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The Italian mother at the centre of an care scandal involving the removal of her baby by Essex social services was far too unwell to care for her child, Essex Council has said. A statement from the council, shedding light on the case which generated a media-storm, explains that the woman in question has two children already in the care system in Italy. The Telegraph's Christopher Booker had originally described the woman as having had "something of a panic attack" on a two-week training course at Stansted. However, in the newly released judgment from Judge Newton, he says the woman...

The launch of a multi-million dollar exotic car demands something more than palm trees and beaches. That’s why Lamborghini parked its Veneno Roadster – one of only nine to be built – on the deck of an Italian aircraft carrier docked in Abu Dhabi LAMBORGHINI The Lamborghini Veneno Roadster is one of the most extreme (and extremely expensive) supercars ever built. With 750-horsepower and a lightweight carbon-fiber chassis, this 2-seat roadster can hit 221 mph. You’ve got to go the extra mile when planning the public introduction of one of the rarest and most expensive exotic cars in the world....

Italian archaeologists have unearthed a 2,600-year-old intact Etruscan tomb that promises to reveal new depths of one of the ancient world’s most fascinating and mysterious cultures.

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers. Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb. The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental breakdown. The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she...

Silvio Berlusconi’s glamorous young partner says she will appeal to Pope Francis to secure the former prime minister a pardon. A day after he was thrown out of the Italian parliament, Silvio Berlusconi’s glamorous young girlfriend has said she will appeal to Pope Francis to secure the former prime minister a pardon. Francesca Pascale, who at 28 is less than half the age of 77-year-old Mr Berlusconi, said she wants to explain the “tragedy” that has befallen her fiancée, after his 20-year parliamentary career was brought to a humiliating end by the vote in the Senate on Wednesday. He was...

A team of Iranian and Italian archaeologists has unearthed ruins of an ancient temple in an Elymais site in the Kaleh Chendar region in southwestern Iran, the Iranian director of the team announced on Saturday. Most parts of the structure have been built with large stones without mortar in form of a broad platform like those built at Persepolis, Jafar Mehrkian told the Persian service of CHN. The structure also includes platforms made of brick, which were usually built in the ancient temples, he added. Vito Messina of the University of Turin and a number of his colleagues accompanied the...

Italian technology will allow the restoration and preservation of thousands of very delicate papyri at the Egyptian museum in Cairo...part of the 'commodity aid' programme of Italian cooperation. High tech instruments in particular provided by Italtrend Spa and produced by Bresciani Srl, which will play a role in saving the museum's secular papyri, were shown during the ceremony. They are a laser and a portable instrument. The laser, an Italian-made groundbreaking tool in the preservation of artwork, uses non-invasive technology to clean very delicate and sensitive surfaces and allows not to use chemical products. The spectrometer is used for chemical-physical...

ROME — Having spent months manufacturing procedural delays or conjuring political melodrama, Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday could no longer stave off the inevitable: Italy’s senate stripped him of his parliamentary seat, a dramatic and humiliating expulsion, even as other troubles loom on his horizon. In the hours before the vote, Italian senators read speeches for or against Mr. Berlusconi, the once-powerful former prime minister. Mr. Berlusconi responded with an outdoor rally in central Rome, transforming the day into a televised, split-screen standoff: on one screen was the former prime minister, declaring himself a victim of persecution and pledging to remain...

Russian President Vladimir Putin had a busy first day in Rome on Monday, going from the pope to a “Pussy Riot” protest to dinner at the palazzo of his old friend, Silvio Berlusconi. Putin showed off his religious side during his visit to the Vatican, stopping to cross himself and kiss an icon of the Madonna that he gave Pope Francis. But Moscow’s improving relations with the Vatican only went so far: Putin didn’t invite Francis to visit. … Long-running tensions in Russia between Orthodox faithful and Catholics in Russia prevented Pope Benedict XVI and before him Pope John Paul...

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

...Hollande is much more focused on tapping into Israel’s know-how to help his country’s beleaguered economy. “Israel is, from an economic point of view, with the high-tech industry, considered to be very valuable,” Dr. Tsilla Hershco, a senior research associate at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies told The Media Line. “With all the turmoil around us, Israel is considered the one stable state in the Middle East from a political and economic point of view.” France has suffered greatly since 2008, when a worldwide economic downturn brought the European Union to the brink of collapse. Since then,...

Yes, teach us about dialogue. Interfaith dialogue socks a woman who opposes the cloth coffin. That's the kicker. And the chaser is the dhimma West enforcing this barbaric code of savagery.In Italy, "an Italian woman protesting the Burka will be jailed, but not the Muslim immigrant who attacked her to defend his right to abuse women with the Burka." Female Politician Attacked by Muslim Over Burka Protest May be Jailed FrontPage Magazine ‎- Obviously it's the native Italian woman protesting the Burka who will be jailed.Obviously it’s the native Italian woman protesting the Burka who will be jailed, not the...

Steps are reportedly being taken to relocate the U.S. embassy to the Holy See onto the grounds of the American embassy to Italy. <-- Advertising --> Although no official decision has been announced, the move appears likely and is being justified on grounds of enhanced security.Previous American ambassadors to the Holy See contacted by the National Catholic Reporter have said they are opposed to the plans.Ambassador James Nicholson, who served as ambassador during the presidency of George W. Bush, said the proposed relocation would be a “massive downgrade” that would turn the embassy into “a stepchild of the embassy to...

November 20, 2013 (Romereports.com) For years, these Roman catacombs were closed off, but now the Vatican has decided to open them completely for the world to see. In fact, thanks to Google Maps, people from every corner of the globe see the catacombs of Priscilla. The Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology, which is headed by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, agreed to give the catacombs a digital presence.      CARD. GIANFRANCO RAVASI President, Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology  “This is actually the first time that something like this happens. It was carried out by Google Maps and you'll be able to see...

A court-appointed expert testifying in U.S. student Amanda Knox’s third murder trial in Italy said Wednesday that a new trace of DNA found on the handle of the knife alleged to have been the murder weapon belongs to Knox and not the victim. That testimony bolsters the defense, which claims the kitchen knife was not the weapon used in the bloody 2007 slaying of Knox’s British roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher. …

The group of the Armenian and Italian expeditionists launched activities in the Kobayr Monastery of Lori to save the fabulous frescos from the devastating rainwater. The Scientific Worker of the Archeology and Ethnology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia Arthur Petrosyan stated this in a conversation with “Armenpress”. Italian expert Stephano Volta underscored that the ongoing activities are of a certain importance as there is an imminent danger of losing exquisite frescos. Kobayr is a 12th-century Armenian monastery located in the village Kober within Lori marz, Armenia. The monastery was built on a shelf...

Europe and China have agreed a currency swap deal to boost trade and investment between the regions. Under the terms of the deal between the European Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China, the swap facility could total as much as 350 billion yuan and €45 billion. … For years Beijing has kept tight control of the yuan, pegging the currency to the U.S. dollar as a way of promoting manufacturing in its export-driven economy, though it has slowly been loosening its hold recently. The swap deal will allow more trade and investment between the regions to be conducted...

Britain has been forced to “silently acquiesce” to a European Union statement expressing “deep concern” over American spying and intelligence operations that have undermined trust between Europe’s governments. Germany and France joined forces in the early hours of Friday morning to isolate Britain by demanding that United States sign a “code of conduct” with them and other EU countries to prevent American intelligence services spying on Europe. … Following tense talks throughout Thursday night a Brussels summit on the conduct of US snooping operations, including accusations that Britain was spying on Italy, David Cameron was forced by 27 other European...

German soldiers cross into Belgium in August 1914 Photo: RA/Lebrecht Music & Arts Like one of Field Marshal Haig’s family whiskies, Max Hastings is a dram that steadily improves with age. His own trenchant views on war, and caustic opinions of the commanders who ran them, tended to obtrude too obviously in his early works, suggesting that if only he had been present at key military conferences costly errors would have been avoided. However, Hastings’s recent massive volumes on his specialist subject, the Second World War, have shown why his position as Britain’s leading military historian is now unassailable. They...

In Italy the number of marriages, especially in church, has reached historic lows, but on the other hand mixed marriages between Italians and immigrants are on the rise and have been for several years. What's the result? Not always family bliss. As could have been easily predicted, cultural and religious differences are more important than multiculturalism leads people to believe. And within purely immigrant Muslim families the problems are the same. From Il Giornale di Vicenza, a local paper in the Venice region: The wife who kills her husband's mistress because she does not comply with the dictates of...

THE BLACK stain on the ice was instantly recognisable. The technician checking a tarpaulin stretched over a section of the Presena Glacier in the Italian Alps—an experimental attempt to slow the melting— quickly called in a rescue party. The block of ice was airlifted to the nearby city of Vicenza. Inside were two soldiers who had fallen at the Battle of Presena in May 1918 and were buried in a crevasse.Their uniforms and their location indicated that they could well have been Kaiserschützen, specialised mountain troops who fought on behalf of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to defend these mountains from...

After the Rome diocese refused to allow a church funeral for Erich Priebke, a funeral for the convicted Nazi war criminal was held in a chapel of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) outside Rome. The October 15 funeral for Priebke drew a crowd of protesters, with some shouting “murderer” as the coffin passed by, while counter-protesters gave the fascist salute. Police kept the two groups separate. Priebke, who was convicted for orchestrating the killing of over 300 Italian civilians in the Ardeatine Caves, died last week at the age of 100. He had never disavowed his Nazi...

ROME (CNN) - The Italian branch of schismatic Catholic sect with a history of anti-Semitism has agreed to hold a funeral for a convicted Nazi war criminal, despite protests from Jewish groups and the local mayor. -snip- But the conservative Society of St. Pius X, whose leaders were excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1988 for ordaining their own bishops without Vatican approval, agreed Tuesday to hold funeral rites for Priebke. -snip- The society also said that it "reaffirms our repudiation to any form of anti-semitism and racial hatred." But the Society of St. Pius X has a long history...

Following yesterday’s thwarted funeral, some reaction in Italy: The head of Rome’s Jewish community praised protesters who blocked the funeral of a convicted Nazi war criminal as Italy marked on Wednesday the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from the Rome ghetto.Erich Priebke’s final resting place is now unclear after the protesters forced a suspension of his funeral on Tuesday in the Italian town of Albano Laziale. His body is lying at a military airport near Rome pending a decision from the authorities.The former German SS officer died aged 100 last week in Rome, where he had been serving...

In what is one of the worst immigrant tragedies in the Mediterranean in recent years, a boat full of immigrants sank off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, causing over 300 victims at the last count. The response to the accident is what divides Italy and public opinion worldwide. While the Minister for Integration, Congolese Kyenge Cecile, has used this tragic opportunity to reiterate her call for the abolition of the crime of illegal entry and illegal residence, the Northern League has requested her resignation and wants the boats to be turned back because they are full...

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) continues to spread. Health officials in Saudi Arabia have confirmed that three more people had died from the virus, ABC News reported. At least 38 cases have been reported in the country, and 24 of them have been fatal. Little is known about the rapidly-spreading viral respiratory illness, which first appeared in 2012. Before the recent Saudi cases, WHO was notified of at least 50 people instances of MERS, 30 of which were fatal. In addition to the recent one in Italy, clusters have been confirmed in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United...

(Updated with a response from Dr. Maria Grazia Modena) New questions are being raised about the integrity and reliability of research published by a prominent Italian cardiologist and her colleagues. Last November, as previous reported here, Maria Grazia Modena, a former president of the Italian Society of Cardiology, and 8 other Italian cardiologists were arrested as part of a broad investigation into serious medical misconduct at Modena Hospital. To date the Italian authorities have not issued any indictments, but at least one aspect of the investigation appears to involve unauthorized research and failing to obtain informed consent from patients in...

The United States will move about 200 Marines to a U.S. base at Sigonella, Italy from one in Spain in the next day or so, U.S. military officials said on Tuesday, bolstering the U.S. ability to respond to any crises after its raid in Libya.

The region around Florence is renowned for its food. Ian Henderson discovers why as he joins the hunt for one of its most famous delicacies.I'm enjoying a breakfast of scrambled eggs with delicate shavings of ridiculously expensive white truffle. According to experts, it’s the perfect way to bring out the unmistakable but indefinable flavour. I’m at a perfectly dressed table on the terrace of the luxuriously relaxed Villa La Massa hotel overlooking the River Arno, a few miles outside Florence. Below a kingfisher has just shot across the water, a brighter blue than the pale Tuscan sky. Ahead are the...

"We've been looking at how we can bring back confidence in the European Union," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in Warsaw late on Monday as he arrived for a meeting of ministers in the Future of Europe Group, which he launched in March. The 11-nation group is poised to submit a raft of recommendations to Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso - heads, respectively, of the bloc's intergovernmental and executive branches, neither of whom are elected by the EU's 500 million people. "We have to understand that we are a community of values and we have to defend...

It was lost for so long that it had assumed mythical status for art historians. Some doubted whether it even existed. But a 500-year-old mystery was apparently solved today after a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was discovered in a Swiss bank vault. The painting, which depicts Isabella d’Este, a Renaissance noblewoman, was found in a private collection of 400 works kept in a Swiss bank by an Italian family who asked not to be identified. It appears to be a completed, painted version of a pencil sketch drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in Mantua in the Lombardy region...

A ship carrying African migrants to Europe caught fire and capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa on Thursday, killing at least 94 people as it spilled hundreds of passengers into the sea, officials said. Over 150 people were rescued but some 200 others were still unaccounted for. It was one of the deadliest recent accidents in the notoriously perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Africa for migrants seeking a new life in the European Union. "We need only caskets, certainly not ambulances," Pietro Bartolo, chief of health services on the island, told Radio 24. He gave the death toll of...

A photo from the gay wedding series. Photo: Gonzalo Orquín A gallery in Rome has removed photographs of same sex couples kissing in churches after the Catholic Church threatened legal action. The series of photos, by Gonzalo Orquín, was due to be displayed at the exhibition opening at the Galleria L’Opera on Wednesday evening. “A letter arrived from the Vicariate of Rome, an organization that is part of the Vatican, which said the church is against the exhibition. I spoke to lawyers and for security reasons we decided not to show the photos,” Orquín told The Local. The Vicariate,...

"Yesterday I apologized for offending many people around the world. Today I am repeating that apology," ... "Through my entire life I have always respected every person I've met, including gays and their families, without any distinction. I've never discriminated against anyone." ... "I have heard the countless reactions around the world to my words, which have depressed and saddened me," ... "It is clear that I have a lot to learn about the lively debate concerning the evolution of the family. In the coming weeks, I pledge to meet representatives of the group that best represent the evolution of...

U.S. and international gay rights supporters called on Friday for a boycott of Italian pasta maker Barilla, whose chairman said he would never feature a gay family in its advertising. The comments sparked a firestorm of protest on social media and resulted in online petitions in English, German and Italian, including one by Italian playwright and Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo. A MoveOn.org petition started by Beth Allen, a Takoma Park, Maryland, mother of two and a lesbian, garnered 85,000 signatures by Friday evening. (Petition: http://r.reuters.com/paz43v) "Guido Barilla made it clear how he felt about families like mine by saying...

A 27-year-old long distance runner is facing disciplinary action after allegedly filling a fake penis with clean urine in order to beat a doping test. Devis Licciardi had just finished a 10km race at Molfetta when officials asked him to take a urine test.

Around 50 protesters dressed in wetsuits, backed by 1,000 supporters, managed to hold up the cruise ships by over an hour as they paddled in the canal – some armed with inflatable rings. The protest was timed to coincide with a busy day on the canal, as a scheduling quirk meant 12 cruise ships were due to head past St Mark's Square – well above the daily average of two ships. "The demonstration was a great success and we now hope the government will take advantage of this momentum and kick the cruise ships out of the Venice lagoon," said...

Arrivederci, Newark. The home state of Frank Sinatra, Tony Soprano, Frankie Valli and Samuel Alito is losing its Italian consulate, leaving a state whose Italian roots run deep in the American consciousness without an official tie to Italy. … The news has raised the ire of Italians here in New Jersey, which has the fourth highest number of Italian-Americans of any state and the second highest number of Italian immigrants. …

Russian President Vladimir Putin rallied behind his old friend Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday, saying the former Italian prime minister would not have faced trial for having sex with a minor if he were gay. “Berlusconi is being tried because he lives with women. If he were homosexual, no one would lift a finger against him,” he told a gathering of journalists and Russia experts.

A GROUP of thieves got away with a jailbreak with a difference when they broke into a prison in northern Italy and stole a safe. The robbers, who are still at large, broke into the prison director's office overnight Tuesday and made off with a safe containing around 5000 euros ($7151), the Corriere della Sera newspaper said.

Staunton, September 12 – “Komsomolskaya Pravda” a week ago celebrated the fact that “Rome is filled with portraits of Vladimir Putin” (kp.ru/daily/26129/3021439/), but it didn’t point out that these pictures were being displayed not by mainstream Italians but by members of extremist, neo-fascist groups, just as is the case in other European countries. In a commentary posted on Slon.ru yesterday, Sergey Sumlenny points out that the signs the Moscow newspaper had shown were being carried by members of the Italian National Front to express their solidarity with Putin on his “struggle with homosexual propaganda” (slon.ru/world/evropeyskie_krayne_pravye_s_putinym_v_serdtse-989843.xhtml). The pictures of Putin in...

An Italian MP has described the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in which around 3,000 people were killed, as "an inside job" and slammed the official version of events as a "conspiracy". Bernini, an MP for the Five Star Movement (M5S) was speaking in parliament on Thursday, the 12th anniversary of the attacks. He said that the official version of the event has been "proved wrong from every point of view". "It’s clearly false and by now, the world has realized." On 11th September 2001 terrorists hijacked four planes in the US; two crashed into New York’s World Trade Centre, another struck...

David Cameron sounds pretty excited about it too. Did Waffles bumble his way into a “solution” to the crisis? Here’s the presumptive Democratic nominee creating a little rhetorical space for her party to declare victory and walk away: “If the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control, as was suggested by Secretary [John] Kerry and the Russians, that would be an important step,” Clinton said. “But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction. Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely, or be held to account.”Clinton also defended Obama’s push for strikes as instrumental in making...

The European Union (EU) is seeking to reassure Israelis who are concerned about the economic harm caused by the EU’s decision to forbid its member states from cooperating, transferring funds, or giving scholarships or research grants to bodies in Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. A senior delegation from the European Union will arrive in Israel early this week to examine ways of preventing damage to Israeli entities operating beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines. …

In a telling sign of Italy’s changing entrepreneurial landscape, Mohammed is now the most common name among Milan's small business owners, trumping Giuseppe, according to a list from the city's Chamber of Commerce. For the first time, a foreign name has taken the top slot in the list, which also includes the arrival of Ahmed. Nearly 1,600 businesses in Milan are run by men called Mohammed, compared to 1,383 by those called Joseph and 1,131 Marco.

The 'International Human Shields' movement, founded by a group of activists in Britain and the US, plans to bring to Syria civilians from countries around the globe, who will try to deter US strikes on the country by staking out potential military targets and serving as human shields there. The British Telegraph said that Franklin Lamb, a lawyer recently appointed as the legal adviser for the group, said he had been "inundated" with requests from activists including from Canada, France, Italy, the US, and Britain. The Syrian regime has not yet told the group whether it intends to let it...

The municipal government of the city of Venice, Italy has passed a law banning the terms “mother” and “father on forms parents must fill out to gain a place for their children at publicly funded day care and kindergartens. The “civil rights and anti-discrimination” policy was introduced by city councilor Camilla Seibezzi, who said that such changes to language are a fundamental objective to combat stereotypes. “The [linguistic] construction forms a category of thought, a daily practice,” she said. The newspaper, Corriere del Veneto, reports that the terms will be replaced by “parent 1” and “parent 2”. The change has...

European banks would leave London “in very short order” if Britain voted to exit the European Union, a senior Goldman Sachs executive said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Michael Sherwood, a vice-chairman at the bank, said the prospect of a British withdrawal was a real worry given Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to hold a referendum on the subject if re-elected in 2015. … Goldman’s Sherwood predicted European banks would quickly relocate if Britain did sever its EU ties. “Forget what we would do. Every European firm would be gone in very short order,” he was quoted as...

In Italy’s South Tyrol region, a move to replace 135 Italian place names with their German equivalents has prompted some locals to pick up their sharpies in protest. Italian-speaking residents in the country’s northernmost province secretly added Italian place names to hundreds of German signs over the weekend. Photos of the altered signs were posted anonymously online. German speakers then responded to the backlash by crossing out the Italian names and replacing them with doodles and offensive messages, according to Italy’s daily La Repubblica newspaper. The news comes just two weeks after Luis Durnwalder, the German-speaking governor of the region,...

ERICE, SICILY – It’s official. The scare is over. The World Federation of Scientists, at its annual seminars on planetary emergencies, has been advised by its own climate monitoring panel that global warming is no longer a planetary emergency. The President of the Italian Senate, Judge Pietro Grasso, who was the judge in Sicily’s first maxiprocesso, a class-action prosecution of dozens of Mafiosi who were sent to prison for a total of 2600 years, gave the magistral lecture at the opening plenary session of the seminars, which ended this week. Both Judge Grasso and the President of the Federation, Professor...