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BBC News, Rome The story of a boat that sank on Lake Maggiore on 28 May has elements of a spy novel. Four people tragically drowned on the picturesque and popular lake south of the Swiss Alps. One was a former agent from Israel's spy agency Mossad, two were Italian intelligence officers and the fourth victim was a Russian woman.

Italian police have discovered the mummified remains of a 70-year-old woman sitting at a table more than two years after she died, prompting calls for better elder care in the country.

Italian police have discovered the mummified remains of a 70-year-old woman sitting at a table more than two years after she died, prompting calls for better care for older people in the country. Marinella Beretta, who had no living relatives, was found in her house in Prestino near Lake Como in northern Italy. Police stumbled upon her remains when they made a house call during high winds in Lombardy, which risked uprooting neglected trees in her garden. She had not been seen by neighbours for at least two and a half years, according to Italian media reports. Her neighbours, who...

Chinese medical experts helping Italy deal with the crisis have said restrictions imposed in the Lombardy region are "not strict enough" to contain the spread Italy called in the military to enforce the lockdown on Friday as officials announced 627 new deaths in 24 hours, the largest single-day toll in any country since the coronavirus outbreak began. Desperate scenes have unfolded in the north of the country, particularly the hardhit Lombardy region where infections first exploded last month, as hospitals struggle to treat thousands of cases, CNN reported.

A man named by Italian news agency Ansa as former construction company owner Adriano Trevisan, in his late 70s, was among almost 60 suspected or confirmed cases in Italy so far. The father-of-three died at a hospital in Padua, in the Veneto region in northern Italy, where he had been admitted along with another person who has tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. A second patient - a woman - then died hours after in Lombardy, a region also in the north. The deaths have prompted local authorities in Lombardy and Veneto to shut schools, businesses...

The number of people in Italy infected with the new virus from China more than quadrupled Friday due to an emerging cluster of cases in the country’s north that prompted officials to order schools, restaurants and businesses to close. Many of the 14 new cases represented the first infections in Italy acquired through secondary contagion and brought the country’s total to 17. The cluster was located in a handful of tiny towns southeast of Milan in the Lombardy region, said Lombardy regional health chief Giulio Gallera. “This was foreseeable even if we hoped it wouldn’t have happened,” Gallera said. The...

---SNIP--- Mr Fontana's region, Lombardy in the north, is the leading destination for migrants in Italy. He reflected on this point. "We can't accept them all," he told Radio Padania, "Because if we had to accept them all, it would mean that we're no longer ourselves… as an ethnic fact. Because they outnumber us, because they are more determined than us to occupy this land." Mr Fontana, by now fully into his stride, reached his conclusion. "We need to decide whether or not our ethnic group, our white race, our society should continue to exist, or be wiped out. It's...

Victory! Something is changing. Some positive effects of the Charlie Hebdo atrocities are felt in Italy, with crackdown on the cult of Islam. First Massimo Bitonci, the mayor of the city of Padua, in the region of Venice (Veneto), Northern Italy, simply and clearly said: "No more mosques in Padua. The city council will not grant any more public space for the building of mosques and Islamic places of worship." Padua's councillor Marina Buffoni sent the city's police to Muslim meeting places, to confiscate posters and images of women in burka. She said: "These posters showed women completely covered...

Venetians have voted overwhelmingly for their own sovereign state in a ‘referendum’ on independence from Italy. Inspired by Scotland’s separatist ambitions, 89 per cent of the residents of the lagoon city and its surrounding area, opted to break away from Italy in an unofficial ballot. The proposed ‘Repubblica Veneta’ would include the five million inhabitants of the Veneto region and could later expand to include parts of Lombardy, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The floating city has only been part of Italy for 150 years. The 1000 year–old democratic Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia, was quashed by Napoleon and was subsumed into...

(ANSA) - Milan, December 2 - Two Moroccans arrested on Tuesday were planning terrorist attacks on targets in northern Italy after failing to make the ``necessary contacts`` to be sent abroad as jihad fighters, police said. Rachid Ilhami, 31, and Gafir Abdelkader, 42, are alleged to have been planning attacks on an immigration office and a police barracks in Milan as well as police stations, a supermarket and a night club carpark in smaller towns in the Lombardy region. Milan anti-terrorist unit chief Bruno Megale stressed that the pair were not ``an organic part of any organisation`` despite wiretapped conversations...