Italy News

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - Italy's popular SuperEnalotto game has already raked in over three billion euros this year and is expected to break its all-time record of 3.15 billion euros set in 1999, game organizers Sisal said on Monday.

Money collected from SuperEnalotto bets already broke last year's record intake of 2.509 billion euros by mid-September and the 2008 record was a 29.3% jump over the previous year.

(ANSA) - Brussels, November 16 - Negotiators must continue seeking agreement ahead of next month's climate change summit, the European Commission said Monday, as ministers gathered in Copenhagen for a final, critical preparatory meeting.

Over 40 environment, energy and climate ministers attended the closed-door conference in the Danish capital, which got under way just hours after US President Barack Obama said there would be no legally binding deal at the December summit.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday declined to talk about an extradition case that has strained relations between Brazil and Italy.

Lula said he had spoken to Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi about ex-terrorist Cesare Battisti on the sidelines of a United Nations world food summit in Rome.

"I couldn't come to Italy without addressing the Battisti case, but I don't want to tell you what we said to each other," Lula told journalists as he left the premier's office.

(ANSA) - Turin, November 16 - There are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers in 86 countries but their number is likely much higher as more children are being recruited for active combat, according to experts meeting at an international conference in Turin on Monday.

"You have to take account of girl soldiers who are often not included in the estimates....the increase in conflicts means that the number of child soldiers has probably increased," said Margherita Boniver, the Italian government's special envoy for humanitarian emergencies.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - Italy's anti-trust authority on Monday gave its green light to Fiat to acquire bankrupt chassis-maker Bertone.

The watchdog said that the operation did not give Fiat a dominant position which could have hindered competition in the sector.

Fiat's bid for Bertone won out over one presented by former Lancia CEO Gian Mario Rossignolo, who has since acquired the De Tomaso marque.

Bertone has in the past designed models for Fiat as well as its subsidiaries Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - Italian fashion icon Valentino told reporters on Monday he missed his work but had no regrets about his decision to retire.

"I miss the daily routine, being in the atelier but the high fashion world has been hard hit by the crisis and no one makes those expensive clothes any more," said the 77-year-old designer, who dressed the world's most glamourous women in his 45-year career.

"I wouldn't be able to express my creativity any longer. Yes, I miss it but I'm also glad not to caught in this (economic) crisis".

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was in fine form as he chaired Monday's world hunger summit in Rome, ribbing Libya's Colonel Gaddafi about his famously long speeches and telling a joke about Kark Marx.

"Five minutes from Colonel Gaddafi would be too much to hope for but I appeal to his good nature," Berlusconi said in calling the Libyan leader to the rostrum.

(ANSA) - Turin, November 16 - Innovation in Auto Industry (IAI), a company owned by former Lancia CEO Gian Mario Rossignolo, announced on Monday that it had changed its name to De Tomaso Automobili.

The move came after IAI last week signed a preliminary agreement to acquire the De Tomaso automobile marque, five years after the automaker was first placed liquidation.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - The suicide rate in Italian prisons is the highest it has been in some 20 years and could climb even higher before the end of the year, according to Luigi Manconi, a former interior undersecretary and chairman of an inmates' rights association.

So far this year 64 inmates have taken their own lives, the most recent in the Tolmezzo penitentiary on Saturday.

"Statistics confirm an atrocious fact: the suicide rate in prisons is 15-17 times higher than on the outside," Manconi said.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - World food summits in the past have failed to make any real progress in stamping out hunger, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi said Monday.

Addressing the 60 heads of state who turned out for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's food security summit in Rome, Gaddafi said that ''all of the resolutions and promises made during previous summits have been made in vain''.

(ANSA) - Florence, November 16 - Leonardo da Vinci painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, an Italian art expert says.

In a new book, Florentine art expert and Leonardo specialist Renzo Manetti said there was strong evidence for the never-discovered work because of alleged imitations.

Manetti argues that, like other Renaissance artists inspired by so-called Neoplatonic philosophy, Leonardo had conceived a 'heavenly' and a 'vulgar' version of the same subject, which represents the two sides of the love goddess Venus.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - The world's eight richest nations must make good on their pledge to invest $20 billion towards feeding the world's hungry, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said during a world food summit on Monday.

The premier made his appeal to the 60 world leaders who turned out for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's food security summit in Rome.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday said that "opulence and waste" were unacceptable when there was so much hunger in the world.

Giving a keynote speech here at the World Summit on Food Security, organised by the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Benedict criticised what he defined as "egotism and speculation" on food as well as "nutritional models aimed only at consumption".

(ANSA) - Brussels, November 16 - The Italian government is fully behind ex-premier and ex-foreign minister Massimo D'Alema's bid to become the European Union's new foreign policy chief, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday after a government minister criticised D'Alema.

Frattini stressed that the opinion of Civil Service Minister Renato Brunetta, who claimed ex-Communist D'Alema's centre-left Democratic Party was not a social democratic party and "could not represent Italy's future," was strictly personal.

(ANSA) - Palermo, November 16 - Sicilian police on Monday arrested 34 people in connection with a family-run drug ring moving cocaine, hashish and heroin on the streets of Palermo.

Police said the suspects ran the racket like a family owned business with women responsible for book keeping and inventory while the fathers and sons peddled drugs on the streets.

Over the course of the three-year operation, dubbed Family Market, dealers were seen pushing their wares in front of local grade schools while children looked on in the background.