Free Republic

Renowned Italian architect Stefano Boeri has argued that public spaces should be redesigned to include natural barriers such as giant plants to protect pedestrians from possible terror attacks. Boeri is the brain behind the sustainable residential building project Vertical Forests, the first of which was built in Milan, hosting thousands of trees and plants on a tower block. He has championed the idea of incorporating greenery into urban planning to tackle problems caused by urbanization, including air pollution, and a larger green “city” will be built near the Chinese city of Liuzhou in the next few years. Now Boeri has...

Italy said on Saturday it had deported two Moroccans and a Syrian on security grounds, lifting to 202 the number of potentially dangerous Islamists expelled since January 2015. The announcement came as security was raised after vehicle attacks in Barcelona and elsewhere, and a widely-reported warning from the Islamic State group that Italy is next on its hit list. Administrative expulsions, which are not subject to any appeal, are one of the main planks of Italy’s strategy for preventing the kind of jihadist attacks suffered by other European countries. Sicily decided Saturday to introduce barriers preventing vehicular access to six...

An Italian toilet icon in southern Italy has upset the LGBT community. A hotel establishment in Cavallino near the southern Italian city of Lecce has created a storm with its unusual toilet icons, three to be precise; a woman, a man, and a “gay” man. “The word had been covered up but somebody decided to uncover it and make it visible again,” the owner told Il Quotidiano. The owner said the extra icon would be painted over. It had been there since the previous administration, according to the current owner, who stressed that there was no intention to discriminate, according...

Thousands of Italians emigrated to Scotland in the 20th Century, but it seems that 400 years earlier a group of Scots may have settled in a village in the Italian Alps. So local legend has it… And there are plenty of signs to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it's true. High up in the mountains of northern Italy, just a few kilometres from the Swiss border, the people of the tiny village of Gurro speak a strange dialect, incomprehensible even to the other villages in the same valley. They have peculiar surnames, and the women's traditional costume features a patterned...

The Italian government has released photographic evidence which they claim shows the German migrant rescue NGO Jugend Rettet cooperating with people smugglers off the Libyan coast. Jugend Rettet, an NGO which operates rescue missions in the search and rescue (SAR) zone off the Libyan coast, has been accused of cooperating with people smugglers by Italian prosecutors. The authorities have now released photographs which they claim show the Jugend Rettet vessel the “Iuventa” very close to a smuggler boat, Die Welt reports. Just over a week ago, Italian authorities confiscated the Iuventa from the NGO and has since announced that at...

ed kidnapping of British model Chloe Ayling in Italy has become more complicated after it was revealed that she was seen shopping with her alleged captor during the period she was supposedly being held hostage. Ayling's Italian attorney, Francesco Pesce, told reporters that the 20-year-old woman feared for her life and went on the shopping trip after deciding it would be better to cooperate with her captor. "She thought the best idea was to go along with it and be nice to her captor," Pesce told the BBC. "He told her he wanted to release her somehow and some time."...

“Here” is Castel Volturno, one of Italy’s most infamous municipalities, once earmarked by the Camorra, the main Mafia syndicate of Campania and Naples, to become a lavish Italian resort to rival the French Riviera. The ambition was never realized — it wasn’t advanced by the Camorra’s waste companies also dumping toxic waste in the countryside between the cities of Naples and Caserta, earning the area the nickname “Death Triangle.” What remains of the Camorra’s French Riviera vision is a bedraggled, squalid coastal town, 30 kilometers north of Naples, where many houses built illegally were sold to bamboozled working-class families who...

A nation has come before my courts attention, Its leader creating his own ascension, The cries of the innocent brought before me, Torture and murder with blasphemy, Turning his back to My very Throne(Jeremiah 17:13), Creating a temporal one of his own, Causing his subjects through fear to give him fame, Trying his best to erase My Name("Jesus Christ"), No fear of The Creator has he, So now he shall meet the angel of death and catastrophe, A boy attempting to become a man, But very soon will lose his land, The hand "is" writing on the wall, This man's...

George Soros with his pal, the infamous abortionist and friend of Pope Francis, Emma Bonino, at the "In The Pursuit of Peace Award Dinner 2015"With the breaking of the news into the English language media-sphere the other day, some thoughts converged, into the form of a question: Why would anyone expect Emma “La Bicicletta” Bonino not to be invited to speak at a Catholic Church in Italy? Catholic editorialists are furious that Bonino was invited to speak at the church of San Defendente in Ronco di Cossato, on July 26, 2017, “World Refugee Day”. But there is an underlying tone...

Little Rock police have identified the victim in Friday's homicide as 31-year-old Carlo Marigliano. According to the victim's family, Marigliano, was visiting Little Rock from Italy and spoke limited English and was traveling with an Italian tour group when he decided to break away and explore the city alone. The victim’s family tells KATV they are flying in from Italy and the Italian Consulate is getting involved in the investigation. Little Rock police are not releasing any suspect information.

Despite strong protests, local Caritas office sponsors Emma Bonino to speak on immigration with the approval of the parish priest while the local bishop chooses to remain silent. In the face of strong opposition, one of Italy’s most notorious pro-abortionists spoke in a Catholic church on Wednesday while pro-life Catholics were locked out, silenced or ejected. Emma Bonino addressed the issue of immigration at the July 26 event, on the feast of St. Anne and St. Joachim, at the church of San Defendente in San Rocco di Cossato in the diocese of Biella, northern Italy (see video here). The church...

A deadly combination of a plummeting birthrate and massive immigration portend that native Italians will make up an increasingly small percentage of Italy’s overall population, a new study reports. Italy’s fertility rate is less than half of what it was in 1964, the Centro Machiavelli reported in its study titled “How immigration is changing Italian demographics.” It has dropped from 2.7 children per woman to just 1.5 children per woman currently, a figure well below the replacement level for zero population growth of roughly 2.1 children per woman.

Tweet Email  Email The Latest on the migrant crisis in Europe (all times local): 10:40 p.m. Italy's migrant crisis is spawning new protests, with a local mayor in Sicily leading a popular revolt to prevent a few dozen new arrivals from taking up residence in an abandoned hotel. Vincenzo Lionetto, mayor of Castel'Umberto in Messina, wrote an "urgent and important" Facebook post advising residents that the local prefect had just informed him that the 30 or so migrants would be transferred to the Canguro hotel. He led a dozen or so residents in surrounding the hotel with their cars...

Senior Italian government figures are threatening to issue European Union visas to 200,000 migrants, granting them unrestricted access to the bloc’s borderless Schengen Zone. Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro and Senator Luigi Manconi told The Times that the government was discussing issuing migrants with temporary visas which would allow them to leave Italy and move freely through the bloc’s 26 Schengen countries. Mr. Giro and others from the ruling Democratic Party believe Italy can exploit the little-known European Council Directive 2001/55, drafted after the Balkans conflict, to give temporary EU entry permits to ‘displaced people’ – triggering another wave of...

Italian government officials have threatened to issue temporary EU visas to thousands of migrants in an effort to deal with Italy's escalating migrant and refugee crisis that would allow new arrivals to travel north. In what has been described as a 'nuclear option,' Italian government officials have threatened to allow 200,000 migrants who enter the country to travel across Europe by using a Brussels directive, The Times reports. More than 86,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Italy already this year. Italy has been struggling to cope with a huge rise in people fleeing north Africa and hundreds of asylum...

The majority of Italians want to see migrant arrivals stopped completely, and believe the ‘ius soli’ law being pushed by Italy’s globalist government is “ethnic replacement”, enacted to boost the proportion of left wing voters in the nation. The ruling Democratic Party (PD) say that passing the long-awaited ius soli (meaning ‘law of the soil’ in Latin) bill, which would make it much easier for second generation immigrants to gain citizenship, would send an important message that “migrants are an integrated part of society”.

Italian film star Elsa Martinelli has died today at the age of 82. She passed away in Rome after a long and glamorous career as a star of the silver screen. Elsa was best known for her roles in Le Rouge Et Le Noir in 1954 and for The Indian Fighter the following year, in which she starred opposite Kirk Douglas.

PARIS --- The Italian Ministry of Defense has authorized funding for development and acquisition of the Common Anti-air Modular Missile (CAMM), being developed by MBDA for the United Kingdom, to replace its Aspide / Spada missiles, which are to be retired from 2021. Italy is interested in the Extended Range version of CAMM, and has earmarked €95 million as its contribution to development costs; the first €5 million will be paid this year, according to a June 6 memorandum signed by Lt. Gen. Francesco Castrataro, director of army procurement at the defense ministry's procurement division, Segredifesa. In the memorandum, which...

VIENNA (AFP) – Austria will “very soon” impose border checks and deploy soldiers on its frontier with Italy if the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean does not slow, Vienna’s defence minister was quoted as saying Monday. “I expect that very soon border controls will be activated and that a assistance deployment (by the military) will be requested,” Hans Peter Doskozil told the online edition of the Krone daily. He was cited as saying that this move was “indispensible if the inflow into Italy does not ease”. The paper said that 750 soldiers were available and that four armoured vehicles...

The ongoing European disaster euphemistically known as the "migrant" crisis has just taken a turn for the worse -- or for the better, depending on your point of view: Italy has summoned Austria's ambassador after the government in Vienna announced it was ready to deploy border troops to block any migrant influx. Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil told Kronen Zeitung daily that troops could go to the Brenner Pass. He said four Pandur armoured personnel carriers had been sent to the Tyrol region and 750 troops were on standby. Austria has border checks with Hungary and Slovenia. But elsewhere...