Politics News Event

(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 - 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".

(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 - 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) - Goia Tauro, November 6 - Customs police on Friday seized 142kg of cocaine found inside a container which had arrived from South America.

Police said this was the third major haul of the drug the had made in the past few months.

The Calabrian crime syndicate 'Ndrangheta is believed to control the European cocaine market and the interior ministry has calculated that this lone generates some 45 billion euros, or 3% of Italy's GDP, from this trade.

(ANSA) - Agrigento, November 6 - Sicilian prison guards on Friday said they averted a suicide attempt by a prison inmate who set her cell on fire.

Guards said they found the woman lying unconscious on the floor of her cell, but were able to drag her to safety before putting out the flames.

The president of prison guards' union Osapp, Domenico Nicotra, said the incident showed prison guards' commitment to inmates' safety, despite a recent probe into violence by staff.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 5 - The environment ministry on dismissed reports on Thursday that a wreck off the coast of Calabria was in fact a ship carrying toxic waste and not a World War I passenger vessel.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Italian weekly Espresso claimed that a research vessel sent by the ministry to investigate the wreck had in fact looked at the wrong ship.

(ANSA) - Brasilia, November 5 - Ex-terrorist Cesare Battisti said on Thursday that he was ''just a trophy'' to the Italian government, which is fighting for his extradition from Brazil.

A week ahead of a Brazil supreme court hearings to decide whether to hand Battisti over, he told ANSA that ''Fascist ministers'' in Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government wanted to claim him as a ''prize''.

Battisti named Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa as one of many ''sworn enemies'' who had ''personal and ideological reasons'' for wanting him in an Italian prison.

(ANSA) - Brasilia, November 5 - Remarks by ex-terrorist Cesare Battisti on Thursday drew angry retorts from one of the victims of his leftist militant group and government officials demanding his extradition from Brazil.

During an interview with ANSA, Battisti said he'd been in touch with the son of Pierluigi Torregiani, whom Battisti is accused of killing in 1979.

His son, Alberto, was also shot during the attack, which left him paralyzed from the waste down.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 5 - Parliament's bicameral anti-mafia commission on Tuesday questioned a mafia turncoat who claims he was involved in the sinking of three ships carrying toxic waste, saying he had given them new information.

Francesco Fonti, a former member of southern Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia, spent more than five hours fielding questions from commission members, President Gaetano Pecorella told reporters.

(ANSA) - Palermo, November 5 - One-time Cosa Nostra 'superboss' Salvatore Riina was arrested in 1993 thanks to a tip off to police from his long-time right hand and fellow townsman Bernardo Provenzano, who then took over as the head of the Sicilian Mafia, according to the son of former Palermo mayor Vito Ciancimino.