrooms," the premier said.

Therefore, he said, a proposed referendum to keep the crosses was not needed.

Nonetheless, after almost a week of popular outrage, Italy is appealing the sentence by the European Court of Human Rights.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Italian pop star Laura Pausini said she was thrilled with her fourth Latin Grammy award.

''I already felt I'd won by being chosen to kick off the night,'' she said.

The award itself left her ''stunned, more than ever,'' she said.

''No words can describe what I'm feeling''.

Pausini won the prestigious prize for her smash hit album 'Primavera anticipada' (Early Spring).