Timeline Italy: (B) 1930-2015
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1930 Feb 18, Luigi Pirandello's "Come Tu Mi Vuoi," premiered in Milan.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1930 Apr 21, Silvana Mangano, actress (Death in Venice, Barabbas), was born in Rome, Italy.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1930 Jun 29, Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist, was born.
(HN, 6/29/01)
1930 Jul 23, Earthquake struck Ariano, Italy, and some 1,500 were killed.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1930 Gino Severini, artist, published Fleurs et Masques in London.
(SFEM, 2/1/98, p.6)
1930 Futurist Italian poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti denounced pasta as obsolete and urged Italians to try more avant-garde combinations like cooked salami sauced in espresso and spiked with eau de Cologne.
(WSJ, 12/29/95, p.A-11)
1930 In Italy Battista “Pinin" Farina founded Pininfarina SpA, a car design firm.
(SFC, 8/8/08, p.B5)
1930 Mt. Stromboli in Italy erupted and hurled 30-ton rocks onto houses 3 km away and caused a tidal wave as the entire island mountain rose.
(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.30)
1931 Sep 16, Omar Mukhtar (b.1862), Libyan hero, was hanged by Italian authorities in the concentration camp of Solluqon. From 1912 he had led an insurrection against Italian invaders.
(Econ, 11/14/09, p.101)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Mukhtar)
1932 Jan 5, Umberto Eco, Italian novelist who wrote "The Name of the Rose," was born.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1932 Apr 17, Graziella Sciutti, Italian opera singer, was born.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1932 Aug 4, Luigi Beccali (1907-1990), Italian athlete, won Olympic gold in the 1500 meters. He gave a Fascist salute at the winners’ podium.
(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.R2)(http://tinyurl.com/6al4up)
1932 Sep 11, Valentino, fashion designer for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1932 Oct 25, Mussolini promised to remain dictator for 30 years.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1932 Nov 5, Mussolini freed 16,000 criminals.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1933 Mar 19, Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini proposed a pact with Britain, France and Germany.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1933 Jun 26, Claudio Abbado, composer, conductor (London Symph-1982), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1933 Jul 1, Italian Air Force Gen. Italo Balbo led a flight of twenty-four flying boats on a round-trip flight from Rome to the Century of Progress in Chicago, Illinois. The flight had seven legs and ended on Lake Michigan near Burnham Park on Aug 12. In honor of this feat, Mussolini donated a column from Ostia to the city of Chicago; it can still be seen along the Lakefront Trail, a little south of Soldier Field.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Balbo)
1933 Giulio Einaudi (d.1999 at 87) founded the Giulio Einaudi Editore in Turin, a publishing house that he built into a wellspring of fine literature, intellectual thought and political theory. In 1994 the firm became part of Mondadori, part of the media empire of Silvio Berlusconi.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C5)
1933 Mussolini decided to transform Campione, a destitute fisherman’s village, into a showcase for Italy’s prosperity. Subsidies were curtailed in 2001.
(WSJ, 1/16/00, p.A1)
1933 Francesco Illy founded Illycafe in Trieste, Italy. He invented the compressed air coffee machine (patented in 1934), the predecessor of the espresso machine as we now know it.
(http://indiacoffee.org/newsletter/2005/august/in_the_news1.html)
1934 Feb 18, Aldo Ceccato, conductor (Detroit Symph Orch 1973-77), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1934 Feb 24, Renata Scotto, soprano (Violetta, La Traviata), was born in Savona, Italy.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renata_Scotto)
1934 Jun 23, Italy gained the right to colonize Albania after defeating the country.
(HN, 6/23/98)
1934 Sep 20, Sophia Loren, actress (Desire Under the Elms, Black Orchid), was born in Rome.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1934 Dec 5, Italian and Ethiopian troops clashed at the Ualual on disputed Somali-Ethiopian border.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1934 Attilio Bertolucci (1912-2000) published his 1st collection of poems "November Fires."
(SFC, 6/15/00, p.A34)
1934 The Italian film "La Signora di Tutti" starred Isa Miranda and was directed by Max Ophuls.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, DB p.50)
1934 Charles Ponzi, Italian immigrant, check forger and scam artist, was deported from the US to Italy where he got work in Mussolini’s treasury and embezzled money from the fascists.
(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.G2)
1935 Feb 18, Rome reported sending troops to Italian Somalia.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1935 Feb 27, Mirella Freni, lyric soprano (Madame Butterfly), was born in Modena, Italy.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1935 Mar 23, France, Italy and Britain agreed to present a unified front in response to Germany.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1935 Jul 18, Ethiopian King Haile Selassie urged his countrymen to fight to the last man against the invading Italian army. He had previously warned the League of Nations of the dangers of appeasement.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1935 Oct 3, Italy invaded Ethiopia.
(DoD, 1999, p.237)(www.onwar.com/aced/data/india/italyethiopia1935.htm)
1935 Oct 6, Italian army occupied Adua, Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
(MC, 10/6/01)
1935 Oct 11, The League of Nations met and voted 50 to 4 (Austria, Hungary, Italy and Albania opposed) to condemn Italy for the attack on Ethiopia.
(http://nazret.com/history/)
1935 Oct 12, Luciano Pavarotti, Italian opera tenor, was born in Modena, Italy.
(AP, 10/12/07)
1935 Dec 30, Italian bombers destroyed a Swedish Red Cross unit in Ethiopia.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1935 Mussolini presented a gift of 3,000,000 gold francs to Albania; other economic aid followed.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1935 Mussolini exiled Carlo Levi (1902-1975), Italian journalist, artist and doctor. As a Jew and for his antifascist activities he was exiled until 1936 to two isolated villages in the province of Lucania.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/clevi.htm)
1935 Bruno Ducati (d.2001) and his brothers Adriano and Marcello began producing condensers and radio equipment in Italy. They switched to motorcycle production after WW II.
(SFC, 5/17/01, p.A25)
1935-1936 The Italian army used chemical warfare against Ethiopia in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
(NH, 10/98, p.18)
1936 Jan 5, Daggha Bur, Ethiopia, was bombed by the Italians.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1936 Mar 1, Giulio Bargellini (b.1869), Italian artist, died in Rome.
(www.comune.calenzano.fi.it/redaz/web/I/3B0241D3.htm)
1936 Mar 23, Italy, Austria and Hungary signed Pact of Rome.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1936 Mar 29, Italy firebombed the Ethiopian city of Harar.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1936 Apr 18, Ottorino Respighi (56), Italian composer (Pines of Rome), died.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1936 May 2, With the Italian invasion Ethiopia’s Emp. Haile Selassie left for French Somaliland. He went into exile for 5 years during which time he was based in Bath, England.
(http://tinyurl.com/ahqhm)
1936 May 5, Italian troops occupied Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1757 Italians and 1593 Eritreans were killed, more than 275,000 Ethiopians were killed.
(http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Prelude05.html)(http://nazret.com/history/)
1936 May 9, Fascist Italy took Addis Abba and annexed Ethiopia as Benito Mussolini celebrated in Rome.
(AP, 5/9/97)(HN, 5/9/98)
1936 Jun 30, Haile Selassie asked the League of Nations for sanctions against Italy.
(www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_400.html)
1936 Jul 4, The League Council voted to end economic sanctions against Italy with the collapse of Ethiopia. The cancellation of economic sanctions against an aggressor state marked the failure of collective security under the League and was a harbinger of conflict in the upcoming years.
(http://www.indiana.edu/~league/1936.htm)
1936 Sep 29, Silvio Berlusconi, later 2-time PM of Italy, was born to middle-class parents in Milan.
(WSJ, 3/30/06, p.A12)
1936 Nov 1, In a speech in Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini described the alliance between his country and Nazi Germany as an "axis" running between Rome and Berlin after Count Ciano’s visit to Germany.
(AP, 11/1/97)(HN, 11/1/98)
1936 Nov 18, Germany and Italy recognized the Spanish government of Francisco Franco.
(AP, 11/18/97)
1936-1939 The Spanish Civil War has been commonly referred to as "a rehearsal for World War II" by historians because of the intervention by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, and their use of the war to test new weapons and military techniques. It was fought between the liberal Second Spanish Republic government and right-wing rebel forces, including the fascist Falangists, monarchists and Nationalists. The rebels had the support of the Roman Catholic Church, in addition to Germany and Italy. The Government supporters, called Loyalists, had the support of communists, socialists, anarchists, the Soviet Union and volunteers from around the world who formed the International Brigades. Between 400,000 and 1 million were killed in the war, ultimately won by the rebels. In 2008 Paul Preston authored “We Saw Spain Die: Foreign correspondents in the Spanish Civil War." In 2012 Paul Preston authored “The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain."
(HNQ, 9//00)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.97)(Econ, 3/24/12, p.86)
1937 Jan 9, Italian regime banned marriages between Italians and Abyssinians.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1937 Feb, More than 30,000 Ethiopians were reportedly massacred by Italian forces in Addis Ababa. Italian estimates numbered between 600 and 2,000. Later studies put the number at around 20,000.
(http://nazret.com/history/)(Econ 7/22/17, p.66)
1937 Apr 27, Antonio Gramsci (b.1891), Italian communist, philosopher and political theorist, died. He said that to eliminate the bourgeois state one must seize the institutions that reproduce the dominant class’s thought patterns.
(Econ, 8/22/09, p.33)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci)
1937 Jun 10, Luciana Paluzzi (Fiona Volpe), actress (Five Fingers, Thunderball), was born in Rome, Italy.
(www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/bond-villains/luciana)
1937 Jul 20, Guglielmo Marconi (b.1874), Italian engineer, inventor of wireless telegraphy, marquis (radio, Nobel 1909), died in Rome.
(ON, 11/99, p.10)(MC, 7/20/02)
1937 Sep 6, The Soviet Union accused Italy of torpedoing two Russian ships in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1937 Sep 25, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler met with Italian Premier Benito Mussolini in Munich.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1937 Dec 11, Italy withdrew from the League of Nations.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1937 Dec 23, London warned Rome to stop the anti-British propaganda in Palestine.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1937 Italy occupied Albania. [see Apr 8, 1939]
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)
1937 An Italian Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Cabriolet, later called one of the finest classic cars in existence, was produced. In 1999 it sold for $4 million.
(SFC, 8/31/99, p.A26)
1937 The 1,700 year-old Axum Obelisk was dismantled and removed from Ethiopia by Italian forces. Mussolini used it to commemorate the 15th anniversary of his march on Rome. In 1998 Italy agreed to return it. The border war delayed the return to 2003.
(AM, 5/01, p.10)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.A2)
1938 Mar 1, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Italian poet, writer and political leader, died. In 2013 Lucy Hughes-Hallett authored “The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet Seducer and Preacher of War."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_d%27Annunzio)
1938 Jun 19, The Italian soccer team performed the fascist salute in Colombes Stadium, Paris, before the start of the World Cup soccer final match against Hungary. Italy defended its World Cup title, beating Hungary 4-2. It would keep the Jules Rimet Trophy for another 12 years as the world descended into war.
(AP, 5/16/18)
1938 Jul 14, Italian Premier Mussolini published an anti-Jewish and African manifesto prepared by Italian "scientists."
(http://specialcollections.library.wisc.edu/exhibits/Fascism/Race.html)(Econ, 11/21/09, p.55)
1938 Sep 1, Mussolini cancelled the civil rights of Italian Jews.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1938 Sep 5, Achille Gaggia, Italian barman, applied for a patent for an espresso maker that forced boiling water through coffee at high pressure. The Gaggia company was founded in 1947 and formally formed in 1948.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.6)(www.gaggia.com/storia_espresso.asp)
1938 Sep 29, British, French, German and Italian leaders signed the Munich Agreement, which was aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, inhabited by a German-speaking minority. The treaty ceded three areas of Czechoslovakia to other powers: the Sudetenland was annexed into Germany, the Teschen district was given to Poland, and parts of Slovakia went to Hungary. British PM Neville Chamberlain gained a brief peace agreement from Hitler at Munich and without consulting the Czechs agreed that Nazi forces could occupy Sudetenland. Some mark this "appeasement policy" as the decisive event of the century. Chamberlain predicted "peace in our time." French PM Edouard Daladier was very depressed from the meeting. In 1980 Telford Taylor published "Munich: The Price of Peace." It is a detailed political & diplomatic history of the 1930's in Europe, culminating in the Munich conference. Taylor later helped write the rules for Nuremberg Trials. In 2008 David Vaughan authored “Battle for the Airwaves: Radio and the 1938 Munich Crises."
(http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Chlup/chluplinks/munich.html)(SFC, 6/9/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 6/16/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)(AP, 9/29/06)(SFC, 5/26/98, p.B2)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.115)
1938 Nov 10, Fascist Italy enacted anti-Semitic legislation.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1938 Nov 17, Italy passed its own version of anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1938 Dec 17, Italy declared the 1935 pact with France invalid, because ratification's had not been exchanged. France denied the argument.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1938 King Victor Emmanuel III supported dictator Benito Mussolini and signed racial laws that expelled Jews from government and university jobs and the military and restricted their work, schooling and right to own property. Some 8,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps from which only about 600 survived.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.A11)
1938 In the Langhe region of Italy Giacomo Morra initiated the Int’l. Truffle Fair in Alba.
(SFEC, 9/27/98, p.T4)
1938 In Italy Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963), neurosurgeon, and psychiatrist Lucio Bini (1908-1980) pioneered the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), electric shock, to cure patients of depression.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh38el.html)
1938 Enrico Rebuschini, a northern Italian priest, died. In 1997 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
(SFC, 5/5/97, p.A8)
1938 G. Trolli, an Italian physician working in the Belgian Congo (Zaire), reported a condition called konzo meaning "tied legs." It was later related to cyanide poison from improper preparation of cassava root.
(NH, 7/96, p.14)
1939 Feb 24, Hungary signed an anti-Communist pact with Italy, Germany and Japan.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1939 Apr 7, Italy invaded Albania, which offered only token resistance. Less than a week later, Italy annexed Albania. [see Apr 8]
(AP, 4/7/99)
1939 Apr 8, Italy, under Fascist dictatorship led by Benito Mussolini seized the country of Albania. The Albanian parliament voted to unite Albania with Italy; King Zog fled to Greece. Under Mussolini’s totalitarian rule Italy embarked on expansion and military conquest. Ethiopia fell victim, conquered by Italy in 1936. Italy’s foreign policy cooperation with Germany began in 1936 and both joined forces to intervene in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Francisco Franco’s rebel forces. Italy’s military alliance with Germany was struck in 1939. [see Apr 7]
(HN, 4/8/98)(www, Albania, 1998)
1939 May 7, Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
(AP, 5/7/97)
1939 May 22, The foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a "Pact of Steel" committing Germany and Italy to a military alliance forming the Axis powers.
(HN, 5/22/99)(AP, 5/22/07)
1939 The Italian film "Ossessione" (Obsession) featured the debut of Massimo Giroti (d.2003 at 84). It was a loose adaptation of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and was directed by Luchino Visconti.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.A17)
1939 Italy passed a law for the Protection of Artistic Patrimony. It required that art over 50 years old be offered to the government for acquisition before export.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.64)
1940 Mar 5, The British surprised Mussolini by taking seven Italian coal ships.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1940 Mar 9, Britain freed captured Italian coal ships on the eve of German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop's visit to Rome.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1940 Mar 18, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass across the Alps during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1940 Apr 12, Italy annexed Albania.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1940 Apr 28, Luisa Tetrazzini (b.1871), celebrated Italian soprano, died in Milan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Tetrazzini)
1940 May 16, Bernardo Bertolucci, director (1900, Last Emperor), was born in Parma, Italy.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1940 Jun 10, Italy declared war on France and Britain; Canada declared war on Italy.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1940 Jun 11, The Italian Air Force bombed the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1940 Jun 24, France signed an armistice with Italy after the axis country attacked a portion of southern France during Germany's blitzkrieg.
(AP, 6/24/97)(HN, 6/24/99)
1940 Jun 28, Italian fascist Marshall Italo Balbo (b.1896) was killed when his plane was shot down over Tobruk, Libya, by friendly fire.
(SSFC, 7/5/15, DB p.50)
1940 Aug 11, Italian forces attacked Observation Hill in British Somaliland. Capt. Wilson and Somali gunners under his command beat off the attack and opened fire on the enemy troops attacking Mill Hill, another post within his range. The enemy finally overran the post at 5 p.m. on the 15th August when Capt. Wilson, fighting to the last, was reportedly killed. 2 months later he was awarded a Victoria Cross. In April 1941, however, Wilson was found alive in a prisoner of war camp in Eritrea. Wilson died at age 96 on Dec 23, 2008.
(AP, 12/30/08)
1940 Sep 12, Italian forces began an offensive into Egypt from Libya.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1940 Sep 9, Italian troops under Marshal Graziani attacked Egypt. Rodolfo Graziani (1882-1955) became known as the “Burtcher of Ethiopia."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodolfo_Graziani)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.20)
1940 Sep 27, Nazi-Germany, Italy and Japan signed a formal alliance called Tripartite Pact, a 10 year military and economic alliance strengthening the Axis alliance.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 25, The Greek Army beat back an invasion by Mussolini’s forces.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 25, Hitler visited Mussolini in Florence.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 28, Greece said no to an ultimatum from Benito Mussolini who demanded that PM Metaxas allow the Italian army free passage to enter and occupy strategic sites in Greece unopposed. Italy invaded Greece, launching six divisions on four fronts from Albania, which it had occupied the previous year. Greece successfully resisted Italy's attack. From 1942 Greeks celebrated From 1942 Greeks celebrated October 28 as Ohi Day (No Day).
(www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/oxi-day.html)(AP, 10/28/97)(HN, 10/28/98)
1940 Oct 28, A meeting between Hitler and Mussolini took place in Florence.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1940 Nov 11, Britain’s Royal Navy attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1940 Dec 9, British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II and seized 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
(AP, 12/9/97)(HN, 12/9/98)
1940 The film "Piccolo Mondo Antico" was directed Mario Soldati.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1940 The film "St. John the Baptist Beheaded" starred Toto.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1940-1943 This period in Italy was cover by Roderick Bailey in his book “"Target Italy: The Secret War against Mussolini" (2014).
(Econ, 6/21/14, p.80)
1941 Jan 20, Hitler met with Mussolini and offered aid in Albania and Greece.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1941 Jan 22, British and Australian troops captured Tobruk from Italians.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1941 Feb 6, The RAF cleared the way as British took Benghazi, Libya, trapping thousands of Italians.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1941 Feb 16, The Italians lost their last position in the Sudan.
(HN, 2/16/98)
1941 Mar 9, Italians launched a large-scale counterattack across the center of the front against Greece, which, despite the superiority of the Italian armed forces, failed. After one week and 12,000 casualties, Mussolini called off the counterattack and left Albania 12 days later.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Greece)
1941 Mar 21, The last Italian post in East Libya fell to the British.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1941 Mar 28, The Italian fleet was routed by the British at the Battle of Matapan off the coast of Greece. More than 2,000 Italian sailors died and five Italian ships were destroyed. Mavis Batey (1921-2013) of British intelligence had decoded a message that signaled the attack three days earlier.
(HN, 3/28/99)(SFC, 11/29/13, p.C4)
1941 Mar 29, Terence Hill, actor (Super Fuzz, They Call Me Trinity), was born in Venice, Italy.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1941 Mar 29, The British sank five Italian warships off the Peloponnesus coast in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1941 Mar 30, The U.S. seized Italian, German and Danish ships in 16 ports.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1941 Apr 6, Italian-held Addis Ababa surrendered to British and Ethiopian forces.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1941 Apr 17, Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany ending 11 days of futile resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. More than 300,000 Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. Italian and Albanian forces attacked and jointly occupied Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)(AP, 4/17/97)(MC, 4/17/02)
1941 May 18, Italian army under General Aosta surrendered to Britain in Ethiopia.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1941 Jul 28, Riccardo Muti, conductor (Philadelphia Orch), was born in Napoli, Italy.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1941 Nov 18, Mussolini's forces left Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
(MC, 11/18/01)
1941 Dec 9, China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1941 Dec 11, The US declared war on Germany and Italy. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(TL, 1988, p.112)(AP, 12/11/97)
1941 The British seized Eritrea from the Italians.
(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.A22)
1942 Jan 29, German and Italian troops took Benghazi in North Africa.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1942 Aug 27, Cuba declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1942 Dec 4, U.S. bombers struck the Italian mainland and Naples for the first time in World War II.
(AP, 12/4/97)(HN, 12/4/98)
1942 Dec 18, Hitler met with Mussolini and Pierre Laval.
(HN, 12/18/98)
1942 The film "Malombra" was directed Mario Soldati.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1942 Lev Nussimbaum (37), Orientalist and writer (aka Essad Bey or Kurban Said), died in Italy, while researching a biography of Mussolini. In 2005 Tom Reiss authored “The Orientalist," a biography of Nussimbaum, whose books included the novel “Ali and Nino" (1937), translated to English in 1970.
(WSJ, 2/17/05, p.D8)(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B3)
1943 Jan 14, Italian occupation authorities refused to deport any Jews living on their territories in France.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1943 Jan 22, Battle of Anzio: Italy.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 28, German-Italian forces launched a counter offensive in North-Africa.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1943 May 18, Allied bombers attacked Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1943 Jun 2, 99th Pursuit Squadron flew its 1st combat mission over Italy.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1943 Jun 11, The Italian island of Pantelleria surrendered after a heavy air bombardment.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1943 Jun 15, The 8,000-ton Rosandra, an Italian merchant ship, sank after being torpedoed by a British submarine a day earlier off Albania's southern coast. 6 people died but 173 were safely evacuated to land. In 2010 underwater archeologists reported the discovery of the ship.
(AP, 6/14/10)(www.uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/3507.html)
1943 Jul 9, American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily. The 'man who never was' pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in military history--after his death.
(HN, 7/9/98)
1943 Jul 10, During World War II, U.S. and British forces completed their amphibious landing in Sicily.
(AP, 7/10/97)(HN, 7/10/01)
1943 Jul 19, More than 150 B-17 and 112 B-24 Allied bombers attacked Rome for the first time.
(AP, 7/19/97)(HN, 7/19/98)
1943 Jul 22, The American Seventh Army forces led by Gen. George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily. Gen Patton moved his troops across Sicily through August.
(TMC,1994,p.1943)(WSJ,12/8/95,p.A-14)(AP, 7/22/07)
1943 Jul 25, Benito Mussolini was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III and placed under arrest. Fascist Grand Council, reeling from the invasion of Sicily and fearing a subsequent destructive invasion of the mainland, forced Dictator Benito Mussolini to resign. Mussolini was later rescued by the Nazis and re-asserted his authority.
(AP, 7/25/97)(HN, 7/25/98)(The National Interest, 8/25/19)
1943 Jul 26, Otto Skorzeny's commando group arrived in Rome.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1943 Aug 13, The British bombed Milan. Elmer Alifano was an injured American held captive in a Milan hospital during the bombing where he received more injuries and where a third of the Allied prisoners were killed.
(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A19)
1943 Aug 17, The Allied conquest of Sicily was completed as U.S. and British forces entered Messina.
(AP, 8/17/97)(HN, 8/17/98)
1943 Aug 28, Mussolini was transferred from La Maddalena Sardinia to Gran Sasso.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1943 Aug, Italy's surrender to Allied forces weakened Italian hold on Albania; Albanian resistance fighters overwhelmed five Italian divisions.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1943 Sep 3, The British Eighth Army invaded Italy, landing at Calabria, during World War II. Italy signed a secret armistice with the Allies, but it was not announced until Sep 8.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)
1943 Sep 4, British 8th army landed at Taranto in South Italy.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1943 Sep 8, Italy surrendered to the Allies in WW II.
(www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsItaly.htm)
1943 Sep 9, Allied forces in operation Avalanche landed at Salerno and Taranto during World War II. They encountered strong resistance from German troops.
(AP, 9/9/97)(HN, 9/9/98)(MC, 9/9/01)
1943 Sep 10, German troops occupied Rome and took over the protection of Vatican City.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1943 Sep 12, German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. 107 Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny (1908-1975) freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains. Paratroopers in 12 gliders took the Italian Carabinieri guards by surprise without firing a single shot, and whisked ex-dictator Mussolini away in a Storch airplane to Rome. The rest of the commando team escaped by cable car. Skorzeny then flew Mussolini to meet with Hitler.
(AP, 9/12/97)(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A15)(The National Interest, 8/26/19)
1943 Sep 13, Germans counter attacked at Salerno.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1943 Sep 14, German troops abandoned the Salerno front in Italy.
(HN, 9/14/98)
1943 Sep 23, Benito Mussolini formed a rival fascist government in Italy.
(www.cifr.it/Chapter_05.html)
1943 Sep 24, German forces executed 117 Italian officers on the Greek island of Cephalonia. The massacre became the basis for the 1994 bestseller Captain Corelli's Mandolin by British writer Louis de Bernieres. On Oct 18, 2013 an Italian court handed a life sentence in absentia to former German army corporal Alfred Stork (90) for his role in the execution.
(AFP, 10/18/13)
1943 Sep 29, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice aboard the British ship Nelson off Malta.
(AP, 9/29/97)
1943 Sep, Trieste was occupied by the Germans and held until the end of the war. Many of the city’s Jews perished at the nearby Risiera di San Sabba Nazi death camp.
(SFC, 2/3/97, p.C3)
1943 Sep, Pope Pius XII offered Vatican assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis and in Italy ran an extensive network of hideouts for escaping Jews.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1943 Oct 1, Allied forces captured Naples during World War II. British troops in Italy entered Naples and occupied Foggia airfield.
(HFA, '96, p.38)(AP, 10/1/97)(HN, 10/1/98)
1943 Oct 12, The U.S. Fifth Army began an assault crossing of the Volturno River in Italy.
(HN, 10/12/98)
1943 Oct 13, During World War II, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
(AP, 10/13/97)
1943 Oct 16, In Italy the Nazi SS police and Waffen SS began rounding up the Jews of Rome. There was an anti Jewish riot in Rome as the Jewish quarter was surrounded by Nazis, and Jews were evacuated to Auschwitz. Pope Pius XII made no public protest, though he did send some messages of disapproval through intermediaries. In total, nearly 8,000 Italian Jews died in concentration camps in World War II.
(WSJ, 10/18/99, p.A46)(AFP, 10/27/18)
1943 Dec 2, Italy’s Bari harbor was attacked by German bombers. They achieved a complete surprise bombing shipping and personnel operating in support of the Allied Italian campaign. 27 cargo and transport ships and a schooner were sunk. The release of mustard gas from one of the wrecked cargo ships added to the loss of life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.20)
1943 Dec 3, Battle of Monte Cassino, Italy began.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1943-1947 Thousands of Italians were killed by Yugoslav partisans in and around the Istrian peninsula, which had fallen to Italy after the 1st world war. Mussolini’s fascists had brutally Italianized the peninsula prior to the arrival of the partisans.
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.48)
1944 Jan 4, The British Fifth Army attacked Monte Cassino, Italy.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1944 Jan 6, In Italy lava began flowing from the conelet of Mount Vesuvius. Lava flows continued into March with several explosions thru the end of March.
(http://vulcan.fis.uniroma3.it/vesuvio/1944eng.html)
1944 Jan 15, The U.S. Fifth Army successfully broke the German Winter Line in Italy with the capture of Mount Trocchio.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1944 Jan 20, Allied forces began unsuccessful operations to cross the Rapido River and seize Cassino, Italy.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1944 Jan 22, US troops under Major General John P. Lucas made an amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio, Italy, just south of Rome. Major General Lucas commanded Operation Shingle, a surprise landing behind German lines in Italy. General Lucas harbored grave doubts about the chances for success in this, the most daring operation of the Italian campaign. The seaborne operation was planned as a way of outflanking German strength on Italy’s Gustav Line and swiftly capturing Rome, but almost nothing went according to plan.
(HNQ, 4/4/01)(AP, 1/22/08)
1944 Jan 30-1944 Feb 2, At Cisterna, Italy, some 250-300 US Rangers died as part of the battle of Anzio. 8 rangers escaped and hundreds were captured.
(AP, 3/20/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cisterna)
1944 Feb 2, The Germans stopped an Allied attack at Anzio, Italy.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1944 Feb 7, The Germans launched a [counteroffensive] second attack against the Allied beachhead at Anzio, Italy. They hoped to push the Allies back into the sea.
(AP, 2/7/97)(HN, 2/7/99)
1944 Feb 15, American bombers attacked the Abbey of Monte Cassino in central Italy in an effort to neutralize it as a German observation post. In 2003 Matthew Parker authored "Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II."
(HN, 2/15/99)(Econ, 9/20/03, p.80)
1944 Mar 2, A train disaster killed 521 people in Salerno, Italy.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)
1944 Feb 15, American bombers attacked the Abbey of Monte Cassino in an effort to neutralize it as a German observation post in central Italy.
(HN, 2/15/99)
1944 Mar 1, Massive strikes took place in Northern Italian towns.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1944 Mar 2, In Salerno, Italy, fumes from a locomotive stalled in a tunnel suffocated 521 people.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1944 Mar 4, Anti-German strikes took place in North Italy.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1944 Mar 15, Allied bombers again raided German-held Monte Cassino, Italy.
(AP, 3/15/07)
1944 Mar 19, At Cisterna, Italy, Germans, increasingly worried about resistance, rounded up the entire town and marched them north. Many ended in labor camps and farms as far north as Tuscany.
(AP, 3/20/10)
1944 Mar 23, A bomb assassination against Southern Tirol congregation in Rome killed 33.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1944 Mar 24, In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans, who the day before killed 32 [33] German soldiers [policemen]. The Ardeatine Cave massacre near Rome, Italy, took place. In retaliation to the systematic murder of Nazi officers by the Italian underground, an SS officer ordered that 10 Italian civilian men be shot for every Nazi officer killed. The age of the civilians did not matter and so many teenagers and boys were among the dead found in the caves. Argentina extradited former Nazi officer, Erich Priebke, to Rome in 1995 to face trial for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre.
(AP, 3/23/97)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-21) (WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-1)(HN, 3/24/98)
1944 Apr 22, Hitler and Mussolini met at Obersalzburg.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1944 May 11, Allied forces launched a major offensive against German lines in Italy.
(AP, 5/11/07)
1944 May 13, Allied forces in Italy broke through the German Gustav Line into the Liri Valley.
(HN, 5/13/99)
1944 May 15, A partisan attack on a movie theater killed 5 German soldiers in Genoa. 4 days later SS Officer Friedrich Engel ordered the killing of 59 Italian prisoners in reprisal. In 2002 Engel (93) was sentenced to 7 years in prison for the order.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A14)(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May 17, Polish poet Felix Konarski (1907-1991) wrote the song “Red Poppies on Monte Cassino" on the night before the Allied attack that crushed the German defense at Monte Cassino. Alfred Schutz (d.1999) composed the music.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trv_4epO6vw)(SFC, 9/23/15, p.A2)
1944 May 18, The Allies in Italy finally captured Monte Cassino, Europe's oldest Monastic house, after a four-month struggle that claimed some 20,000 lives. The Polish 2nd Army corps, at a staggering loss of life, captured the convent of Monte Cassino.
(HN, 5/18/99)(AP, 5/18/02)(SC, 5/18/02)
1944 May 19, The Gustav line, the German defense line in Italy, collapsed under heavy assault by Allied troops.
(DTnet, 5/19/97)
1944 May 19, Friedrich Engel (1909-2006), a Nazi SS officer, oversaw the massacre of 59 Italian prisoners near Genoa. An Italian military court convicted Engel in absentia in 1999 and sentenced him to life for war crimes connected to a total of 246 deaths. In 2002 a German court convicted Engel of 59 counts of murder and handed him a suspended seven-year term.
(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May 29, British troops occupied Aprilia, Italy.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1944 May 30, Caligula’s ships, extracted from Lake Nemi, were set ablaze and destroyed. Blame was cast on German soldiers and American artillery.
(AM, 5/01, p.31)
1944 Jun 3, Nazis pulled out of Rome.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1944 Jun 4, The US Fifth Army under Gen. Mark Clark, entered Rome, beginning the liberation of the Italian capital during World War II.
(AP, 6/4/97)(Econ, 4/12/08, p.94)
1944 Jun 7, Italian partisans shot at least one German soldier in a radio transmitter unit that included Matthias Defregger. Eventually, 17 men, ranging from 17 to 65, were shot in retaliation, and much of the village of Filetto di Camarda was burned. Defregger later became a Bishop and faced charges in 1969 for the murders. The charges were dropped in 1970.
(www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901076,00.html)
1944 Jun 26, German troops near the Italian village of Falzano di Cortona herded 11 civilians into a barn and blew it up. Gino Massetti (15) survived and in 2008 testified in the trial of former Wehrmacht Lt. Josef Scheungraber, the company commander accused of ordering the reprisal killings and four others after two German soldiers were killed. In 2009 Scheungraber (90) was convicted of 10 murders and jailed for life.
(AP, 10/7/08)(AFP, 8/11/09)
1944 Jun, German soldiers in the Hermann Goering division, named after the head of Adolf Hitler's air force, shot and killed more than 200 civilians and destroyed most of the homes in the Tuscan town of Civitella to avenge a deadly attack by partisans. In 2008 Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of the massacre. Germany rejected the ruling.
(AP, 10/22/08)
1944 Aug 4, British 8th army reached the suburbs of Florence, Italy.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1944 Aug 11, German troops abandoned Florence, Italy, as Allied troops closed in on the historic city.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1944 Aug 12, Churchill and Tito met in Naples.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1944 Aug 28-1944 Sep 9, In Italy 10 citizens from Forli were killed "without need and without any justified motive" by a platoon led by German officer Heinrich Nordhorn. In 2006 an Italian military tribunal convicted Nordhorn (86) in absentia in the killings of the 10 civilians.
(AP, 11/4/06)(http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/1175818.php)
1944 Aug 31, The British Eighth Army penetrated the German Gothic Line in Italy.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1944 Aug, Some 300 SS troops surrounded Sant'Anna, Italy, which had been flooded with refugees, ostensibly to hunt for partisans. Instead, they rounded up and shot villagers, according to survivors. Others were herded into enclosed areas such as basements and killed with hand grenades. In 2005 a local court convicted 10 Nazi SS in absentia.
(AP, 6/22/05)
1944 Sep 5, Flight Sgt. Maximilian Volke, a German ace pilot, took off from a northern Italian air base with three other fighters to intercept a group of American bombers. He was shot down by gunners in one of the US planes. His plane and remains were found in 2007.
(AP, 8/14/07)
1944 Sep 29-1944 Oct 5, Nazi murders took place in Marzabotto, Italy, under SS-major Reder. Retreating Nazi troops killed some 1,000 women, children and elderly while allegedly pursuing resistance fighters. In 2002 German Pres. Rau apologized for the massacre. In 2007 an Italian military tribunal gave life sentences in absentia to 10 German former SS men for massacring about 800 Italian villagers. They had laid waste to the villages of Marzabotto, Grizzana and Vado di Monzuno near Bologna, as the Germans retreated before Allied troops.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marzabotto_massacre)(USAT, 4/18/02, p.4A)(Reuters, 1/14/07)
1944 Oct 20, A US air raid targeted an industrial complex near Milan, Italy, but a second wave of bombers went off course and released their bombs southeast of the target to lighten their loads as they returned to base. The bombing raid killed 184 elementary school children.
(AP, 10/20/19)
1944 Dec 2, Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (b.1876), Italian ideologue, poet, and editor, died in Bellagio, Italy. He was main founder of the Futurist movement [see 1909]. In 2006 Gunter Berghaus edited “Critical Writings by F.T. Marinetti," translated by Doug Thompson.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7v7f3)(SFC, 10/24/06, p.E2)
1944 Dec 26, In Italy two platoons of the segregated 92nd Infantry Division fought the German 14th Army at Sommocolonia. Of 70 "Buffalo Soldiers" and 25 Italian Partisans only 18 survived. In 1977 Lt. John Fox and 6 other black Americans were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. By the end of the war 2,916 Buffalo soldiers fell breaking the Gothic Line.
(SFC, 7/13/00, p.A15)(Ind, 1/11/03, 5A)
1944 The US 10th Mountain Division expelled the Nazis from the mountains of northern Italy.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C3)
1944-1945 This period in Italy was covered by James Holand in his 2008 book “Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945."
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.93)
1944-1945 In Italy the Bolzano camp in the Alpine South Tyrol area served as a transit point for Jews, Italian resistance fighters, Italians drafted for factory work and German army deserters who were being shipped north.
(AP, 11/7/10)
1945 Jan 28, The US Army 10th Mountain Division first entered combat in the Apennine Mountains of northern Italy.
(ON, 4/2011, p.7)
1945 Feb 6, In northern Italy a B-25 Mitchell dubbed "Maybe" was damaged during a bombing run near Trento during World War II. Pilot Earl Remmel of Hooker, Oklahoma, and co-pilot Leslie Speer of Jeffersontown, Kentucky, kept the plane steady long enough for the other five crew members to bail out.
(AP, 9/19/14)
1945 Mar 12, Italy's Communist Party (CPI) called for armed uprising in Italy.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Apr 17, Mussolini fled from to Milan.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1945 Apr 23, US troops in Italy crossed the river Po.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1945 Apr 27, US 5th army entered Genoa.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1945 Apr 27, Italian partisans captured Mussolini.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1945 Apr 28, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country. In 1961 Charles F. Delzell, a historian at Vanderbilt Univ., wrote "Mussolini's Enemies: The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance." In 2005 R.J.B. Bosworth authored "Mussolini’s Italy." In 2007 Philip Morgan authored “The Fall of Mussolini. In 2009 the diaries of Clara Petacci were published as a book.
(AP, 4/28/97)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)(Econ, 10/8/05, p.92)(Econ, 7/14/07, p.89)(Econ, 11/21/09, p.55)
1945 Apr 29, The German Army in Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Venice and Mestre were captured by the Allies. In 1956 Norman Kogan, historian at the Univ of Connecticut, wrote "Italy and the Allies."
(HN, 4/29/99)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)(MC, 4/29/02)
1945 Apr 30, In Italy a vehicle known as a DUKW (pronounced duck) sank while crossing Lake Garda during the last days of fighting in Europe The dead included 24 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division and a 25th soldier from another unit.
(AP, 4/29/16)
1945 May 2, German Army in Italy surrendered.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1945 May 2, Yugoslav troops occupied Trieste.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1945 May 2, The Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin and the Allies announced the surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria.
(AP, 5/2/97)
1945 Aug 2, Pietro Mascagni (81), Italian composer (Cavalleria Rusticana), died.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1945 Carlo Levi (1902-1975), Italian journalist, artist and doctor, authored “Christ Stopped at Eboli," his first documentary novel.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/clevi.htm)
1945 John Hersey won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel "Bell for Adano." It was later made into a Broadway play and a movie. The story was modeled on Major Frank E. Toscani (d.2001 at 89), military governor of Licata, Italy.
(SFC, 1/30/01, p.A22)
1945 The Italian film “Rome Open City" was directed by Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). It was about the German occupation of Rome and was the first film of his war trilogy.
(SFC, 1/22/10, p.E2)
1946 Apr 28, Domenico Leccisi (d.2008 at 88) and 2 other Italians marked the first anniversary of the death of Mussolini by digging up his body in a Milan cemetery. They passed the body to 2 monks, who buried it in a nearby monastery. The theft sparked a nationwide manhunt for the group. The body was later returned for burial in Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace.
(SFC, 11/5/08, p.B15)
1946 May 9, Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III, known as "sciaboletta", or small sabre, due to his stature, abdicated the throne in favor of his son Umberto II in a vain effort to avert a plebiscite to decide whether Italy should remain a monarchy or become a republic. Umberto II (d.1983) ruled for just 26 days before he was sent into exile after a June referendum abolished the monarchy. After the referendum Victor Emmanuel III went into exile in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died the following year.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.A11)(SFC, 6/3/96, p.A12)(SFC, 1/30/01, p.C2)(Reuters, 12/17/17)
1946 May, The Teatro alla Scala reopened under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. It closed at the end of 2001 for restoration to be completed in 2004.
(SSFC, 1/27/02, p.C9)
1946 Jun 2, The Italian monarchy was abolished by referendum in favor of a republic.
(AP, 6/2/97)(HN, 6/2/98)
1946 Jun 10, Italy replaced its abolished monarchy with a republic.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1946 Nov 2, Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor, was born in Venice, Italy.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1946 Curzio Malaparte, an Italian fascist intellectual, authored “Kaputt," an autobiographical novel that described the cruelty of Nazi fanaticism.
(WSJ, 1/19/08, p.W8)
1946 The Italian film “Paisan" was directed by Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). It was comprised of 6 short films dealing with the Allied liberation of Italy. This was the 2nd film of his war trilogy.
(SFC, 1/22/10, p.E2)
1946 Enrico Piaggio designed the 1st Vespa motor scooter as a practical solution to transportation needs in postwar Italy. Corradino D’Ascanio, helicopter pioneer, came up with the idea for the 2-wheeled Vespa scooter.
(SFC, 8/16/03, p.F1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.64)
1946 In Italy the Carpigiani firm, a maker of ice-cream making machines, was founded. Bruto Carpigiani (d.1945) had designed the first machine and his brother Poerio did the marketing.
(Econ, 8/18/07, p.55)
1946 In Italy Mediobanca was founded to rebuilt the country’s industry in the aftermath of WWII.
(Econ, 6/14/14, p.68)
1947 Dec 27, The new Italian constitution was promulgated in Rome.
(HN, 12/27/98)
1947 Dec 28, Victor Emmanuel (b.1869-1947), also known as Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy (1900-1946), Emperor of Ethiopia (1939-1943) and King of Albania (1939-1943), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Emmanuel_III_of_Italy)
1947 Georgio Strehler (d.1997) founded the Piccolo Theater in Milan.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.B6)
1947 The Ferrari automobile began to be manufactured.
(WSJ, 6/9/97, p.A1)
1948 Feb 2, The United States and Italy signed a pact of friendship, commerce and navigation.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1948 Mar 25, The Italians banned a compromise with Yugoslavia and demanded the return of Trieste.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1948 Jun, In Rome Father Karol Jozef Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, completed his thesis “The Problems of Faith in the Works of St. John of the Cross" and earned a doctorate in philosophy. In July he returned to Poland as an assistant pastor at Niegowic.
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.A12)
1948 The Italian film “Germany Year Zero" was directed by Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). It was the 3rd of his war trilogy and was about the privations of German survivors in postwar Berlin.
(SFC, 1/22/10, p.E2)
1948 In Italian general elections the Communist Party won 31% of the vote.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.9)
1948 Italy’s new constitution outlawed the Fascist Party. It spread power equally between the lower Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. It also gave significant autonomy to four distinct regions: Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d’Aosta and Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A15)(Econ, 11/26/16, p.20)
1948 African and Indian three-wheelers (tuk-tuks) began following the original design of the Piaggio Ape C, which was originally based on the Italian Vespa.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw)
1949 Apr 4, The (NATO) North Atlantic Treaty Organization pact was signed by the US, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada. It provided for mutual defense against aggression and for close military cooperation.
(www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm)(TOH, 1982, p.1949)
1949 Nov 21, The UN Assembly decided for the eventual independence of Italy’s former colonies. In the meantime they remained under UN supervision. United Nations granted Libya its independence in the year 1952.
(EWH, 1968, p.1176)(HN, 11/21/98)
1949 The Italian film "Bitter Rice" (Riso Amaro) starred Silvana Mangano. It was directed by Giuseppe de Santis (d.1997).
(SFC, 5/19/97, p.A24)(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E1)
1950 Nov 4, The European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome. 5 protocols were added later. Alleged violations were handled by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
(www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html)(WSJ, 4/26/06, p.A1)
1950 The Italian film "Mamma Mia, Che Impressione!" starred Alberto Sordi in his first role.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1950 Giaur was formed in Italy by the great Berardo Taraschi (previously of Urania) and the Giannini brothers, the name coming from Giannini and Urania. The engines were mainly Giannini units, although Fiat and Crosley items were also used.
(http://ferrariexperts.com/giaur.htm)(SSFC, 7/20/08, p.J3)
1951 Jan 10, [Harry] Sinclair Lewis (65), American author of 23 novels and 3 plays (Nobel 1930), died in Rome of a nervous disorder. In 2002 Richard Lingeman authored "Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street."
(HNQ, 5/18/98)(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.W8)(MC, 1/10/02)
1951 Apr 18, Jean Monnet, French civil servant, and Robert Schuman, French foreign minister, helped found the European Union with agreements between 6 countries on the pooling of coal and steel resources. Ministers from Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and France put their names on the Treaty of Paris, the founding document of what in four decades would become the European Union.
(Econ, 9/25/04, Survey p.3)(Econ, 6/18/16, p.45)
1951 Sep 11, Stravinsky's opera "Rake's Progress," premiered in Venice.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1951 Sep 19, Italian civil servants struck for a pay increase.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1951 Nov 26, Illona Staller, Italian member of Parliament (La Cicciolina), was born in Budapest, Hungary.
(MC, 11/26/01)(AP, 11/26/02)
1952 May 6, Maria Montessori (b.1870), Italian physician, educationist, died In Holland. She opened her 1st school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori)(SFC, 1/6/07, p.B1)
1952 The film "La Provinciale" starred Gina Lollobrigida and was directed Mario Soldati and based on a novel by Alberto Moravia.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1952 An Italian law made the praise of fascism a crime.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A15)
1953 Feb 20, Riccardo Chailly, conductor (West Berlin Symph Orch), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1953 Jul 15, Eugenio Balzan (b.1874), Italian journalist, died in Lugano. In 1933 he moved to Switzerland, living in Zurich and Lugano, where he invested his fortune with success. He left a substantial inheritance to his daughter Angela Lina Balzan (1892–1956), who at the time was suffering an incurable disease. Before her death, she left instructions for a foundation, the Balzan Prize Foundation. Since then it has two headquarters, the Prize administered from Milan, the Fund from Zurich.
(AP, 9/6/10)(www.balzan.org/en/history_1698.html)
1953 Nov, In Italy the Iso Isetta microcar was introduced in Turin. The car originated with the Italian firm of Iso SpA. In the early 1950s the company was building refrigerators, motor scooters and small three-wheeled trucks. Iso's owner, Renzo Rivolta, decided he would like to build a small car for mass distribution. By 1952 the engineers Ermenegildo Preti and Pierluigi Raggi had designed a small car that used the scooter engine and named it Isetta—an Italian diminutive meaning little ISO.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.102)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta)
1953 Dec 5, Italy and Yugoslavia agreed to pull troops out of the disputed Trieste border.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1953 The Italian film "I Vitelloni" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1953 Italy founded ENIPower, a state attempt to break the oligopoly of the “Seven Sister," the major oil companies of the day.
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.53)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.64)
1954 Jul 31, Italians Lino Lacedelli (1925-2009) and Achille Compagnoni (1915-2009) first scaled Pakistan’s K-2, the world's second-highest mountain. In 2004 Lacedelli authored “K2: The Price of Conquest."
(AP, 7/27/04)(SSFC, 11/29/09, p.C8)
1954 The Italian film "The Poor and the Noble" starred Toto (Antonio de Curtis) and Sophia Loren.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1954 The Italian film "Senso," a historical romance, starred Farley Granger and Alida Valli. It was made by Luchino Visconti.
(SFEM, 9/10/00, p.21)(SFC, 3/30/11, p.C4)
1954 The film "La Strada" was directed by Federico Fellini.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.42)
1954 Amintore Fanfani (d.1999 at 91) became the head of government. He resigned after 12 days following a vote of no confidence in Parliament. He later became head of the UN Gen'l. Assembly.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.C6)
1954 Italy regained Trieste, which had been held by the United Nations. In 2001 Jan Morris authored "Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere."
(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.R2)(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.R2)
1954 Ardito Desio (d.2001 at 104) of Italy organized the 1st expedition to reach the top of K2 in Kashmir, the world’s 2nd highest peak. In 1962 Desio became the 1st Italian to reach the South Pole.
(SFC, 12/14/01, p.A33)
1955 Aug 16, Fiat Motors ordered the 1st private atomic reactor.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1955 The film "Toto Against the Four" starred Toto.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1955 Marco Pannella (1930-2016) helped found Italy's Radical Party and rose to fame as the movement's leader in the 1960s and 1970s.
(Reuters, 5/19/16)
1956 Feb 2, Figure skater Tenley Albright became the first American woman to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Italy. She achieved this despite an ankle injury.
(NYT, 2/3/1956, p. 26)
1956 Jul 25, The Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm in 200 feet of water 50 miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Mass. 46 people of its 1,706 passengers and crew were killed. The Dorea was headed from Genoa, Italy, to NY, and sank eleven hours after the crash.
(WSJ, 5/30/97, p.A1)(AP, 7/25/97)(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A16)(SFC, 7/30/99, p.D5)(AP, 1/14/12)
1956 Nov 1, Pietro Badoglio (85), Italian general (1922-43), Premier of Italy (1943-44), died.
(www.fact-index.com/p/pi/pietro_badoglio.html)
1956 Giorgio Bassani, author, won the Strega literary award for his work: "Five Stories About Ferrara."
(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
1957 Jan 16, Arturo Toscanini (b.1867), Italian-US conductor (NBC), died in NYC. He led the NBC Symphony from 1937-1954. In 1978 Harvey Sachs wrote a biography of Toscanini. In 2002 Sachs edited "The Letters of Arturo Toscanini," his correspondence with Ada Mainardi. In 2017 Sachs authored a 2nd biography “Toscanini."
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9073009/Arturo-Toscanini)(HN, 3/25/01)(WSJ, 4/30/02, p.D7)(Econ 6/24/17, p.75)
1957 Mar 10, Thousands of soccer fans rioted in Italy.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1957 Mar 25, The Treaties establishing the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community were signed in Rome. The Treaty of Rome enabled people, goods, services and money to move unchecked throughout the Union. The Council of Ministers represents the governments of the members. Major decisions are made by the Council of Foreign Ministers. A 20-member Commission composed of appointed representatives of each member state serves as the administrative arm and members represent the Union. The Commission proposes and executes laws and policies. A European Parliament is composed of 626 members elected by the electorates of the member states and they sit in party groups. The Commission proposes, the Parliament advises, and the Council decides. The goal was to create a common market for all products but especially coal and steel.
(AP, 3/25/97)(HN, 3/24/98)(http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/eec.htm)
1957 May 9, Ezio F. Pinza, Italian bass (La Scala of Milan, NY Met Opera, Broadway musicals), died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1957 Jul 4, In Italy the new 13 horsepower Fiat 500 (Cinquecento) was launched in Turin. In 1965 Fiat introduced the 500 F model. The car could get 58 mpg from its 4.25-gallon tank.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.69)(SSFC, 5/1/11, p.J1)(SFC, 4/13/12, p.F1)
1957 Jul 23, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (b.1896), Sicilian aristocrat and writer, died in Rome. His classic novel “Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard), was published in 1958. It was about Sicilian blue bloods struggling to adopt to the changes ushered in by Italian unification in the 1860s and included the line: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." David Gilmour later authored the biography “The Last Leopard" (1991). In 1963 the film "Leopard" starred Burt Lancaster as the prince who makes the ceremonial cut into the timballo. It was directed Luchino Visconti and based on the novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
(WSJ, 12/9/06, p.P24)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.61)(SFC, 10/2/96, zz1 p.8)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.56)
1957 Jul 28, The Situationist International (SI) was formed at a meeting in the Italian village of Cosio d'Arroscia with the fusion of several extremely small avant-garde artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an off-shoot of COBRA), and the London Psychogeographical Association. The groups came together intending to reawaken the radical political potential of surrealism. The group also later drew ideas from the left communist group Socialisme ou Barbarie.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International)
1957 Italo Calvino, Italian writer, authored his novel “Il Barone Rampante" (The Baron in the Trees). It tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baron_in_the_Trees)
1957 The Italian film "La Grande Strada Azzurra" ("The Wide Blue Road") starred Yves Montand and Alida Valli. The tale of a fishing community was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006).
(AP, 10/13/06)
1957 The film "Nights of Cabiria" by Federico Fellini featured his wife, Giulietta Masina, as a Roman prostitute.
(SFEC, 10/11/97, DB p.36) (WSJ, 8/7/98, p.W4)
1957 The Italian Mille Miglia automobile race, begun in 1927, was cancelled following the crash of a Ferrari driven by the Marquis de Portago. He and his co-driver were killed along with 10 bystanders when the car ran off the road at 90 mph.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A13)
1957 At this time only 2% of Italian homes had refrigerators. By 1974 this increased to 94%.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.63)
1958 Mar 1, Giacomo Balla (b.1871), Italian composer and painter, died. He was a signatory to the 1910 Futurist Manifesto, and designed and painting Futurist furniture. He also created Futurist "antineutral" clothing.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.71)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Balla)
1958 Edward Banfield, American sociologist, authored “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society." It was about poverty in southern Italy.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.12)
1958 Domenico Modugno made a hit with "Volare." The Italian song won the 1958 Eurovision contest.
(SFC, 11/30/02, p.D1)(Econ, 5/14/05, p.57)
1958 The film "Big Deal on Madonna Street" starred Vittorio Gassman and Toto. It was directed by Mario Monicelli.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1958 A new law shut down the state-controlled brothels.
(SFC, 9/25/00, p.A12)
1959 Jan 21, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, was established in Rome on the basis of Article 19 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights)
1959 Oct 7, Mario Lanza (b.1921), undisciplined opera singer and temperamental movie star, died of a heart attack in Rome. Born with a glorious Italian tenor, Lanza resisted all professional urgings. He first came to light while in the Army, then started singing publicly, first on radio, then in movies. He signed a contract with MGM studios, where he made such movies as "The Toast of New Orleans," and "The Great Caruso." His heroic bellow sold records and filled concert halls. Lanza put several teachers through hell because he would not learn to read music, and he began to believe his hype as the century's greatest talent since Enrico Caruso (a thought which made Mrs. Caruso gag and Met Opera General Manger Rudolf Bing to ask: "Mario Who?"). He spent money as fast as he earned it, pampering himself through his life. He was fired by MGM because of his unpredictably in weight, ranging from compactness to obesity, often within a month's time.
(www.lanzalegend.com/bio.htm)(www.nndb.com/people/994/000091721/)
1959 The Italian film "The Great War" starred Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)
1959 The Italian film "Kapo" told the story of a Jewish girl trying to escape from a concentration camp. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006).
(AP, 10/13/06)
1959 In Italy Steno Marcegaglia founded the Marcegaglia steel works.
(www.marcegaglia.com/news/18_03_06_steel.html)
1960 Feb 27, Adriano Olivetti (58), Italian engineer, manufacturer, died.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1960 Jul 1, Italian Somaliland joined the British Somaliland Protectorate to form the Republic of Somalia. The French Somali Coast (Côte française des Somalis) continued as a French colony until 1967 when it became an overseas territory of France as ‘Territoire Francais des Afars et des Issas’, achieving independence in 1977 as Djibouti.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Somaliland)(Econ, 3/22/08, p.55)
1960 Aug 25, The 17th summer Olympics opened in Rome. Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994), was the first African American to win three gold medals in a single Olympiad. Her athleticism was remarkable since Rudolph contracted polio as a small child and spent six years in a steel brace. With therapy and hard work, Rudolph overcame her handicap to excel in basketball and track. As a celebrity, she worked to break many gender and racial barriers. Rudolph died of brain cancer.
(WSJ, 7/19/96, p.R6)(HN, 6/23/98)(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1960 Aug, Rafer Johnson (1934-2020) carried the American flag into Rome’s Olympic Stadium as the first Black captain of a United States Olympic team. He went on to win gold in a memorable decathlon duel, bringing him acclaim as the world’s greatest all-around athlete.
(NY Times, 12/3/20)
1960 Sep 11, The 17th Summer Olympics closed in Rome. In 2008 David Maraniss authored “Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Summer_Olympics)
1960 The Italian film "La Dolce Vita" starred Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996), Anita Ekberg and Laura Betti (d.2004).
(SFC, 12/20/96, p.A4)(SFC, 8/3/04, p.B6)
1960 The Italian film "The Passionate Thief" starred Toto and Anna Magnani.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1960 The Italian film "The Traffic Policeman" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1961 Nov 11, Congolese soldiers murdered 13 Italian UN pilots.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1961 Calisto Tanzi dropped out of university to concentrate on the a family delicatessen business near the Parma railway station: Calisto Tanzi & Sons - Salamis and Preserves. In 1966 Calisto Tanzi adopted the new ultra-high temperature (UHT) Swedish pasteurizing technique to produce long-life milk. In 2003 the company filed for bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 12/22/03, p.A6)(WPR, 3/04, p.18)
1961 Leonardo Del Vecchio founded Luxottica, a maker of eye shades and prescription glasses, in Belluno, Italy. In 1990 the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.73)
1962 Apr 5, St. Bernard Tunnel was finished and Swiss and Italians workers shook hands.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1962 Jul 14, Borehole for Mont Blanc-tunnel, between France and Italy, was finished. [see Aug 14]
(MC, 7/14/02)
1962 Aug 14, French and Italian workers broke through at the Mount Blanc Vehicular Tunnel. [see Jul 14]
(MC, 8/14/02)
1962 Giorgio Bassani (d.2000 at 84) authored his semi-autobiographical novel: "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis." In 1971 a film version by Vittorio De Sica with Dominique Sanda won a Hollywood Oscar for the Best Foreign Film.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, DB p.40)(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
1962 Nicolo Tucci ( d.1999 at 91) published his first English novel "Before My Time." Tucci had worked for the propaganda ministry of Benito Mussolini, but moved to NY in 1938 and took up anti-fascist propaganda.
(SFC, 12/16/99, p.A33)
1962 The Italian film "Mafioso" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1962 The Italian film "Momma Roma" was directed by Paolo Pasolini.
(SFC, 11/11/99, p.B1)
1962 The Italian film “Il Sorpasso" was directed by Dino Risi. It starred Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant in one of the great road movies of all time.
(SFC, 4/20/17, p.E8)
1962 Valuables stripped from Jews during the war were moved to a vault in central Rome.
(SFC, 2/3/97, p.C3)
1962 Gianna Beretta Molla (39), an Italian pediatrician, died a week after giving birth to her 4th child. In 2004 she was among six new saints named by Pope John Paul II because she'd refused to end her pregnancy despite warnings it could kill her.
(AP, 5/16/05)
1963 Feb 16, 1st round-trip swim of Straits of Messina, Italy, was made by Mary Revell of US.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1963 Jul 25, Ugo Cerletti (b.1877), Italian neurosurgeon, died. In the 1930s he and Lucio Bini pioneered the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), electric shock, to cure patients of depression.
(Econ, 6/3/06, p.78)(www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/511.html)
1963 Sep 9, In Italy a landslide into Vaiont Dam emptied a lake and killed 3-4,000 people. [see Oct 9]
(MC, 9/9/01)
1963 Sep 29, The second session of Second Vatican Council opened in Rome.
(AP, 9/29/97)
1963 Oct 9, A dam in Piave valley of Italy, broke and about 2,000 died. [see Sep 9]
(MC, 10/9/01)
1963 Oct 10, A dam burst in Italy, and over 3,000 died. [see Sep 9, Oct 9]
(MC, 10/10/01)
1963 Dec 30, Alessandra Mussolini, actress (Ferragosto OK), was born in Naples, Italy.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1964 Jun 18, Georgio Morandi (b.1890), reclusive Italian painter, died in Bologna.
(WSJ, 11/11/08, p.D7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Morandi)
1964 Robert Rauschenberg won the grand prize at the Venice Biennale. This established him in the art world with his idea that art is reality reshuffled.
(SFC, 8/20/98, p.E1)
1964 Italian fisherman pulled a bronze Greek statue, the "Victorious Youth," from the sea. It dated from 300 to 100BC and in 1977 it was purchased by the California-based Getty Museum for $4 million. In 2018 Italy's highest court rejected a Getty appeal of a ruling ordering the artwork returned to Italy.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A6)
1964 In Italy the five sisters opened the first Fendi store in Rome's historic center. A year later they hired a young designer named Karl Lagerfeld who helped catapult the Italian brand into global fame, with a focus on designing luxury furs. They sold to the French luxury group LVMH in 1999.
(AP, 6/20/17)
1965 Mar 13, Corrado Gini (b.1884), Italian statistician, died. He developed the Gini coefficient, a measure of the income inequality in a society. Gini was also a leading fascist theorist and ideologue who wrote “The Scientific Basis of Fascism" in 1927.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrado_Gini)(Economist, 10/13/12, SR p.4)
1965 Apr 2, Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy," which blamed Pope Pius XII for war crimes, was banned in Italy.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1965 Jul 16, Mount Blanc Road tunnel between France & Italy opened.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1965 New Directions published "Eugenio Montale: Selected Poems." Montale (1896-1981), an Italian poet writer and translator, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.8)
1965 The film "Hawks and Sparrows" starred Toto and was directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1965 Luciano Benetton was one of 4 family members who launched the Italian Benetton clothing group.
(Econ, 11/3/07, p.82)
1966 Nov 4, In Florence, Italy the River Arno overflowed and damaged the Uffizi Gallery. Whole libraries of valuable ancient documents were soaked. 33 people died in the flood and blame fell principally on Enel, Italy’s largest power company. In 2008 Robert Clark authored “Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces."
(WSJ, 10/29/96, p.A21)(SFC, 4/6/01, p.D4)(Econ, 11/1/08, p.97)
1966 Nov 4, A devastating flood swamped Venice, damaged monuments and covered the city in mud. 5,000 people were made homeless.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D4)(WSJ, 3/8/02, p.AW9)
1966 Dec 19, Alberto "La Bomba" Tomba, Italian skier (Olympic-gold-1988, 92), was born.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1967 Jan 27, Luigi Tenco (29), one of Italy's most famous modern singers, was found dead in his hotel room with a single gunshot wound to the head, hours after learning that his song had been eliminated from a national music competition. In 2006 prosecutors exhumed his body and said they had laid to rest suspicions that he had been murdered.
(Reuters, 2/16/06)
1967 Robert Katz (d.2010 at 77), American writer and historian, authored "Death in Rome." It was a meticulous reconstruction of an infamous 1944 Nazi massacre. A subsequent movie based on it, called "Massacre in Rome," stirred controversy because it suggested Pope Pius XII did not intervene to stop the massacre even though he knew about the Nazis' plans.
(AP, 10/21/10)
1967 A ski-lift was built from Cavalese to the top of Mount Cermis.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.B10)
1967 Italy passed a set of labeling laws similar to the French 1935 Appellation d’Origine Controlee (controlled place of origin). The AOC laws were meant to protect growers and properly identify a wine’s origin. They were not intended as an indicator of quality. The Italian DOC laws (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) regulated grape growing zones and wine production practices.
(SFC, 1/8/96, zz-1 p.4)(SFC, 6/30/99, Z1 p.6)
1967 Film actor Toto (b.1898 as Antonio de Curtis) died.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1968 Mar 16, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (b.1895), Italian composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Castelnuovo-Tedesco)
1968 Michelangelo Pistoletto, artist, rolled around Turin his giant ball of pulped newspaper. The exploit was captured on film.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.E4)
1968 The Sant’Egidio community was started in Rome by a high school student with ideals of prayer, mission and solidarity wit the poor. By 2008 it had 60,000 members in 70 countries and had become active in faith-based peacemaking.
(Econ, 7/5/08, p.72)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Sant'Egidio)
1968-1985 In Italy serial killings during this period left 16 people dead in the Tuscan countryside. In 1994 Pietro Pacciani (69) was convicted of 14 murders and sentenced to life in prison following trial that was televised. He was cleared in 1996 and ordered to face a retrial, but died in 1998. Pacciani's friend, Mario Vanni (70) and Giancarlo Lotti (54) were convicted of their involvement in five of the double murders. Vanni was given a life sentence and Lotti received a sentence of 26 years in prison. In 2001 Florentine authorities reopened the case amid speculation they were investigating up to a dozen wealthy Italians who orchestrated the ritualistic killings by manipulating a trio of voyeuristic peasants. In 2006 Mario Spezi, a journalist who has worked with the American thriller author Douglas Preston on a book about the killings, was arrested and accused of slander and sidetracking the investigation.
(AP, 4/9/06)
1969 Feb 2, Giovanni Martinelli (b.1885), Italian opera singer, died. He enjoyed a long career at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and appeared at other international theatres.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Martinelli)
1969 Feb 27, President Nixon arrived in Rome from West Berlin amid protests by thousands of students.
(www.historynet.com/today_in_history?tihMonth=2&tihDay=27)
1969 Jul 4, The Italian coalition government under Mariano Rumor (1915-1990) fell apart.
(www.speedylook.com/Mariano_Rumor.html)
1969 Jul 4, Erwin Blumenfeld (b.1897), German-born fashion photographer and artist, died in Rome. His books included “My One Hundred Best Photos" (1981) and the autobiography “Eye to I," published in English in 1999. In 1996 William Ewing authored “Blumenfeld: A Fetish for Beauty."
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.E13)(www.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blumenfeld.html)(Econ, 11/9/13, p.88)
1969 Oct 18, The painting "Nativity" by Caravaggio was stolen from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. Peter Watson, English novelist, later wrote "The Caravaggio Conspiracy," an account of his 1981-1982 attempt to recover the work.
(www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/dec/22/caravaggio-art-mafia-italy)(WSJ, 12/11/96, p.A20)
1969 Oct 22, Giovanni Martinelli, Italian opera singer (NY Met), died on his 84th birthday.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1969 Nov 23, The South Tyrolean People's Party (Südtiroler Volkspartei or SVP), founded in 1945 and which had lobbied for more than 20 years for greater autonomy for the German-speaking people of Italy's South Tyrol province, approved the Italian government's proposals to settle the dispute regarding the status of the border region and granting many of the Party's demands. At the urging of SVP leader Silvius Magnago, delegates to the SVP convention voted 583 to 492 to accept the package, paving the way for an agreement between Italy and neighboring Austria.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1969#November_23,_1969_(Sunday))
1969 The film “The Italian Job" starred Michael Caine and Noel Coward. The crime fable was set in Turin, Italy.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E10)
1969 The Italian film "Qeimada" starred Marlon Brando in a tale against colonialism. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006).
(AP, 10/13/06)
1969 The Italian film "Satyricon" was directed by Federico Fellini with music by Nino Rota. It was based on a satiric novel by Petronius Arbiter.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.E3)
1969 The Italian film “Una Storia d’Amore" featured American opera star Anna Moffo (1932-2006) in what appeared to be a nude scene.
(SSFC, 3/12/06, p.B7)
1969 In Italy the Albertini family gave Capuchin Friar Armando Lavini (Padre Pietro 1927-2015)) title to the church of San Leonardo and surrounding land. In 1971 he began restoring the ruined church by hand. A bell was hung in the campanile in 2007.
(Econ, 8/22/15, p.78)
1969 Right-wing militants carried out a series of bombings that Italian authorities and the media pinned on anarchists. Giuseppi Pinelli, one anarchist that was interrogated by the police, was reported to have fallen from a 4th floor window during interrogation. The event inspired Dario Fo to write his 1970 play: "Accidental Death of an Anarchist."
(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.A20)
1970 Jun 27, Reinhold and Gunther Messner of Tyrol, Italy, reached the 26,650-foot peak of Nanga Parbat in northern Pakistan. Gunther (24) died during the descent.
(WSJ, 12/10/03, p.A1)
1970 Jul 18, Arthur Brown (b.1942), English rock singer, was arrested for stripping on stage in Palermo, Sicily.
(www.godofhellfire.co.uk/60s.htm)
1970 Dec 25, Federico Fellini’s “The Clowns," part documentary and part fantasy, was released in Italy for television and the next day as a film.
(SFC, 1/12/15, p.A6)(TVM, 1977, p.139)
1970 Mario Soldati won Venice's Campiello Prize for his novel: "L'Attore" (The Actor), a study of psychological evil.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1970 The film "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" was directed by Franco Zeffirelli and shot in Assisi, Italy.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A21)
1970 In Italy divorce became legal following a titanic parliamentary battle.
(SFC, 1/29/00, p.E3)(Econ., 5/2/15, p.45)
1970 In northern Italy radicals linked up to form the Red Brigades, led by sociology students Renato Curcio and Margherita Cagol.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1970 Colonel Qaddafi expelled 20,000 Italians from Libya.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Italians)
1970 An International Federation ruled current depth records too dangerous and refused to accept further records after French diver Jacques Mayol (1927-2001) and Italian diver Enzo Maiorca (1931-2016) reached 249 feet (about 73m). Their rivalry inspired much of the 1988 film, "Big Blue," directed by Luc Besson.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Maiorca)(AP, 11/13/16)
1971 Jan 25, In Milan, Italy, firebombs damaged the Pirelli tire factory.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1971 Apr 5, In Sicily, Italy, Mount Etna began a series of eruptions.
(http://boris.vulcanoetna.com/ETNA_erupt2.html)
1971 Nov 26, Giacomo Alberione (b.1884), Italian priest who also believed in using modern means to bring God to the faithful, died. He had founded the Paoline Family, which includes a publishing operation printing many religious books as well as Famiglia Cristiana, a top-selling weekly that covers issues of daily life, from homemaking to education, and religious life.
(AP, 4/27/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Alberione)
1971 Dec 29, In Italy Giovanni Leone (1908-2001) became president. He resigned 6 months before the end of his 7-year term amid allegations of links to a payoff scandal involving Lockheed Corp.
(SFC, 11/12/01, p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Leone)
1971 The film "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" by Vittorio De Sica with Dominique Sanda won a Hollywood Oscar for the Best Foreign Film. The film was based on the book by Giorgio Bassani (d.2000 at 84).
(SFEC, 11/17/96, DB p.40)(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
1971 The Italian film "Handsome, Honest, Australian Emigrant, Looking for an Italian Virgin to Marry" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1971 Italy’s Ferrari Daytona was the world’s fastest car, capable of 174 mph.
(Econ, 3/12/15, p.11)
1972 Feb 17, Giulio Andreotti (1919-2013) began serving his first term as the 41st prime minister of Italy.
(AP, 5/6/13)
1972 May 5, Alitalia’s DC-8 Flight 112 crashed west of Palermo, Sicily; killing 115.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alitalia)
1972 May 17, In Italy Luigi Calabresi, head of the political dept. of the Milan police, was killed. He had been falsely suspected of having killed the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli in 1969. In 1988 Leonardo Marino, a former far left Lotta Continua militant, confessed that he drove a getaway car and that Adriano Sofri (b.1942), a writer, had masterminded the killing. On July 28, 1988, Sofri was arrested with Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio Pietrostefani for the alleged murder of Calabresi. Sofri was convicted in 2000.
(WSJ, 3/12/02, p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriano_Sofri)
1972 Aug 15, The Italian town of Grazie di Curtatone began its Int’l. Street Painting Festival. This revived a 16th century practice by itinerant artists who traveled from village to village for religious and folk festivals.
(WSJ, 5/16/06, p.D6)
1972 Italo Calvino (1923-1985), Italian novelist, authored “Invisible Cities." Nominally a series of tales that Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan, it is actually a collection of layered, labyrinthine meditations on cities, memory, desire and language.
(Econ, 12/8/12, IL p.12)(Econ., 8/22/20, p.70)
1972 The Italian film "The Most Beautiful Evening of My Life" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1972 The Italian film "The Scientific Cardplayer" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1972 The Italian film “The Seduction of Mimi" starred Giancarlo Giannini. It was directed by Lina Wertmuller.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E10)
1972 Luigi Calabresi, head of the political dept. of the Milan police, was killed. In 1988 Leonardo Marino, a former far left Lotta Continua militant, confessed that he drove a getaway car and that Adriano Sofri, a writer, had masterminded the killing. Sofri was convicted in 2000.
(WSJ, 3/12/02, p.A22)
1973 Jul 10, Italian Red Brigades kidnapped and held hostage Jean Paul Getty III (1956-2011), nephew of Gordon Getty. Only after his ear was chopped off and sent to a Rome paper did his father J. Paul Getty II, agree to lend money for a ransom. After 5 months Getty senior negotiated a deal and got his grandson back for $2.7 million. Paul III was permanently affected by the trauma, and became a drug addict.
(SFC, 1/8/95, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Paul_Getty)(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A4)
1973 Sep 26, Anna Magnani (b.1908), Academy Award winning Italian actress, died in Rome.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Magnani)
1973 Nov 13, Bruno Maderna (53), Italian-born composer and conductor (Satyricon), died in Germany.
(www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Maderna-Bruno.htm)
1973 Nov 13, Elsa Schiaparelli (b.1890), Italian fashion designer, died in France. In 2014 Meryle Secrest authored “Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_Schiaparelli)(Econ, 10/18/14, p.86)
1973 Dec 10, In Italy the personnel chief of Fiat was kidnapped and held for 8 days.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1973 Nino Rota (1911-1979), Italian composer, composed his "Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano."
(WSJ, 3/5/99, p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota)
1973 Italian tire maker Pirelli introduced steel-belted radial tires.
(Econ, 2/27/10, TQ p.5)
1974 Apr 18, In Genoa, Italy, the Red Brigade kidnapped deputy attorney Mario Sossi. He was held for 35 days.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)(http://tinyurl.com/39vg4e)
1974 Jun 17, In Italy 2 people died in a Red Brigades attack on a right-wing party’s office.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades)
1974 Sep 8, In Italy Renato Curcio and another Red Brigades leader were arrested.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1974 Nov 13, Vittorio de Sica (b.1902), Italian film actor and director, died in France.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0001120/)
1974 Nov 16, In Rome the first UN World Food Conference ended. At the conference, which had opened on Nov. 5, governments examined the global problem of food production and consumption, and solemnly proclaimed that "every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop their physical and mental faculties."
(SFC, 11/18/96, p.A10)(www.un.org/esa/devagenda/food.html)
1974 Cesare Sirtori, a Milan heart researcher, encountered a patient with a high cholesterol level. In 1979 Sirtori found that the patient carried a mutant gene, apolipoprotein A-1, a crucial component of HDL involved in clearing LDL from the body. This led to a new drug in 2003 that seemed to shrink arterial blockages.
(WSJ, 11/5/03, p.B3)(SFC, 11/5/03, p.A15)
1975 Feb 17, Art in by Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, and van Gough, valued at $5 million, was stolen from the Municipal Museum in Milan.
(HN, 2/17/98)
1975 Feb 18, Italy broadened its abortion law.
(www.crlp.org/pub_art_mosaic_conclusion.html)
1975 Feb 18, In Italy Renato Curcio, Red Brigades leader, was freed in a daring prison assault led by Margherita Cagol. She was later killed while trying to kidnap a businessman and Curcio was recaptured.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1975 Aug 26, An international plan began to show significant results to stop Venice from sinking into the sea. Venice was built on 118 small islands. By the early 1960s, rising seawater and floods threatened Venice. Scientists determined that Venice was sinking, and that much of the city would disappear if swift measures were not taken.
(http://twotrees.www.50megs.com/attic/history/08/26.html)
1975 Sep 30, In Rome Donatella Colasanti (17) was found bloodied and battered, but alive in the boot of a car. Beside her was the dead body of her friend Rosaria Lopez (20). Both had undergone hours of torture before Lopez was finally drowned in a bath. Colasanti had escaped the same fate only by playing dead. Andrea Ghira was found guilty in the "Circeo Massacre," named for the town near Rome where two girls were held captive for 36 hours and then left wrapped in plastic in a car trunk, where one girl died. He was convicted in absentia for the slaying. In 2005 his body was found in a cemetery in a Spanish enclave in Morocco, where he was buried in 1994.
(AP, 10/29/05)(http://rome.wantedineurope.com/articles/complete_articles.php?id_art=559)
1975 Oct 6, Chilean Vice Pres. Bernardo Leighton and his wife, Anita Fresno, were shot in Rome. Anita was left permanently disabled. In 2000 Chilean authorities arrested former Gen. Eduardo Iturriaga for the shooting.
(SFC, 3/15/00, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leighton_case)
1975 Oct 16, Vittorio Gui (b.1885), Italian composer (Batture d'aspetto), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Gui)
1975 Oct, Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), Italian poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1999 two collections of his poetry were translated and published in English: Collected Poems 1920-1954" and "Satura 1962-1970."
(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.8)
1975 Nov 1, Pier Paolo Pasolini (b.1922), Italian poet, author and director was murdered. A young male prostitute was tried and convicted for the murder in 1976.
(http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasolini.htm)
1975 Nov 15, The first Summit of 6 leading industrialist nations, G-6, met in Rambouillet, France, for discussions on currency and oil prices. The Group of Six included leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. They were joined a year later by Canada making the "G7". The group was originally established as a vehicle for leading industrialized democracies to discuss the global economy. It later expanded its scope to issues such as peace, the environment and terrorism. Russia, which attended the summit as a guest in 1992, was in 1998 allowed for the first time to attend all summit meetings. The grouping was officially renamed the "G8". In 2014 Vladimir Putin's Russia was suspended from the G8 after it annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and sanctions were imposed on Moscow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_G6_summit)(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A16)(AFP, 6/9/18)
1975 The Italian film "Profumo di Donna" starred Vittorio Gassman.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)
1975 Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1999 2 collections of his poetry were translated and published in English: Collected Poems 1920-1954" and "Satura 1962-1970."
(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.8)
1976 May 6, An earthquake struck Italy’s northern region at Friuli-Venezia Giulia, affecting 11 villages near the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. The earthquake killed more than 1,000 people in a 3,300-square-mile area and left 80,000 homeless.
(http://tinyurl.com/dvzp6)(SFC, 12/17/05, p.F1)
1976 Mar 9, A ski cable car, running from Cavalese to the Alpe Cermis in the Italian Alps, crashed to the ground due to a mechanical failure and killed 42 skiers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable-car_disaster_%281976%29)
1976 Jul 10, There was an explosion at a factory in Seveso, Lombardy, Italy, owned by ICMESA with a Swiss parent company. It produced a cloud of Dioxin which settled over several adjacent communities. The people exposed became nauseated, experienced eye and throat irritations, developed burn-like sores on exposed skin, headaches, dizziness and diarrhea -- the same symptoms recorded by exposed Vietnamese and Cambodian populations. In the next two days, small animals in the area began to die. The contamination led to a high incidence of birth defects.
(www.theveteranscoalition.org/educational_material/agent_orange.htm)(WSJ,2/12/97, p.A8)
1976 Aug 15, Former SS Colonel Herbert Kappler dramatically escaped from prison hospital in Rome with the aid of his wife and taken to Germany.
(http://tinyurl.com/yvulbh)
1976 The wolves of Italy received official protection.
(NH, 12/96, p.52)
1976 Italian carmaker Fiat began manufacturing cars in Brazil.
(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.6)
1977 Apr 28, In Italy the Red Brigades assassinated Fulvio Croce, the president of the Turin Bar Association.
(http://tinyurl.com/ywxupv)
1977 Jun 3, Roberto Rossellini (b.1906), Italian director, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Rossellini)
1977 Sep 2, Italian journalist Indro Montanelli (1909-2001) was shot in the legs by the Red Brigades. In 1969 he acknowledged having had a 12-year-old Eritrean bride during Italy’s colonial occupation in the 1930s. Montanelli was one of Italy’s most revered journalists, honored by the Vienna-based International Press Institute in 2000 as among the 50 World Press Freedom Heroes.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indro_Montanelli)(AP, 6/14/20)
1977 The Italian film "An Average Little Man" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1977 In Italy the Red Brigades abducted a leading businessman. He was freed with a ransom after 81 days. This year the Red Brigades also killed a lawyer, several prison officials and a journalist.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1978 Mar 16, Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped Aldo Moro, Italian politician and 5 time PM, and killed 5 of his bodyguards. Moro, who was planning to form a government combining his Christian Democrats and the Communist Party, was later murdered by the RB. Alessio Casimiri a member of the Red Brigades was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his role in the abduction. Casimiri escaped to Nicaragua and opened a restaurant. It was later reported that police decided not to rescue Moro.
(WSJ, 4/25/96, p.A-1)(AP, 3/16/97)(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1978 May 9, The bullet-riddled body of former Italian PM Aldo Moro, who'd been abducted by the Red Brigades, was found in an abandoned automobile in the center of Rome. In 2000 French police arrested Alvaro Loiacono in northern Corsica for his alleged role in the murder.
(AP, 5/9/97)(SFC, 6/3/00, p.A12)
1978 May 22, Italy legalized abortion. Voters upheld the law in a 1981 referendum.
(http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/population/abortion/Italy.abo.htm)(AP, 5/13/12)
1978 Sep 28, Pope John Paul I [Albino Luciano] died after 33 days as pope. He was found dead the next day in his Vatican apartment.
(www.prose-n-poetry.com/display_work/10583/)(AP, 9/29/97)
1978 Italian artist Luigi Serafini, after 30 months of work, completed his Codex Seraphinianus, an illustrated encyclopedia dealing with a parallel world and written in an unintelligible alphabet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus)
c1978 Pres. Giovanni Leone (d.2001 at 93) resigned 6 months before the end of his 7-year term amid allegations of links to a payoff scandal involving Lockheed Corp.
(SFC, 11/12/01, p.A19)
1978 In Italy the murders of 4 women were related to Maurizio Minghella (23). In 1982 he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the killings. In 1995 he was given partial liberty and prosecutors say he then killed 4 prostitutes. In 2002 his trial continued in Turin. In early 2003 he escaped and was soon captured and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 1/3/03)(http://tinyurl.com/2psh6t)
1978 In Italy Mediaset was founded by Silvio Berlusconi as TeleMilano. It grew to the largest commercial broadcaster in the country.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediaset)
1979 Mar 20, In Rome, Italy, the Mafia killed Mino Pecorelli, a magazine editor. In 1996 Premier Giulio Andreotti went on trial for allegedly turning to the Mafia to kill the troublesome journalist. Andreotti was acquitted by a jury in 1999. 5 others were also acquitted. In 2002 an appeal court in Perugia sentenced Giulio Andreotti to 24 years imprisonment for ordering the murder of Pecorelli.
(http://foi.missouri.edu/jouratrisk/italysexpm.html)(SFC, 4/12/96, p.A-12)(SFC, 9/25/99, p.A14)
1979 Apr 10, Nino Rota (b.1911), Italian composer (Torquemada, Romeo & Juliette), died from cancer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota)
1979 Aug 4, Francesco Cossiga (1928-2010) began serving as the 63rd prime minister of Italy. He continued to Oct 18, 1980. In 1985 he became it In 1985 he became Italy’s 8th president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
1979 Nov 3, Raffaele Bendandi (b.1893), Italian seismologist, died. he believed earthquakes were the result of the combined movements of the planets, the moon and the sun and were perfectly predictable. In 1923 he forecast a quake would hit the central Adriatic region of the Marches on January 2 the following year. He was wrong by two days.
(Reuters, 5/9/11)(http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffaele_Bendandi)
1979 The Italian film "My Asylum" (Chiedo Asilo) starred Roberto Benigni and was directed by Marco Ferreri.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.C3)
1979 Nilde Lotti (d.1999 at 79) became the first female president of the lower house of parliament. She changed from Communist to Left Democrat after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
(SFEC, 12/5/99, p.C15)
1980 Mar 29, Annunzio Mantovani (b.1905), Italian orchestra leader (Mantovani), died at his home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantovani)
1980 Jun 27, Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870, an Italian domestic jetliner, exploded in flight and crashed near the island of Ustica. 81 people were killed. In 1999 it was reported that a fight by warplanes led to the crash and coverup charges were filed against Italian military officials. Among theories for the jet's demise was a bomb planted by domestic terrorists, or an errant US or French missile allegedly fired at a Libyan MiG streaking over the Mediterranean. In 2013 Italy's top criminal court ruled that there is "abundantly" clear evidence that a stray missile caused the Italian passenger jet to crash.
(www.emergency-management.net/avi_acc_1979_1989.htm)(WSJ, 9/2/99, p.A1)(AP, 8/17/10)(AP, 1/28/13)
1980 Aug 2, In Bologna, Italy, a Fascist bomb attack killed 85 people at the train station.
(AP, 8/2/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_massacre)
1980 Aug 20, Reinhold Messner of Italy became the 1st to solo ascent Mt. Everest.
(www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9052253)
1980 Nov 23, Some 2,600 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A12)(AP, 11/23/07)
1980 The "Index Thomisticus" was printed in 56 volumes. It covered the context of all 10 million words written by Thomas Aquinas. Italian Jesuit Roberto Busa (1913-2011) had begun the project using index cards in 1941 and later switched to IBM's punch card machines. Busa was a pioneer in the usage of computers for linguistic and literary analysis.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Busa)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.39)
1980 Italian philosopher Umberto Eco authored "The Name of the Rose," and established a new genre of learned who-dunit novels.
(WSJ, 6/1/01, p.W12)(SSFC, 10/20/02, p.M1)
1980 The Italian film “City of Women" was written and directed by Federico Fellini.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Women)
1980 The Italian film "Ogro was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006). It was set in Spain in the years of dictator Francisco Franco. This was Pontecorvo’s last film.
(AP, 10/13/06)
1980 The Italian film "Terrazza" starred script writer Leonardo Benvenuti and was directed by Ettore Scola.
(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
1980 Italian Pres. Sandro Pertini (d.1999 at 90) appointed Leo Valiani a senator-for-life.
(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)
1980 In Italy Paolo Fazioli, a Roman engineer and pianist, moved to Sacile and opened a piano factory with plans to produce the world’s best pianos. By 2016 his factory was turning out 140 grand pianos a year.
(Econ, 5/7/15, p.80)
1980-1990 The government spent some $30.3 billion in emergency funds to rebuild Naples and Campania. Most of the money disappeared into private pockets and incomplete projects.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A12)
1981 May 13, John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca. The shots hit the pope’s hand and penetrated his abdomen. John Paul forgave Agca 4 days later.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(TMC, 1994, p.1981)(AP, 5/13/97)(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(SFC, 6/14/00, p.A12)
1981 Jun 10, In Frascati, Italy, 6-year-old Alfredo Rampi fell down an artesian well; the story ended tragically as efforts to rescue him proved futile.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1981 Dec 17, Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped Brigadier General James Dozier, the highest-ranking US NATO officer in southern Europe, from his home in Verona, Italy. Dozier was rescued 42 days later.
(HN, 12/17/98)(AP, 12/17/04)
1981 Ettore Sottsass (b.1917), Milanese designer, started the Memphis design movement. The 1996 book "Ettore Sottsass: Ceramics" covers his work.
(SFEM, 9/22/96, p.36)(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Sottsass)
1981 Italian officials discovered Propaganda Due (P2), a rogue Masonic lodge with a mission to infiltrate the organs of the state. Membership included politicians, soldiers, spooks and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. This prompted the outlawing of secret societies.
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.52)
1981 Cesare Battisti escaped from an Italian prison while awaiting trial on four counts of murder committed when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism. In 2007 he was arrested in Rio de Janeiro. In 2008 Brazil's top prosecutor recommended his extradition.
(AP, 4/4/08)
1982 Jan 28, Italian anti-terrorism forces rescued U.S. Brigadier General James L. Dozier, 42 days after he had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades.
(AP, 1/28/98)
1982 Apr, In southern Italy the Grotta delle Formelle chapel in Caserta, was looted. In 2009 two precious Byzantine-era frescos were recovered as part of investigations into Marion True, a former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The frescos, which date from the 11th to the 13th centuries and depict saints, were found in the home of Greek shipping heiress Despoina Papadimitriou.
(AP, 5/20/09)
1982 May 19, Sophia Loren (b.1934) began serving 18 days in an Italian prison for failing to pay her taxes.
(www.answers.com/topic/sophia-loren?cat=entertainment)
1982 Jun 18, The body of Roberto Calvi (1920–1982), an Italian banker, was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in the financial district of London. Calvi, director of Banco Ambrosiano, allegedly hanged himself following the fraudulent bankruptcy of the bank. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with building bricks, and he was carrying around $15,000 of cash in three different currencies. Calvi, dubbed by the press as "God's Banker" due to his close association with the Vatican, had gone missing on June 10. The Holy See was the main shareholder in the bank, which had been accused of laundering money for the Sicilian mafia. In 1992 Carlo De Benedetti, the chairman of Olivetti SpA, was convicted for contributing to the bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano. In 1996 courts upheld his conviction and that of 30 others. In 2003 RAI state television said prosecutors believed the Mafia killed Roberto Calvi because he lost their money and knew too much about their operations. In 2005 a trial began for 5 people in the murder of Calvi. In 2007 a jury acquitted all 5 defendants charged with the murder of Calvi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvi)(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A10)(AP, 7/24/03)(AP, 10/6/05)(AP, 6/6/07)(AP, 11/2/18)
1982 Jul 11, The Italian soccer team won its first World Cup in 44 years.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_FIFA_World_Cup)
1982 Sep 24, US, Italian and French peacekeeping troops began arriving in Lebanon. Some 400,000 Israelis gathered at the first of many demonstrations to protest the Lebanon War.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/usmnf.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/2o8vkl)
1982 Oct 16, Mario del Monaco (b.1915), Italian opera singer, died of kidney disease.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_del_Monaco)
1982 The Italian film "You Disturb Me" (Tu Mi Turbi) was the directing debut for Roberto Benigni.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.C3)
1982 The Vatican Bank, aka Works for Religion (IOR), was involved in the collapse of Italy’s Banko Ambrosiano.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.67)
1982 Umberto Romano (b.1905), Italian born artist, died in NYC.
(http://americanart.si.edu/search/artist_bio.cfm?StartRow=1&ID=4113)
1983 May 7, Mirella Gregori (15) went missing in Rome. In 2018 the news agency ANSA reported that prosecutors were focusing on whether the remains found in an annex of the Holy See's embassy in Rome could be linked either to Gregori, or to Emanuela Orlandi, another 15-year-old girl who went missing a month later.
(AP, 10/31/18)
1983 Jun 22, Emanuela Orlandi (b.1968), the daughter of a Vatican messenger, disappeared after a music lesson in Rome. She was 15 at the time. Her self-proclaimed kidnappers demanded the release of Ali Agca, who wounded the Pope in 1981, for her freedom. They never offered any proof they had the girl or that she was alive.
(AP, 1/10/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuela_Orlandi)
1983 Dec 11, The 1st visit to Lutheran church by a pope was made by Pope John Paul II in Rome.
(www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1983/december/index.htm)
1983 Vittorio Mussolini (d.1997 at 80), 2nd son of dictator Benito, made a documentary film of his father.
(SFC, 6/14/97, p.C2)
1984 Mar 5, Tito Gobbi (b.1923), Italian baritone (Scarpia in Tosca), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito_Gobbi)
1984 In Italy the government of Premier Bettino Craxi signed a decree securing a virtual monopoly of private television for businessman Silvio Berlusconi.
(Econ, 1/9/10, p.53)
1984 In Italy the Vatican paid $244 million for its part in a bank scandal that saw the collapse of another Italian bank.
(SFEM, 1/19/97, p.10)
1984 In Italy the Red Brigades split into two movements: the majority faction of the Communist Combatant Party (Red Brigades-PCC) and the minority of the Union of Combatant Communists (Red Brigades-UCC). The second position later morphed into the Politico-military Communist Party (PCPM). The same year, four imprisoned leaders, Curcio, Moretti, Iannelli and Bertolazzi, rejected the armed struggle as pointless.
(Econ, 2/17/07, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades)
1985 May 29, At Heysel Stadium rioting erupted between British and Italian spectators at the European Cup soccer final in Brussels, Belgium. 39 people were killed when rioting broke out and a wall separating British and Italian soccer fans collapsed. This led to a 5-year ban on English clubs playing on the Continent.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.A28)(AP, 5/29/08)
1985 Sep 19, Italo Calvino (b.1923), Italian writer, died. A collection of his essays was soon published titled "The Literature Machine." In 1999 the original 11 essays and 25 others were published under the title: "Why Read the Classics," translated by Martin McLaughlin. In 2003 McLaughlin published “Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings By Italo Calvino."
(SFEC, 10/24/99, BR p.5)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M4)
1985 Sep 23, Italian journalist Giancarlo Siani (b.1959) was killed after he ran investigative reports on the Mafia in the Naples daily Il Mattino. In 1997 6 Naples gangsters were sentenced to life terms for the murder.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giancarlo_Siani)
1985 Oct 7, Four Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians held by Israel. 413 people were held hostage for 2 days in the seizure that was masterminded by Mohammed Abul Abbas. American Leon Klinghoffer was shot while sitting in his wheelchair and thrown overboard. A case was filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and were turned over to Italy which let Abbas slip out of the country. Abbas was captured in Baghdad in 2003.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4)(AP, 10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)(SFC, 4/16/03, p.A16)
1985 Oct 8, The hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, dumping his body and wheelchair overboard. A case was filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and were turned over to Italy which let Abbas slip out of the country.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4) (AP, 10/8/97)
1985 Nov 25, Elsa Morante (b.1912), Italian writer, died. Her books included “House of Liars" (1948). In 2008 Lily Tuck authored the biography “Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante."
(WSJ, 9/27/08, p.W11)
1985 Dec 27, Palestinian guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; a total of twenty people were killed, including five of the attackers, who were slain by police and security personnel. Abu Nidal was considered responsible. President Reagan blamed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
(AP, 12/27/97)(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A6)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1985 Christopher Hibbert authored “Rome: The Biography of a City."
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.70)
1985 Franco Modigliani (d.2003 at 85), Italian economist at MIT, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his research on savings habits of people and the market value of businesses.
(WSJ, 9/26/03, p.A1)(Econ, 11/14/09, p.88)
1985 Francesco Cossiga (b.1928) was elected president of Italy. He resigned in 1992.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
1985 Pernod Ricard SA acquired the Italian bitters group Ramazzotti.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
1985 Italian journalist Giancarlo Siani was killed after he ran investigative reports on the Mafia in the Naples daily Il Mattino. In 1997 6 Naples gangsters were sentenced to life terms for the murder.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A9)
1985-1991 In Italy a mafia war during this period claimed the lives of almost 600 people. Giovanni Tegano, a senior gangster in Reggio Calabria, was a key participant.
(Econ, 5/8/10, p.54)
1986 Feb 10, The largest Mafia trial in history, with 474 defendants, opened in Palermo, Italy. The trial ended on December 16, 1987, almost two years after it commenced. Of the 474 defendants, both those present and those tried in absentia, 360 were convicted. 2,665 years of prison sentences were shared out between the guilty, not including the life sentences. A total of 114 defendants were acquitted.
(HN, 2/10/97)(www.answers.com/topic/maxi-trial)
1986 Feb 19, Adolfo Celi (b.1922), Italian film actor and director (Thunderball), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Celi)
1986 Mar 22, World financier Michele Sindona died two days after ingesting cyanide in his Italian prison cell in what authorities later ruled a suicide.
(AP, 3/22/06)
1986 Mar 29, A court in Rome acquitted six men in a plot to kill the Pope.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1986 Apr 14, Italy, which opposed an American strike against Libya, warned Libya a day before the strike, which was launched from a NATO base on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
(AP, 10/30/08)
1986 Apr 15, The United States launched an air raid with F-111 warplanes against Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5; Libya said 41 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Tripoli and Benghazi. The step-daughter of Moammar Gadhafi was among those killed near Tripoli by the US bombing.
(HN, 4/15/98)(WSJ, 8/30/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/19/08)(AP, 10/31/08)
1986 The Italian film "Demons" was produced.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.C1)
1986 Rita Levi Montalcini (1909-2012), Italian scientist, shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.
(AP, 4/19/09)(Econ, 1/5/12, p.74)
1986 In Italy 62 founding members met to inaugurate Arcigola, the forerunner of Slow Food.
(www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/history.lasso)
1986 In Italy the first McDonald's Hamburger restaurant opened in Rome.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, Z1 p.2)
1986 Italian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi bought the AC Milan soccer team. He had to quit the club’s presidency for two years in 2004 when a law preventing conflicts of interest for politicians was passed. In 2016 Berlusconi said Chinese investors Sino-Europe Sports Investment Mangement Changxing would pay €740m for the club and take on €220m of tis debt.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.70)(http://tinyurl.com/klwzhl)(Econ, 8/13/16, p.48)
1987 Apr 11, Primo Levi (b.1920), Italian chemist, Auschwitz survivor and writer, died in Italy. In 2002 Carole Angier authored: "Primo Levi: A Biography." His books included the 1947 memoir "If This Is a Man" and "The Periodic Table." In 2002 Carole Angier authored the biography "The Double Bond."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi)(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.M1)(WSJ, 6/14/02, p.W10)
1987 Jun 3, President Reagan arrived in Italy to prepare for a summit of major industrialized democracies, the 13th such gathering of world leaders.
(AP, 6/3/97)
1987 Nov 7, Italian citizens began voting in a 2-day referendum to close down 3 nuclear power plants.
(AP, 11/13/03)(Econ, 6/6/09, p.66)(www.radicalparty.org/ambiente/dilascia_ing.htm)
1987 In Italy porn actress Ilona Staller (known by her stage name of Cicciolina), a member of the Radical Party, was successfully elected to parliament.
(Reuters, 5/19/16)
1988 Apr 16, In Forli, Italy, the Red Brigades-PCC killed Italian senator Roberto Ruffilli, an advisor of Italian PM Ciriaco de Mita. After that, the group activities all but ended after massive arrests of its leadership.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades)
1988 Apr, The Japanese Red Army bombed a US military recreational club in Naples. 5 people were killed.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1988 Jun 11, Giuseppe Saragat (89), president of Italy (1964-71), died.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9065724)
1988 Aug 14, Enzo Ferrari (b.1898), Italian sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Ferrari)
1988 Aug 28, At least 40 people were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show at the US Air Base in Ramstein, West Germany, sending flaming debris into the crowd of spectators. Over the next 2 months the death toll rose to 69.
(AP, 8/28/98)(www.sos.se/sos/publ/REFERENG/9003031E.htm)
1988 Oct 13, In Italy Cardinal Archbishop Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero was forced to announce that the Shroud of Turin did not contain the image of Christ. Scientists at 3 leading universities carbon-dated samples to some time between 1260-1390. In 1998 it was reported that the dating work was not definitive. Lab tests showed Shroud of Turin was not Christ’s burial cloth. The Shroud of Turin Research Project (Sturp) performed radiocarbon dating on fibers of the shroud and found that the linen dated to between 1260 and 1390 AD. Ian Wilson wrote the 1978 book "The Shroud of Turin" and in 1998 "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence That the Most Sacred Relic Is Real."
(WSJ, 4/10/98, p.W6)(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A24)(http://tinyurl.com/zuanz)
1988 Italy enacted a mandatory seat belt law.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.E3)
1988 Controls on capital movement across borders were abandoned by France, Italy and other member states of the European Community.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-44)
1989 Feb 8, In the Azores 144 people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with Italian tourists slammed into fog-covered Santa Maria mountain.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1989 Apr 30, Sergio Leone (60), Italian director (Good, Bad & Ugly), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0001466/)
1989 Milton Friedman authored “Agnelli, Fiat and the Network of Italian Power."
(Econ, 1/28/12, p.80)
1989 The Italian film "The Voice of the Moon" (La Voce Della Luna) starred Roberto Benigni and was the last work directed by Federico Fellini.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.C3)
1990 Sep 21, Italian judge Rosario Livatino (b.1952) was killed by the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. His story inspired a novel, Il giudice ragazzino ("The Boy Judge"), written by Nando Dalla Chiesa in 1992, and this was made into a film with the same title in 1994 by director Alessandro di Robilant. In 1993 Pope John Paul II hailed him a “martyr of justice and, indirectly, of the Christian faith." In 2020 Pope Francis said he was a martyr for the faith and could be beatified, or declared "Blessed." In 2021 he was beatified by the Roman Catholic church in the last formal step before possible sainthood.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosario_Livatino)(Reuters, 12/22/20)(AP, 5/9/21)
1990 Sep 26, Alberto Moravia, Italian writer (Woman in Red), died at 82.
(http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/moravia.htm)
1990 Oct 24, The existence of Gladio, a “stay-behind" espionage operation, was acknowledged by Giulio Andreotti, head of the Italian government. It was sponsored by the CIA and NATO to counter communist influence after World War II in Italy, as well as in other European countries.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio)
1990 Nov, In Naples 2 oil paintings and 17 busts were stolen from the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli alle Croci. In 2009 one of the busts was found in the home of a North Carolina couple who had no idea it was stolen. Authorities told The Charlotte Observer the trail went cold until two years ago, when officials in Rome let federal agents know an Italian citizen sold a similar statue to an antiques dealer from Greensboro.
(AP, 3/21/09)
1990 The Pritzker Int’l. Prize for Architecture was awarded to Aldo Rossi (d.1997) of Italy. He had designed the World Theater in Venice and the Museum of Maastricht in the Netherlands.
(SFC, 9/5/97, p.A24)
1990 In Naples some $60 million vanished in incomplete construction sites for the soccer World Cup Tournament.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A12)
1990 In Pisa the Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed off to tourists for fear of its falling over. The tilt was reduced by 16 inches over the next 11 years and re-opening was scheduled in 2001.
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A1)(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A11)
1990 In Italy the Northern League began annual rallies as a cry for independence.
(Reuters, 7/3/18)
1991 Mar 29, Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona was suspended by the Italian League for testing positive on March 17 for cocaine use.
(http://tinyurl.com/e34y9)
1991 Jun 16, The seventh International Conference on AIDS opened in Florence, Italy. The conference was marked by pleas from African and Asian countries for more help and criticism directed at the United States for its refusal to allow visits by foreigners infected with the AIDS virus.
(AP, 6/16/01)
1991 Aug 29, Libero Grassi, Italian underwear manufacturer, anti mafia, was gunned down in Palermo.
(www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art105.htm)
1991 Aug, 18,000 Albanians crossed the Adriatic to seek asylum in Italy; most were returned. The People's Assembly passed a law allowing private ownership, foreign investment and private employment of workers.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1991 Tano Grasso was placed under police protection after he founded Italy’s first anti-racket association. In 2011 Grasso and Lirio Abate held the Trame literary festival in Lamezia Terme focusing on books about the Mafia.
(Econ, 7/9/11, p.84)
1991 The Italian Communist Party (PCI) disbanded to form the Partito Democratico della Sinistra (PDS), with membership in the Socialist International. It later came to be known as the Left Democrats (DS).
(Econ, 4/28/07, p.62)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Communist_Party)
1991 In Italy Umberto Bossi founded the Northern League, a regionalist-cum-separatist movement.
(AP, 4/5/12)
1991 In Italy Giulio Andreotti was made a senator for life.
(SFEC, 10/27/99, p.A17)
1991 In Italy an anti-laundering act put a limit of 20 million lire on all cash transactions, but no penalties for passbooks containing sums above that amount.
(Econ, 1/29/05, p.71)
1991 In Italy Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest group bribed a judge to win control of Mondadori, the country’s largest publishing house. In 2007 Cesare Previti was convicted of buying this judgment. In 2009 a Milan judge ruled that Fininvest should pay damages of $1.1 billion.
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.53)
1991 Italian authorities allowed several ships with about 25,000 Albanians into the port of Bari. When another wave of immigrants showed up a few months later the policy was reversed and they were sent back home.
(NG, 5/93, p.104)
1991 Ermenegildo Zegna became the first Italian luxury company to enter the Chinese market. By 2007 it had some 52 shops there.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.82)
1991-1992 Luigi Ramponi served as head of the SISMI, the Italian Military Intelligence Service.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A10)
1992 Feb 17, Italian police arrested Mario Chiesa, the first one to be picked up in what would become Italy's massive corruption scandals. This date became considered a watershed moment in recent Italian history. Italy’s "Clean Hands" (Tangentopoli) corruption scandal originated in Milan. A series of bribery cases led to the conviction and flight of Socialist Bettino Craxi.
(AP, 3/31/09)(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T11)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.10)
1992 Apr 28, Francesco Cossiga (b.1928), president of Italy, resigned 2 months before the end of his term.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
1992 May 23, In Sicily anti-Mafia investigator Giovannii Falcone was murdered on a highway outside Palermo. Falcone’s wife and 3 bodyguards were also killed. Sicilian politician Salvo Lima was also murdered. Anti-Mafia investigator Paolo Borsellino was killed in another blast some months later. In 1997 Pietro Aglieri, aka "U Signurinu" (The Little Gentleman), was arrested for involvement in all three murders. 24 mobsters were convicted in the murder in 1997, including Leoluca Bagarella. Salvatore Riina was later credited with ordering Falcone’s murder.
(http://giovanni-falcone.foosquare.com/)(SFC, 9/27/97, p.A12)(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.A23)(Econ 6/10/17, p.53)
1992 May 25, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was elected President of Italy.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1992 Jul 19, Paolo Borsellino, Italian anti-mafia judge, was murdered by mafia. In 2014 An Italian newspaper reported that the remote control to detonate the bomb that killed anti-Mafia prosecutor Paolo Borsellino was hidden inside the intercom at his mother's Palermo residence. Salvatore Riina was later credited with ordering the murder.
(http://paolo-borsellino.biography.ms/)(AP, 3/12/14)(Econ 6/10/17, p.53)
1992 Jul 31, In Italy the scala mobile wage index, which maintained a rigid link between Italian wages and prices, was scrapped after a long struggle.
(www.eurofound.europa.eu/emire/ITALY/SLIDINGSCALEMECHANISM-IT.htm)(Econ, 6/13/09, SR p.9)
1992 Aug 15, Giorgio Perlasca, Italian anti-fascist (saved 5,200 Jews), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio)
1992 Sep 3, An Italian relief plane was shot down by ground-to-air missiles outside of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. (AP, 9/3/97)
1992 Sep 14, The Italian Lira was devalued 7%. This forced Italy to withdraw from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), a pre-euro system of semi-pegged currencies.
(http://tinyurl.com/eh943)(Econ, 7/16/11, p.79)
1992 Oct 22, The US space shuttle Columbia was launched on a 10-day mission that included deployment of an Italian satellite.
(AP, 10/22/97)
1992 Oct 26, Italy ratifies the Treaty on the European Union.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 Nov 29, Emilio Pucci (b.1914), Italian fashion designer (Jackie Kennedy), died in Florence, Italy. In 2000 his firm was acquired by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
(http://tinyurl.com/7ec3n)(WSJ, 8/22/03, p.B1)
1992 Dec, Italy sent 2,500 combat troops to Somalia as part of the US-sponsored multinational force.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A8)
1992 The film "Noto Mandorli Vulcano Stromboli Carnevalle" was shot in Sicily by Michelangelo Antonioni for the Italian pavilion at the Seville Expo in Spain.
(SFEC, 1/17/99, DB p.43)
1992 An Italian court sentenced Marina Petrella, a member of the Red Brigades, in absentia to life in prison on charges including murder and kidnapping. In 2007 French police arrested Petrella for a petty crime and planned to extradite her to Italy. In 2008 a French court ordered her that she be freed from prison because of health problems.
(AP, 8/23/07)(AP, 8/5/08)
1992 The Italian Mafia demanded that sentences passed against some 400 Mafiosi at a mass trial in 1987 be softened and that a law that imposed a harsh prison regime for Mafiosi be repealed. A list of 12 demands was written by written by the son of Salvatore "The Beast" Riina on a scrap of paper while his father was still at large during alleged secret negotiations between the state and the Mafia. The note was only made public in 2009.
(Reuters, 10/19/09)
1992-1993 Giuliano Amato served as the Socialist Premier.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A9)
1992-1994 Warrant Officer Francesco Aloi kept a diary while in Somalia and documented instances of rape, torture and other brutality against the Somalis.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A10)
1992-1996 Giorgio Pressberger was the artistic director for the MittelFest, a theater and musical festival in Cividale del Friuli that links Italy with nine central European countries.
(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A8)
1993 Jan 15, In Sicily Salvatore "The Beast" Riina was arrested. "Toto" Riina, the Sicilian boss of bosses, was arrested for his role in the murder of prosecutor Giovanni Falcone. Bernardo Provenzano was considered to have taken over as boss of the Sicilian Mafia following Riina’s arrest. Provenzano’s right-hand man was Mariano Troia.
(USAT, 9/16/98, p.14A)(www.answers.com/topic/salvatore-riina)(SFC, 1/22/00, p.A11)
1993 Feb 20, Ferrucio Lamborghini (76), Italian auto-designer (Lamborghini, Miura), died.
(www.conceptcarz.com/view/makeHistory/88,8843/makeHistory.aspx)
1993 Mar 16, Mohammed Hussein Nagdi, Iran diplomat, resistance fighter, was murdered in Rome, Italy.
(http://farrid.20m.com/sr.html)
1993 Apr 19, In a national referendum Italians voted by 83% to elect three-quarters of their Senate with a U.S-style 'first-place-takes-all,' single-member district voting system. The Italian Chamber of Deputies, which has far more political power than the Senate, is now expected to modify the 'pure' party list proportional representation system used to elect its members.
(www.fairvote.org/reports/1993/katz.html)(Econ, 9/17/05, p.53)
1993 Apr 28, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi began serving as prime minister of Italy as the country's post- war order, dominated by Christian Democrats and Communists, was falling apart. He continued in office until May 10, 1994. From 1999 to 2006 he served as president.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Azeglio_Ciampi)
1993 May 18, Italian police arrested Mafia boss Benedetto "Nitto" Santapaola.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1993 May 27, Five people were killed in a bombing at the Uffizi museum of art in Florence, Italy; some three dozen paintings were ruined or damaged. Giovanni Brusca was believed to have led teams that damaged the Uffizi museum in Florence with car bombs. He is believed by many to be the leader of the Italian Mafia teams. In 1996 he was arrested in Sicily and charged with masterminding the murder of Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards in 1992. In 1998 Mafia boss Lelluca Bagarella and 13 others were sentenced to life in prison for the May and July bombings.
(AP, 5/27/98)(SFC, 5/21/96, p.A-11)(SFC, 8/24/96, p.A12)(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.A23)
1993 Jul 27, Bombs exploded in Rome and Milan, killing at least five people.
(AP, 7/27/98)
1993 Jul, The modern art museum in central Milan was damaged by bombs. Two churches in Rome were also damaged, including the Basilica of St. John Lateran, between May and July. [see May 20]
(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.A23)
1993 Oct 31, Federico Fellini, Italian film director, died in Rome at age 73. He made some 24 films including "La Strada," "La Dolce Vita," "8 1/2," and "Amarcord" through the 50’s and 60’s.
(WSJ, 4/19/95, p.A-14)(AP, 10/31/98)
1993 Nov 21, The Neo-fascist MSI won 36% of municipal elections in Rome.
(www.nationarchive.com/Summaries/v257i0020_07.htm)
1993 Robert Putnam authored "Making Democracy Work." Here he tried to understand why for many decades northern Italy had been richer than the south.
(Econ., 9/5/20, p.57)
1993 Italy abolished parliamentary immunity, however members of parliament could only be jailed with parliamentary authorization. In 2008 Silvio Berlusconi restored immunity for himself and three other office holders.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.63)(Econ, 12/3/16, p.16)
1993 Silvio Berlusconi created his Forza Italia! party.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.57)
1993 Antonio Basolino was elected mayor of Naples. Before his election the post was appointed by local party leaders. The city had been mired in corruption for decades and the new mayor began to clean it up.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A1,12)
1993 In Italy a federal law granted people in illegal dwellings the right to use public utilities but warned that illegal structures would be demolished. Demolitions began in 1998.
(SFC, 7/22/00, p.A10)
1993 Antonio Fazio became governor of the Bank of Italy.
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.58)
1993 Italy’s Fiat Auto SpA bought Maserati.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.B1)
1993 Maurizio Gucci sold his remaining stake in Gucci to Investcorp, a Bahraini firm.
(WSJ, 11/5/03, p.A1)
1994 Mar 19, Giuseppe Diana, Italian anti-mafia priest, was murdered.
(http://tinyurl.com/7plc8)
1994 Mar 20, Ilaria Alpi (32), a journalist, was shot and killed in Somalia along with her cameraman, Miran Hrovatin, on the same day that Italian troops left the country. She had collected evidence of brutality by Italian officers against Somalis along with evidence of illegal gun-running.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A8)
1994 Mar 23, Actress Giulietta Masina (b.1921 ), wife of Federico Felini, died in Rome.
(AP, 3/23/99)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0556399/)
1994 Mar 27, Italians went to the polls in general elections that resulted in big gains for a right-wing coalition. Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right grouping won the election.
(AP, 3/27/99)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.10)
1994 Jun 3, President Clinton, continuing his tour of Italy, visited the graves of American soldiers killed in the Anzio landing during World War II.
(AP, 6/3/99)
1994 Jun, Carlo Toto, an Italian contractor, purchased a Boeing 737 at a court auction and began a small-charter airline service that became Air One.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.A13)
1994 Jul 17, Brazil defeated Italy to win its fourth World Cup title in Los Angeles. The 15th FIFA World Cup was hosted by the United States.
(AP, 7/17/99)(http://tinyurl.com/m6z96z3)
1994 Sep 29, Gunmen in Italy fired at the rental car of the Green family of Bodega Bay, Ca., and killed their young boy, Nicholas Green. The parents donated his organs and saved 7 lives in Italy. An appeals court in 1998 found 2 men guilty of the botched highway robbery. Michelle Ianello was sentenced to life in prison and Francesco Mesiano was sentenced to 20 years.
(SFEC, 10/27/96, p.B8)(SFC, 6/6/98, p.A10)
1994 Jul 8, Leaders of the Group of Seven nations opened their 20th annual economic summit in Italy. Silvio Berlusconi hosted the G-7 summit in Naples.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A12)(AP, 7/8/99)(Econ, 1/22/05, p.46)
1994 Jul 9, Members of the Group of Seven (G-7) nations concluded their economic summit in Naples, Italy.
(AP, 7/9/99)
1994 The Italian government introduced instant lotteries.
(WSJ, 11/1/96, p.A1)
1994 The National Alliance was created as a broad based successor to the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which was created after WW II to keep alive the ideals of Mussolini.
(Econ, 12/6/03, p.44)
1994 Istria was the first region of the former Yugoslavia to be officially designated as a "Region of Europe". The Istria of 2005, alternatively called Istra and Istrija, is politically divided into three separate countries: Croatia, Slovenia and Italy.
(www.istrians.com/istria/maps/)
1994 Roberto Pannunzi, Italian mobster, was arrested in Colombia. He had forged links with Colombian cartels for transatlantic trade in cocaine. He was extradited to Italy and released when his detention expired. He was rearrested in 2004 but disappeared in 2009 when sent to a private clinic near Rome following a heart attack.
(Econ, 5/8/10, p.54)
1995 Jan 13, Italy named Treasury Minister Lamberto Dini its prime minister. He pledged to resign after approval of a deficit cutting budget.
(AP, 1/13/00)(WSJ, 10/27/95, p.A-1)
1995 Mar 27, In Italy Maurizio Gucci (46), businessman, was shot to death in Milan. He was the last family member to have held shares in the Gucci fashion company, now part of the Bahrain-based Investcorp. In 1997 police arrested his former wife, a psychic, a doorman, and two hitmen for their roles in the murder. In 1998 Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli (50) was convicted and sentenced to 29 years in prison. The psychic got 25, the doorman got 26, the driver got 29 and the gunman got life. Reggiani was furious that after 13 years of marriage he had abandoned her for another woman, leaving her to bring up their two young daughters. Reggiani's sentence was cut short for good behavior and she was released in 2017.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.A12)(SFC, 11/4/98, p.A13)(The Telegraph, 1/11/21)
1995 Oct 10, Paolo Gucci (64), Italian entrepreneur and accessories designer, died.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9112125?tocId=9112125)
1995 Nov 21, Former Nazi Capt. Erich Priebke was extradited from Argentina to Italy to face trial for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre. A court found him guilty in 1996 but released him because too much time had elapsed since the crime. There was a major uproar and he was again arrested and a 1997 trial convicted him and co-defendant Major Karl Hass. Priebke was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Hass was convicted but released due to mitigating circumstances. face charges in the massacre of 335 Italian civilians in Nazi-occupied Rome.
(AP, 3/23/97)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-21) (WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 7/23/97, p.A9)
(AP, 11/21/02)
1995 Nov, Air One launched service between Rome and Milan, a route on which Alitalia had held a monopoly.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.A13)
1995 Italian interest rates began to fall in anticipation of its joining the EU.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.108)
1995 The Italian port at Gioia Tauro began handling container ships. The local mafia, ‘Ndrangheta, tried to extort $1.50 for every container, but the demand was overcome.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.78)
1996 Jan 29, In Venice, Italy, the 204-year-old La Felice opera house burned down. It was scheduled to be reconstructed and finished by Sep 27, 1999. It was later determined by experts to have been caused by arson. In 2003 Italy's top criminal court upheld convictions on arson charges for Enrico Carella and fellow electrician Massimiliano Marchetti, sentencing them to seven and six years in jail respectively. In 2005 John Berendt authored “The City of Falling Angels," which centered on the burning of La Fenice. In 2007 Carella was arrested in Mexico.
(SFC, 6/27/96, p.D3)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.E4)(AP, 1/29/01)(WSJ, 9/24/05, p.P12)(AP, 3/3/07)
1996 May 16, Romano Prodi was named head of the center-left Olive Branch alliance that won April elections. PM Prodi led Italy’s 55th postwar government with the leftists in power for the first time in 50 years.
(WSJ, 5/17/96, p.A-1)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.10)
1996 May 20, Giovanni Brusca (36), believed by many to be the leader of the Italian Mafia, was arrested in Sicily. He is charged with masterminding the murder of Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards in 1992.
(SFC, 5/21/96, p.A-11)
1996 May 25, Renzo De Felice (67), scholar and historian of Italy’s Fascist period, died in Rome.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A15)
1996 Jun 2, Separatists in northern Italy celebrated their growing campaign to split off from the south on the 50th anniversary of the Italian republic. Umberto Bossi is the head of the Northern League and founder of the self-declared Republic of Padania. At a rally in Pontida, near Milan, ministers in Bossi’s "government" swore allegiance to Padania, a name derived from the valley of the Po. Their proposed republic includes everything from Florence to the Alps.
(SFC, 6/3/96, p.A12)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Jun 9, The latest unemployment rate was 12.4%.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Parade, p.9)
1996 Jun 10, The center-left government announced a new privatization calendar that included the sale of stakes in insurance, banking, and oil companies.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A9B)
1996 Sep 15, Umberto Bossi, populist politician and leader of the Northern League, planned to declare the independence of the Federal Republic of Padania.
(WSJ, 9/13/96, p.A6)
1996 Sep 15, Lorenzo Necci, head of the state-run railroad, was arrested for corruption, embezzlement, abuse of office, falsification of balance sheets and fraud.
(SFE, 9/17/96, p.A12)
1996 Sep 26, The foreign minister announced that the country would no longer make land mines that are used against people.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A16)
1996 Sep 27, In Milan 50,000 metal workers marched on strike.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)
1996 Nov 17, The World Food Summit concluded a five-day meeting in Rome, with delegates promising a wide-ranging effort to ease hunger around the globe.
(AP, 11/17/97)
1996 Dec 19, Marcello Mastroianni (b.1924), Italian actor, died at age 72. He appeared in 171 films and had just finished shooting "Journey to the Beginning of the World.
(WSJ, 12/20/96, p.A1)(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A9)
1996 Dec 25, Some 280 migrants from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were suspected of having drowned in the Mediterranean while being transshipped in the Malta-Sicily channel. At least 283 people died while on the illegal voyage from Alexandria to Italy.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.A13)(Econ., 4/18/15, p.21)
1996 Frances Mayes published "Under the Tuscan Sun." In 1999 she followed it up with "Bella Tuscany."
(SFEC, 4/25/99, BR p.2)
1996 Flooding of 32 inches or more hit Venice a record 101 times in this year.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D4)
1996 The government assigned a Central Commission for Worldwide Italian-Restaurant Standards to certify that authenticity of Italian restaurants outside Italy.
(WSJ, 4/14/99, p.A1)
1996 Ludovico Filotti, a former employee of Barings, persuaded his new employer, a large Japanese bank, to purchase Italian zero coupon postal bonds in an arbitrage scheme under falling interest rates. Other bankers followed and within days $3.6 billion worth of bonds were sold. They matured after the euro deadline and were not counted as current debt.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.108,110)
1996-1998 Some 15% of all new structures in Italy were built illegally.
(SFC, 7/22/00, p.A10)
1997 Feb, In Italy Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady" went missing from Ricci-Oddi modern art gallery. In 2019 the painting was found stashed within the walls of the gallery. The painting gained notoriety the year before its disappearance when a young art student discovered that it was Klimt's only 'double' portrait, with the visible painting completed on top of another, 'Portrait of a Young Lady', which had not been seen since 1912.
(The Telegraph, 12/11/19)
1997 Apr 11, In Italy, fire damaged the 500-year-old San Giovanni Cathedral, home of the Shroud of Turin, which some consider Christ's burial cloth.
(AP, 4/11/98)
1997 Apr 12, In Turin the Shroud of Turin was recovered from a fire that began in the Guarini chapel of the city’s 15th century cathedral.
(WSJ, 4/14/97, p.A1)
1997 May 9, Eight Venetian separatists took over the bell tower at St. Mark’s Square. They were overpowered by police after 7 1/2 hours.
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A10)
1997 May 9, Marco Ferreri (b.1928), film director, died. His work included "The Wheelchair" (El Cochecit 1960), "Le Lit Conjugal" (The Conjugal Bed 1963), "Dillinger Is Dead" (1969), "La Grande Bouffe" (1973), "La Derniere Femme" (1976), and "Bye Bye Monkey’ (1978).
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A20)
1997 May 16, Giuseppe De Santis, film director, died at 80. His films included "Bitter Rice" (1949), "Obsession," "Tragic Hunt," "Under the Olive Tree," and "Rome 11 O’Clock."
(SFC, 5/19/97, p.A24)
1997 May 22, In Italy the Grand Princess was launched at the Fincantieri Monfalcone shipyard. It was the world’s largest passenger cruise ship at 109,000 gross tons and was scheduled for interior completion in the spring of 1998.
(SFEC, 5/26/97, p.A11)
1997 May 22, In Italy the Grand Princess was launched at the Fincantieri Monfalcone shipyard. It was the world’s largest passenger cruise ship at 109,000 gross tons and was scheduled for interior completion in the spring of 1998.
(SFEC, 5/26/97, p.A11)
1997 Sep 26, In Sicily a court convicted 24 mobsters for the 1992 bombing of the top anti-Mafia prosecutor. Salvatore "Toto" Riina, the reputed "boss of bosses" was among those convicted for having plotted the assassination of Giovanni Falcone.
(SFC, 9/27/97, p.A12)
1997 Sep 26, Two earthquakes hit central Italy east of Umbria and at least 11 people were killed. The basilica of Assisi, St. Mary of the Angels, built on the site where St. Francis died, was severely damaged. 4 people were killed while assessing damage from the first quake. An estimated 100,000 buildings in the Umbria and Marche regions were damaged.
(SFC, 9/27/97, p.A1)(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.A18)
1997 Sep 26, In Italy Bob Dylan performed at a religious congress in Bologna before a crowd 200,000 and Pope John Paul II.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A3)
1997 Oct 9, Dario Fo (71), an Italian playwright and performer, received the Nobel Prize in literature. The leftist playwright had been prosecuted by Italy, denounced by Roman Catholic Church leaders and barred from the United States. His work included: "Archangels Don’t Play Pinball" (1960), "Mistero Biffo," (Comic Mystery) written in 1969, and "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" (1970), "We Can’t Pay, We Don’t Pay" (1974) and "Orgasmo Adulto Escapes From the Zoo."
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 8/23/98, DB p.13)(AP, 10/9/98)
1997 Oct 9, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi resigned after his Marxist allies refused to accept welfare cuts. The 17-month old government was the first leftist-dominated and 55th government since WW II. Pres. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro asked Prodi to stay on as caretaker while a new government is formed.
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.D3)
1997 Oct 13, The Communist Refounding Party reopened talks that were expected to restore Prodi to power and leave his budget intact.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A10)
1997 Oct 26, In Italy the Northern League party of Umberto Bossi held a symbolic election to choose a "parliament" for independent Padania.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.A9)
1997 Nov 16, In weekend municipal elections center-left parties won a landslide victory bolstering support for Prime Minister Prodi’s government.
(WSJ, 11/18/97, p.A1)
1997 Nov Kidnappers of industrialist Giuseppe Soffiantini sent a slice of his left ear and demanded a ransom payment of $12 million by Dec 20.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.B12)
1997 Dec 27, In Italy Some 825 illegal immigrants, mostly Kurds, were rescued by Italian tugboats from the Turkish ship Ararat. They were attempting to smuggle into Italy from Turkey.
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.A19)
1997 Dec 30, Danilo Dolci, advocate of nonviolent social reform, died at age 73. His writings and poetry chronicled Sicily’s beauty and despair. His books include: "Report From Palermo," "Waste," and "Sicilian Lives" (1981).
(SFC, 1/1/98, p.A25)
1997 Dec, Word began to spread that Dr. Luigi Di Bella (85) had found a cure for cancer, a cocktail of drugs that stopped tumor growth.
(WSJ, 4/21/98, p.A1)
1997 The film "Land in Between" (Terra di mezzo) was directed by Matteo Garrone. It was about an immigrant in Italy.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Marianna Ucria" was directed by Robeto Faenza. It was based on a novel by Dacia Maraini about an 18th century Sicilian deaf mute.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Moon Spins Between land and Sea" (Giro di lune tra terre e mare) was directed by Giuseppe Gaudino. It was a tale of the ancient town Pozzuoli set in the present and the time of Nero.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Physical Jerks" (In barca a vela contromano) was directed by Stefano Reali. It was jab at the public health system about a patient who checks into a hospital for surgery.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Pizzicata" was about a US fighter pilot shot down in 1943.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The comedy film "Satisfaction or Your Money Back" (Consigli per gli acquisti) was directed by Sandro Boldoni. It was a spoof on modern consumerism.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "We All Fall Down" (Tutti giu per terra) was directed by Davide Ferrario. It was about a young virgin man who had spent his adolescence with an aunt in Rome and then returns home to Turin.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 Ferrari took over Maserati. In 2000 the new $85,000 Maserati Spyder was introduced.
(WSJ, 3/25/02, p.B11)
1997 The Italian Parmalat Corp. acquired Beatrice Foods.
(WSJ, 12/22/03, p.A6)
1997-1998 Fiat SpA of Italy said it would invest $1 bil over this period in Brazil for new engines, updated models, and new projects.
(WSJ, 5/30/96, p.A11)
1998 Jan 1, Navy patrols intercepted a 2nd ship with 386 refugees, mostly Kurds,
(WSJ, 1/2/98, p.A1)
1998 Jan 2, Italy pledged to grant political asylum to genuine Kurdish immigrants. Another 1,300 were scheduled to soon arrive from Turkey. German and Austrian officials feared the immigrants would spill over to their countries.
(SFC, 1/3/98, p.A9)
1998 Jan 25, Kidnappers of industrialist Giuseppe Soffiantini sent a slice of his ear and a note to a TV news station. The ransom was reportedly reduced to about $6 million.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.B12)
1998 Feb 3, A US surveillance aircraft cut a ski cable in Italy and caused the death of 20 skiers in a gondola cable car running from Cavalese to the Alpe Cermis. The EA-6B aircraft was normally used for patrols over Bosnia and was only slightly damaged. Lt. Col. Steven Watters was later relieved of command for telling crew members of a related squadron to destroy evidence in the investigation. The pilot did not have Italian military maps that identified the ski lift. Four crewmen were later charged by the Marine Corps with negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter and dereliction of duty. The pilot and navigator faced trial for manslaughter. Pilot Richard J. Ashby was acquitted of all charges in 1999. Navigator Joseph Schweitzer was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide charges. Schweitzer later pleaded guilty to obstruction and conspiracy charges for destroying a videotape made during the flight. The tape indicated that the plane had been flying upside down. Schweitzer was sentenced to dismissal from the Marine Corps. Capt. Ashby (32) was found guilty of obstruction of justice and conspiracy in May, 1999 and was sentenced to 6 months in prison and dismissed from the Marine Corps. Families of the victims settled for $2 million apiece in 2000.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.A7)(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A11)(SFC, 2/19/98, p.B10)(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A14)(SFC, 7/11/98, p.A2)(SFC, 3/5/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/16/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A1)(SFC, 4/3/99, p.A3)(SFC, 5/1/99, p.A4)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A4)(SFC, 5/11/99, p.A4)(SFC, 4/26/00, p.A4)
1998 Feb 11, Pres. Yeltsin completed a 3 day visit to Italy and scored $5 billion in trade and investment contracts.
(SFC, 2/12/98, p.A14)
1998 Feb 12, Over 250 cars crashed on the foggy highway A-13 between Padua and Bologna. Four people were killed and dozens were injured.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.D2)
1998 Mar 6, Francesca Trombino, lawyer, was bludgeoned to death in Pordenone. She was representing a US Marine in the Feb 3 cable-car disaster. She was also representing the wife of the captured suspect in a divorce case.
(SFC, 3/7/98, p.A7)
1998 Mar 19, In Italy suspected mafia member Giuseppe Magaddino was shot and killed. Sicilian Mafia member Claudio Adriano Giusto was later charged with killing Magaddino using a 7.65 mm firearm and then taking his wallet. Giusto was arrested in Spain in 2011 after 13 years on the run.
(AFP, 4/20/11)(http://tinyurl.com/3za9prm)
1998 Apr 12, Maria Angela Rubino (32) was found shot in a train bathroom. The murder was similar to 6 others along the Italian Riviera since March 9.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A10)
1998 Apr 20, The Goldman Environmental Awards were presented to six winners in SF. The prizes were increased to $100,000. Anna Giordano (32) of Italy won for her campaign against illegal hunting of birds in Sicily and southern Italy.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A8)
1998 May 4, In Vatican City Alois Estermann (43), the pope’s top bodyguard, was shot and killed along with his wife, Gladys Meza Romero (49) in their apartment by Cedrich Tornay (23), who then shot himself. Estermann had just been appointed the head of the Swiss Guards and was killed by Tornay due to damaged professional pride. An investigation was concluded in 1999 and suggested that marijuana and a brain cyst impaired Tornay.
(WSJ, 5/5/98, p.A1)(USAT, 5/6/98, p.6A)(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A10)(AP, 5/4/99)
1998 May 7, In southern Italy heavy rains sent a torrent of mud through Sarno and several other towns. At least 55 people were reported dead. The death toll climbed to 116.
(USAT, 5/8/98, p.7A)(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.A22)
1998 May 19-1998 May 20, Bandits stole three of Rome's most important paintings, two by Van Gogh and one by Cezanne, from the National Gallery of Modern Art.
(SFC, 5/21/98, p.A14)(AP, 5/19/99)
1998 May 24, At the 51st Cannes Film Festival the Golden Palm award went to the Greek film "Mia Eoniotita Ke Mia Mera (Eternity and a Day), directed by Theo Angelopoulos. The Grand Prize went to the Italian film "La Vita e Bella" (Life Is Beautiful) by director Roberto Benigni. It starred Benigni, Giorgio Cantarini and Nicoletta Braschi.
(SFC, 5/25/98, p.E5)(SFEC, 10/25/98, DB p.46)
1998 Jul 1, Mt. Etna erupted for 30 minutes.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A7)
1998 Jul 11, It was reported that fires in southern Italy and Sicily burned 2,500 acres of forest and grassland.
(SFC, 7/11/98, p.A8)
1998 Jul 11, Maria Soledad Rosas (24), an Argentine squatter under house arrest in Turin, was found hanged to death.
(SFEC, 7/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 13, Silvio Berlusconi, former premier, was convicted for the 3rd time since Dec. This conviction was for illegal party financing in 1991. A prior conviction was for bribing tax inspectors.
(SFC, 7/14/98, p.A10)
1998 Jul 17, In Rome UN delegates from more than 100 countries overwhelmingly approved (120-7) a historic treaty, the Statute of Rome, creating the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, with jurisdiction over individuals, ignoring strenuous U.S. objections over certain provisions. It was to be located in the Hague with 18 judges from 18 countries serving 9 year terms. It still required ratification by 60 countries to become effective. The vote passed 120 to 7 with 21 abstentions. The US, China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen voted against the International Criminal Court Treaty (ICC). In 2002 the US moved to withdraw its signature.
(SFC, 7/18/98, p.A10)(WSJ, 7/20/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/6/02, p.A1,4)(Econ, 11/22/03, p.27)
1998 Jul 17, In Viterbo anarchist vandals sprayed painted graffiti over 15th century frescoes in response to the suicide of Maria Rosas.
(SFEC, 7/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 31, Over 10,000 members of the nation’s beach workers (bagnini) went on strike and closed their umbrella stands.
(WSJ, 8/3/98, p.A1)
1998 Aug 15, A rock slide at Brenner Pass killed 5 German tourists near the town of Forteza.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A21)
1998 Aug 19, In Italy the Assicurazioni Generali insurance company announced that it will pay $100 million to Holocaust survivors and the heirs of victims for life insurance and annuity policies that it refused to honor after WW II.
(SFC, 8/20/98, p.A7)
1998 Sep 9, A 5.5 earthquake hit Italy between the towns of Castelluccio Inferiore and Laino Borgo where the regions of Calabria and Basilicata meet.
(SFC, 9/10/98, p.C2)
1998 Sep 18, In Italy the TV dubbers agreed to end their 2-month strike.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.C16)
1998 Oct 3, Communists voted to reject Prime Minister Prodi’s budget.
(WSJ, 10/5/98, p.A1,22)
1998 Oct 5, Federico Zeri, Italy’s leading art critic and historian, died at age 77. He had cataloged in 4 volumes the Italian paintings in New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
(SFC, 10/6/98, p.A22)
1998 Oct 9, The center-left coalition of Premier Romano Prodi lost a vote of confidence by one vote. Pres. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro asked Prodi to continue leading a temporary government.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A11)
1998 Oct 16, Massimo D’Alema, head of the Democratic Left Party, was asked by Pres. Scalfaro to form a new government.
(SFC, 10/17/98, p.A13)
1998 Nov 1, John Kagwe of Kenya won the NY Marathon in 2:8:45. Franca Fiacconi of Italy won among the women in 2:25:17.
(WSJ, 11/2/98, p.A1)
1998 Nov 12, In Italy Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurd PKK, was arrested in Rome.
(SFC, 11/14/98, p.A11)
1998 Nov 20, In Italy a court ordered the release of Kurdish rebel Abdullah Ocalan under a law barring extradition in death penalty cases and planned to grant him asylum.
(SFC, 11/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Dec 16, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, was freed by an appeals court in Rome. Turkish officials were outraged and renewed threats of economic retaliation.
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C4)
1998 Dec 16, In Rome an apartment building collapsed and killed 20 people.
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C5)
1998 Dec, Banca Etica, an Italian ethical bank, was authorized to start operating as a bank. Executive pay is not allowed to exceed six times the lowest wage at the bank.
(http://banca-etica.com/inglese/default.php?ID=1748&anteprima=)(Econ, 6/1/13, p.70)
1998 The Italian film "The Best Man" starred Diego Abatanuono and Ines Sastre and was directed by Pupi Avati. It was about a bride who hates her new husband and their wedding in Northern Italy at the turn of the century.
(SFC, 8/21/98, p.C5)
1998 The Italian film "Go Around the World" was directed by Davide Manuli and was about an orphan raised by a Gypsy.
{Film, Italy}
(SFEC, 10/4/98, DB)(http://tinyurl.com/33mf9m)
1998 The Italian film "Pianese Nunzio, Fourteen in May" was directed by Antonio Capuano. It was about an priest’s involvement with an altar boy.
(SFC, 6/18/98, p.E4)
1998 The Italian film "Steam" starred Alessandro Gassman and Mehmet Gunsur. It was directed by Ferzan Ozpetek.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, DB p.10)
1998 Toni Dykstra of southern California was found dead in Rome as she sought to bring her kidnapped daughter back to the US. Boyfriend Carlo Ventre was charged with her murder. In 2007 Ventre (59) died of a heart attack while testifying at his trial.
(AP, 6/26/07)
1999 Jan 1, The Maastricht Treaty specified that a monetary union will be established by this date, and laid down several criteria that EU nations must fulfill in order to join. Some of the criteria included: maximum budget deficits of 3% of GDP, a cap on government debt of 60% of GDP. The European economic and monetary union (EMU) was scheduled to start with a new "Euro" currency. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain made the transition. Public use was set for Jan 1, 2002.
(WSJ, 9/25/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 12/5/95, p.A-14)(SFC, 11/16/96, p.A1)(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A8)
1999 Jan 8, Pope John Paul II met with the new Prime Minister and former communist leader, Massimo D'Alema.
(SFC, 1/9/99, p.A9)
1999 Jan 14, In Italy police arrested 9 people in Milan who allegedly rigged the Milan Lotto using children and tampered balls for drawing wining numbers.
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A10)
1999 Feb 27, The $60 billion bid by Olivetti for Telecom Italia was ruled legally admissible by Italian stock market regulators.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, p.A24)
1999 Mar 11, In northern Italy an avalanche killed 3 German skiers.
(SFC, 3/12/99, p.A15)
1999 Mar 24, In the 7-mile Mt. Blanc tunnel between France and Italy a fire erupted from a truck transporting flour. The death toll was raised to 9 with 24 injured. The fire was extinguished after 3 days and the death toll rose to 35. Identification of the remains of at least 40 people began Mar 28. Thirty-nine people were killed when fire erupted in the Mont Blanc tunnel in France and burned for two days. It re-opened in 2002. In 2005 a French court convicted 10 people and 3 companies for safety lapses in the 2-day fire.
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.A14)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A10)(SFC, 3/29/99, p.A8)(AP, 3/24/00)(SSFC, 3/17/02, p.C4)(AP, 3/24/04)(WSJ, 7/28/05, p.A1)
1999 May 5, Ibrahim Rugova, prominent Albanian leader, flew to Rome with the permission of Yugoslav authorities for talks with Premier Massimo D'Alema and foreign Minister Lamberto Dini.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.A13)
1999 May 13, In Italy the Parliament chose Treasury Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (78) as the new president.
(SFC, 5/14/99, p.A15)
1999 May 20, In Italy Massimo D'Antona, a univ. professor of labor law and the architect of labor reforms, was shot to death as he walked to work in Rome. The Red Brigade claimed responsibility in a 28-page manifesto left in a trash bin. In 2005 Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Marco Mezzasalma and Roberto Morandi were convicted and sentenced to life terms. Paolo Broccatelli received a nine-year term.
(SFC, 5/22/99, p.A13)(AP, 7/9/05)
1999 Jun 19, Turin, Italy, was chosen as the site of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games.
(AP, 6/19/00)
1999 Jun 19, the Bologna process for the creation of the European Higher Education Area started. 29 European Ministers responsible for higher education signed the Bologna declaration in which they undertake to create a European Higher Education Area.
(www.aic.lv/ace/ace_disk/Bologna/about_bol.htm)
1999 Jun 19, Mario Soldati (b.1906), Italian writer and film director, died at age 92. He started publishing novels in 1929 although his fame came with “America primo amore" (1935), a diary about the time he spent teaching at Columbia University. He won literary awards for the work.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Soldati)
1999 Jul 31, St. Mary of the Angels Basilica in Assisi reopened following earthquake repairs due to the Sep 26, 1977, quake.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.A18)
1999 Sep 10, A 15-ton bronze horse, designed after an idea by Leonardo da Vinci, was scheduled to be unveiled at the 500th anniversary of the French occupation of the Ducal palace in Milan, when da Vinci's prototype was disfigured. It was begun by Charles Dent (d.1994), a United Airlines pilot, and finished by a foundation that he endowed. It was cast in Beacon, N.Y.
(SFC, 6/26/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep 23, The cloned bull Galileo was unveiled at the dairy cattle show in Cremona. The Health Ministry confiscated the bull the next day due to the 1998 decree forbidding cloning issued by Health Minister Rosy Bindi.
(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.A22)
1999 Sep 24, A jury acquitted former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti of the 1979 killing of a journalist.
(AP, 9/24/00)
1999 Oct 23, Giulio Andreotti (80), 7 times prime minister, was acquitted of charges that he was the Sicilian Mafia's protector in Rome.
(SFEC, 10/24/99, p.A17)
1999 Dec 18, In Italy Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema resigned and brought an end to the 56th government since WW II. Pres. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi asked him to form a new coalition.
(SFEC, 12/19/99, p.A26)
1999 Dec 22, In Italy Premier Massimo D'Alema won a vote of confidence for a new cabinet.
(SFC, 12/23/99, p.C7)
1999 Dec 23, Premier Massimo D'Alema won parliamentary approval for the 57th government. The Cabinet included 5 new members and 20 holdovers.
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.A20)
1999 Roberto Calasso's work "Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India" was translated to English by Tim Parks. Calasso, head of the Milan publishing house Adelphi, also authored "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" and "The Ruin of Kasch."
(SFEC, 1/17/99, BR p.8)
1999 The Italian film "Ferdinando e Carolina" starred script writer Leonardo Benvenuti (d.2000 at 77) and was directed by Lina Wertmuller.
(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
1999-2005 Alitalia, Italy’s national airline, accumulated net losses of some 2.6 billion euros.
(Econ, 1/6/07, p.53)
2000 Jan 19, Bettino Craxi (65), former 2-term Italian premier, died in Tunisia. He had fled Italy in 1994 to escape a corruption jail sentence.
(WSJ, 1/20/00, p.A1)(Econ, 1/9/10, p.53)
2000 Feb 6, The government proposed car-free Sunday program, "domenica a piedi," began. Some 100 cities signed up for the program to ban downtown traffic on the 1st Sunday of the month through May.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A8)
2000 Feb 21, Avalanches in Italy killed 3 skiers in the northern Venosta Valley.
(SFC, 2/22/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 30, A mandatory helmet law for motorbike riders went into effect.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.E3)
2000 Apr 13, Giorgio Bassani, author and editor, died at age 84. His books included "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis."
(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
2000 Apr 19, Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema resigned.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A9)
2000 Apr 20, In Italy the center-left parties closed ranks behind Treasury Minister Giuliano Amato following the resignation of Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema.
(WSJ, 4/21/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 21, Pres. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi gave Giuliano Amato the go ahead to form Italy’s 58th government since WW II.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A9)
2000 Jun 13, In Italy the government pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca (42), the man who wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981. Agca was flown to Turkey to finish serving 8 years for the 1979 murder of a newspaper editor.
(SFC, 6/14/00, p.A12)
2000 Jun 14, Attilio Bertolucci (88), poet and father of 2 movie directors, died in Rome. His 1984 autobiographical free verse novel "The Bedroom" was made into a movie.
(SFC, 6/16/00, p.A34)
2000 Jun 29, Vittorio Gassman, film actor, died at age 77. He had appeared in 124 films between 1946 and 1999.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)
2000 Jul 1-9, In Italy the World Pride int’l. gay pride festival opened in Rome.
(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.C14)(SFEC, 7/2/00, p.A17)
2000 Jul 17, Aligi Sassu, painter, sculptor and engraver, died at age 88 on Mallorca. His early work included a futurist manifesto titled: "Dynamism and Muscular Strength." His paintings included "Uomini Rossi" (Red Men), 1931.
(SFC, 7/19/00, p.B2)
2000 Jul, Prof. Auriti began exchanging one simec, his new currency, for 2 lire in Guardiagrele. Auriti hoped to convince the world that central bankers are con artists because they insert new money through loans and thus reduce purchasing power.
(WSJ, 10/6/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul, It was reported that 3 girls (16-17) in Chiavenna killed Sister Maria Laura Mainetti. The catechism students hit her with a stone and stabbed her 19 times. Bishop Alessandro Maggiolini called it "the triumph of emptiness."
(SFC, 7/12/00, p.A8)
2000 Aug 29, Conrad Marca-Relli, artist, died in Parma at age 87. His collages served as a link between the European avant-garde and American Abstract Expressionism. He created monumental collages and in the 1950s added strips of canvas over canvas.
(SFC, 9/1/00, p.D6)
2000 Sep 10, A flood in Calabria killed at least 10 people at the Le Giare campground near Soverato.
(SFC, 9/11/00, p.B8)
2000 Sep 15, The Mafia was reported to be engaged in a $500 million business of illegal dog fighting. An estimated 5,000 dogs died annually from the fighting.
(SFC, 9/15/00, p.A16)
2000 Sep 25, Livia Turco, Social Affairs Minister, pushed to decriminalize the sale of sex and to allow prostitutes to form cooperatives.
(SFC, 9/25/00, p.A12)
2000 Sep, The reality TV show "Grande Fratello" made its debut.
(SFC, 10/29/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 15, At least 31 people were killed as landslides due to heavy rains continued in the Alps of Switzerland and Italy. 23 died in northern Italy and 8 in southern Switzerland
(SFC, 10/16/00, p.F8)(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A14)(SFC, 10/19/00, p.C4)
2000 Oct 18, Hundreds of Italian police raided the Univ. of Messina. 79 faculty and staff were later indicted on organized crime charges.
(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A4)
2000 Oct 18, In southern Italy the bodies of 6 illegal immigrants, believed to be Kurds, were found dumped on the side of a highway.
(SFC, 10/19/00, p.C10)
2000 Oct 24, The Parliament approved a law to end the 200-year old draft in favor of an all volunteer military. The armed forces planned reductions to 190,000 from 270,000 within 7 years.
(SFC, 10/25/00, p.A16)
2000 Nov 3, Leonardo Benvenuti, film script writer and actor, died at age 77.
(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
2000 Dec 17, In northern Italy at least 10 climbers and skiers were killed after ice formed overnight in the Alps.
(SFC, 12/18/00, p.E2)
2001 Jan 6, A NATO meeting was scheduled in Italy on the use of ammunition with depleted uranium following the deaths from cancer of 6 Italian soldiers following duty in the Balkans. 5 Balkan veterans from Belgium along with peacekeepers from Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic had died of cancer.
(WSJ, 1/04/01, p.A1)(SFC, 1/6/01, p.A7)
2001 Jan 29, Demonstrators in Turin clashed with police following an agreement between France and Italy to establish a high-speed rail line between Turin and Lyon.
(SFC, 1/30/01, p.A12)
2001 Jan, Italy and the US signed a treaty that requires objects dating between 900 BC and 400 CE be accompanied by Italian government certification before leaving the country.
(WSJ, 2/6/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 17, Protesters demonstrated at the third Global Forum in Naples. They clashed with police and 50 officers and 70 protesters suffered minor injuries.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.D4)
2001 Apr 20, Giuseppe Sinopoli (54) died from a heart attack while conducting at the Berlin Deutsche Opera house.
(SFC, 4/21/01, p.D5)
2001 May 13, In Italy Silvio Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms coalition led the left-of-center Olive Tree coalition in parliamentary elections. Berlusconi opposed a federal Europe and stood as a proponent of free trade and low taxes.
(SFC, 5/14/01, p.A1)(SFC, 5/15/01, p.A9)
2001 May 27, The center-left opposition won mayoral runoffs in Naples, Turin and Rome.
(SFC, 5/28/01, p.B12)
2001 Jun 10, Silvio Berlusconi (64), known as Il Cavaliere, became premier for a 2nd time and formed his Cabinet. He promised a 100-day revolution to transform the economy. All 61 single-member constituencies in Sicily went to the center-right.
(SFC, 6/11/01, p.A8)(SFC, 9/7/01, p.A15)(Econ, 3/25/06, p.56)
2001 Jul 20, A G-8 economic summit, planned in Genoa, Italy, expected over 100,000 demonstrators. The summit opened with raging street battles between police and demonstrators; one protester was fatally shot by officers. Carlo Giuliani (23) was shot and killed by police while protesting at the G-8 summit. At least 100 people were injured. In 2008 a court convicted 15 Italian officials of abusing protesters held in at police garrison following violent demonstrations during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa. In 2015 the European Court of Human Rights awarded Arnaldo Cestaro $48,900 and ruled that his unpunished police beating amounted to torture. In 2017 Europe's human rights court found Italy guilty of torture over a raid in which riot police kicked, punched and hit dozens of protesters who had gathered inside a school building during the G8 meeting in Genoa.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A6)(AP, 7/20/02)(SFC, 7/21/01, p.A1)(AP, 7/15/08)(SFC, 4/8/15, p.A2)(Reuters, 6/22/17)
2001 Jul 21, A 2nd day of violent protests turned Genoa into a war zone of rolling riots.
(SFC, 7/22/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul, Marco Tronchetti Provera, chairman of the Italy’s Pirelli tire company, won control of Telecom Italia.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.78)
2001 Jul, Mt. Etna began erupting with lava flow.
(SFC, 8/1/01, p.A8)
2001 Aug 8, In Rome police chief Gianni de Gennaro acknowledged that excessive force had been used against protesters of the Group 8 summit.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A8)
2001 Oct 8, In Milan, Italy, a Scandinavian Airlines SAS jet, Flight 686 to Copenhagen, crashed into a small Cessna on takeoff and 114 people were killed in both planes with 4 killed on the ground. The Cessna had moved onto the wrong runway as the SAS jet took off under foggy conditions.
(SFC, 10/9/01, p.B1)(WSJ, 10/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Nov 7, Italy pledged an aircraft carrier and 2,700 troops to help the American campaign in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A6)
2001 Nov, The Leaning Tower of Pisa was expected to open for tourists after being closed since 1990 to reduce the tilt.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A11)
2001 Dec 16, A state-run home for the disabled burned down near Buccino and 19 patients were killed.
(SFC, 12/17/01, p.A3)
2001 Rome declared the ruins of the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary to be a cultural heritage.
(SFC, 11/15/02, p.J1)
2001 Domenico Morosini opened a private museum at the former home of Benito Mussolini (d.1945) in Predappio. It was built between 1925-1927 and sold to Morosini for $1.2 million in 2000.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A15)
2001 Italy’s Parliament passed legislation allowing millions of Italians who had emigrated, or who were born to emigre parents, to cast ballots in Italian elections. The legislation was pushed forward by lawmaker Mirko Tremaglia (1926-2011).
(AP, 12/31/11)
2002 Jan 4, Antonio Todde, an Italian shepherd listed by Guinness as the world’s oldest man, died just shy of his 113th birthday. "Just love your brother and drink a good glass of red wine every day."
(SFC, 1/5/02, p.A22)
2002 Jan 5, Renato Ruggiero, the Foreign Minister, quit over the government’s European policy.
(SFC, 1/7/02, p.A5)
2002 Jan 6, Premier Berlusconi named himself interim foreign minister.
(SFC, 1/7/02, p.A5)
2002 Jan 30, In Italy Samuele Lorenzi (3), was found bludgeoned to death in the family's Alpine home. His mother Anna Maria Franzoni, who denied the murder, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2007 a Turin appeals court upheld the conviction but reduced her sentence to 16 years.
(AP, 4/27/07)
2002 Feb 5, In Italy the health ministry confirmed the country’s 1st case of mad cow disease.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2002 Feb 19, Italian authorities arrested 4 Moroccans in Rome, members of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat. Maps were found of the US Embassy, small quantities of cyanide, and a map of the city’s water system.
(SFC, 2/21/02, p.A16)
2002 Mar 9, The Mont Blanc tunnel reopened to connect Italy and France.
(SSFC, 3/17/02, p.C4)
2002 Mar 19, Marco Biagi (b.1950), Italian jurist, was assassinated due to his role as an economic advisor to Roberto Maroni, a minister in Silvio Berlusconi's government. Biagi had devised legislation for a temporary labor contract.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Biagi_%28jurist%29)
2002 Mar 20, Some 928 illegal immigrants, mostly ethnic Kurds, arrived on a rusty cargo ship. Italy declared a state of emergency to deal with the problem.
(SFC, 3/21/02, p.A10)
2002 Mar 21, A tour bus traveling from Lucca to Florence collided with a truck and at least 3 Americans were killed.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A10)
2002 Apr 16, In Italy millions of workers staged the biggest strike in decades to protest government plans to make it easier to fire workers.
(SFC, 4/17/02, p.A8)
2002 Apr 18, In Italy a small plane crashed into the 25th floor of the 32-story Pirelli building in Milan. He was killed along with 2 government lawyers working inside. Pilot Luigi Fasulo (67) made a distress call and flew off course. Suicide over financial problems was later suspected.
(SFC, 4/19/02, p.A1,16)(SFC, 4/20/02, p.A9)
2002 Jun 4, Parliament approved legislation on tougher immigration policies.
(SFC, 6/5/02, p.A13)
2002 Jun 7, It was reported that Italy had committed to a $4.3 billion project for a suspension bridge linking Sicily over the 2-mile-wide straits of Messina.
(WSJ, 6/7/02, p.A1)(Econ, 11/22/03, p.75)
2002 Jun, In Italy the Parliament approved a measure to transfer all state property into a new company called Patrimonio dello Stato SpA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Economy Ministry. Some assets were planned for sale to reduce the $1.3 trillion public debt and to help finance the bridge from Calabria to Sicily.
(WSJ, 7/23/02, p.D8)
2002 Jul 4, Italian photographer Angelo Frontoni (76), known for his work with stars such as Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and Ava Gardner, died in Rome.
(AP, 7/4/02)
2002 Jul 19, Italy took steps to return the prized Axum obelisk to Ethiopia. The 1,700-year-old monument was hauled off by Italian forces after their 1937 invasion of the African country. It was returned in 2003.
(AP, 7/20/02)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.A2)
2002 Jul 30, Rome decided to have the coins collected from the Trevi fountain every day and not just on Mondays. The next day Roberto Cercelletta (50), a self-described unemployed Roman resident, self-inflicted razor cuts on his stomach in a protest and asked if the money collected has really gone to the Catholic charity Caritas in past years.
(AP, 7/31/02)
2002 Jul 31, US court papers alleged that Russia's Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (53) used his influence with members of the Russian and French skating federations to fix the outcome of the pairs and ice dancing competitions at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics last February. Tokhtakhounov was arrested in Italy. Italy’s highest court denounced an extradition bid and freed Tokhtakhounov.
(Reuters, 7/31/02)(SFC, 8/1/02, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alimzhan_Tokhtakhounov)
2002 Aug 8, In Indonesia Lorenzo Taddei (34), an Italian tourist, was shot dead in Central Sulawesi when gunmen fired on the bus he was traveling in.
(Reuters, 8/9/02)
2002 Aug 31, Five Kurdish migrants were found dead in the back of a cargo truck after they apparently suffocated during a harrowing ferry crossing from Greece to Italy.
(AP, 8/31/02)
2002 Sep 14, In Italy tens of thousands of protesters rallied in central Rome, accusing conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi of using political power for his personal benefit, and saying opposition parties were not doing enough about it.
(AP, 9/14/02)
2002 Sep 25, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi urged the United Nations to come up with a "new, strongly worded, unambiguous and exacting" resolution on Iraq that could authorize the use of force if Baghdad fails to comply with it.
(AP, 9/26/02)
2002 Oct 15, In Italy a heavily armed man fatally shot his ex-wife and six other relatives and neighbors and then killed himself in Chieri, a suburb of Turin.
(AP, 10/15/02)(SFC, 10/16/02, p.A16)
2002 Oct 31, A strong earthquake rocked central and southern Italy, trapping about 50 children in a school in San Giuliano di Puglia after the building's roof collapsed. 27 children and a teacher were killed.
(AP, 10/31/02)(AP, 11/1/07)
2002 Nov 9, Some 450,000 marched through Florence in a protest against globalization and U.S. policy in Iraq.
(AP, 11/10/02)
2002 Nov 9, A dry winter and a wet summer ravaged Italy's grapevines, causing the worst harvest in half a century. Some regions were spared the disasters, like the area in Tuscany where Chianti is produced and parts of southern Italy.
(AP, 11/9/02)
2002 Nov 16, In Italy thousands of anti-globalization demonstrators marched in Rome, Florence and Naples to protest the arrests of 20 people, including a leader of the movement, on charges stemming from violent protests last year.
(AP, 11/16/02)
2002 Nov 19, Italian newspapers reported that the 'ndrangheta, the Calabrian version of the Sicilian Mafia, received 3 percent of the multimillion dollar contracts for work on stretches of the highway that passed through their "territory."
(AP, 11/20/02)
2002 In Italy Francesco Sbano co-produced a new malavita (mafia folk music) CD: "La Musica della Mafia."
(NW, 8/26/02, p.54)
2002 An Italian study showed that one gram a day of supplementary omega-3 oil reduced death from cardiovascular disease by 30% in those who had survived a recent heart attack.
(Econ, 9/2/17, p.70)
2003 Jan 16, The European Union's Court of Justice ordered Spain and Italy to drop national rules on what constitutes chocolate, saying they can no longer bar British and Irish confections made with vegetable fats instead of cocoa butter.
(AP, 1/16/03)
2003 Jan 24, Giovanni Agnelli (81), the patriarch of the Fiat auto company, died in Turin after a months-long illness.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 27, A head-on train collision between French and Italian passenger trains killed two people. It appeared to be the result of human error.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 30, Italian police arrested 28 Pakistanis during a routine sweep for illegal immigrants. The arrested possessed explosives, hundreds of forged documents and maps of the Naples area with "sensitive" targets circled.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Feb 22, In Rome, Italy, some 2,000 cat lovers marched in the city’s 1st Cat Pride march and demanded protection for the many, local stray cats.
(SSFC, 2/23/03, A2)
2003 Feb 17, American CIA operatives snatched Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Abu Omar) from his house in Milan and took him to Egypt, where he was jailed, tortured and released. In 2005 an Italian judge ordered the arrest of 13 American suspects on charges of kidnapping. In 2009 Nasr asked for euro10 million (nearly $15 million) in damages from the American and Italian defendants charged in his abduction.
(Econ, 7/2/05, p.48)(AP, 10/7/09)(SFC, 10/8/09, p.A2)
2003 Mar 6, Italian police raided a house in Palermo and captured Salvatore Rinella (49), a top Mafia boss.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 11, Benetton, an Italian retailer, said it planned to attach salt-grain sized microchip transmitters to clothing at its 5,000 stores.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.B1)
2003 Mar 29, Italian Dr. Carlo Urbani (46), a WHO expert on communicable diseases, died of SARS in Thailand, where he was being treated after becoming infected while working in Vietnam. Urbani was the 1st doctor to identify SARS.
(AP, 3/29/03)
2003 May 14, In Italy Premier Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated the ambitious $4 billion "Moses" project to ease the flooding in Venice.
(AP, 5/15/03)
2003 May, In Italy construction began on a breakwater for Venice to prevent high tides from entering its lagoon.
(Econ, 9/27/03, p.80)
2003 Jul 15, Four US crew members were killed in a fiery crash of a Navy helicopter in Italy.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 22, Italy's state TV chief said she will resign as soon as Premier Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition passes a law opponents say will grant the business mogul even greater control over Italian media.
(AP, 7/23/03)
2003 May 28, Prometea, the world's 1st cloned horse, was born in Cremona, Italy.
(SFC, 8/7/03, p.A2)
2003 Sep 5, European Union foreign ministers met in Riva del Garda, Italy, to discuss Iraq, the tattered Mideast peace plan and their bloc's draft constitution as some 500 anti-globalization protesters blocked main roads to an Italian Alps town.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 11, The Italian Health Ministry said at least 4,175 more elderly Italians died in the summer heat wave that scorched Europe this year compared with the same period last year. The heat wave caused about 70,000 premature deaths across Europe.
(AP, 9/11/03)(Econ, 5/9/15, p.54)
2003 Sep 16, Italian consumer groups asked for a boycott on virtually all products and services to protest price hikes.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 28, A nationwide power blackout in Italy hit virtually the whole population in the dead of night. Power was out for as much as 18 hours. Problems began after a tree branch hit power lines in Switzerland.
(AP, 9/28/03)(WSJ, 10/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 10/1/03)
2003 Oct 4, In Italy anti-globalization demonstrators set fire to an employment agency, smashed cars and windows and hurled insults at government headquarters in Rome.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, A shipment of uranium-enriching centrifuge gear was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2009 Urs Tinner, suspected of involvement in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring, said in a Swiss TV documentary that he tipped off US intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/28/world/fg-network28)(WSJ, 12/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/22/09)
2003 Oct 5, In Somalia Annalena Tonelli (60), an Italian aid worker who dedicated 33 years of her life to helping Somalis, was shot and killed outside the hospital she founded to treat tuberculosis patients.
(AP, 10/6/03)
2003 Oct 11, In Italy 4-month-old twin Greek girls joined at the temple were successfully separated after a 13 hour operation at a Rome hospital.
(AP, 10/12/03)(SFC, 10/15/03, p.A2)
2003 Oct 12, Renato Rinino (41), a professional Italian thief who gained notoriety for stealing jewelry from Prince Charles' London palace in 1994, was shot and killed in Savona.
(AP, 10/12/03)
2003 Oct 19, An Italian coast guard crew found 13 bodies on board a rickety wooden boat in waters off Sicily and 15 other would-be illegal Somali immigrants suffering from exposure and badly in need of food and water. Some 50 bodies were consigned to the sea before the boat was found.
(AP, 10/20/03)(Econ, 10/25/03, p.48)
2003 Oct 24, In Italy police arrested 7 alleged members of the radical Red Brigades suspected of the 1999 killing of a Labor Ministry consultant.
(AP, 10/24/03)
2003 Oct 24, In Italy millions of workers stayed home to protest government plans to reform the pension system.
(AP, 10/25/03)
2003 Oct 25, An Italian court has ordered a crucifix removed from a classroom, where a law still requires public schools to display a cross.
(AP, 10/26/03)
2003 Oct 29, Italian tenor Franco Corelli (82), one of the top opera stars of the 20th century, died in Milan.
(AP, 10/31/03)(SFC, 11/1/03, p.A21)
2003 Oct 30, In Italy former Premier Giulio Andreotti was acquitted of charges he ordered the Mafia killing of a journalist in 1979, wiping out the veteran politician's previous conviction.
(AP, 10/30/03)
2003 Oct, Roberto Colannino bought a controlling stake in Piaggio, the Italian scooter maker. Debts at the time were equal to 60% of annual sales.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.64)
2003 Nov 12, In Iraq a suicide truck bomber attacked the headquarters of Italy's paramilitary police in Nasiriyah, killing 31 people, including 18 Italians, and possibly trapping others.
(AP, 11/12/03)(AP, 11/13/03)
2003 Dec 6, Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Rome to protest government plans to reform Italy's pension system, which economists say can no longer sustain itself.
(AP, 12/6/03)
2003 Dec 11, The Italian Parliament imposed controls on medically assisted reproduction.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A17)
2003 Dec 12, Several people fell ill across Italy after drinking apparently tainted bottled mineral water, the latest in a scare that has prompted prosecutors to launch investigations across the nation.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 14, Venice threw itself a party to celebrate the rebirth of the La Fenice, following a $90 million restoration, with a gala concert that drew the Italian president, European royalty and Italy's glitterati.
(AP, 12/15/03)(SFC, 12/15/03, p.A2)
2003 Dec 15, In Italy Calisto Tonzi, head of Parmalat SpA, one of the world's biggest dairy firms, resigned. [see Dec 19]
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.95)
2003 Dec 19, Parmalat SpA, an Italian food giant, reported a $4.9 billion shortfall. Soon another $3.6 billion in bonds was also in question. Parmalat planned to file for bankruptcy protection in what turned into the biggest corporate fraud in Europe's history. Parmalat employed 36,000 people in 29 countries. Fausto Tonna, former chief financial officer, soon acknowledged that there was systematic falsification of accounts for some 15 years. In 2001 an auditor in Brazil had raised an alarm over financial transactions. The accounting scandal reached $17 billion.
(SFC, 12/24/03, p.B1)(WSJ, 12/26/03, p.C1)(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A3)(Econ, 8/6/05, p.57)
2003 In Italy CasaPound was founded as a group of squatters claimed housing for needy families. It took its name from Ezra Pound, the American poet who was a Mussolini sympathizer and who identified rent as a form of usury, one of the group's founding principles.
(AP, 9/28/17)
2003 PM Berlusconi’s government passed a law granting him and 4 associates immunity from criminal prosecution while serving as PM of Italy. The law was later struck down by Italy’s constitutional court.
(WSJ, 11/15/04, p.A1)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.11)
2003 In Italy regional legislation recognized the prosecco district, a region just north of Venice, for sparkling wine produced with prosecco grapes.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.108)
2004 Jan 9, Norberto Bobbio (94), an Italian liberal philosopher, essayist and senator for life, died in Turin. One of his most important books is the 1955 "Politica e Cultura" ("Politics and Culture"). A 1994 essay, called "Destra e Sinistra" ("Left and Right"), was his best-selling work.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 28, Italian police said they cracked a drug smuggling ring spanning four continents, arrested more than 150 people and seized more than five tons of cocaine.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Feb 14, Marco Pantani (34), Italy’s favorite cyclist, died.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.83)
2004 Feb 17, A new study reported that 2 cows in Italy had been found with a new form of mad cow disease, bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE).
(SFC, 2/17/04, p.A7)
2004 Feb 22, Giorgio Armani signed a $1 billion hotel venture with Dubai’s Emaar Properties.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.61)
2004 Mar 20, Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Rome demanding that Italy pull its 2,600 troops out of Iraq.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar, John Petters (21), a Minnesota college student, was stabbed to death in Florence after he and a friend mistakenly walked into the private grounds of a villa. In 2005 a judge convicted Alfio Raugei (55), an Italian man, of manslaughter and sentenced him to three years' imprisonment, after lawyers argued the killing was in self-defense.
(AP, 7/1/05)
2004 Apr 1, Italy, Turkey, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands arrested 41 militants in a coordinated crackdown on a Turkish Marxist group. Police in Istanbul arrested 25 suspects of the Marxist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army/Front, or DHKP-C, while security forces in the other countries detained 16 others.
(AP, 4/1/04)
2004 Apr 13, Four Italians working as private security guards for a U.S. company in Iraq were reported missing, and an Arab satellite TV broadcaster said they were kidnapped by insurgents.
(AP, 4/13/04)
2004 Apr 14, In Iraq militants executed an Italian captive.
(AP, 4/15/04)
2004 Apr 16, In Italy Premier Silvio Berlusconi's corruption trial resumed in Milan.
(AP, 4/16/04)
2004 Apr 19, Pierluigi Vigna, Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, said Italian mobsters and Islamic terrorist groups have forged links in arms and drug trafficking.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, Authorities in southern Italy reported that they had seized about 7,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles and other combat-grade firearms from a Turkish-flagged ship headed for New York. The weapons were destined for a company in the U.S. state of Georgia.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 26, Iraqi kidnappers said they would kill 3 Italian hostages unless Italians rally against Italy's participation in the occupation of Iraq.
(SFC, 4/27/04, p.A8)
2004 May 27, Umberto Agnelli (69), Fiat Chairman, died in Turin.
(SFC, 5/29/04, p.B6)
2004 May 27, Vito Bigione (52), one of Italy's most-wanted Mafia suspects, was captured in Venezuela. He was accused of a key role in international drug trafficking and flown back to Italy. Bigione had spent years living in Namibia and only recently moved to Venezuela.
(AP, 5/29/04)
2004 May 27, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo became the new chairman of Confindustria, the Italian employer’s confederation.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.60)
2004 May, An reporter in Sardinia reported that PM Berlusconi was transforming a grotto into a secret boat tunnel at his Villa Certosa property and questioned whether legal permits had been obtained. The next day the Interior Ministry claimed that all matters relating to the villa were to be protected under a state secrecy law.
(WSJ, 11/15/04, p.A1)
2004 Jun 11, In Palermo, Sicily, a court convicted and sentenced 30 top Sicilian mobsters to life imprisonment after a 10-year trial covering a total of 77 murders.
(AP, 6/12/04)
2004 Jun 11, Egon von Furstenberg (57), a Swiss-born aristocrat known as the "prince of high fashion," died in Rome.
(AP, 6/11/04)
2004 Jun 13, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party lost a sixth of its voters in the EU elections.
(Econ, 7/3/04, p.43)
2004 Jun, Some 34 Italian private secondary schools were caught up in an investigation into a vast trade in bogus exam passes.
(Econ, 6/12/04, p.49)
2004 Jul 5, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi won an endorsement from his EU colleagues for plans to narrow Italy's budget deficit with $9.2 billion in new spending cuts and tax measures.
(AP, 7/5/04)
2004 Jul 24, The 16th edition of Italy's Miss Cicciona contest (Italy's Miss Chubby) began in Forcoli, central Italy.
(AP, 7/25/04)
2004 Jul 26, Al-Qaida-linked Islamic militants threatened to "shake the earth" everywhere in Italy if Rome does not withdraw troops from Iraq. The Internet statement, attributed to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, was the 2nd such threat against the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in two weeks.
(AP, 7/26/04)
2004 Jul 28, The Italian parliament approved structural economic reforms that included raising the retirement age from 57 to 60 effective in 2008.
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.44)
2004 Jul 31, A 10-day manhunt for a murder suspect ended in a shootout near the Circus Maximus in central Rome. Luciano Liboni had allegedly killed a policeman July 22.
(AP, 7/31/04)
2004 Jul 31, Laura Betti (70), Italian film actress, died. Her debut was in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita" (1960).
(SFC, 8/3/04, p.B6)
2004 Aug 1, A militant group claiming links to al Qaeda has given Italy a 15-day deadline to withdraw its troops from Iraq or face attacks.
(AP, 8/1/04)
2004 Sep 7, An Italian aid organization said that two Italian women were kidnapped from its office in Baghdad.
(AP, 9/7/04)
2004 Sep 21, Italian and Lebanese authorities reported the arrest of 10 alleged terrorists, thwarting plans to blow up the Italian Embassy in Beirut in a car bomb attack.
(AP, 9/21/04)
2004 Sep 23, A militant group falsely claimed in a Web posting that two Italian women taken hostage in Iraq had been killed. [see Sep 28]
(AP, 9/23/04)
2004 Sep 28, In Iraq kidnappers released two female Italian aid workers and five other hostages. A $1 million ransom was alleged. In 2005 it was reported that Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraqi insurgents and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two Italian aid workers kidnapped in Baghdad.
(AP, 9/28/04)(WSJ, 9/30/04, p.A1)(AP, 8/25/05)
2004 Oct 20, Terra Madre, an international meeting of food communities, held its first meeting in Turin, Italy. It formed as a part of the Slow Food movement. The group followed with meetings every 2 years.
(SSFC, 10/26/08, p.A18)(www.worldchanging.com/archives/005321.html)
2004 Oct 20, Fiat SpA's auto unit said that it will temporarily reduce production at three factories next month, a move that will affect thousands of workers.
(AP, 10/20/04)
2004 Oct 31, In Italy unusually high tides sent sea water sweeping through Venice, covering 80 percent of the city by afternoon.
(AP, 11/1/04)
2004 Nov 20, In southern Italy 8 people from two families were killed when a gas explosion destroyed their apartment building.
(AP, 11/20/04)
2004 Nov 30, Italy ground to a halt as millions of workers observed a general strike in protest against the economic policies of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government.
(AFP, 11/30/04)
2004 Nov, Italy’s National Magistrates Assoc. (ANM) staged their 3rd one-day strike under the current parliament to protest a bill to reform the judicial system.
(Econ, 11/27/04, p.53)
2004 Dec 2, From Italy it was reported that a mob turf war claimed more than 20 lives in the last month in the Naples area, prompting police to launch an emergency security clampdown.
(AP, 12/2/04)
2004 Dec 10, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted of corruption charges that have dogged his government from the start.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Marcello Dell'Utri, a close political ally of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, was convicted of ties with the Sicilian Mafia and sentenced to nine years in prison.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 16, Italy’s Pres. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi vetoed a bill that would have placed magistrates under government oversight and forced them to choose between careers as judges or prosecutors.
(SFC, 12/17/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 17, Italy's interior ministry said 181 people had been arrested in the past three months in a crackdown on the Camorra in Naples whose turf warfare now overshadows that of the Sicilian mafia.
(AP, 12/18/04)
2004 Dec 18, Naples police said they have broken up a mob protection racket focused on local bakeries and flour makers.
(AP, 12/18/04)
2004 In Italy the 15,000 sq.-meter Pirelli HangarBicocca art museum was founded in a former factory in Milan. In 2012 the museum re-launched its program of exhibitions and events.
(http://tinyurl.com/puvvyzj)(Econ, 6/4/16, p.83)
2004 Italy imported more shoes than it exported for the 1st time.
(WSJ, 6/13/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 1, Italy was forecast for 1.8% annual GDP growth with a population at 58.1 million and GDP per head at $31,410.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.88)
2005 Jan 7, In northern Italy a passenger train and a freight train collided in thick fog on the Bologna-Verona line, killing 17 people and injuring dozens.
(AP, 1/7/05)(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 10, New Italian legislation went into effect to stop smoking in restaurants and bars. Officials extended the initial Jan 1 date for the benefit of New Year revelers.
(SFC, 12/21/04, p.A7)(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A10)
2005 Jan 22, In Italy a war within the Camorra, the regional mafia of Naples, was reported to have claimed 35 lives over the last 4 months.
(Econ, 1/22/05, p.46)
2005 Feb 2, The EU told Italy, France and Germany, to do more to bring their budgets in balance as required by the rules of Europe's single currency.
(AP, 2/2/05)
2005 Feb 4, Gunmen seized Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist in central Baghdad, in a hail of gunfire after she had been interviewing people who fled the US assault last year on the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
(AP, 2/4/05)
2005 Feb 8, A Web posting in the name of a militant group in Iraq claimed to have executed Italian female journalist Giuliana Sgrena.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 16, CEO Sergio Marchionne announced Fiat SpA will buy the Maserati sportscar brand from Ferrari, a company in which it already had a majority stake, just three days after winning independence from General Motors Corp.
(AP, 2/16/05)(Econ, 4/26/08, p.88)
2005 Mar 4, American troops fired on a car taking Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad's airport and wounded her. Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence officer who negotiated her freedom, was hit by the gunfire and died in her arms. Sgrena returned to Italy the next day. In 2007 an Italian court threw out the case against the US soldier charged in the shooting of Calipari.
(AP, 3/5/05)(AP, 10/25/07)
2005 Mar 6, Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist wounded by American troops in Iraq after her release by insurgents, rejected the U.S. military's account of the shooting and declined Sunday to rule out the possibility she was deliberately targeted.
(AP, 3/6/05)
2005 Mar 15, Pres. Berlusconi announced that Italy would begin pulling its 3,300 troops out of Iraq in September. The next day he said the withdrawal date was merely a hope.
(AP, 3/16/05)(Econ, 3/19/05, p.56)
2005 Mar 17, Italian airline Alitalia SpA said that the latest strike by flight attendants could plunge the struggling carrier into bankruptcy.
(AP, 3/17/05)
2005 Mar 24, Istat reported that Italy’s economy contracted 0.4% in the previous quarter due in part to a fall in exports.
(WSJ, 3/25/05, p.A7)
2005 Mar 30, Dutch bank ABN Amro announced a 6.3 billion euros ($8.1 billion) bid for the 87 percent of Italian bank Antonveneta it does not already own, the second foreign offer for an Italian bank in as many days.
(AP, 3/30/05)
2005 Apr 7, Pres. Bush met with Premier Berlusconi and Pres. Ciampi one day after viewing the pope’s body at the Vatican.
(SFC, 4/7/05, p.A13)
2005 Apr 13, Italian regulator Consob said it has approved a bid by Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA for Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, in what would become the euro zone's largest cross-border banking takeover.
(AP, 4/14/05)
2005 Apr 15, Italy’s government teetered near collapse after 2 coalition parties said they would withdraw from PM Berlusconi’s government.
(SFC, 4/16/05, p.A7)
2005 Apr 18, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi agreed a deal with rebel ministers of the Christian Democrat UDC party to form a new centre-right government and avoid snap elections.
(AFP, 4/18/05)
2005 Apr 20, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he would step down but pledged to form a new government, an attempt to strengthen a coalition left weakened by electoral defeat and concerns over a slow economy.
(AP, 4/20/05)
2005 Apr 23, Silvio Berlusconi formed a new government and will present his choice of Cabinet ministers to Italy's legislators for approval in the hopes of avoiding new elections. Berlusconi was sworn in as head of Italy's 60th government since the end of World War II.
(AP, 4/23/06)
2005 Apr 28, Premier Silvio Berlusconi's new government won approval from the Italian Senate, ending a government crisis that followed an embarrassing defeat in regional elections.
(AP, 4/28/05)
2005 Apr 29, Italy and the United States said they had failed to agree on whether U.S. soldiers were at fault in the death of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq.
(AP, 4/30/05)
2005 Apr 29, Italy slashed its 2005 growth forecast by almost half to 1.2 percent and warned its budget deficit could hit 4 percent of gross domestic product.
(AP, 4/29/05)
2005 May 2, Italian investigators blamed US military authorities for failing to signal there was a checkpoint ahead on the Baghdad road where American soldiers killed an Italian agent, concluding in a report that stress, inexperience and fatigue played a role in the shooting.
(AP, 5/3/05)
2005 May 10, Italy's center-left opposition celebrated as returns from local elections in Sardinia and 2 northern regions dealt Premier Berlusconi's forces another embarrassing defeat.
(AP, 5/10/05)
2005 May 18, Police arrested nine terror suspects during raids in northern Italy in what they said was a crackdown on extremist cells accused of planning attacks in Italy and abroad.
(AP, 5/18/05)
2005 May 24, Italian police raided the homes and offices of 186 suspected members of a child pornography ring, including three Roman Catholic priests and a local mayor, that downloaded pictures from an exclusive Web site.
(AP, 5/24/05)
2005 May 25, In Italy a judge ordered best-selling author Oriana Fallaci to face trial on charges of defaming Islam in her recent book "The Strength of Reason." Fallaci, who is in her 70s, said she is accused of violating an Italian law that prohibits "outrage to religion."
(AP, 5/26/05)
2005 May, Italy reported that it had fallen back into recession for the 1st quarter of 2005.
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.13)
2005 Jun 5, An accident inside the Frejus Alpine tunnel between France and Italy killed at least two people. A truck loaded with tires and another carrying glue caught fire along with four other vehicles.
(AP, 6/5/05)
2005 Jun 7, The EU head office said that Italy broke the bloc's budget rules with excessive deficits in 2003 and 2004 and is likely to breach the limit again this year and in 2006.
(AP, 6/7/05)
2005 Jun 9, Clementina Cantoni (32), an Italian aid worker kidnapped at gunpoint in the Afghan capital three weeks ago, was released.
(AP, 6/10/05)
2005 Jun 12, The Venice Biennale opened under the direction of Rosa Martinez and Maria de Corral.
(Econ, 6/4/05, p.80)
2005 Jun 12, Italians voted in national referendums on whether to loosen assisted fertility legislation. 90% voted to change the law but only 26% of eligible voters bothered to turn out.
(AP, 6/12/05)(Econ, 6/18/05, p.48)
2005 Jun 12, UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank, announced the takeover HVB Group, Germany’s 2nd biggest. This gave UniCredit a commanding presence in Germany, Austria and Poland.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.70)(Econ, 10/12/13, SR p.8)
2005 Jun 13, In Italy a Vatican-backed voter boycott helped defeat efforts to ease restrictions on assisted procreation and embryo research.
(AP, 6/14/05)
2005 Jun 14, Carlo Maria Giulini (91), renowned conductor, died in Brescia, Italy.
(SFC, 6/16/05, p.B7)
2005 Jun 22, In La Spezia, Italy, 10 former members of the Nazi SS were convicted in absentia of taking part in the 1944 massacre of more than 500 villagers in the Tuscan village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 6/22/05)
2005 Jun 24, An Italian official said a judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for allegedly helping deport an imam to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. The agents are suspected in the seizure of an Egyptian-born imam identified as Abu Omar on the streets of Milan in February 2003.
(AP, 6/24/05)
2005 Jun 29, The EU gave Italy until the end of 2007 to cut its budget deficit in line with euro-zone rules, a warning that is powerless as it carries no punishment.
(AP, 6/29/05)
2005 Jun 29, Some 400 would-be immigrants from Africa landed on Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily, and air patrols spotted at least 200 more on their way.
(AP, 6/29/05)
2005 Jul 8, In Italy a judge convicted and sentenced to life in prison three members of the Red Brigades terrorist group for the 1999 killing of a government labor adviser, court officials said. A fourth was convicted and sentenced to nine years.
(AP, 7/8/05)
2005 Jul 11, A judge ordered the arrest and isolation of 3 senior officers of the Banco di Credito Cooperativo Sofige Gela, a small bank on Sicily’s southern coast. The had been under investigation for aiding and abetting the Mafia.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.72)
2005 Jul 12, Antonio Fazio, governor of the Bank of Italy, informed his friend Gianpiero Fiorani, head of Banca Popolare Italiana (BPI), that BPI’s bid for the Antonveneta bank had received a go ahead before making the news public.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.67)(WSJ, 9/13/05, p.A1)
2005 Jul 13, In Brescia, Italy, a judge convicted two North Africans of belonging to an extremist cell alleged to have planned attacks, including one against Milan's subway. Moroccan Mohamed Rafik was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison and Tunisian Kamel Hamraoui to three years and four months.
(AP, 7/13/05)
2005 Jul 20, A Milan prosecutor sought arrest warrants for six more purported CIA operatives, accusing them of helping plan the kidnapping of an Egyptian radical Muslim cleric.
(AP, 7/20/05)
2005 Jul 22, The Italian government approved a package of anti-terrorism measures that allow authorities to take DNA samples from suspects and jail those who provide explosives training.
(AP, 7/22/05)
2005 Jul 25, An appeals court in Milan, Italy, issued arrest warrants for six more purported CIA operatives accused of helping plan the 2003 kidnapping of a radical Egyptian Muslim cleric.
(AP, 7/26/05)
2005 Jul 25, Magistrates in Italy impounded BPI’s shares in Antonveneta. 2 days later Consob, Italy’s stockmarket regulator, froze BPI’s offer for up to 90 days. [see Jul 12]
(Econ, 8/13/05, p.57)
2005 Jul 29, Osman Hussain (27), a Briton with Ethiopian citizenship, was arrested in Rome after investigators traced his cell phone calls across Europe. He is accused of trying to attack the Shepherd's Bush subway station in west London.
(AP, 7/30/05)
2005 Jul, Italian police arrested two Slovenians who allegedly mailed steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and other customers around the world.
(AP, 8/1/05)
2005 Aug 6, A Tunis Air jet carrying 35 passengers went down in the sea off the Sicilian coast, and rescuers were on their way. 16 people were killed, while 23 survived. A bad fuel gauge on the Tuninter plane caused the crash. On March 23, 2009, the Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, was sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot. Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between 8 and 9 years in jail.
(AP, 8/5/05)(AP, 8/7/05)(WSJ, 9/8/05, p.A1)(Reuters, 3/24/09)
2005 Aug 13, An Italian newspaper reported that more than 100 Italian troops whose tours in southern Iraq have ended are not being replaced, apparently marking the beginning of the country's withdrawal from Iraq ahead of schedule.
(AP, 8/14/05)
2005 Aug 13, A small plane carrying tourists crashed in southern Italy, killing at least two people.
(AP, 8/14/05)
2005 Aug 15, Italy’s Interior Minister said Italy has arrested 141 people in a security swoop following the bombings in London and Egypt last month and remains at high risk from an attack by Islamic militants. Expulsion procedures had begun against 701 people.
(Reuters, 8/15/05)
2005 Aug 6, A Tunis Air jet carrying 35 passengers went down in the sea off the Sicilian coast, and rescuers were on their way. At least 13 people were killed, while 23 survived. A bad fuel gauge on the Tuninter plane cause the crash.
(AP, 8/5/05)(AP, 8/7/05)(WSJ, 9/8/05, p.A1)
2005 Sep 1, In Italy a summer music hit has sparked a war of words between left-wingers and neo-fascists who claim the Colombian pop song, "La camisa negra" ("The black shirt"), as their anthem.
(AP, 9/1/05)
2005 Sep 2, Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Cabinet approved a reform program for Italy's central bank that includes a seven-year fixed term for the Bank of Italy governor.
(AP, 9/2/05)
2005 Sep 6, Italy's Fiat SpA is to launch a new version of its Punto, Fiat's most popular model. The company has sold 6 million Puntos since launching the car in 1993. In 1997 the Punto became the best-selling car in Europe, with 600,000 models sold.
(AP, 9/5/05)
2005 Sep 9, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Cabinet approved a bill to limit the use of phone taps, legislation prompted after conversations recorded during a bank takeover investigation were leaked to the media this summer.
(AP, 9/9/05)
2005 Sep 10, Masked gunmen abducted Lorenzo Cremonesi of the Corriere della Serra daily, an Italian journalist in the Gaza Strip town of Deir El-Balah. He was released after a few hours.
(AP, 9/10/05)
2005 Sep 16, Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared Italy's mission in Iraq "an absolute and total" success, and said Italy would continue to reduce its military presence there.
(AP, 9/16/05)
2005 Sep 16, Italian officials said they have captured Paolo Di Lauro (52), an alleged top boss of the Camorra crime syndicate, dealing what they said was a serious blow to organized crime in the Naples area.
(AP, 9/16/05)
2005 Sep 20, Fiat of Italy struck a deal with Zastava of Kragujevac, Serbia, to make up to 16,000 cars a year. Zastava’s arms plant made a recent $3.8 million contract with Iraq.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.47)
2005 Sep 21, Domenica Siniscalco, Italy's economy minister, resigned in a row over the Bank of Italy and the budget, dealing a major blow to PM Silvio Berlusconi months before an election that polls say he is likely to lose.
(AP, 9/22/05)(Econ, 9/24/05, p.61)
2005 Sep 25, Italy's government stripped Bank of Italy Governor Antonio Fazio of his authority to represent the country at a World Bank meeting.
(AP, 9/25/05)
2005 Sep 26, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was cleared of charges of false bookkeeping in a case involving funding for the former Socialist party.
(AP, 9/26/05)
2005 Sep 26, Dutch bank ABN Amro said it had signed a contract with Banca Popolare Italiana and its allies to buy their 39.37 percent stake in Banca Antonveneta for a total outlay of 3.2 billion euros (3.85 billion dollars).
(AP, 9/26/05)
2005 Sep 28, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said a $5.2 billion project to build flood barriers to save Venice from its high tides will go forward.
(AP, 9/29/05)
2005 Oct 14, Italy's culture industry pledged to shut down theaters, cinemas and cancel concerts throughout the country for the day to protest planned cuts to the art budget.
(AP, 10/14/05)
2005 Oct 14, Italy’s Alitalia airline, 62.3% owned by the government, approved a revised corporate plan for 2005-2008.
(Econ, 10/22/05, p.70)
2005 Oct 16, Italy held primaries to select the center-left's candidate to challenge conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi in next year's election. Former Italian premier Romano Prodi made a sweeping victory in a nationwide primary.
(AP, 10/16/05)(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 16, In Italy center-left politician Francesco Fortugno was shot as he voted in a nationwide primary in the small Calabrian town of Locri. In March 2006 police arrested 5 suspects in Reggio Calabria.
(AP, 10/22/05)(AP, 3/21/06)
2005 Oct 18, In Rome, Italy, a teenager (15) who appeared on the roof of his family home with a pistol following the shooting deaths of his parents was taken into custody after an officer coaxed him down by telling him the couple was only wounded.
(AP, 10/18/05)
2005 Oct 19-2005 Oct 20, Police arrested total of 58 people for drug trafficking in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Serbia-Montenegro. The arrests were a response to the Oct 16 murder of Italian politician Francesco Fortugno.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 23, Pope Benedict XVI named five new saints at the close of a 3-week Synod of Bishops. They included: Italians Felice da Nicosia, a lay Capuchin who lived in the 1700s, and the Rev. Gaetano Cantanoso, who founded the Veronican Sisters of the Holy Face in 1934.
(AP, 10/23/05)
2005 Oct 25, Police in riot gear charged demonstrators in the streets near Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi's office as students protested university reforms sponsored by his conservative government.
(AP, 10/25/05)
2005 Oct 28, An Italian court held the first in a series of closed-door hearings to decide whether to indict Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and 13 others for alleged fraud at his family's broadcaster Mediaset.
(AP, 10/28/05)
2005 Oct 28, Police in Sicily said they have arrested two suspected mobsters accused of plotting to murder a judge with a car bomb.
(AP, 10/28/05)
2005 Nov 7, Fiat SpA and Ford Motor Co. said they had signed an agreement to collaborate on small cars, completing a deal to co-develop new models due in 2007 and 2008.
(AP, 11/7/05)
2005 Nov 8, Iraqi Pres. Jalal Talabani met with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a strong supporter of the US-led war in Iraq. Talabani is on a weeklong visit to Italy, which includes talks with the country's top officials and a meeting at the Vatican with Pope Benedict XVI.
(AP, 11/8/05)
2005 Nov 11, An Italian prosecutor said that the Milan prosecutor's office has asked for the extradition of 22 purported CIA operatives in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003.
(AP, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 11, An Italian newspaper reported that a long-awaited Vatican document, to be released Nov 29, says practicing gays, those with "deeply rooted" homosexual tendencies or those who support gay culture cannot be admitted to the priesthood.
(AP, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 15-2005 Nov 16, Italian authorities arrested three Algerians believed to have links to an Algerian militant group that has allied itself with Osama bin Laden.
(AP, 11/17/05)
2005 Nov 16, The Italian Senate passed constitutional reform that imposed an eccentric form of proportional representation. It was designed to give the prime minister presidential powers.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.56)(www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/ital-d02.shtml)
2005 Nov 18, An Italian judge who refuses to hear cases because there are crucifixes in the nation's courtrooms was convicted of failing to carry out his official duties and sentenced to seven months in jail.
(AP, 11/18/05)
2005 Nov 19, Pope Benedict XVI and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi discussed relations between the Catholic Church and Italy, amid accusations that the church interferes in the country's domestic affairs.
(AP, 11/19/05)
2005 Nov 25, Across Italy public transportation ground to a halt, public offices shut down and thousands rallied as part of a general strike against the government's 2006 budget.
(AP, 11/25/05)
2005 Nov, In Italy opposition politicians claimed that tax evasion adds up to as much as $234 billion a year.
(Econ, 11/26/05, Italy p.12)
2005 Dec 8, It was reported that a new Italian law required businesses, that offered Internet access to the public, to ask clients for ID and to log the owner’s name a document type.
(SFC, 12/8/05, p.C5)
2005 Dec 15, French and Italian authorities said European police have broken up the biggest-ever illegal immigration ring targeting Britain by arresting dozens of suspects believed to have helped smuggle "thousands" of people into that country.
(AP, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 15, Italy's defense minister said the country will pull 300 more troops out of Iraq in January, continuing a gradual withdrawal begun earlier this year.
(AP, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 16, Italian prosecutors showed a court thank you notes and other correspondence that they contended proved a former curator at the J. Paul Getty museum knew artifacts were being illegally acquired.
(AP, 12/16/05)
2005 Dec 19, In Italy Antonio Fazio, embattled central bank chief, resigned.
(AP, 12/19/05)
2005 Dec 20, Italy’s government passed an overhaul package to scale back the power and responsibilities of the central bank governor.
(WSJ, 12/21/05, p.A14)
2005 Dec 20, Argentina Brunetti (98), a character actress who played the worried wife of Mr. Martini in the classic film "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), died in Rome. Her autobiography, "In Sicilian Company," which chronicles her family's show business adventures, was released in October.
(AP, 12/25/05)
2005 Dec 22, Italy's antitrust authority said it has opened an investigation to determine whether Premier Silvio Berlusconi violated conflict of interest rules when his government approved subsidies to Italians who buy digital-television decoders.
(AP, 12/22/05)
2005 Dec 23, An Italian judge issued EU arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in 2003. the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 EU member countries.
(AP, 12/23/05)
2005 Dec 23, Police in southern Italy arrested three Algerians on international terrorism charges and accused them of planning attacks in Iraq and Italy.
(AP, 12/23/05)
2005 Dec 29, Italy’s Newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that prosecutors accused Premier Berlusconi of ordering the payment of at least $600,000 to British lawyer David Mills in 1997 to give false testimony in two trials against the premier.
(AP, 12/29/05)
2005 Dec 29, Mario Draghi, an investment banker and former Treasury official, was named Bank of Italy governor to succeed Antonio Fazio.
(AP, 12/29/05)
2005 Dec, In Italy Daniela Santanche of the right-win National Alliance succeeded in putting a new porn tax into the 2006 budget.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.72)
2005 In Italy Mitchell Wolfson, American collector, opened his Wolfsoniana Museum at Nervi, to be run by the commune of Genoa. He specialized in collecting political propaganda and decorative art made between 1880 and 1945 illustrating the evolution of modern Western design.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.83)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Wolfson,_Jr.)
2005 Italy’s public debt climbed from 103.8 percent of GDP in 2004 to 106.4 percent, the greatest hike since 1994. In mid-2006 it reached 108% of GDP.
(http://english.people.com.cn/200603/17/eng20060317_251339.html)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.49)
2006 Jan 3, Urbano Lazzaro (81), a resistance fighter credited with arresting fascist dictator Benito Mussolini at the end of World War II, died in Vercelli, Italy.
(AP, 1/4/06)
2006 Jan 6, In Yemen 5 Italian hostages were freed in good health after six days in captivity when their kidnappers surrendered to government troops.
(AP, 1/6/06)
2006 Jan 8, Almost 500 would-be illegal immigrants have arrived on Italy's Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, between Sicily and North Africa, in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 1/8/06)
2006 Jan 12, Italy's Air One said it will buy 30 Airbus A320s under a $1.8 billion deal for delivery by 2008 and plans to exercise an option to buy 10 more planes this year.
(AP, 1/12/06)
2006 Jan 14, Tens of thousands of women marched through Milan to demand Italy keep its liberal abortion law intact while gays rallied in Rome to push for legal recognition for homosexual couples.
(AP, 1/14/06)
2006 Jan 19, Italy’s defense minister said Italy will withdraw all its troops from Iraq by the end of this year, in the first official timetable for Rome to end its mission.
(AP, 1/19/06)
2006 Jan, Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi sent out letters telling the parents of some 600,000 babies born in 2005 how to receive a 1,000 euro "baby bonus" from the state. The letter was sent to all families with a new-born, including immigrants, even though the cash bonus was meant only for Italian babies. In April the Economy Ministry asked all those who claimed the money but were not entitled to it, estimated at 3,000 immigrant families, to pay it back.
(Reuters, 4/21/06)
2006 Feb 2, Italy's government won a vote of confidence in the upper house of parliament on a broad decree that includes financing for the country's mission in Iraq.
(AP, 2/2/06)
2006 Feb 6, In Rome, Italy, a bus loaded with Turkish tourists veered off a road in the Italian capital and slid about 50 feet down a ravine, killing 12 people.
(AP, 2/7/06)
2006 Feb 8, The Italian Senate approved a bill that would dramatically increase the number of women elected to parliament in a country with one of the lowest number of female lawmakers in Europe.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 9, Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government easily won a confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies on a bill that included financing the country's military in Iraq.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 9, An Italian judge dismissed an atheist's petition that a small-town priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed. Luigi Cascioli, a 72-year-old retired agronomist, had accused the Rev. Enrico Righi of violating two laws with the assertion, which he called a deceptive fable propagated by the Roman Catholic Church.
(AP, 2/10/06)
2006 Feb 10, Opening ceremonies were held in Turin, Italy, for the 20th Winter Olympics.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Feb 10, Greece and Italy said they had found swans with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the first known cases in the European Union of wild birds with the deadly strain of the disease.
(Reuters, 2/11/06)
2006 Feb 11, Italy dissolved its parliament and scheduled elections for early April, opening a campaign that pits Premier Silvio Berlusconi against a strong center-left opponent.
(AP, 2/11/06)
2006 Feb 11, American Chad Hedrick won the 5,000 meters in speedskating at the Olympics in Turin, Italy.
(AP, 2/11/07)
2006 Feb 13, Joey Cheek (26), American speedskater, won a gold medal in the 500-meter sprint in Turin, Italy, and announced that he would donate his $25,000 award from the US Olympic Committee Olympic Aid, founded by Olav Koss in 1994 and direct it to a refugee program in Chad. Hannah Teter won gold and Gretchen Bleiler won silver in the halfpipe. Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin won the gold medal in pairs figure skating, extending Russia's four-decade dominance of the event.
(SFC, 2/14/06, p.A1)(AP, 2/13/07)
2006 Feb 14, At Turin, American Ted Ligety won Olympic gold in men's combined skiing, while Bode Miller was disqualified for straddling a gate.
(AP, 2/14/07)
2006 Feb 16, Russia's Evgeni Plushenko beat world champion Stephane Lambiel of Switzerland by an unfathomable 27.12 points to win the gold medal in men's figure skating at the Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
(AP, 2/16/07)
2006 Feb 16, In Afghanistan the bodies of two Italian aid workers were found in a guarded compound in Kabul. The Italian news agency ANSA said the two could have died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a defective stove in the compound.
(AP, 2/16/06)
2006 Feb 18, Italy's Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli resigned following deadly clashes in Libya over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that he had made into T-shirts and wore on state television.
(AP, 2/18/06)
2006 Feb 18, In Italy Kjetil Andre Aamodt of Norway outwaited the weather and outran the field to successfully defend the men's super-G title for his record eighth Olympic Alpine medal. American Shani Davis won the men's 1,000-meter speedskating in Turin, becoming the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in Winter Olympic history.
(AP, 2/18/06)(AP, 2/18/07)
2006 Feb 20, At the Turin Olympics, Tanith Belbin and partner Ben Agosto snapped the US medals drought in figure skating with a silver; Russians Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov won the gold.
(AP, 2/20/07)
2006 Feb 21, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Italy signed a deal under which it will return antiquities Italy says were looted in exchange for long-term loans of other artifacts.
(AP, 2/21/06)
2006 Feb 23, Japan's Shizuka Arakawa stunned favorites Sasha Cohen of the United States and Irina Slutskaya of Russia to claim the women's figure skating gold medal at the Turin Winter Olympics.
(AP, 2/23/07)
2006 Feb 24, Julia Mancuso won gold in the women's giant slalom at the Turin Olympics.
(AP, 2/24/07)
2006 Feb 25, Apolo Anton Ohno upset favored South Korean Ahn Hyun-soo to win the gold in the 500-meter short track speedskating event at the Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
(AP, 2/25/07)
2006 Feb 26, On the final day of the Turin Winter Olympics, Sweden beat Finland 3-2 to win the men's hockey gold. Germany led the gold medal count with 29. The US won 25 medals including 9 gold, Canada won 24, Austria 23 and Russia 22. Drew Lachey leaped to victory with professional partner Cheryl Burke on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." Shizuka Arakawa won a gold medal for Japan in figure skating.
(SFC, 2/27/06, p.A1)(SFC, 2/27/06, p.A1)(AP, 2/26/07)
2006 Mar 2, Tommaso Onofri, a 17-month-old epileptic boy, was kidnapped from his home in Casalbaroncolo, near Parma, Italy. His body was found April 1. He was killed by blows to the head with a shovel. Suspects Mario Alessi, a construction worker, and Salvatore Raimondi have been accusing each other of killing the child shortly after the kidnapping. A woman was accused of complicity in the kidnapping.
(AP, 3/7/06)(AP, 4/3/06)
2006 Mar 10, Prosecutors in Milan said they have requested that Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi be indicted on corruption charges.
(AP, 3/10/06)
2006 Mar 11, Premier Silvio Berlusconi denounced Italy's judiciary as a danger to democracy and promised changes to the system as he tries to hold on to the premiership in next month's election.
(AP, 3/11/06)
2006 Mar 14, In Italy 2 local trains collided head-on outside a station near Milan, killing at least two people.
(AP, 3/14/06)
2006 Mar 24, In Italy the film “Il caimano" (The Cayman), directed by Nanni Moretti, was released. It was loosely about PM Silvio Berlusconi, but not the anti-Berlusconi diatribe that had been expected.
(Econ, 4/1/06, p.42)
2006 Mar 27, PM Silvio Berlusconi said on radio that he does not want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country, drawing plaudits from a right-wing ally and criticism from center-left opponents.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Apr 9-2006 Apr 10, Italy held parliamentary elections. Conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi faced a strong challenge from his center-left opponent Romano Prodi in a bitter campaign marked by disenchantment over Italy's stagnant economy.
(AP, 4/9/06)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.28)
2006 Apr 11, Center-left challenger Romano Prodi claimed an outright electoral victory over Premier Silvio Berlusconi before official results were in, but the slim margin could return Italy to political paralysis and instability.
(AP, 4/11/06)
2006 Apr 11, Bernardo Provenzano (73), Italy's reputed No. 1 Mafia boss, was arrested at a farmhouse in Sicily after frustrating investigators' efforts to catch him during more than 40 years on the run.
(AP, 4/11/06)(SFC, 4/12/06, p.A7)
2006 Apr 12, Italian police arrested three people suspected of aiding Italy's No. 1 fugitive and reputed Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, who was captured a day earlier.
(AP, 4/12/06)
2006 Apr 13, Dame Muriel Spark (b.1918) died in Tuscany, Italy. Her spare and humorous novels made her one of the most admired British writers of the post World War II years. Her work of 23 novels, included the autobiographical "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1961), which was later adapted for a Broadway hit (1966) and a movie.
(AP, 4/15/06)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.83)
2006 Apr 19, A top Italian court confirmed the slim electoral victory of center-left economist Romano Prodi over Premier Silvio Berlusconi, according to Italian television.
(AP, 4/19/06)
2006 Apr 22, Alida Valli (84), Italian movie star, died in Rome. She appeared in over 100 films that included “The Third Man" (1949).
(SFC, 4/27/06, p.B7)
2006 May 2, PM Silvio Berlusconi, the longest-serving leader in postwar Italy, resigned to make way for a center-left government led by Romano Prodi.
(AP, 5/2/06)
2006 May 5, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed two Italian soldiers and wounded four as they were traveling to help Afghan police hurt in an attack near Kabul.
(AP, 5/5/06)
2006 May 10, The Italian Parliament elected Giorgio Napolitano (80), a former Communist, to be president, paving the way for a government headed by center-left leader Romano Prodi to be formed within days.
(AP, 5/10/06)
2006 May 12, Spain's Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) agreed to the French bank BNP Paribas' purchase of its 14.75-percent stake in Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), saying it will reap 567 million euros (731 million dollars) in capital gains from the sale.
(AP, 5/13/06)
2006 May 16, Italy’s top sporting body put the national football federation under emergency rule as prosecutors looked into a match-fixing scandal involving the Juventus team of Turin in 19 games in the 2004-05 season.
(Econ, 5/20/06, p.53)
2006 May 17, Romano Prodi became prime minister of Italy, forming the country's 61st postwar government more than a month after his center-left coalition narrowly won parliamentary elections.
(AP, 5/17/06)
2006 May 21, Local authorities said boats carrying more than 400 migrants have been intercepted off Lampedusa over the past 48 hours, overwhelming the tiny island south of Sicily.
(AP, 5/21/06)
2006 May 23, Italy's new deputy economics minister called the nation's economic situation "a disaster," saying the deficit in 2006 may exceed 4.5 percent of gross domestic product.
(AP, 5/23/06)
2006 May 26, Italy said it will pull 1,100 of its troops from Iraq in June, giving its first specific numbers about the planned withdrawal.
(AP, 5/26/06)
2006 May 26, In Naples, Italy, the body of a man was found in a manhole with a knife in his abdomen. He was soon identified as Lewis Brooks Miskell (49), a Canadian diplomat missing since March.
(AP, 5/29/06)
2006 Jun 10, In Calabria, Italy, killers shot a farmer who had filed complaints against people who had put a squeeze on him. Calabria’s ‘ndrangheta, a homebred Mafia, would often present bullets by post to intended targets.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.71)
2006 Jun 20, Italian police arrested at least 45 people in an anti-Mafia crackdown in Sicily, including top bosses who had allegedly been in touch with Bernardo Provenzano, the reputed No. 1 boss picked up earlier this year.
(AP, 6/20/06)
2006 Jun 25, Italians voted in a constitutional referendum on whether to give regions more clout and shift power to the premier to encourage more stability in a country that has had 61 governments since World War II.
(AP, 6/24/06)
2006 Jun 26, Near-final returns showed Italians soundly rejected massive changes to the country's postwar constitution that proponents had argued would increase political stability and modernize the country.
(AP, 6/26/06)
2006 Jun 27, Italy's ruling coalition agreed to withdraw as many as 400 soldiers from Afghanistan, dealing another blow to US-led military efforts overseas.
(AP, 6/27/06)
2006 Jun 28, Italy's center-left government won a confidence vote, a motion it had called itself in a political maneuver to gain more time to implement a package of reforms.
(AP, 6/28/06)
2006 Jun 30, Pierluigi Bersani, Italian minister for economic development, rushed a decree through cabinet abolishing some of the more abstruse regulations in the services industry that throttled economic activity. This sparked wildcat protests by taxi drivers. The taxi strikes ended July 17 following concessions from the government.
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.59)(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.G2)
2006 Jul 5, Italian prosecutors said they had arrested two Italian intelligence officers and were seeking four more Americans as part of an investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 7, Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was ordered to stand trial following an investigation into the sale of television rights at Mediaset SpA.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 9, Italy beat France 5-3 in a shootout following a 1-1 tie in the World Cup final. Zinedine Zidane, captain of the French team, was sent off for head-butting an Italian player.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.49)
2006 Jul 11, In Italy Piaggio & C. SpA, the maker of the iconic Vespa scooter, defied weak market conditions that have derailed other planned public offerings recently to see its shares surge above the IPO price in their debut in Milan.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 18, Authorities freed about 100 Poles forced into virtual slavery as Italian and Polish police arrested 25 people involved in a human trafficking ring that brought farm workers to Italy.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 25, Italian carmaker Fiat Group and India's Tata Motors Ltd. announced they have signed an agreement for a joint-venture in India to make passenger vehicles, engines and transmissions for Indian and overseas markets.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Aug 10-2006 Aug 11, Italian police raided Internet cafes, money-transfer offices and long-distance phone call centers catering to Muslims and arrested 40 people in a crackdown linked to Britain's announcement it had thwarted an alleged terror plot.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 12, In northern Italy the stabbed body of Hina Saleem (21) was found in the garden of the family home at Sarezzo. She was killed by her father because she refused to conform to an Islamic lifestyle. News reports said the family had been insisting on an arranged marriage with a cousin in Pakistan. The father and three other men, including her uncle, were charged with premeditated murder and hiding the body.
(AP, 9/7/06)(http://tinyurl.com/rfr4z)
2006 Aug 18, At least 10 people died and as many as 40 were feared missing when a small boat packed with illegal immigrants sank off Sicily, prompting Italy to call for greater cooperation to fight human trafficking.
(Reuters, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Ten bodies were found and about 20 other people were believed missing after a 2nd boat in 2 days carrying would-be immigrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 70 survivors were plucked from the water after the boat sank, several of whom said there had been 120 people on the boat.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 28, Italy approved 2,500 troops in a boost to an expanded international force in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Sep 2, Italian soldiers poured into Lebanon, part of the first large contingent of international troops dispatched to boost the UN force keeping the peace between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, A small boat of African migrants from Eritrea was intercepted off the coast of Sicily. They said eight people died during their grueling trip. They had left from Libya 10-12 days earlier.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 9, Italy's PM Romano Prodi said Syria has agreed "in principle" to a European Union presence on its border to help stem the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 10, The Chinese film “Still Life" won the top award as the 11-day Venice Film Festival came to a close. The Chinese film was about the Three Gorges Dam project.
(SFC, 9/11/06, p.D5)
2006 Sep 15, Oriana Fallaci (76), the Italian writer and journalist best known for her abrasive interviews and provocative stances, died overnight in Florence.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 19, Police in southern Italy arrested scores of people in an overnight crackdown on organized crime, including on clans that had a grip on the local tourist industry.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 21, Italy formally handed over security responsibility of the southern Dhi Qar province to Iraqi forces, the second of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over to local control. 2 people were killed and another nine were wounded when a car bomb exploded near an electricity company office in Baghdad. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit a record-high 6,599.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Oct 2, Italian police said they had smashed an Algerian Islamic fundamentalist cell that gave logistical support to suspected militants in Algeria.
(Reuters, 10/2/06)
2006 Oct 3, A Turkish Airlines plane carrying 113 people from Albania to Istanbul landed in Italy where a Turkish man surrendered and released all the passengers unharmed. The Turkish army deserter who hijacked the airliner sought asylum because he fears persecution in his Muslim homeland after his conversion to Christianity and wanted Pope Benedict XVI's protection.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/3/07)
2006 Oct 12, In Italy the government of Romano Prodi approved a bill to erode the near-monopoly over private television exercised by Silvio Berlusconi, who controls 3 of the country’s 4 main private channels.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.61)
2006 Oct 12, Gillo Pontecorvo (b.1919), Italian filmmaker, died in Rome at age 86. He directed the black-and-white classic "The Battle of Algiers" (1966).
(AP, 10/13/06)
2006 Oct 12, Carlo Acutis (15), Italian computer whiz, died of leukemia. Acutis had created a website to catalog miracles and took care of websites for some local Catholic organizations. In 2020 he was moved a step closer to possible sainthood with his beatification in the town of Assisi, where he is buried.
(AP, 10/10/20)
2006 Oct 13, Italy’s Economy Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa said tax evasion is a "disease which exists in all countries, but in Italy it is an epidemic." The next day 2005 data on tax returns by the self-employed, among whom evasion is considered particularly rife, made front page news in most of newspapers.
(AP, 10/14/06)
2006 Oct 14, Two Italian tourists, freed in Libya after being kidnapped in August in Niger, denounced their captors as bandits and said they were mistreated during their ordeal.
(AP, 10/14/06)
2006 Oct 17, The Italian bank Sanpaolo won a five-way race for control of Bank of Alexandria, the first Egyptian bank to be privatized in a selloff worth 1.6 billion dollars.
(AFP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, In Italy a subway train rammed into another train halted at the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II station in central Rome, killing at least one person and injuring 236.
(AP, 10/17/06)(WSJ, 10/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 19, Italian police arrested 12 alleged members of a Mafia clan accused of drug trafficking and running an extortion ring that terrorized businesses in the Sicilian town of Messina.
(AP, 10/19/06)
2006 Oct 26, The Slow Food movement, founded in 1989, sponsored Terra Madre in Turin, Italy. The 5-day event brought together representatives of food communities that produced good, clean and fair food in a responsible and sustainable way.
(www.terramadre2006.org/terramadre/welcome_eng.lasso)
2006 Oct 30, An Italian court ordered former Premier Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial on charges of corruption along with David Mills, the estranged husband of Britain's culture minister.
(AP, 10/30/06)
2006 Oct 31, Italy said it would beef up security in Naples by adding 1,000 patrol officers and surveillance cameras amid an upsurge of slayings around a city already known for street violence and organized crime.
(AP, 10/31/06)
2006 Nov 4, Swathes of Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands and went dark for up to an hour in the late evening as cold Germans rushing to switch on heaters sucked up electricity from Europe's interconnected networks.
(AP, 11/5/06)
2006 Nov 6, In Italy a Milan court sentenced Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, the accused mastermind of the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid, to 10 years in jail for membership of a terrorist organization. A second Egyptian, Yahya Mawad Mohamed Rajeh, was sentenced to five years in jail in the case.
(AFP, 11/6/06)(WSJ, 11/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Nov 8, In Italy gunmen in the Naples area used a stolen ambulance in the drive-by killing of a fellow mob member. At least 9 murders over the last two weeks in the city have prompted calls for tough measures.
(AP, 11/8/06)
2006 Nov 9, Police arrested 50 people across central Italy to break up an organization that allegedly transported cocaine and heroin from Africa to Europe using couriers who swallowed drug-filled pellets.
(AP, 11/10/06)
2006 Nov 10, Italian police said they arrested 13 people, including a judge accused of ties with the Mafia, as part of a crackdown on organized crime in southern Italy.
(AP, 11/10/06)
2006 Nov 11, In Italy police arrested 3 more thieves plaguing the railways for weeks by stealing copper electrical conductors from the tracks. Among the 22 suspects arrested since Oct 15 were 18 Romanians, three Italians and the one man from Mali.
(AP, 11/13/06)
2006 Nov 15, A court in Palermo, Sicily, convicted 46 deputies, confidants and helpers of jailed Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, many of whom helped the former fugitive evade capture, and sentenced them to terms of up to 18 years in prison.
(AP, 11/16/06)
2006 Nov 16, Spain, France and Italy unveiled a five-point Middle East peace initiative, calling Israeli-Palestinian violence intolerable and saying that Europe must take a lead role in ending the conflict.
(AP, 11/16/06)
2006 Nov 17, In Italy British musician Peter Gabriel (56) has been awarded "Man of Peace 2006" at the start of the annual summit of Nobel peace prize laureates organized by the Gorbachev Foundation and the City of Rome.
(AP, 11/17/06)
2006 Nov 17, Italy turned over Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed (35) an Egyptian Muslim militant convicted of terrorism to Spain, where he is charged as a key suspect in the 2004 Madrid terror bombing.
(AP, 11/17/06)
2006 Nov 18, Italian Premier Romano Prodi won a key confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies on the center-left government's planned 2007 budget, which included heavily protested tax increases and spending cuts.
(AP, 11/18/06)
2006 Nov 20, Italian Premier Romano Prodi’s center-left government got rid of the heads of its 3 intelligence chiefs: military service (SISMI), civil agency (SISDI) and the coordinating body CESIS.
(Econ, 11/25/06, p.48)
2006 Nov 22, Authorities in Italy, Spain, the United States and several South American countries arrested 76 people as part of a major drug crackdown in which a restaurant linked to one of Colombia's most feared warlords was seized.
(AP, 11/22/06)
2006 Nov 27, Italian Premier Romano Prodi said the last of Italy's soldiers in Iraq, some 60-70 troops, will return home this week, ending the Italian contingent's presence in the south of the country after more than three years.
(AP, 11/27/06)
2006 Dec 2, In Rome some 700,000 supporters of Silvio Berlusconi demonstrated against the government’s planned tax increases. Pier Ferdinando Casini’s Union of Christian Democrats (UDC) held its own rally in Palermo.
(Econ, 12/9/06, p.56)
2006 Dec 5, An Italian prosecutor asked for the indictment of 26 Americans and Italian secret service officials on a charge of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
(AP, 12/5/06)
2006 Dec 10, Tenor Roberto Alagna walked out of a performance of Verdi's "Aida" at Italy's famed La Scala opera house when the audience booed his rendition of the aria "Celeste Aida."
(AP, 12/10/07)
2006 Dec 16, An Italian judge rejected a paralyzed man's request to be removed from a respirator, ruling that the law does not permit the denial of lifesaving care and urging lawmakers to confront the issue. Piergiorgio Welby (60) died Dec 20 after he was taken off his respirator.
(AP, 12/16/06)(AP, 12/21/06)
2006 Dec 20, In Calabria, Italy, ‘ndrangheta, the Mafia ruling the region, broke into the workshop of the Cooperativa Valle del Marro, the 1st firm in the region to have established a legitimate business using assets once owned by the Mafia.
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.64)
2006 Dec 22, The Roman Catholic Church denied a religious funeral for Piergiogio Welby, the paralyzed Italian author who died after a doctor disconnected his respirator, saying it would treat his public wish to "end his life" as a willful suicide.
(AP, 12/22/06)
2006 Dec 24, Mario Scaramella, who met with an ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London the day the Russian fell ill from radiation poisoning, was arrested in Naples after returning from London. Rome prosecutors have accused him of arms trafficking and slander.
(AP, 12/24/06)
2006 Dec 28, Italy’s PM Romano Prodi vowed to deliver "shock therapy" to spur growth in Italy after years of a sluggish economy, outlining an ambitious 2007 agenda he hopes will reverse his decline in popularity.
(AP, 12/28/06)
2006 Roberto Saviano (b.1979) authored “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System." In 2014 it was turned into a television series in Italy. It premiered in the US in 2016.
(Econ, 1/12/08, p.76)(Econ, 8/27/16, p.50)
2006 Alexander Stille authored “The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi."
(SFC, 6/15/06, p.D7)
2006 Italy ranked 45th in the Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
(Econ, 2/10/07, p.52)
2006 In Italy the tax collection agency, Equitalia, was formed to take over tax collection operations previously carried out by reluctant banks and their subsidiaries.
(Econ, 1/7/12, p.45)
2006 Italy was taken over by Spain in GDP per head. This was made public in late 2007.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.44)
2006 Francois Pinault (b.1936), French billionaire, obtained the ownership of Palazzo Grassi in Venice to display his art collection.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Pinault)
2007 Jan 13, An Italian military tribunal gave life sentences in absentia to 10 German former SS men for massacring about 800 Italian villagers in 1944. They had laid waste to the villages of Marzabotto, Grizzana and Vado di Monzuno near Bologna, as the Germans retreated before Allied troops.
(Reuters, 1/14/07)
2007 Feb 7, An Italian judge ordered a U.S. soldier to stand trial in absentia for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad on March 4, 2005.
(AP, 2/7/07)
2007 Feb 8, In Cape Verde 3 Italian women, aged 17-33, were brutally attacked while vacationing, dragged into the woods, pelted with stones and left for dead at the bottom of a hole. One woman survived. 3 local men were arrested.
(AP, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 12, Police conducted raids across northern Italy, breaking up a leftist militant group that was allegedly planning kidnappings or kneecappings of victims to finance its plots. The group traced back to the Red Brigades. Police said they arrested 15 suspects accused of belonging to the Politico-military Communist Party (PCPM) in Milan, Turin, Padua and other northern Italian cities. Police in 7 locations across Italy arrested 17 men, including four alleged arms traffickers: Massimo Bettinotti (39), Gianluca Squarzolo (39), Ermete Moretti (55), and Serafino Rossi (64). A 5th member, Vittorio Dordi, was believed to be in Congo, apparently involved in the diamond trade. The luggage of Squarzolo had yielded the original clue to the arms deal. They were involved in a $64 million deal negotiated with Libyan officials for some 500,000 Chinese-made assault rifles. Iraqi and Italian partners had haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into Iraq.
(AP, 2/12/07)(Econ, 2/17/07, p.54)(AP, 8/13/07)(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)(AP, 4/12/08)
2007 Feb 16, An Italian judge indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect on a Milan street in what would be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The proceedings were later suspended pending a ruling on the Italian government's request to throw out the indictments.
(AP, 2/16/07)(AP, 2/16/08)
2007 Feb 17, Some 70 thousand Italians under heavy police guard protested against the expansion of a US military base in Vicenza that has divided the center-left government.
(Reuters, 2/17/07)(Econ, 2/24/07, p.61)
2007 Feb 21, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi stepped down following an embarrassing parliamentary defeat of his government's proposed foreign policy program. His center-left government had been in power for just 9 months.
(AP, 2/22/07)(SFC, 2/22/07, p.A3)
2007 Feb 24, Italy's president asked Romano Prodi to stay on as premier and put his center-left government to a new vote of confidence in parliament.
(AP, 2/24/07)
2007 Feb 28, Italian Premier Romano Prodi kept his fractious center-left coalition together to win a confidence vote in the Senate, ensuring the immediate survival of his nine-month-old government.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Mar 2, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi won a confidence vote in the lower house of parliament, formally ending Italy's political crisis.
(AP, 3/2/07)
2007 Mar 6, Italian prosecutors cleared a physician who disconnected the respirator of a paralyzed man who had asked to die.
(AP, 3/6/07)
2007 Mar 10, In Italy thousands of supporters of legislation that would grant legal rights to unmarried couples including gays rallied in Rome to urge lawmakers to resist Vatican pressure against the measure.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2007 Mar 14, In Italy 5 former members of Argentina's military were convicted in absentia of murdering three Italians during the Argentina’s "dirty war" (1976-83).
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 14, Italy and Russia said they wanted talks between Moscow and the European Union on a new strategic partnership agreement to start as soon as possible.
(AP, 3/14/07)
2007 Mar 16, It was reported that Italy has banned schoolchildren from using mobile phones in class in an attempt to stop ringtones disrupting lessons and prevent pupils messing about with video cameras.
(Reuters, 3/16/07)
2007 Mar 18, Afghanistan's Taliban said it had handed an Italian journalist, whom it captured two weeks ago and threatened to kill, to tribal elders pending a final deal for his release.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, Officials said Cesare Battisti, a former Italian communist revolutionary who went into hiding in France two and a half years ago, was arrested in Brazil. In 1993 the former revolutionary was given a life sentence by an Italian court for his role in four murders committed in 1978 and 1979.
(AFP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 19, The Italian Foreign Ministry said Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a reporter for Italian daily La Repubblica kidnapped two weeks ago in Afghanistan, has been released.
(AP, 3/19/07)
2007 Mar 26, An Italian prosecutor demanded a five-year jail sentence for conservative former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is accused of bribing a judge.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 28, Jazz musician Tony Scott (85), a clarinetist, composer and arranger who worked with such greats as Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, died in Rome.
(AP, 4/1/07)
2007 Apr 17, In Rome a US soldier went on trial in absentia for the shooting death of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari at an Iraqi checkpoint in March 2005. However, a court later threw out the proceedings against Spc. Mario Lozano, saying Italy had no jurisdiction.
(AP, 4/17/08)
2007 Apr 22-2007 Apr 23, In Italy Marco Ahmetovic (22) killed the four teenage boys after driving his van onto a pavement while under the influence of alcohol. He was sentenced to 6-1/2 years detention, but was allowed to spend most of that time under house arrest in return for cooperating with the court.
(Reuters, 11/29/07)
2007 Apr 27, Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was cleared in a high-profile corruption case involving bribing judges.
(AP, 4/27/07)
2007 May 6, Italian news said a Vatican court for the first time has issued a drug conviction, giving a former employee of the Holy See a four-month suspended sentence for cocaine use.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 11, Austrian authorities said they have arrested 40 suspects and seized thousands of videos, CDs and DVDs as part of a yearlong crackdown on child pornography. Police in Italy made two arrests in connection with the investigation, which was code-named Operation Max. The server was located in St. Petersburg, Russia, and since has been shut down.
(AP, 5/11/07)
2007 May 12, In Italy thousands of people, including families with their children, poured into a Rome piazza to protest a government bill that would give legal rights to unmarried couples, including gays and lesbians.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 12, In Italy security officials from Europe's largest countries backed a plan to profile mosques on the continent and identify radical Islamic clerics who raise the threat of homegrown terrorism.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 14, Endemol, the brains behind reality television shows like "Big Brother", fell into the hands of a consortium led by Italy's Mediaset which is looking to branch out of the saturated Italian television market.
(AP, 5/14/07)
2007 May 25, A "garbage crisis" in Naples dominated news in Italy. For weeks local and national authorities have tried to end a stalemate over mountains of rubbish rotting on the streets for lack of adequate landfill sites.
(Reuters, 5/25/07)
2007 May 29, Andrew Speaker (31), a lawyer from Atlanta with a rare and dangerous form of tuberculosis, ignored doctors' advice and took two trans-Atlantic flights, leading to the first US government-ordered quarantine since 1963. Italian officials said they were tracing the movements of Speaker, who honeymooned in Rome for two days despite being told to turn himself in to health authorities.
(AP, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/30/07)(Reuters, 6/1/07)
2007 Jun 8, In Italy the first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened in the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terrorist suspect.
(AP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 9, President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI discussed the pontiff's deep worries that Christians in Iraq would not be embraced by the Muslim majority. Bush, denounced by anti-American protesters on the streets of Rome, defended his humanitarian record as he met with the Pope. Bush met with PM Prodi for the first time several hours after seeing the pope.
(AP, 6/9/07)(AP, 6/9/08)
2007 Jun 12, Authorities said Italian police have recovered an ancient Greek temple dug up in southern Italy by a construction crew who had dumped or looted the prized artifacts and begun to pour cement over the ruins.
(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Jun 17, In Italy Gianfranco Ferre (b.1944), known as the "architect of fashion," died in Milan. He was the top designer for Christian Dior from 1989-1996.
(SFC, 6/18/07, p.A2)(AP, 6/17/08)
2007 Jun 23, Italian energy company Eni SpA and Russia's state-controlled OAO Gazprom said they signed a memorandum of understanding on the possibility of supplying Russian gas to European Union countries through a pipeline under the Black Sea.
(AP, 6/23/07)
2007 Jun 26, Sizzling temperatures in Greece, Italy and Romania brought power cuts and brush fires in a heat wave that has led to at least 38 deaths in southeast Europe in recent days.
(AP, 6/26/07)
2007 Jun 28, It was reported that Italy’s PM Romano Prodi estimated that unpaid taxes, including income from the black market, were equal to 27% of Italy’s GDP. The public debt stood at 106% of GDP.
(WSJ, 6/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Jun, Italian officials broke up a terrorist ring with the arrest of four people, three in Milan and one in London, after examining financial records showing a steady transfer of funds from Tunisia allegedly used to recruit Islamic extremists and send them to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Jul 4, In Italy some 100,000 people in Turin celebrated the launch of the new Fiat 500 (Cinquecento), 50 years following the launch of the 1st Fiat 500.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.69)
2007 Jul 7, A global poll picked the Great Wall of China, Rome's Colosseum, India's Taj Mahal, Peru’s Macchu Picchu, Jordan’s Petra, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid as the new seven wonders of the world. The campaign to name the new wonders was launched in 1999 by the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber.
(AP, 7/8/07)
2007 Jul 18, Two boats carrying would-be migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe sank between Italy and Libya, leaving five people dead, including a child. Eleven others were missing and presumed dead. An Italian Navy ship pulled 22 survivors from the water.
(AP, 7/19/07)
2007 Jul 21, Italian police arrested three Moroccans, an imam and two of his aids, they accuse of being part of a militant cell that allegedly used a mosque in a central Italian city as a terror training camp.
(AP, 7/21/07)
2007 Jul 30, Michelangelo Antonioni (b.1912), film director, died (94). He was one of Italy's most influential post-war film directors whose portrayals of modern angst and alienation won him a cult following. His films included the Oscar-nominated "Blowup," "Zabriskie Point" and the internationally acclaimed "L'Avventura" (The Adventure).
(Reuters, 7/31/07)
2007 Aug 15, In Germany 6 Italian men were fatally shot in the head in the western city of Duisburg, an execution-style killing that Italy's interior minister said appeared to be a feud between two Italian organized crime clans. On March 12, 2009, Dutch police arrested Giovanni Strangio (30), an Italian man wanted for the killings in Duisburg.
(AP, 8/15/07)(AP, 3/13/09)
2007 Aug 29, The 11-day Venice Film Festival opened for its 75th anniversary edition.
(SFC, 8/30/07, p.E5)
2007 Aug 30, Hundreds of police raided a small town in southern Italy and arrested more than 30 suspected members of organized crime clans believed to be involved in a feud that killed six Italians in Germany earlier this month.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2007 Aug 30, The Rome-based Hands Off Cain, an anti-death penalty group, reported that more people were put to death in 2006, 5,628, than in either of the previous two years. China alone accounting for 5,000 executions.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2007 Aug, In Italy over a hundred people became ill in Castiglione di Cervia, near Ravenna, with a disease that was later identified as chikungunya, a tropical disease spread by the tiger mosquito. This was the first such outbreak in modern Europe.
(SSFC, 12/23/07, p.A22)
2007 Sep 6, Legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti (71), who brought opera to the masses with his powerful voice and jovial personality, died of pancreatic cancer in Modena.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 8, Taiwan-born Ang Lee's erotic spy thriller "Lust, Caution" won the Venice Film Festival's top award, two years after he captured the same prize here with "Brokeback Mountain."
(AP, 9/9/07)
2007 Sep 13, In Italy consumer groups held nationwide protests to draw attention to the burden placed on families by the rising cost of food, especially Italians' beloved staple, pasta.
(AP, 9/13/07)
2007 Sep 18, In Italy local authorities said Milan central railway station's notorious Platform 21, which witnessed the deportation of hundreds of Jews in 1943-45, will host the city's first Holocaust memorial. The museum will open in two years' time and occupy 6,000 square meters of the underground rail network.
(Reuters, 9/18/07)
2007 Sep 22, Afghan authorities said they had seized dozens of Iranian and Chinese-made weapons after a brief battle with Taliban fighters near the border with Iran. In northern Afghanistan NATO helicopters fired on a group of suspected insurgents in response to a rocket attack. Four Afghans died and 12 were wounded. 2 Italian soldiers and their two Afghan staff on a weekend patrol disappeared in western Afghanistan. In southern Zabul province the Taliban kidnapped three Afghan men accused of spying for the US and executed them.
(AP, 9/22/07)(AP, 9/23/07)
2007 Sep 24, In western Afghanistan Italian special forces rescued two captive Italian intelligence agents from a militant convoy, killing at least eight kidnappers. Both kidnapped Italians were wounded in the raid, but one died from his wounds in Rome on Oct 4. In southern Afghanistan a Canadian soldier was killed and four were wounded during a military operation.
(AP, 9/24/07)(Reuters, 9/25/07)(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Sep 29, In Italy PM Romano Prodi announced that the low-paid would get reduced property taxes and either an income tax break or a cash handout. He also mentioned a cut in the corporate tax rate from 33% to 27.5%.
(Econ, 10/6/07, p.59)
2007 Oct 14, In Italy projections showed Rome's mayor overwhelmingly winning a nationwide primary to become the leader of a new center-left party and the probable candidate for premier against conservative billionaire Silvio Berlusconi in the next general election.
(AP, 10/14/07)
2007 Oct 17, A man opened fire in a courtroom in northern Italy, seriously wounding his estranged wife and killing her brother before being shot to death by police.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 22, An Italian lobby group for small businesses said revenue from organized crime amounts to an estimated $127 billion annually, making it the largest segment of the economy.
(AP, 10/22/07)
2007 Oct 23, Police broke up an Italian-Canadian mafia clan that ran drug trafficking and money laundering operations, arresting 12 people and seizing millions of dollars in assets. The clan was led from Canada by Nick and Vito Rizzuto, a father and son, who were jailed for previous crimes respectively in 2006 and 2005.
(AP, 10/23/07)
2007 Oct 28, At least 15 migrants drowned in the waters off the Italian coast in two separate incidents, including the disintegration of a boat that spilled more than 100 passengers into rough seas.
(AP, 10/29/07)
2007 Oct 30, In Italy Giovanna Reggiani (47) was brutally attacked as she returned home in northern Rome. She died 2 days later. Nicolae Mailat, a Romanian Gypsy, admitted to snatching her bag but denied her murder. Her attack triggered a public outcry.
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.63)
2007 Nov 1, Italy's president signed a decree allowing the expulsion of EU citizens "for reasons of public safety" to fight "episodes of heavy violence and ferocious crime." This followed the Oct 30 attack on a 47-year-old woman as she walked along a road after dark toward barracks where she lived. She was beaten, dragged through mud and left half naked in a ditch. The woman died 2 days later. Police arrested Nicolae Mailat a Romanian in his 20s, who lives in a shack in one of several sprawling settlements on the outskirts of Rome.
(AP, 11/2/07)
2007 Nov 1, In Italy Meredith Kercher (21), a British university student, was killed [see Nov 2].
(AP, 12/5/09)
2007 Nov 2, Italy began deporting Romanians with criminal records in response to a streak of violent crime blamed on immigrants. In Rome up to 10 people wearing motorcycle helmets attacked a group of Romanians with knives, metal bars and sticks in the parking lot of a supermarket. Three Romanians were injured. As part of the crackdown, bulldozers in Rome for a second day knocked down shantytowns where thousands of foreigners lived without permits.
(AP, 11/3/07)
2007 Nov 2, In Italy Meredith Kercher (21), a British university student, was found dead with her throat slashed in the bedroom of a house in the central city of Perugia. A week later 3 suspects in the murder were remanded in custody by an Italian investigating magistrate. On Nov 19 police in Perugia identified a 4th suspect as Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast native. Guede was arrested in Germany the next day and DNA evidence confirmed that he had sex with Kercher the night she was stabbed. In 2009 roommate Amanda Knox, of Seattle, Wa., was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison. The court also convicted Knox's co-defendant and former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, and gave him a 25-year jail term for the murder. Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen, had already been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 11/2/07)(AFP, 11/10/07)(AP, 11/19/07)(AP, 11/22/07)(AP, 12/5/09)
2007 Nov 5, In Sicily Salvatore Lo Piccolo (65), who magistrates believe is the Sicilian Mafia's new "boss of bosses," was arrested after nearly a quarter of a century on the run. He was arrested with his son, Sandro (32), and two other Mafia bosses.
(Reuters, 11/5/07)
2007 Nov 6, Italian police said a Europe-wide sweep disrupted an Islamic cell that was recruiting potential suicide bombers for attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. They announced the arrests of 20 terror suspects, mostly Tunisians. Authorities in Britain, France and Portugal confirmed arrests.
(AP, 11/6/07)
2007 Nov 8, A US Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed in northern Italy, killing at least four people on board and injuring six. Two more soon died in a hospital.
(AP, 11/8/07)(AP, 11/9/07)
2007 Nov 11, In Italy a police officer accidentally shot and killed a soccer fan while trying to break up a fight by a Tuscan highway between supporters of rival teams. Enraged by the killing, hundreds of fans rioted in Rome, attacking a police station.
(AP, 11/12/07)
2007 Nov 14, NATO defense chiefs chose Italian Adm. Giampaolo Di Paola as head of the alliance's military committee.
(AP, 11/14/07)
2007 Nov 18, In Italy former Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced the creation of a new political party, saying the time felt right because his supporters had gathered so many signatures calling for the ouster of Premier Romano Prodi.
(AP, 11/19/07)
2007 Nov 29, A wildcat protest by cab drivers caused gridlock in downtown Rome, leaving Italians and tourists alike stranded at airports and train stations across the capital. Unions had been negotiating with Mayor Walter Veltroni over planned fare increases, but they walked away from the talks and called the sudden protest after authorities said they wanted to issue 500 new taxi licenses.
(AP, 11/29/07)
2007 Nov 30, In Italy a general transport strike by workers demanding more investment in the sector forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights and idled trains, ships and buses across the country.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007 Nov 30, Italian oil firm Eni and oil and gas exploration firm Burren Energy said they had agreed the terms of a takeover offer from Eni worth 1.74 billion pounds. Burren is an independent group quoted on the London stock exchange that runs oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Congo, Egypt and Yemen.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007 Dec 3, Daniele Emmanuello (43), the Mafia godfather of Gela, Sicily, was killed while trying to escape police. He was considered one of Italy's 30 most dangerous Mafia fugitives.
(AP, 12/3/07)(Econ, 12/8/07, p.62)
2007 Dec 4, In Italy Vincenzo Santapaola, a suspected Mafia boss, and scores of alleged mobsters were arrested during raids in Catania, Sicily. Police also seized weapons and drugs, and found a book that listed extortion fees and salaries of the people working for the family.
(AP, 12/4/07)
2007 Dec 11, Trucking unions cut short a meeting with the Italian transport ministry, ending hope that the chaos-causing strike disrupting traffic and petrol deliveries would end soon.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 12, It was reported that Italy's government has decided to appoint a special commissioner to try to curb price rises after inflation hit a three-and-a-half year peak in November, but economists see the move as little more than a publicity stunt. Italy's truck drivers agreed to call off a protest that has blocked highways and borders for three days, causing shortages of gasoline, medicine and perishable foods across Italy.
(Reuters, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 15, Italian authorities said they have captured, Edoardo Contini (52), a fugitive Naples crime boss who built one of the most dangerous cartels.
(AP, 12/15/07)
2007 Dec 18, An Italian team published the first full genetic sequence of a grape variety, pinot noir, in the Public Library of Science.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.137)
2007 Dec 23, In Afghanistan echoing pledges by the leaders of France and Australia, Italian PM Romano Prodi emphasized his county's long-term commitment in a meeting with President Hamid Karzai. Afghan intelligence agents detained a 50-year-old foreign woman carrying a suicide vest in eastern Afghanistan. A roadside explosion killed one policeman and wounded three others in Kunar province. Police clashed with Taliban militants in the Gelan district of central Ghazni province, killing a local insurgent leader and two of his bodyguards. Another booby-trapped body was discovered in Kandahar province.
(AP, 12/23/07)(AP, 12/24/07)
2007 Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella authored “La Casta" (The Caste), a dissection of the way tax revenue is frittered away by Italy’s political class. "The Caste: How Italian politicians have become untouchable," written by journalists from the leading daily Corriere della Sera, became best-seller soon after its publication.
(Econ, 8/25/07, p.48)(AFP, 10/12/07)
2007 In Italy Khalid Khamlich, an Islamic extremist, was convicted of terror ties. He was alleged to be part of a cell that planned attacks on the Milan subway and a cathedral. In 2010 he was expelled to his native Morocco.
(AP, 11/26/10)
2007 In Italy Oscar Farinetti set up the first Eataly food market in Turin. In 2013 his 21st store opened in Chicago.
(Econ, 11/30/13, p.62)
2007 Italian Oil company ENI SpA bought Burren Energy PLC, a small independent company that operates an oil field in Turkmenistan. ENI from that point on was denied entry visas by Turkmenistan, which was annoyed at not being consulted in the deal.
(WSJ, 4/23/08, p.B8)
2008 Jan 3, Crews in Naples, where the streets increasingly are lined with trash, began cleaning up a long disused dump in a bid to ease a mounting garbage crisis.
(AP, 1/3/08)
2008 Jan 7, Police in Naples clashed with protestors over a mafia-linked rubbish disposal crisis as the Italian government convened an emergency meeting to try and resolve the row.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 8, Some 60,000 tons of garbage were piled up in the streets of Naples.
(Econ, 1/12/08, p.44)
2008 Jan 16, Italian police arrested scores of suspected mobsters in Palermo in the latest raid on suspected Sicilian Mafia hideouts.
(AP, 1/16/08)
2008 Jan 18, A court in Palermo convicted Sicily's Gov. Salvatore Cuffaro of helping a Mafia boss and sentenced him to five years in prison.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 21, In Italy a key ally of Premier Romano Prodi pulled his party from the Cabinet amid a corruption scandal, sending the center-left governing coalition scrambling to keep the administration from falling.
(AP, 1/21/08)
2008 Jan 23, Italy’s Premier Romano Prodi won a confidence vote in parliament's lower house, but his chances for success in the upper house appeared to worsen as more allies defected amid growing pressure on the center-left leader to resign.
(AP, 1/23/08)
2008 Jan 24, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi resigned after the Senate voted 161-156 to sink his 20-month-old center-left coalition in a fiery session in which one senator was spat on, fainted and was carried out on a stretcher.
(AP, 1/25/08)
2008 Jan 31, The EU ordered Italy to clean up Naples within a month, or face legal action.
(AP, 1/31/08)
2008 Feb 3, In Italy Ernesto Illy (82), the longtime head of Italian coffee giant illycaffe SpA, died. A chemist and son of Francesco Illy, who founded the company in 1933, Ernesto traveled the world in search of the best blend of beans.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 6, Italy's Pres. Giorgio Napolitano dissolved parliament, clearing the way for early elections just two years after the last parliamentary vote. Premier Romano Prodi will continue as caretaker premier until the election.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 7, Authorities in Italy and the US conducted raids targeting dozens of alleged members of Mafia clans who controlled drug trafficking between the two sides of the Atlantic. A 169-page indictment in the US went back 3 decades and included at least 7 murders. The main targets in NY included 3 of the “five families" controlling organized crime in America: the Genovese, Bonanno and Gambino families.
(AP, 2/7/08)(Econ, 2/16/08, p.41)
2008 Feb 13, In Italy police raided sites in Calabria and issued arrest warrants for 57 people, including politicians, bankers and businessmen, in the latest mafia sweep targeting drug trafficking and extortion rackets.
(AP, 2/13/08)
2008 Feb 16, In Italy Michael Seifert (83), a former SS prison guard who was sentenced to life in prison in Italy for Nazi war crimes, was jailed near Naples, hours after he was extradited from Canada. Seifert, known as the "Beast of Bolzano," was convicted in absentia in 2000 by a military tribunal in Verona on nine counts of murder committed while he was an SS guard at a prison transit camp in Bolzano, northern Italy.
(AP, 2/16/08)
2008 Feb 18, Italian police captured Pasquale Condello (57), the top boss of a powerful organized crime syndicate. The Condello crime clan was one of the most ferocious 'ndrangheta families and Condello had received several life prison terms for four murders and other crimes.
(AP, 2/18/08)
2008 Feb 24, In Milan, Italy, masked thieves drilled a tunnel and broke into a jewelry showroom as employees were preparing for a VIP showing by Damiani, making off with gold, diamonds and rubies in a brazen daylight heist.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 27, Italian tax police busted a ring of auto-body shops involved in creating fake Ferraris using Pontiac Fieros.
(WSJ, 2/28/08, p.D5)
2008 Feb 29, Italy’s Eni SpA signed a major oil production agreement with Venezuela. Last month Eni said it had reached a compensation deal in which Venezuela agreed to a payment in excess of $700 million.
(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.A5)
2008 Mar 4, Italian police said they have seized 150 million euros of property and goods from feuding Calabrian mafia clans who are under investigation for the murder of six Italians outside a pizzeria in Germany last year.
(Reuters, 3/4/08)
2008 Mar 15, Thousands of Italians marched in an anti-mafia protest and called on all citizens to take a public stand against Italy's powerful crime syndicates.
(Reuters, 3/15/08)
2008 Mar 15, Alitalia, Italy’s state-owned national airline, accepted a takeover offer worth $217 made by air France-KLM, a French-Dutch airline group. The Italian government accepted the offer on March 17.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.73)
2008 Mar 22, Magdi Allam (55), Italy's most prominent Muslim, converted to Catholicism in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service. The iconoclastic writer has condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel.
(AP, 3/22/08)
2008 Mar 26, Italian officials held a crisis meeting after Japan and South Korea banned imports of mozzarella following the discovery of high dioxin levels in buffalo milk used to make the famed cheese.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Apr 3, Alitalia edged closer to bankruptcy protection after Air France-KLM abruptly broke off talks to buy the struggling national airline and Alitalia's chairman of seven months resigned in frustration.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2008 Apr 4, An executive for a prominent Tuscan wine producer said authorities confiscated some 600,000 bottles of his company's 2003 Brunello di Montalcino, alleging too many bottles were produced for it to be entirely authentic.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 7, Italian police arrested 38 suspects in a sweep against a clan of the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate accused of murder, extortion and arms and drug trafficking.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 12, Investigators in Turkey found the body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo (33), an Italian artist known as Pippa Bacca. She was last seen on March 31 hitchhiking in a wedding gown. Police detained a man suspected of killing her.
(AP, 4/12/08)
2008 Apr 13, Italians went to the polls in general elections likely to return conservative Silvio Berlusconi to the prime minister's office for a third time at the expense of new centre-left flagbearer Walter Veltroni.
(AFP, 4/13/08)
2008 Apr 14, In Italy exit polls put media mogul Silvio Berlusconi ahead in parliamentary election but suggested he was uncertain of winning the upper house majority he needs to steer the country through an economic downturn.
(AP, 4/14/08)
2008 Apr 15, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi (71) pledged to use his big election win to push through economic reforms, and vowed to close the border to illegal immigrants in a crackdown on criminals he called "the army of evil." He owed his majority in parliament to the support of the xenophobic Northern League, which won 8 percent of votes.
(Reuters, 4/15/08)
2008 Apr 17, In Italy Silvio Berlusconi returned to the world diplomatic stage by hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin at his villa in Sardinia. The event lost some of its luster when Putin was forced, before the glare of television cameras, to deny reports he had secretly divorced his wife and planned to marry an Olympic gymnast.
(Reuters, 4/18/08)
2008 Apr 22, Alitalia flew into the unknown after Air France-KLM withdrew its takeover offer, leaving Italy's long-struggling flagship airline with little choice but to contemplate bankruptcy or receivership. The outgoing center-left government allowed a loan of €300 million to Alitalia.
(AP, 4/22/08)(Econ, 4/26/08, p.68)
2008 Apr 28, Residents of Rome elected Gianni Alemanno, the Italian capital's first right-wing mayor since World War II. He took 53.6 percent of the vote to 46.3 percent for Francesco Rutelli, a former two-time center-left Rome mayor.
(AP, 4/29/08)(Econ, 5/3/08, p.61)
2008 May 1, Rescuers found the bodies of five French ski mountaineers who had been missing since the day before when they were swept away by an avalanche during an excursion on Punta Basei, a 10,000-foot peak in Italy's northwestern Alps.
(AP, 5/1/08)
2008 May 6, In Italy the data-protection authority ruled that releasing tax returns into cyberspace was illicit. Tax authorities had recently put all 38.5 million tax returns for 2005 up on the internet. A measure authorizing the released had been signed on March 5, but not enacted until the defeat of the Prodi government.
(Econ, 5/10/08, p.61)
2008 May 7, Conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi formed Italy's 62nd postwar government for his third stint as premier.
(AP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 13, Italy's new PM Silvio Berlusconi adopted a conciliatory tone with a pledge to reach out to the left-wing opposition and to turn the country around economically.
(AP, 5/13/08)
2008 May 15, Italian police announced the arrest of hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants in a sign of the new right-wing government's determination to clamp down. Police had arrested 383 people sing May 7.
(AP, 5/15/08)(WSJ, 5/16/08, p.A8)
2008 May 18, In Italy residents of Naples, fed up with the stench from months of uncollected rubbish, used the waste to barricade streets in protest at the long-running crisis.
(AP, 5/18/08)
2008 May 20, The European Parliament censured Italy for its treatment of Gypsies.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.71)
2008 May 21, Premier Silvio Berlusconi moved his Cabinet meeting to Naples, vowing to clean the city's streets of the garbage that has piled up for months and become a stinking symbol of government inadequacy.
(AP, 5/21/08)
2008 May 23, Frank Phel (74), an American tourist, was hit and killed by a train at a Rome station as he was walking on the tracks in a daze after being drugged and robbed. The suspected robber was arrested the next day.
(AP, 5/26/08)
2008 May 25, The French film “The Class" (Entre les Murs) won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah," a study of the criminal underworld in Naples, won the grand prize. Paolo Sorrentino’s “Il Divo," a portrait of former Premier Giulio Andreotti, won the jury award.
(SFC, 5/26/08, p.F5)
2008 May 26, In Italy police arrested 49 suspected mobsters in raids on the Naples-based Camorra mob, the equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia for the Naples area.
(AP, 5/26/08)
2008 May 30, Italy declared a state of emergency in the north of the country after flooding and mudslides left at least three people dead in heavy rains that also hit Belgium, Britain, France and Germany.
(AFP, 5/30/08)
2008 Jun 5, In Italy a 3-day UN summit aimed at fighting hunger worldwide ended with pledges to boost food output, calls to cut trade barriers and more research on biofuels. Just before the meeting Saudi Arabia announced a donation of $500 million.
(WSJ, 6/6/08, p.A10)(Econ, 6/7/08, p.70)
2008 Jun 13, An Italian woman (47), whose family kept her locked in a room for almost two decades, was freed by police. She had been accused of becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
(AP, 6/14/08)
2008 Jun 18, Italian police arrested 33 Sri Lankan Tamils charged with belonging to the outlawed Tamil Tigers group fighting a separatist insurgency against the government in Colombo. In addition to being charged with membership of a proscribed organization, the 33 were also accused of having helped finance the Tamil Tigers through remittances.
(AFP, 6/18/08)
2008 Jun 26, Unicredit, Italy's biggest bank by capitalization, said it would cut 9,000 jobs in western Europe and invest in central and eastern Europe to boost profits following massive acquisitions.
(AP, 6/26/08)
2008 Jul 2, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi pledged to end the garbage crisis in Naples and the surrounding area by the end of July.
(AP, 7/2/08)
2008 Jul 3, It was reported that Italian authorities have started fingerprinting tens of thousands of Gypsies living in nomad camps across the country, brushing aside accusations of racism by human rights advocates and international organizations. The Interior Ministry said prints will only be taken from people who do not have a valid Italian or EU document.
(AP, 7/3/08)
2008 Jul 7, In Italy transport workers went on strike, forcing the cancellation of thousands of bus, tram and subway lines and snarling traffic across the country.
(AP, 7/7/08)
2008 Jul 9, In Italy police in Naples arrested 44 suspected mobsters in a crackdown on drug trafficking. The latest raids led to the confiscation of apartments, cars, motorcycles, farmland and companies worth nearly $480 million.
(AP, 7/9/08)
2008 Jul 10, The European Parliament called the fingerprinting of Gypsies in Italy a clear act of racial discrimination and urged the authorities to stop it.
(AP, 7/10/08)
2008 Jul 14, Police in the Adriatic city of Pescara arrested Otttaviano Del Turco, the governor of Italy's Abruzzo region, in a health care corruption investigation. Prosecutors said at least 35 people are being investigated.
(AP, 7/14/08)(Econ, 7/19/08, p.60)
2008 Jul 15, In Italy a judge in Venice indicted Saber Fadhil Hussein for plotting a terrorist attack on US bases in Iraq using ultra-light aircraft.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.A9)
2008 Jul 16, An Italian parliamentary panel gave initial approval to a plan to fingerprint everyone in the country, a move that could defuse criticism over a mandatory program to fingerprint Gypsies.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Aug 4, Italy’s Defense Ministry deployed some 3,000 soldiers in cities across the country as part of government measures to fight street crime. The government said they will stay on the streets for at least 6 months.
(AP, 8/4/08)(Econ, 8/9/08, p.49)
2008 Aug 23, In Italy a gang of men badly beat a Dutch couple and raped the woman while they camped in an isolated field outside Rome during a cycling tour of Europe. The attackers also stole some US$2,200. Two Romanian men were soon arrested.
(AP, 8/23/08)(Reuters, 8/25/08)
2008 Aug 30, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi met in Libya to sign a "friendship pact." Italy agreed to pay Libya US$5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country, which ended in 1943. A provision stated that the parties commit themselves "not to resort to threatening or using violence."
(Reuters, 8/30/08)(AP, 8/31/08)(AP, 2/27/11)
2008 Sep 5, Mila Schoen (b.1916), an Italian designer of elegant, impeccably tailored clothes, died at her villa in northern Italy.
(AP, 9/5/08)
2008 Sep 7, Italy's foreign minister, after meeting US Vice President Dick Cheney, said the EU wants to work closely with the United States in resolving the Georgian crisis.
(AP, 9/7/08)
2008 Sep 9, An Italian study showed a new way to test for cervical cancer is more accurate than a pap smear and identified more dangerous lesions.
(Reuters, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 18, In Italy 6 immigrants from Ghana, Togo and Liberia were slain by automatic gunfire as they stood outside a store that sold ethnic goods in Castel Volturno, a town north of Naples.
(AP, 9/20/08)
2008 Sep 19, In Italy hundreds of African immigrants took their anger over the alleged mafia killing of six Africans to the streets, hurling rocks and smashing windows in Castel Volturno.
(AP, 9/20/08)
2008 Sep 19, Alitalia cancelled flights and regulators said they might soon ground the troubled flag-carrier as it hurtles toward bankruptcy after the failure of another rescue plan.
(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Sep 30, Italian police arrested scores of suspected mobsters, including three top fugitives believed linked to the gangland-style slaying of six African immigrants near Naples.
(AP, 9/30/08)
2008 Oct 4, The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy began meeting in Paris at a summit on the world financial crisis threatening banks, growth and jobs across the continent. They vowed to do all they could to prevent Wall Street's turmoil from destabilizing their banking systems. Germany's No. 2 commercial property lender, Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, said its $48 billion rescue plan had unraveled when private banks pulled out.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 11, Italian security forces including army paratroops arrested seven members of the Camorra mafia believed linked to the killing of African immigrants near Naples last month.
(AFP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 12, Pope Benedict XVI gave the Roman Catholic church four new saints, including an Indian woman whose canonization is seen as a morale boost to Christians in India who have suffered Hindu violence. They included Sister Alphonsa (1910-1946) of the Immaculate Conception, a nun from southern India and India’s first woman saint; Gaetano Errico (1791-1860), a Neapolitan priest who founded a missionary order in the 19th century; Sister Maria Bernarda, born as Verena Buetler (1848-1924) in Switzerland, who worked as a nun in Ecuador and Colombia; and Narcisa de Jesus Martillo Moran (1832-1869), a 19th century laywoman from Ecuador who helped the sick and the poor.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2008 Oct 13, Italian police arrested five people in the Calabria region, including the mayor of Rosarno, for suspected ties to the local mob.
(AP, 10/13/08)
2008 Oct 16, Italian police arrested Antonio Pelle (46), an alleged fugitive mobster, believed to be the head of an organized crime clan involved in the slaying of six people in Germany last year. His family was involved in a feud that led to the Aug. 15, 2007 killing of six Italians outside a restaurant in Duisburg, Germany.
(AP, 10/16/08)
2008 Oct 21, Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of a June 1944 massacre. The next day Germany rejected the ruling by Italy's top criminal court.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 23, An Italian military helicopter crashed in northeastern France, killing all eight people on board.
(AP, 10/23/08)
2008 Nov 1, Three Tunisian men accused of terrorism links by Italian prosecutors arrived in Milan under heavy security after being extradited from Britain. Habib Ignaoua, Mohamed Khemiri and Ali Chehidi were arrested in the London and Manchester areas last year as part of coordinated raids across Europe against an alleged Italian-based network recruiting fighters for Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AP, 11/2/08)
2008 Nov 4, Italian police arrested 47 people including the wife of a jailed mafia boss in raids on a Naples-based organized crime syndicate. They also seized bank accounts and assets worth about 80 million euros ($102 million) in the raids.
(AP, 11/4/08)
2008 Nov 6, In Italy Domenico Magnoli (27), an alleged mobster, woke up in a private Italian clinic following liposuction surgery, and was arrested for trafficking in cocaine. Police alleged that Magnoli, born in Cannes, France, has links to the Piromalli crime clan in the 'ndrangheta syndicate.
(AP, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 10, Italian railway and mass transit workers staged a strike creating chaos for commuters. A wildcat protest by some of Alitalia’s staff forced the national airline to scrap dozens of flights.
(SFC, 11/11/08, p.A3)
2008 Nov 10, Miriam Makeba (b.1932), the South African folk singer and anti-apartheid activist fondly known as "Mama Africa," died in southern Italy after performing at a concert against organized crime.
(AP, 11/10/08)(SFC, 11/11/08, p.B5)
2008 Nov 18, Italian authorities in Sicily seized assets worth euro700 million ($885 million) from Giuseppe Grigoli, a supermarket chain owner, suspected of letting the Mafia use his businesses to launder money.
(AP, 11/18/08)
2008 Dec 1, In Italy the worst flooding in Venice in more than 20 years forced residents and tourists to wade through knee-high water.
(AP, 12/1/08)
2008 Dec 6, In Denmark "Gomorra," a movie by Italian director Matteo Garrone about Naples' criminal underworld, won the best film prize at the 21st annual European Film Awards.
(AP, 12/6/08)
2008 Dec 10, In Italy a bumper harvest was expected to push wine production above that of neighboring France for the first time in a decade, making Italy the world's largest wine producer.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 13, Alex Bellini, an Italian adventurer, was rescued a mere 65 nautical miles short of his goal, Australia, after rough weather sapped him of his final shreds of energy. He had spent 10 months rowing more than 9,500 nautical miles (18,000 kilometers) across the Pacific.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 16, Italian police backed by helicopters arrested almost 90 suspected mobsters and thwarted a plan by the hobbled Sicilian Mafia to reconstitute itself and form a new ruling commission to set strategy. Gaetano Lo Presti (52), the alleged Mafia boss of a Palermo neighborhood, hanged himself in jail, hours after he was arrested in a blitz against Cosa Nostra.
(AP, 12/16/08)(AP, 12/17/08)
2008 Dec 16, In Italy Fiat Group SpA for the first time shut down most of its Italian plants for a month, laying off nearly 50,000 workers for an extended holiday as it copes with the precipitous drop in demand for new cars.
(AP, 12/16/08)
2008 Dec 18, In Italy Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi was sentenced to 10 years in prison over a 14-billion-euro fraud scandal that led to one of Europe's largest corporate bankruptcies.
(AFP, 12/18/08)
2008 Dec 30, Paul Hofmann (96), Austria-born writer, died in Rome. During WWII he informed on his Nazi commanders in occupied Rome and later became a New York Times correspondent. Hofmann authored over a dozen books, including "That Fine Italian Hand," "The Seasons of Rome: A Journal" and "O Vatican! A Slightly Wicked View of the Holy See."
(AP, 1/1/09)
2008 Dec 31, The Vatican announced that it will no longer automatically adopt new Italian laws as its own, citing the vast number of laws Italy churns out, many of which are in odds with Catholic doctrine.
(AP, 12/31/08)
2008 Dec, Italy’s public debt, the world’s 3rd biggest, was the equivalent of 104% of GDP.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.61)
2008 Christopher Duggan authored “The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796."
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.89)
2008 The US signed weapons agreements this year valued a $37.8 billion, or 68.4% of all business in the global arms bazaar, up from $25.4 billion in 2007. Italy was 2nd with $3.7 billion and Russia 3rd with $3.5 billion.
(SFC, 9/7/09, p.A3)
2009 Jan 7, Freezing temperatures and exceptional snowfall caused travel delays across Europe and were blamed for at least 12 deaths, including that of a man in Milan who was crushed when a canopy collapsed under the weight of snow.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 12, Alitalia's board accepted Air France-KLM's offer to buy 25 percent of the company and become its international partner.
(AP, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 14, Italian police arrested Giovanni Setola, a top Mafia fugitive, who had eluded capture earlier this week by climbing through a trap door and into a sewer below his hideout.
(AP, 1/14/09)
2009 Jan 14, In Brazil Cesare Battisti (54), a leftist fugitive who wrote police thrillers while evading a life sentence for two political murders, was granted refugee status in Brazil and an official said he could go free this week. Italy's government protested the decision. Battisti escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 while awaiting trial on four counts of murder allegedly committed when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism. He fled to France and reinvented himself as a mystery writer. Battisti has repeatedly insisted on his innocence. On March 5, 2010, he was sentenced to two years in prison for passport fraud.
(AP, 1/14/09)(AFP, 3/6/10)
2009 Jan 19, An Atheist Bus Campaign's message, translated into Catalan, began appearing on two routes in Barcelona, with plans to extend the campaign to the rest of the country. A campaign with the concise message "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life," took to the road in Britain this month. In Italy buses with the slogan "The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that we do not need him" will begin traversing the northern Italian city of Genoa on February 4.
(AFP, 1/24/09)
2009 Jan 20, Chrysler and Italy’s Fiat confirmed they had reached an agreement on an alliance that would give Fiat a 35% stake in Chrysler, but only if Chrysler gets $3 billion more in financial help from Washington.
(WSJ, 1/21/09, p.B1)
2009 Jan 24, In Italy some 600 migrants and refugees broke out of an overcrowded immigration facility on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to protest their treatment. The migrants returned to the facility after several hours.
(AP, 1/24/09)
2009 Feb 1, In Italy an Indian (35) was attacked while sleeping on a bench in Nettuno, a town 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Rome. 3 young men were arrested for allegedly beating and setting on fire the Indian immigrant.
(AP, 2/2/09)
2009 Feb 3, Eluana Englaro (37), a woman at the center of Italy's right-to-die debate, was transferred to a hospital where she is to be allowed to die after 17 years in a vegetative state.
(AP, 2/3/09)
2009 Feb 9, In northern Italy Eluana Englaro (38) died at her clinic as the Italian Senate discussed legislation clarifying the right to die. Englaro had been in a vegetative state since a 1992 car accident and died after her family cut off her food and water.
(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 14, In Rome G-7 finance ministers strongly rejected protectionism, pledging to work together to support growth and employment and to strengthen the banking system so the world can overcome its worst financial crisis in 50 years.
(AP, 2/14/09)
2009 Feb 17, A Milan court sentenced David Mills, the British former tax lawyer of Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, to four-and-a-half years in jail for corruption.
(AFP, 2/17/09)
2009 Feb 24, France’s Pres. Sarkozy and Italy’s Premier Berlusconi signed a deal pairing utilities from each nation to study the feasibility of building nuclear power plants in Italy.
(WSJ, 2/25/09, p.A11)
2009 Mar 4, Salvatore Samperi (64), Italian director, died in his house on Lake Bracciano. He was best known for erotic comedies that challenged the morals of Italy's middle class.
(AP, 3/5/09)
2009 Mar 11, Italy's highest court sided with the government and threw out key evidence in an alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect in Italy, dealing a blow to the trial of 26 Americans charged in the case.
(AP, 3/11/09)
2009 Mar 18, Gianni Giansanti (52), an award-winning Italian photographer, died in Rome after battling bone cancer. He shot the 1978 image that for many captured the horror of that era — the bullet-riddled body of Aldo Moro, the kidnapped former Italian Christian Democrat premier, in the truck of a parked car. He also had snapped candid portraits of Pope John Paul II during his pilgrimages.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 21, Tens of thousand of people marched in Naples to commemorate the victims of the mafia and demand an end to the stranglehold of organized crime on southern Italy.
(AP, 3/21/09)
2009 Mar 31, Italian police said they have arrested Mario Chiesa for his alleged role in a scam involving garbage disposal in Milan and elsewhere in northern Italy. He was one of eight people apprehended, with two others being placed under house arrest. Chiesa was arrested in 1992 and convicted for his involvement in the Clean Hands corruption scandals. He served his sentences doing socially useful work and was freed in 2000.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Bernardo De Bernardinis, deputy chief of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, told the people in the L'Aquila region that recent tremors over the last 4 months posed no danger. He and 6 others were later indicted following the April 6 earthquake that left 308 people dead. Their trial began in 2011. On Nov 10, 2014, an appeals court cleared the seven defendants in the case. Dr. De Bernardinis received a two-year suspended sentence for the deaths of some of the victims.
(Econ, 9/17/11, p.86)(SFC, 11/11/14, p.A2)(Econ, 11/15/14, p.82)
2009 Apr 6, In central Italy a magnitude 6.3 earthquake knocked down whole blocks of buildings as residents slept, killing 309 people in L'Aquila, capital of the Abruzzo region, which was near the epicenter. It was the country's deadliest quake in nearly three decades. Tens of thousands were homeless and 1,500 were injured. 8 students were killed when their dorm collapsed in L'Aquila. Investigations into shoddy construction soon followed.
(AFP, 4/6/09)(AP, 4/6/09)(AP, 4/9/09)(AP, 10/19/09)(Econ, 10/27/12, p.80)
2009 Apr 11, Somali pirates hijacked the Italian-flagged tugboat Buccaneer, an American-owned tugboat, with 16 crew in the Gulf of Aden. The pirates abandoned the ship on August 9 and all crew members were freed. No random was paid.
(AP, 4/11/09)(AP, 4/26/09)(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Apr 18, About 140 migrants remained stranded aboard a Turkish cargo ship for a third day as Malta and Italy argued about which country should accept them.
(AP, 4/18/09)
2009 Apr 19, Italy agreed to accept 140 migrants stranded aboard a Turkish cargo ship that rescued them in the Mediterranean, ending a four-day standoff with Malta about who would take them in.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 24, In Italy US and Russian arms negotiators held a "very productive" initial round of talks aimed at agreeing a new treaty to curb nuclear weapons as part of a broader effort to improve relations.
(AP, 4/24/09)
2009 Apr 26, Pope Benedict XVI named five new saints, including Portugal's 14th century independence leader and an Italian priest who ministered to factory workers at the dawn of the industrial era.
(AP, 4/26/09)
2009 Apr 29, Youssef Magied al-Molqui, one of the 4 Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and killed an American passenger in 1985, left prison in Palermo, Sicily, after more than 23 years in jail. Ibrahim Fatayer Abdelatif, another convicted Achille Lauro hijacker, was released last year.
(AP, 4/30/09)
2009 May 1, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has compared himself to Jesus Christ and Napoleon, boasted that he was the world's most popular leader.
(Reuters, 5/2/09)
2009 May 3, Italian media reported that PM Silvio Berlusconi's wife wants a divorce, just days after she publicly criticized his party's selection of young women to run in European elections.
(Reuters, 5/3/09)
2009 May 4, In Germany Sergio Marchionne, the boss of Italy's Fiat, drummed up support in Berlin for audacious plans to snap up General Motors' European arm and merge it with the bankrupt Chrysler to create a new global auto giant. Germany's economy minister said Fiat Group SpA wants to take over GM's Opel unit without running up debt and would preserve the three main German assembly plants if successful.
(AFP, 5/4/09)(AP, 5/4/09)
2009 May 7, In Italy Jonathan Robert Hindenach (24) of Charlotte, Michigan, killing an Italian man in Florence. He had consumed drugs and alcohol before slaying Riccardo Nistri (62).
(AP, 5/8/09)
2009 May 10, Italian police arrested a fugitive crime boss who they found holed up in a secret room of his brother's house in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Salvatore Coluccio has been a fugitive since 2005.
(AP, 5/10/09)
2009 May 12, Italian anti-terrorism investigators said two French citizens behind bars since last year on suspicion of smuggling migrants were al-Qaida propaganda point men in Europe and were heard talking in jail about a possible attack on a Paris airport. Bassam Ayachi (62) and Raphael Frederic Gendron (33) were served warrants in jail accusing them of criminal association for international terrorism. The men have been held in Bari since November when they were arrested on suspicion of smuggling two Syrians and three Palestinians into Italy.
(AP, 5/12/09)
2009 May 13, Italy's lower chamber of parliament passed a hotly debated bill making it a crime to enter or stay in Italy illegally, the latest effort by Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative forces to crack down on illegal migration. The bill included a fine of up to $13,670 and jail for people housing illegal immigrants.
(AP, 5/13/09)(SFC, 5/14/09, p.A2)
2009 May 15, In Spain police arrested of Raffaele Amato, an alleged Camorra boss who investigators say was one of Italy's top cocaine importers.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 19, Italian police arrested Franco Letizia (31), one of the country's "most-dangerous" fugitives, in raids that netted at least 70 suspected members of the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate. The search for dozens more was still under way.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 22, An Italian warship arrested nine pirates after helping a US-flagged container vessel and another ship evade brigands off the coast of Somalia.
(AP, 5/22/09)
2009 May 27, Italian police issued 61 arrest warrants against purported members of Naples’ Camorra mob for allegedly running drug and extortion rings. Suspects arrested included 9 women and several bosses of the Sarno clan.
(SFC, 5/28/09, p.A2)
2009 May, Naples began a six-month experiment hiring former convicts, including muggers, drug traffickers and con artists to guide tourists through the art-rich but crime-plagued city and use their inside knowledge of the local underworld to keep visitors safe.
(AP, 9/13/09)
2009 May, Chikungunya, a mosquito-born virus endemic to tropical Africa and Asia, was reported to have arrived in Albania and Italy.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.83)
2009 Jun 6, In Venice the Punta della Logana, an old customs building, opened as an art museum following restoration funded by French billionaire Francois Pinault.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punta_della_Dogana)
2009 Jun 10, Italy's Fiat became the new owner of the bulk of Chrysler's assets, closing a deal that saves the troubled US automaker from liquidation and places a new company in the hands of Fiat's CEO.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Jun 10, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi began his first visit to Italy with a warm embrace from Premier Silvio Berlusconi, evidence of better ties between the energy-rich desert nation and its former colonial ruler.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Jun 11, Italian police said they were carrying out arrests in Rome, Milan and other cities as part of an investigation into the activities of suspected radical leftist terrorists.
(AP, 6/11/09)
2009 Jun 12, In New Jersey an Indictment was unsealed today against three individuals who allegedly hacked into the telephone systems of large corporations and entities in the US and abroad and sold information about the compromised telephone systems to Pakistani nationals residing in Italy. Italian law enforcement conducted searches of approximately 10 locations in four regions of Italy and arrested the financiers of the hacking activity. Those financiers allegedly used the information to transmit over 12 million minutes of telephone calls valued at more than $55 million over the hacked networks of victim corporations in the US alone.
(SFC, 6/16/09, p.A2)(http://newark.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/2009/nk061209.htm)
2009 Jun 13, In Italy tens of thousands of gay rights activists demanding rights for same-sex couples marched through the streets of Rome on Saturday in a gay pride parade.
(AP, 6/13/09)
2009 Jun 13, An Italian court ordered the recall of 10,000 tons of wood fuel pellets imported from Lithuania over fears that they could have dangerous levels of radioactivity. Test results showed that they contained cesium 137, a highly toxic radioactive substance normally produced by a nuclear explosion or from the combustion of a nuclear reactor. The contaminated pellets themselves were not dangerous to humans, but danger comes from the ashes and the smoke produced when they are burned.
(AFP, 6/14/09)
2009 Jun 15, Italy's interior minister defended plans to allow citizen patrols to beef up security amid outrage over a new right-wing guard that has put Fascist and Nazi-like symbols on its uniforms.
(AP, 6/15/09)
2009 Jun 16, Italian police said they had arrested 13 people suspected of helping a top Mafia fugitive hide, communicate with other mobsters and conduct his business. Investigators said they are closing in on Matteo Messina Denaro, a fugitive who is among a handful of mobsters vying to take over the Sicilian Mafia. Most of the arrests were carried out in Trapani, a city in Western Sicily that is the power base of Messina Denaro.
(AP, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 20, Italian police in Sicily said they have arrested 14 people and placed more than 250 under investigation in the country's biggest sweep against Internet child pornography.
(AP, 6/20/09)
2009 Jun 20, In Venezuela authorities arrested Salvatore Miceli, suspected of being a key intermediary in the drug trafficking trade and one of Italy's most dangerous Mafia fugitives, as he left his apartment in Caracas. Police also picked up two other Italian suspects.
(AP, 6/21/09)
2009 Jun 22, In Italy Khaled Hussein (73), a Palestinian man who helped plan the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, died of a heart attack in a jail in Benevento.
(SFC, 6/23/09, p.A2)
2009 Jun 25, In Italy foreign ministers of the industrialized Group of Eight gathered for a 3-day meeting in Trieste. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said he hoped delegates from the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia will condemn the crackdown in Iran and urge a recount.
(AP, 6/25/09)
2009 Jun 26, Group of Eight foreign ministers, meeting in Trieste, Italy, criticized Iran's postelection violence, and urged its ruling clergy to ensure the outcome of the disputed ballot reflects the will of the Iranian people. The G8 countries also condemned North Korea's nuclear and missile tests and called on the country to return to the negotiating table.
(AP, 6/26/09)
2009 Jun 29, In Italy a freight train carrying liquefied gas derailed and exploded in the midst of the Tuscan town of Viareggio just before midnight, setting off a fire that killed 21 people, many as they slept in their homes. At least 50 were injured. An axle failure was blamed for the rail disaster.
(AP, 6/30/09)(AP, 7/1/09)(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Italy Matteo Salvini, a member of the often xenophobic, anti-immigrant Northern League party, resigned his seat in the lower chamber of Parliament after being filmed singing a racist chant about Naples and its residents.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, G8 Leaders met in L'Aquila, Italy, for talks on threats to global security and stability at a summit where climate change, a continuing global economic crisis, nuclear proliferation and world hunger took top billing.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Italy the G8 opened their summit to include the G5, which made their fifth straight appearance at the annual summit, albeit as guests, to discuss climate change, development aid, global economic growth and international trade.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Italy the 3-day G8 summit came to close. World leaders launched a $15 billion initiative to help farmers in poor countries boost production in a shift in the way the West tackles world hunger.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 22, Italian authorities seized some euro200 million ($284 million) in assets and businesses owned by the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate, including the Cafe de Paris of "La Dolce Vita" movie fame. 12 other restaurants, apartments and luxury cars were also impounded in the operation.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Europe deadly summer wild fires spread across Spain, France, Italy and Greece with holidaymakers rescued from beaches and thousands of firefighters brought into the battle.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 30, Italy approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, drawing fierce protests by the Vatican. The Italian Drug Agency ruled that the drug cannot be sold in drug stores but can only be administered by doctors in a hospital.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern Italy rules for officially condoned vigilante groups took effect.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 9, Italians newspapers reported that burglars earlier in the week had made off with jewels and cash worth 11 million euros (15.6 million dollars) from the hotel room of a Saudi princess in Sardinia, sparking a diplomatic incident. On Sep 15 Sardinia police said most of the jewels had been recovered.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Aug 20, Italian customs found a boat with five Eritrean survivors of what it called a "shocking tragedy. Around 75 African migrants died in the Mediterranean after their stranded boat ran out of food and water.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Italy a lucky lotto player in Tuscany won Italy's record euro147.8 million ($211.8 million) state lottery, pocketing what has been billed as Europe's biggest jackpot.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 30, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi laid the foundation stone for an ambitious highway stretching along the entire Libyan coast.
(AFP, 8/30/09)
2009 Sep 8, Mike Bongiorno (85), called Italy's "Quiz King," died. His big TV break came in the 1950s when he helped popularize the quiz show on Italian pubcaster Rai. One of his biggest hits was "Lascia o Raddoppia?" (Double or quits) the Italian version of "The $64,000 Question."
(www.variety.com/article/VR1118008405.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=2562)
2009 Sep 19, Maurizio Montalbini (56), Italian sociologist, died. He had spent months dwelling in caves to study how the mind and body cope with complete isolation. In 1987 he claimed his first world record after spending 210 days alone in a cave in the Apennine mountains.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 22, A sharply divided EU failed to protect the threatened bluefin tuna, as the bloc's Mediterranean nations refused to back even a temporary a ban on catching the fish prized by sushi aficionados. Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France and Italy, with strong fishermen's lobbies at home, insisted on continuing the hunt despite the precarious state of the species. Conservation groups had earlier criticized the EU for not pushing to list the bluefin tuna under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Oct 2, In Italy rivers of mud unleashed by heavy rains overnight flooded parts of the Sicilian city of Messina, leaving at least 22 people dead while sweeping away cars and collapsing buildings. 40 people remained missing.
(AP, 10/3/09)(AP, 10/4/09)
2009 Oct 3, In Rome tens of thousands of people gathered to defend freedom of the press accusing Pres. Silvio Berlusconi of trying to silence critical voices.
(SSFC, 10/4/09, p.A6)
2009 Oct 7, A top Italian court overturned a law granting Premier Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office. It had been pushed through by Berlusconi's coalition in 2008 when the premier faced separate trials in Milan for corruption and tax fraud tied to his Mediaset broadcasting empire.
(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 8, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he will go on TV and appear in courtrooms to prove that corruption and tax fraud charges in two trials against him are false.
(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 12, In Italy Mohamed Game (35), a Libyan, hurled a home-made bomb at the Santa Barbara police barracks in Milan, losing his hand from the blast and slightly wounding a policeman on duty outside. Game had lived in Italy since 2003 and had never been a suspect. Italian police detained two more suspects and found a large quantity of bomb-making chemicals during overnight searches.
(AFP, 10/12/09)(AP, 10/13/09)
2009 Oct 15, Italy and NATO denied a newspaper report that the Italian intelligence secretly paid the Taliban thousands of dollars to maintain peace in an area in Afghanistan that was under Italian control. The Times of London had just reported that Italy had paid "tens of thousands of dollars" to Taliban commanders and warlords in the Surobi district. It accused Rome of failing to inform its allies about the payments and of misleading the French, who took over the Surobi district in mid-2008, into thinking the area was quiet and safe. An ambush of the French in a mountain pass on Aug. 18, 2008, was the biggest single combat loss for international forces in Afghanistan in more than three years.
(AP, 10/15/09)
2009 Oct 25, In Italy 4 policemen were questioned for allegedly attempting to blackmail opposition leader Piero Marrazzo (51). The case centered on widespread media reports that a video shows the center-left politician in the company of a transsexual in a Rome apartment.
(AP, 10/25/09)
2009 Oct 27, An Italian appeals court upheld the conviction of British lawyer David Mills for accepting a bribe to lie in court to protect Silvio Berlusconi. A lower court found Mills guilty of corruption in May and sentenced him to 4 1/2 years. In 2010 Italy’s highest court overturned a guilty verdict against Mills, ruling that the stature of limitations had expired.
(AP, 10/27/09)(SFC, 2/26/10, p.A2)
2009 Oct 31, Italian police arrested one of the country's most wanted mafia fugitives after tearing down a wall in a dawn raid at a chicken farm near Naples where he had built a hideout. Salvatore Russo (51), the head of a Camorra clan carrying his name, had been sentenced to life in prison for homicide and links to organized crime and was on the run since 1995.
(AFP, 10/31/09)
2009 Nov 3, Europe's court of human rights ruled the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms under the continent's rights convention. The court ordered Italy to pay a $7,390 fine to a mother who has fought for 8 years to have crucifixes removed from public school classrooms. The Vatican denounced the ruling.
(AP, 11/3/09)(SFC, 11/4/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 4, An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program. The Americans and Italian agents were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Nov 7, Italian paramilitary police arrested Luigi Esposito in Posillipo, a northern coastal suburb of Naples. Esposito, on the run since 2003, was using a wig and false name when captured. Esposito was said to be an expert money-launderer, who funneled illicit cash from drug trafficking into tourism and other businesses for the Camorra crime syndicate.
(AP, 11/8/09)
2009 Nov 10, Iran announced it will use Italy to launch a communications satellite after waiting years for Russia to do the job.
(AP, 11/10/09)
2009 Nov 11, An Italian company that helped build a communications satellite for Iran said there are no plans to launch it, denying an announcement made in Tehran this week.
(AP, 11/11/09)
2009 Nov 12, Italy's top security official said that authorities have smashed an international terror cell with the arrest in Italy and elsewhere in Europe of 17 Algerians who were raising money to finance terrorism.
(AP, 11/12/09)
2009 Nov 15, Italian police captured convicted mobster Domenico Raccuglia, one of Sicily’s top mafia fugitives, in an apartment near Trapani.
(SFC, 11/16/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 16, A 3-day summit on world hunger opened in Rome. Zimbabwe’s Pres. Mugabe used the UN summit on world hunger to lash out at the West and defend land reforms blamed for plunging his people into starvation. Some 60 heads of state and dozens of minister rejected a UN call to commit $44 billion annually for agricultural development in poor countries.
(AP, 11/17/09)(SFC, 11/17/09, p.A8)
2009 Nov 18, In Italy the head of a UN food agency expressed regret that an anti-hunger summit failed to result in precise promises of funding, and critics said the meeting had only thrown crumbs to the world's 1 billion people without enough to eat.
(AP, 11/18/09)
2009 Nov 21, Italian police arrested a Pakistani father and son accused of helping fund and providing logistical support for last year's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. The day before the attacks began on Nov. 26 they allegedly sent money using a stolen identity to a US company to activate Internet phone accounts used by the attackers and their handlers.
(AP, 11/21/09)
2009 Nov 24, In Italy prostitute Patrizia D'Addario’s memoir, "Gradisca, Presidente," (At Your Pleasure, Premier), went on sale. In it she claimed that she had slept with Premier Silvio Berlusconi on the understanding he would help her set up a countryside inn but that she got "nothing" in return.
(AP, 11/24/09)
2009 Nov 30, Guantanamo detainees Adel Ben Mabrouk (39) and Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri (43) arrived in Italy for trial on int’l. terrorism charges. The 2 Tunisian men were charged for allegedly recruiting fighters for Afghanistan.
(SFC, 12/1/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 1, Italian officials said police have broken up a major mafia clan, issuing 83 arrest warrants and seizing businesses, land, race horses and a London-based online betting company. Local politicians and businessmen in the southern city of Bari were among those implicated as part of a 3-year operation, called "Domino," for collaborating with the Parisi clan.
(AP, 12/1/09)
2009 Dec 2, An Italian-led team of scientists said a robotic hand has been successfully connected to an amputee, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts. A video was shown of Pierpaolo Petruzziello (26) as he concentrated to give orders to the hand placed next to him.
(AP, 12/2/09)
2009 Dec 4, A jailed Mafia hitman linked Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi to the Cosa Nostra, telling a court that a godfather convicted for a 1993 bombing campaign had boasted of his links to the media mogul.
(Reuters, 12/4/09)
2009 Dec 4, In Italy Amanda Knox of Seattle, Wa., was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher (21), her British roommate on Nov 1, 2007. The conviction was announced at around midnight after 13 hours of deliberations. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison. The court also convicted Knox's co-defendant and former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, and gave him a 25-year jail term for the murder. Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen, had already been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 12/5/09)
2009 Dec 5, In Italy thousands of people gathered in Rome for “No Berlusconi Day," a gathering born on the Internet to protest against Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
(Econ, 12/5/09, p.61)(http://tinyurl.com/yhy5mnt)
2009 Dec 5, Italian police found convicted Mafioso Gianni Nicchi (28), alleged to be Cosa Nostra's No. 2 leader, hiding in an apartment in Palermo. Nicchi, a fugitive since 2006, was convicted last year of extortion and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Authorities in Milan arrested Gaetano Fidanzati (74) as he strolled down a street. Fidanzati is a reputed longtime Cosa Nostra boss of a Palermo crime clan and has been a fugitive for two years.
(AP, 12/5/09)
2009 Dec 5, Italian tax police said that they had seized works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and other giants of art in a crackdown on assets hidden by Calisto Tanzi, the disgraced founder of the collapsed dairy company Parmalat.
(AP, 12/5/09)
2009 Dec 5, In Haiti Francesco Fantoli (54), an Italian journalist, was mortally wounded by gunmen who may have tried to rob him outside a bank in Port-au-Prince. He recently founded a soccer school in the southern city of Jacmel, where he often lived.
(AP, 12/6/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Italy at least 5 sperm whales died after a pod of nine beached on the southern coast. Experts called it a rare and puzzling mass beaching for such a large species. Officials were considering euthanizing the last two whales still trapped in high waves.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 13, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi (73) was hospitalized in Milan with a fractured nose and two broken teeth from an attack by a mentally disturbed man who hit him in the face with a statuette. Police arrested attacker Massimo Tartaglia (42), a 42-year-old man with a history of psychological problems.
(AP, 12/14/09)
2009 Dec 15, In Italy Massimo Tartaglia, the man who attacked Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, wrote a letter to Berlusconi through his lawyers, saying he was sorry for his act as a judge considered whether he should be transferred to a psychiatric hospital.
(AP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 19, Diplomatic sources said an Italian and his wife were missing and their car was found abandoned in eastern Mauritania, near the border with Mali.
(Reuters, 12/19/09)
2009 Dec 20, Italian state-run and private television stations said a third Tunisian detainee from Guantanamo Bay is being moved to Italy to face international terrorism charges for having allegedly recruited fighters for Afghanistan. He was identified as Moez Ben Abdelkader Fezzani (40), also known as Abou Nassim.
(AP, 12/20/09)
2009 Dec 23, In Italy an unusually high tide flooded most of Venice, forcing tourists and residents to wade through knee-high waters or take to improvised, elevated boardwalks set up in St. Mark's Square and other landmarks.
(AP, 12/23/09)
2009 Dec 23, Italian carmaker Fiat became a majority owner of Serbian car manufacturer Zastava with a 67% stake.
(Econ, 1/2/10, p.39)(http://tinyurl.com/yd2lccd)
2009 Dec 27, Italian officials said 7 people, including a German teenager, have been killed by weekend avalanches in northern Italy.
(AP, 12/27/09)
2009 In Italy comedian Beppe Grillo and communications executive Gianroberto Casaleggio (1954-2016) founded the Five Star Movement (M5S) stressing environmental commitment and political reform.
(Economist, 9/29/12, p.58)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.53)
2009 In Italy some 7% of the population was made up of immigrants.
(Econ, 5/16/09, p.58)
2010 Jan 8, In Italy at least 37 people were wounded in Rosarno, following clashes between the migrants, police and local residents. The wounded included 5 migrants, 14 residents and 18 police officers.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2010 Jan 9, In Italy some 300 African migrants were bused out of Rosarno, a southern Italian town rocked by two days of clashes between the migrants, police and local residents. The rioting began after two men, one from Nigeria and the other from Togo, were lightly wounded by a pellet gun attack on Jan 7. Migrants alleged they were earning illegally low wages, as little as euro20 euros ($30), for a 12-hour day picking citrus fruit and other crops.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2010 Jan 13, Ethiopia’s biggest hydroelectric dam was opened by PM Meles Zenawi and Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. The Gilegel Gibe II dam was financed by Italy.
(AFP, 1/14/10)
2010 Jan 27, It was reported that Italian fashion house Armani has stopped selling online a T-shirt bearing a logo similar to Indonesia's national symbol, Garuda Pancasila, after some bloggers protested and other people called for the label to be sued.
(Reuters, 1/27/10)
2010 Jan 30, In Italy hundreds of judges walked out of nationwide ceremonies held to mark the start of the judicial year in protest at "destructive legislation" introduced by PM Silvio Berlusconi.
(AFP, 1/30/10)
2010 Jan 30, The European Union said Italy is to stop fishing for bluefin tuna, the lucrative but over-exploited species beloved of Japanese sushi fans, for 12 months.
(AP, 1/30/10)
2010 Feb 2, The key witness in a Mafia trial in Sicily told a court that a close ally of PM Silvio Berlusconi had direct links with the former "Boss of Bosses" of the Cosa Nostra.
(Reuters, 2/2/10)
2010 Feb 11, Italy's Fiat SpA and Russian automobile company Sollers announced a euro2.4 billion ($3.3 billion) joint venture to produce up to 500,000 vehicles per year in Russia in a bid to become the country's second-largest car maker.
(AP, 2/11/10)
2010 Feb 13, Italian police said they have confiscated 500,000 tons of counterfeit goods discovered in eight industrial hangars on the outskirts of Rome. Once labeled with Italian brands, They would have brought in several million euros for the counterfeiters. The goods were suspected of being imported from China.
(AFP, 2/13/10)
2010 Feb 13, In Italy an Egyptian youth, Hamed Mahmoud Abdel Aziz Essayyed Abdou, was stabbed to death in Milan in a killing blamed on Peruvian and Ecuadorian youths. 36 Egyptians and one Ivorian national were detained following a rampage by around 100 North Africans.
(AFP, 2/14/10)
2010 Feb 19, Pope Benedict XVI approved sainthood for Mother Mary MacKillop (1842-1909), making the woman known for her work among the needy Australia's first saint. Sainthood was also approved for Stanislaw Soltys, a 15th-century Polish priest; Italian nuns Giulia Salzano and Battista Varano; Spanish nun Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria y Barriola and a Canadian brother, Andre Bessette (d.1937). The formal canonization will take place Oct. 17 in Rome.
(AP, 2/19/10)
2010 Feb 23, In Italy an oil spill began and spread south down the Lambro to Piacenza and Cremona overnight, despite efforts to contain it. By the next day if reached the Po River, with officials warning of an ecological disaster as they scrambled to contain the sludge before it contaminated Italy's longest and most important river. Milan regional officials said the cause was certainly sabotage at a former refinery turned oil depot, since the cisterns were opened and the oil allowed to flow unimpeded into the Lambro River near Monza.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 24, An Italian court convicted three Google executives of privacy violations because they did not act quickly enough to remove an online video that showed sadistic teen bullies pummeling and mocking an autistic boy. Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three in absentia to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted. In the US, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 generally gives Internet service providers immunity in cases like this, but no such protections exist in Europe.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 26, In Italy telecoms billionaire Silvio Scaglia spent the night in police custody after flying in by private jet from the Caribbean to face charges in a money-laundering probe. Scaglia, the founder of Italy's second biggest telecoms company, Fastweb, was among 56 people for whom arrest warrants were issued in a case where prosecutors allege more than 2 billion euros (1.8 billion pound) was laundered via fake international phone service purchases and sales from 2003-2006.
(Reuters, 2/26/10)
2010 Mar 3, Italian police arrested seven people on suspicion of trafficking arms to Iran, two Iranians they believe are secret agents and five Italians. Two more Iranians were being sought. On April 29 Ali Damirchi-Lou and state television reporter Hamid Masoumi-Nejad were released from jail and placed under house arrest.
(AP, 3/3/10)(AFP, 4/30/10)
2010 Mar 10, National police in Rome said 20 warrants have been issued so far in Palermo and six arrests have been made in the United States. Police say the crackdown targeted a Palermo-based Mafia crime family, and those named in the warrants are suspected of being mobsters and running extortion, money laundering and drug trafficking operations.
(AP, 3/10/10)
2010 Mar 15, Italian police arrested the "postmen" of the Mafia's top boss, 19 close aides who delivered the notes Matteo Messina Denaro writes to impart orders from his hideout.
(AP, 3/15/10)
2010 Mar 15, British and Italian doctors carried out groundbreaking surgery to rebuild the windpipe of a 10-year-old boy using stem cells developed within his own body. Doctors at London's Great Ormond Street children's hospital implanted the boy with a donor trachea, or windpipe, that had been stripped of its cells and injected with his own.
(AFP, 3/20/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Turin, Italy, Mao Asada (19) of Japan toppled Olympic champion Yu-Na Kim in a triumphant season finale which saw her claim her second world title at the world figure skating championships.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 28, In Italy voters cast their ballots in regional elections. Premier Silvio Berlusconi emerged as the victor in the elections widely depicted as a test of his popularity. Only 64% bothered to vote.
(AP, 3/28/10)(AP, 3/30/10)(Econ, 4/3/10, p.53)
2010 Apr 9, France and Italy agreed to cooperate more closely to increase nuclear power generation and vowed to come to the aid of debt-laden Greece in order to defend the euro.
(AP, 4/9/10)
2010 Apr 10, Afghan officials said 2 Italian doctors are among nine people detained in an alleged plot to kill Helmand's provincial governor. On April 18 Afghan authorities released three Italian medical workers who had been detained for a week, clearing them of allegations they were part of a Taliban plot to kill a provincial governor.
(AP, 4/10/10)(AP, 4/18/10)
2010 Apr 12, In northern Italy a landslide threw a passenger train from its tracks near the border with Austria, killing nine people and injuring 28. A large irrigation pipe burst at a higher elevation as the 2-car train passed below.
(AFP, 4/12/10)(SFC, 4/13/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 26, Italian police arrested Giovanni Tegano (70), a veteran mobster who was on the run for 17 years, in a house in Reggio Calabria. He was among the most wanted men of the 'Ndrangheta organized crime group.
(AP, 4/27/10)
2010 May 9, A plume of volcanic ash snaked its way through southern France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, shutting down airports and disrupting flights across Europe.
(AP, 5/9/10)
2010 May 10, Italian anti-mafia police said they have broken up an unusual alliance of Italy's three main crime syndicates controlling wholesale produce markets, including price fixing.
(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 May 26, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi bowed to market concerns about his country's high debt load and bloated public sector, springing euro24 billion in spending cuts on an unsuspecting public just weeks after ruling out painful measures.
(AP, 5/26/10)
2010 May 31, Italy posted a financial-stabilization decree aimed at tax cheats.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.53)
2010 Jun 15, Italian police arrested Nicola Schiavone, a powerful mobster of the Camorra crime syndicate, in his villa in Casal di Principe, a small town north of Naples. He is the son of imprisoned mobster Francesco Schiavone, reputedly the longtime top boss of the clan. Another of the elder Schiavone's sons was arrested last month.
(AP, 6/15/10)
2010 Jun 18, In Italy Pierino Gelmini (85), a politically connected former priest, was indicted on charges he sexually molested 12 young men who were being treated at the drug rehabilitation center he founded in Italy.
(AP, 6/18/10)
2010 Jun 25, Thousands of Italians took to the streets to protest public spending cuts. Demonstrators demanded that PM Berlusconi modify his plan to freeze pubic sector salaries and slash local government funding.
(SFC, 6/26/10, p.A2)
2010 Jun 25, In southern France Giuseppe Falsone, an Italian mobster and one of the country's top 30 most wanted fugitives, was arrested in Marseille.
(AP, 6/25/10)
2010 Jul 6, An EU lawmaker urged member governments to open their secret files on UFOs. Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of the European Parliament, said that the EU needs its own "X Files" archive where anyone can see information on UFOs, including data gathered by the military.
(AP, 7/6/10)
2010 Jul 9, Italy's Fiat, which controls Chrysler Group LCC, said it will proceed with a euro700 million ($886 million) investment to move production of its new Panda compact from Poland to a plant near Naples despite an unresolved dispute with an Italian union.
(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Jul 13, Italian police launched one of their biggest operations ever against the powerful 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate, arresting 300 people including top bosses and seizing millions worth of property in pre-dawn raids.
(AP, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 20, Italian engineers launched a 3-month, 8,000-mile test drive of a robotic vehicle from Parma to China.
(SFC, 7/21/10, p.A2)
2010 Jul 22, In Italy police carried out six arrests and charged that members of the Camorra mafia won contracts to rebuild the quake-hit city of L'Aquila with the help of four bank employees.
(AFP, 7/22/10)
2010 Jul 31, In southern Italy an apartment building collapsed in Afragola, a small town near Naples. Rescue workers said they have pulled the bodies of 3 people from the wreckage, including a little girl.
(AP, 7/31/10)
2010 Aug 17, Francesco Cossiga (1928-2010), former Italian premier (1979-1980) and president (1985-1992), died. He led Italy's fight against domestic terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s but resigned after failing to save the life of a politician kidnapped by the Red Brigades.
(AP, 8/17/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
2010 Aug 30, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Premier Silvio Berlusconi marked a friendship treaty between their two countries amid increasing criticism here over Gadhafi's exhortation to Italians to convert to Islam.
(AP, 8/30/10)
2010 Sep 6, Italy’s Balzan Foundation said its prize for the biology of stem cells has gone to a Japanese researcher for discovering a way to transform adult cells into cells with the characteristics of stem cells. The prize to Shinya Yamanaka is one of four — two for sciences, two in humanities. Brazilian mathematician Jacob Palis was cited for his work in dynamic systems. The humanities prizes went to Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, the father of micro-history, for his contributions to the study of ordinary people in Europe, and to German Manfred Bauneck for his history of the European theater.
(AP, 9/6/10)
2010 Sep 12, The Venice film festival ended with an awards ceremony. Jury president Quentin Tarantino faced charges of favoritism after he handed out two major awards to his friends, including best picture to his ex partner Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere."
(Reuters, 9/12/10)
2010 Sep 21, Italian prosecutors launched an investigation into the Vatican bank's top executives for allegedly violating money laundering legislation, triggering a sharp rebuttal by the Vatican. The bank's top two officials were under investigation for suspected money laundering and police have frozen 23 million euros ($30.21 million) of its funds.
(AFP, 9/21/10)(Reuters, 9/21/10)
2010 Sep 23, In Italy Carabinieri investigators in southern Calabria said that an euro8 million winning ticket in the national Superenalotto numbers game was sold in a smokeshop owned by the father-in-law of a suspect jailed in a drug probe. The winner avoided taxes on interest due had the windfall been deposited in a bank. The mobsters got an excuse to open a mega-account. Italian law requires those making big deposits to prove the funds aren't illegal. Police seized millions of euros worth of assets from the jailed mob suspect.
(AP, 9/23/10)
2010 Sep 29, Two American balloonists disappeared in rough weather off the Italian coast. Richard Abruzzo (47) and Carol Rymer-Davis (65) were participating in the 54th Gordon Bennett Gas Balloon Race, in which teams try to fly the farthest on a maximum of about 1,000 cubic meters (35,300 cubic feet) of gas. Searching was called off on Oct 4. On Dec 6 an Italian fishing boat pulled the remains of the two from the Adriatic Sea.
(AP, 9/30/10)(SFC, 10/5/10, p.A2)(AP, 12/6/10)
2010 Sep, Italian police early this month arrested a Frenchman (28) of Algerian origin suspected of having links with Al-Qaida.
(SFC, 10/4/10, p.A3)
2010 Oct 6, In Italy Concetta Serrano was participating in a live TV show that focuses on missing people when the anchor told her brother-in-law had confessed to have allegedly murdered her daughter. The Italian news agencies broke the story of the alleged confession while the show was being broadcast from inside the uncle's house in the southern Italian town of Avetrana, where Sarah Scazzi (15) disappeared on Aug. 26.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Italy Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao sealed Sino-Italian business deals worth €2.25 billion ($3.15 billion), after fending off European pressure to raise the value of the yuan.
(AFP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 13, Italy became the latest NATO ally to detail plans to scale down its military presence and hand over territory to Afghan security forces by the end of next year.
(AP, 10/14/10)
2010 Oct 15, In Italy judicial sources said prosecutors have launched an investigation against PM Silvio Berlusconi for tax evasion linked to his Mediaset media empire. The allegations, which were immediately rejected by Mediaset, were linked to tax declarations for 2003 and 2004 and are part of a wider inquiry.
(AFP, 10/15/10)
2010 Oct 17, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed Australia's first saint, canonizing Mary MacKillop (1842-1909), a 19th-century nun. The Vatican also declared five other saints in an open-air Mass attended by tens of thousands. Brother Andre (1845-1937), a Canadian, Italian nuns Giulia Salzano and Battista Camilla da Varano, and Spanish nun Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria y Barriola were also canonized.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 18, Iran took part for the first time in talks in Rome with the international contact group on Afghanistan that set "sufficient stability" and basic human rights as the most realistic aims for the war-torn nation.
(AFP, 10/18/10)
2010 Oct 20, Italian police arrested Antonio Cortese. He is suspected of planting an unloaded bazooka and carrying out a bomb attack earlier this year that damaged the entrance of the Reggio Calabria courthouse in southern Italy. Turncoat Antonino Lo Giudice, a former top 'Ndrangheta boss, accused Cortese of planting the explosives in an attempt to intimidate prosecutors.
(AP, 10/20/10)
2010 Oct 20, Robert Katz (77), American writer and historian, died in Italy. His meticulous reconstruction of an infamous Nazi massacre in Rome brought him fame and sparked a trial over whether he defamed the pope. His book "Death in Rome" (1967) and the subsequent movie based on it, called "Massacre in Rome," stirred controversy because it suggested Pope Pius XII did not intervene to stop the massacre even though he knew about the Nazis' plans.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Italy demonstrators in Naples set vehicles ablaze and hurled stones and firecrackers at police over plans to build a garbage dump in the Vesuvio National Park. 20 officers were left injured.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 23, In Italy mafia fugitive Gerlandino Messina (38) was nabbed by Carabinieri in Favara, near Agrigento, his power base in Sicily. He had been on the run for 11 years before being caught.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 23, The European Commission warned Italy that it may face sanctions if it doesn’t remove some 2,400 tons of trash piled up in the streets of Naples.
(SSFC, 10/24/10, p.A6)
2010 Oct 28, A Milan court convicted three doctors of performing unnecessary surgeries. Prosecutors produced evidence that unneeded operations, including amputations, were performed on 83 patients at the Santa Rita clinic in Milan with the aim of getting large reimbursements from the state health system. Pier Paolo Brega Massone, the hospital's chief surgeon, was sentenced to 15 1/2 years in prison.
(AP, 10/29/10)
2010 Nov 5, In Pakistan a private plane chartered by an Italy-based oil company crashed near the airport in Karachi after the pilot warned of engine trouble. All 21 people on board, including an Italian, were killed.
(AP, 11/5/10)
2010 Nov 6, In Italy Michael Seifert (86), a former Nazi SS prison guard known as "the beast of Bolzano" for his cruelty, died in an Italian hospital. The Ukrainian-born Seifert was serving a life sentence at the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison in southern Italy.
(AP, 11/7/10)
2010 Nov 10, Dino De Laurentiis (91), Italian film producer, died at his home in Beverly Hills. Over 6 decades he produced over 500 films including the Oscar winning “Serpico" (1973).
(SFC, 11/12/10, p.C7)
2010 Nov 12, Italy's opposition presented a no-confidence motion against Premier Silvio Berlusconi, setting the stage for a showdown in parliament that could spell the end of the government.
(AP, 11/13/10)
2010 Nov 15, In Italy the political crisis engulfing Premier Silvio Berlusconi deepened with four members of the Cabinet quitting their jobs, a move that does not topple the government but further weakens the leader. Berlusconi stands accused of having an "uncontrollable sickness" when it comes to women, and of hosting "bunga-bunga" parties that culminate in sex.
(AP, 11/15/10)(http://tinyurl.com/2anggqg)(Econ, 11/6/10, p.63)
2010 Nov 17, Italian police captured Antonio Iovine (46), one of the country’s most wanted mobsters. He was considered the financial brains behind the Camorra crime syndicate clans.
(SFC, 11/18/10, p.A2)
2010 Nov 19, The Los Angeles Auto Show opened. Fiat, now associated with Chrysler, introduced its tiny Fiat 500. Fiat sales in America would begin in January, following a 27-year absense.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.69)
2010 Nov 23, Authorities in southern Italy arrested two women in an operation against suspected mobsters, a development that reflects the increasing role of women in running the mob's affairs. Those arrested included Carmelina Capria, wife of imprisoned clan boss Antonio Pesce, and Maria Grazia Pesce, wife of fugitive boss Roberto Matalone.
(AP, 11/23/10)
2010 Nov 23, In Brazil Roberto Puppo, a native of Bergamo, Italy, was shot and killed. His bullet-ridden body was found in Alagoas on the next day. Authorities believe the killing was ordered by da Silva's boyfriend, an Italian man "suspected of belonging to an international organized crime group." A teenager, who was not identified because he is a minor; and a private security guard identified as Cosme Alves were arrested after a few weeks and charged with the killing.
(AP, 12/31/10)
2010 Nov 25, Italian students occupied the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Rome's Colosseum to protest education cuts and university reforms being considered by parliament.
(AP, 11/25/10)
2010 Nov 27, In northern Italy 3 hikers died after being caught in an avalanche.
(AP, 11/27/10)
2010 Nov 30, In Italy police vans and lines of officers in riot gear blocked access to much of Rome's historic center to keep thousands of student protesters from reaching Parliament. Similar protests snarled other cities, including Milan, Turin, Naples, Venice, Palermo and Bari. In Genoa, students protested under the slogan "they block our future, we block the cities."
(AP, 11/30/10)
2010 Nov 30, Investors sold off government bonds from Spain, Portugal and Italy amid worries that Europe's debt crisis has not been contained by Ireland's bailout but will force more expensive rescue efforts.
(AP, 11/30/10)
2010 Nov, Italy and Montenegro agreed to build an undersea cable to let Montenegro export electricity.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.100)
2010 Dec 2, Retired Naples Cardinal Michele Giordano (80), the highest ranking church official to ever stand trial in Italy, died. The cardinal was acquitted in 2000 of charges that he supplied about $800,000 (€600,000) to finance a loan-shark ring run linked to his family. He was also accused of misappropriating another $500,000 in church funds. He had always proclaimed his innocence.
(AP, 12/3/10)
2010 Dec 5, In southern Italy a speeding car plowed head-on into a group of cyclists, killing eight of them. Police said the driver had been smoking marijuana.
(AP, 12/5/10)
2010 Dec 14, In Italy protesters set cars alight and hurled cobblestones at police in chaotic scenes in central Rome after PM Silvio Berlusconi won a crucial confidence vote in parliament. Over 100 people were injured including around police.
(AFP, 12/14/10)(Econ, 12/18/10, p.95)
2010 Dec 16, Astronauts from the US, Russia and Italy blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan on a mission to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 12/16/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 22, In Rome, Italy, all embassies were informed about a pair of package bombs that exploded at the Swiss and Chilean embassies, injuring two people who opened them. Security officials later said that an Italian group calling itself Informal Anarchist Federation claimed responsibility.
(AP, 12/23/10)(AP, 12/24/10)
2010 Dec 22, In Rome tens of thousands of students took to the streets to peacefully protest planned changes in the university system. Protests in Palermo and Milan turned violent.
(SFC, 12/23/10, p.A4)
2010 Dec 27, In Italy bomb squad experts defused a package bomb that was delivered to the Greek Embassy in Rome, four days after similar mail bombs exploded at two other embassies, wounding two people.
(AP, 12/27/10)
2010 Dec 29, Brazilian media reported that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has decided not to extradite former Italian guerrilla Cesare Battisti, a move that could hurt ties with Italy.
(Reuters, 12/29/10)
2010 Dec 31, Brazil's president granted political asylum to Italian fugitive Cesare Battisti, but the case must still be heard by the nation's Supreme Court.
(AP, 12/31/10)
2010 Manlio Graziano authored “The Failure of Italian Nationhood: The Geopolitics of a Troubled Identity."
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.4)
2010 In Italy Operation Gaol led to the arrest of over 40 people associated with the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime group.
(Econ, 4/26/14, p.52)
2011 Jan 4, Italian protesters rallied against the Brazilian president's refusal to extradite ex-militant Cesare Battisti, amid government assurances that relations with Brazil will not be affected.
(AFP, 1/4/11)
2011 Jan 8, An Italian association for bird protection said that over 700 dead birds have been picked up since Jan. 1 from the streets of Faenza, about 30 miles (50 km) southeast of Bologna. They appeared to have overeaten sunflower seeds, which damage their livers and kidneys. The seeds were mostly waste from a nearby oil factory.
(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 9, In Italy a 74-year-old retiree in Genoa shot dead two neighbors and then his wife before turning the gun on himself. Jealousy appeared to be behind the rampage.
(AP, 1/9/11)
2011 Jan 10, Italian auto giant Fiat said it has increased its stake in Chrysler to 25% from 20% as part of a deal signed after the iconic US brand emerged from bankruptcy in 2009.
(AFP, 1/10/11)
2011 Jan 13, In Italy a court ruling partially stripped PM Silvio Berlusconi of political immunity.
(AFP, 1/14/11)
2011 Jan 13, Italy's Mount Etna has come back to life with a brief eruption that sent lava down its slopes and a cloud of ash into the sky, forcing the overnight closure of a nearby airport. Its last major eruption was in 1992.
(AP, 1/13/11)
2011 Jan 14, Italy’s PM Berlusconi learned that he had been placed under investigation for paying for sex with an underage prostitute, Karima el-Mahroug (known as Ruby), and abusing his position by trying to cover it up.
(Econ, 1/22/11, p.63)
2011 Jan 19, Italy’s the national statistics office said one in five young Italians, or more than 2 million people, are not studying nor working, the highest percentage of "idle" youths in the European Union.
(Reuters, 1/19/11)
2011 Jan 27, In Italy PM Silvio Berlusconi faced more pressure to resign after magistrates issued new documents with fresh details of erotic parties, some with under-age girls, and of his gifts to participants.
(Reuters, 1/27/11)
2011 Jan 31, Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi said he wanted to drop from the constitution a clause imposing social obligations on entrepreneurs. He also promised tax breaks for the south and offered cooperation with the opposition.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.63)
2011 Feb 2, Italian Maria Sandra Mariani (53) was kidnapped in southeastern Algeria near the town of Djanet by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Algeria’s official news agency reported the kidnapping on Feb 4. Mariani was released on April 17, 2012.
(AP, 2/4/11)(AFP, 7/21/11)(AFP, 4/17/12)
2011 Feb 3, In southern Italy Matthias Kaspar Schepp (43), a Canadian-born resident of Switzerland, was found dead by a railway station of an apparent suicide. Swiss police said they still had no evidence of the whereabouts of his twin daughters, Alessia and Livia (6), reported missing on Jan 30. The girls were last seen on a ferry to the French island of Corsica four days before their father apparently killed himself in Italy.
(SFC, 2/8/11, p.A5)(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 4, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign a key government decree to increase the taxation powers of local authorities, dealing a blow to embattled PM Silvio Berlusconi.
(Reuters, 2/4/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Italy thousands of people attended a rally to demand Premier Silvio Berlusconi's resignation following allegations he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl and used his office to cover it up.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Israeli police arrested four men in the theft of religious items valued at more than $1 million from a synagogue in Italy. The 4 suspects, Israelis in their 20s, were accused of stealing the items from Milan's central synagogue last week and smuggling them to Israel.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 8, Somali pirates firing guns and rocket propelled grenades hijacked the Savina Caylyn, an Italian oil tanker, and diverted the medium-sized vessel towards Somalia. The tanker was reported freed on Dec 21 along with 22 crew members.
(AP, 2/8/11)(AP, 12/21/11)
2011 Feb 9, Italian prosecutors filed a request for an immediate trial of PM Berlusconi on criminal charges relating to prostitution and abuse of power.
(SFC, 2/10/11, p.A2)
2011 Feb 11, Italy warned it faces a humanitarian crisis with some 1,600 would-be migrants from Tunisia arriving in its waters over the past two weeks following unrest in their home country.
(AP, 2/11/11)
2011 Feb 12, Italian auto giant Fiat, under pressure to abandon any plan to move its headquarters to the United States, committed to invest 20 billion euros to produce 1.4 million vehicles in Italy.
(AFP, 2/12/11)
2011 Feb 13, Thousands of Italian women turned out across the country to protest against Premier Berlusconi, saying his dalliances with young women humiliate the sex as a whole.
(AP, 2/13/11)
2011 Feb 13, Tunisian immigrants clinging to small fishing boats landed in Italy, as the Italian government appealed for EU aid and said it wanted to deploy its security forces in Tunisia.
(AFP, 2/13/11)
2011 Feb 15, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi faced a potentially fatal challenge to his power when a judge ordered him to stand trial on prostitution and abuse of power charges.
(AP, 2/15/11)
2011 Feb 15, Italian news agency ANSA said Curt Knox and Edda Mellas were indicted in Perugia for libel. The charge stemmed from an interview they gave Britain's Sunday Times years ago in which the father alleged police had physically and verbally abused his daughter during questioning after Meredith Kercher's 2007 slaying.
(AP, 2/15/11)
2011 Feb 16, International migration officials said nearly 100 Egyptians have arrived in Italy in two boats, as fears rose about a wave of people trying to reach Europe because of turmoil in the Arab world.
(AP, 2/16/11)
2011 Feb 25, Italian police arrested six Moroccan men suspected of inciting hatred against Pope Benedict XVI for converting a Muslim journalist in Italy to Catholicism.
(AP, 2/25/11)
2011 Feb, A Italian convicted Pietro Lamberti for having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced him to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor. The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court. In 2013 Italy's highest court overturned the conviction of Lamberti (60) because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship."
(AFP, 12/30/13)
2011 Mar 7, French fashion colossus LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton announced that it has agreed to buy Rome-based jeweler Bulgari SpA in a cash-and-shares deal worth euro4.3 billion ($6 billion).
(AP, 3/7/11)
2011 Mar 8, Italian police picked up 31 suspects in a major crackdown on the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate. 6 suspects, all Italian citizens, were apprehended in Germany on an Italian-issued European arrest warrant. 3 suspects in Canada and one in Australia were still being sought. Among those picked up in Italy was Francesco Maisano, a boss who tried to hide in an underground bunker when police raided his home.
(AP, 3/8/11)
2011 Mar 10, In Italy the government of Premier Berlusconi approved legislation to drastically overhaul the justice system, including ending the possibility of prosecutors appealing acquittals.
(SFC, 3/11/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 18, Italy's foreign minister said his nation will allow its military bases to be used for the UN-backed military intervention to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya.
(AP, 3/18/11)
2011 Mar 19, Six Danish F-16 fighter jets landed at the US air base in Sigonella, Sicily, and a half-dozen US aircraft arrived elsewhere as the military buildup mounted in Italy for possible action against Libya.
(AP, 3/19/11)
2011 Mar 19, Libyan officials detained the crew of an Italian ship docked in Tripoli and prevented the vessel from leaving port. The "Asso 22" tug of the Naples-based shipping company Augusta Offshore SrL had 8 Italian, 2 Indian and a Ukrainian crew member aboard. Agence France-Presse journalists Dave Clark and Roberto Schmidt went missing while working in the eastern Tobruk region.
(AP, 3/20/11)(AFP, 3/20/11)
2011 Mar 29, The UN refugee agency says over 2,000 people have arrived in Italy from Libya by boat since March 26 and more are believed to be en route.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 30, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi promised to evacuate the thousands of North African migrants who have overwhelmed the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, earning cheers from residents exasperated by the arrivals.
(AP, 3/30/11)
2011 Mar 31, Italy shipped more than 2,000 migrants to detention camps on its mainland, relieving pressure on Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily which has been overwhelmed by a relentless stream of boats full of illegal arrivals from North African shores.
(AP, 3/31/11)
2011 Apr 1, Greek authorities said an Italian radical anarchist group, the Informal Anarchist Federation, has claimed responsibility for three mail bomb attacks on a Greek prison, an office of the Swiss nuclear power industry and an Italian military barracks.
(AP, 4/1/11)(SFC, 4/1/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 4, Italy recognized opponents of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as the country's only legitimate voice, becoming the third country to do so, after France and Qatar.
(AP, 4/4/11)
2011 Apr 5, Italy and Tunisia signed a deal to choke off the flood of Tunisians heading to Italian shores. Italy agreed to take two flights a day of repatriated migrants.
(SFC, 4/6/11, p.A2)(Econ, 4/16/11, p.58)
2011 Apr 8, France and Italy announced an agreement to joint sea-and-air patrols to try to block new Tunisian migrants from sailing to European shores.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 11, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi made a rare appearance in open court but left after about 2 1/2 hours, saying the hearing at his tax fraud trial was a waste of time and accusing prosecutors of having no case against him.
(AP, 4/11/11)
2011 Apr 15, Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni (36) was found hanged in a Gaza apartment just hours after he was abducted by an al-Qaida-inspired group. Hamas soon arrested 4 people in connection with the killing, and sought others.
(AP, 4/15/11)(AP, 4/16/11)
2011 Apr 17, A train carrying Tunisian immigrants from Italy was halted at the French border in an escalation of an international dispute over the fate of North African migrants fleeing political unrest for refuge in Europe, unprecedented since the introduction of the Schengen travel-free zone.
(AP, 4/17/11)
2011 Apr 18, Italian chocolate tycoon Pietro Ferrero (47) fell off his bike while riding in South Africa and died. A heart attack was suspected.
(AFP, 4/19/11)
2011 Apr 21, Italian automaker Fiat, closing in on its goal of taking a majority stake and full control of Chrysler LLC by the end of the year, announced a deal to buy another 16 percent share sooner than expected at a price of $1.3 billion.
(AP, 4/21/11)
2011 Apr 21, Somali pirates captured an Italian cargo ship headed for Iran with 21 crew members on board, including 6 Italians and 15 Filipinos, in the Arabian Sea near Oman. The Rosalia D'Amato was released on Nov 25 after a ransom was dropped onto the ship.
(AFP, 7/24/11)(AFP, 11/26/11)
2011 Apr 23, Italian police arrested Francesco Campana (38), the alleged No. 1 boss of the organized crime syndicate based in Puglia, the region that makes up Italy’s boot-shaped heel.
(AP, 4/23/11)
2011 Apr 26, French dairy giant Lactalis offered $5 billion (€3.4 billion) for Parmalat, Italy’s biggest manufacturer of milk products.
(Econ, 5/7/11, p.70)
2011 May 3, Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said that 80 Mafiosi from two prominent crime syndicates have been arrested in separate operations. 40 were arrested for association with the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate in Calabria. Another 40 people in Naples were accused of trafficking drugs between Italy and Spain.
(AP, 5/3/11)
2011 May 5, In Italy an international meeting on Libya agreed to set up a new fund to aid Libyan rebels, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promising Washington would tap frozen assets of Moamer Kadhafi's regime.
(AFP, 5/5/11)
2011 May 6, Commuters in Italy scrambled to find the few buses and subway trains running during a one-day general strike that also affected air and rail travel, banks, public offices and schools.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 13, In Italy Rev. Riccardo Seppia (51), who had served in Sestri Ponente as pastor of Holy Spirit church for 14 years, was arrested for allegedly abusing a 16-year-old boy and giving him cocaine.
(AP, 5/15/11)
2011 May 14, Italian border police escorted a boat with 218 Tunisians aboard to tiny Lampedusa island, where tens of thousands of illegal migrants have arrived since January to escape turmoil in North Africa. Meanwhile, Africans fleeing Libya by sea reached Sicily.
(AP, 5/14/11)
2011 May 15, Italians voted in partial local elections with all eyes on the northern business hub of Milan, a center-right stronghold of embattled PM Silvio Berlusconi.
(AFP, 5/15/11)
2011 May 27, In Italy a Naples hospital said Puerto Rican tourist Oscar Antonio Mendoza (66), who was knocked to the ground by muggers trying to grab his Rolex, has died, nine days after he was hospitalized with severe head injuries.
(AP, 5/27/11)
2011 May 29, Italians began 2-days of voting to elect mayors in cities and towns across the country, with Premier Berlusconi hoping to avert defeat in his electoral stronghold of Milan.
(AP, 5/29/11)
2011 May 30, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi faced a stinging defeat in his northern stronghold of Milan. Local elections threatened to unbalance his fractious center-right coalition government. Berlusconi's candidates lost in major races like Milan and Naples, as did candidates of his ally the Northern League in northern cities like Novara where they have thrived.
(Reuters, 5/30/11)(AP, 5/31/11)
2011 Jun 3, In southern Afghanistan two coalition service members were killed in separate insurgent attacks. An Italian paramilitary Carabinieri was killed in northeastern Panjsher province. Lt. Col. Cristiano Congiu, a member of the anti-drug and security squad at the Italian embassy, was involved in an altercation on a narrow village street. He allegedly fired his pistol and wounded a youth, aged 18 or 19. Villagers then fired their own weapons and killed Congiu.
(AP, 6/4/11)
2011 Jun 3, The US Treasury reached an agreement to sell the rest of its holdings in Chrysler to Italy’s Fiat.
(Econ, 6/11/11, p.77)
2011 Jun 4, Italy-based Fiat offered $125 million to buy the Canadian government's stake in Chrysler Group LLC as it moved swiftly to strengthen its control of the US automaker.
(Reuters, 6/4/11)
2011 Jun 11, Pop star Lady Gaga performed at a large gay pride rally at Rome’s Circus Maximus. She also used the appearance to speak out in favor of full equality for gay men and lesbians, and to denounce countries that show intolerance to those who are different.
(AP, 6/11/11)(AFP, 6/11/11)
2011 Jun 13, Italian voters turned out in large numbers to defeat laws passed by Premier Berlusconi’s government to revive nuclear energy, privatize the water supply and help him avoid prosecution.
(SFC, 6/14/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 17, Italy signed an agreement with Libyan rebels meant to stem a stream of migrants fleeing unrest, prompting concerns at the UN refugee agency that people seeking asylum won't have proper protection.
(AP, 6/17/11)
2011 Jun 24, European Union leaders appointed Italy's Mario Draghi as the next president of the European Central Bank, a move that gives investors much-needed certainty over who will lead the institution in its pivotal role in the fight against the crippling debt crisis.
(AP, 6/24/11)
2011 Jun 30, The Italian government approved a $68 billion austerity sweep. The 3-year plan aimed to bring the government’s 3.9% budget deficit to near balance by 2014.
(SFC, 7/1/11, p.A2)
2011 Jul 1, In Italy a horse smashed into a barrier and died during training for a famed race around Sienna’s cobblestone piazza, leading to calls from animal rights groups for a suspension of the risky bareback contest. Some 50 horses have died since 1970.
(AP, 7/2/11)
2011 Jul 3, In Italy some 45 police and carabinieri officers were injured west of Turin as demonstrators protested construction of a high-speed rail linking Italy to France. At least five people were arrested.
(AP, 7/3/11)
2011 Jul 6, In Italy a military court in Verona convicted 9 former Nazi soldiers in the deaths of over 140 civilians in massacres in the Apennine mountains in the spring of 1944. The defendants were sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 7/7/11, p.A2)
2011 Jul 9, In Italy a Milan court ordered Fininivest, one of PM Berlusconi’s family holding companies, to pay $798 million as compensation for corrupt activities in a takeover battle.
(SSFC, 7/10/11, p.A6)
2011 Jul 12, In Italy Giovanni Strangio, the ringleader of a gangland style massacre of six people in Germany, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the Aug 15, 2007, attack that highlighted the international reach of Italy's Calabrian mafia. He was one of eight people convicted and given Italy's stiffest sentence for their roles in the violent feud that culminated in Duisburg. Three other people were convicted and sentenced to terms ranging from nine to 12 years, while three more were acquitted.
(AP, 7/12/11)
2011 Jul 15, Italy passed a $99 billion austerity package. The nation’s debt was the highest in the Eurozone at nearly 120% of GDP. The euro70 billion package did not entail any significant reduction in the wages, perks and privileges of the notoriously bloated, handsomely paid political elite, despite repeated promises such cuts would be carried out.
(SFC, 7/16/11, p.A2)(AP, 7/21/11)
2011 Jul 24, Pirates seized the Rbd Anema e Core, an Italian tanker with a crew of 23, off Benin in the Gulf of Guinea.
(AFP, 7/24/11)
2011 Aug 1, Italian officials said 25 African migrants trying to reach Italy from Libya died in the hold of a rickety boat so packed with people that the migrants could not get out as they struggled to breathe.
(AP, 8/1/11)
2011 Aug 2, Italy recalled its ambassador to Syria to protest the repression of anti-government protests and urged other European nations to do the same.
(AP, 8/2/11)
2011 Aug 2, A boat carrying 330 migrants from Libya arrived late in the day on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a day after officials found 25 people choked to death in the engine room of another Libyan refugee boat.
(AFP, 8/3/11)
2011 Aug 10, In Italy undercover police donned togas, capes and sandals to stop a turf battle among Italians who impersonate gladiators outside the Colosseum and other landmarks in Rome and make money by posing for camera carrying tourists.
(AP, 8/13/11)
2011 Aug 12, The Italian government approved $65 billion in additional emergency austerity measures over the next two years in an effort to balance the budget by 2013. Tax hikes and cuts to local government were included.
(SFC, 8/13/11, p.A2)
2011 Aug, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain introduced bans to prevent the short selling of financial stocks. The EU banned naked shorting of shares in October, effective in Nov, 2012.
(Econ, 10/22/11, p.88)
2011 Sep 1, Italian police arrested businessman Giampaolo Tarantini and his wife Angela Devenuto on charges of allegedly extorting money from Premier Silvio Berlusconi to ensure his cooperation in a probe over recruiting prostitutes to attend wild parties at Berlusconi's home. Tarantini has admitted he paid a high-end prostitute, Patrizia D'Addario, and other women to attend parties at Berlusconi's residences, but insisted the premier didn't know. Between September 2008 and May 2009 Tarantini recruited women of "young age, slender frame," and told them what to wear and how to behave at the parties.
(AP, 9/1/11)(AP, 9/16/11)
2011 Sep 4, Italian police detained a man who confessed to knocking two chunks of marble off a statue in Rome's famed Piazza Navona and of trying to damage the nearby Trevi Fountain a day earlier.
(AP, 9/5/11)
2011 Sep 12, In Italy an explosion at a fireworks factory in Arpino killed 6 people.
(SFC, 9/13/11, p.A2)
2011 Sep 26, Italian oil giant ENI said it has resumed oil production in Libya more than six months after civil unrest brought oil and gas output in the country to a near standstill.
(AFP, 9/26/11)
2011 Oct 2, In Italy Allison Owens (23), of Columbus, Ohio, was killed by a car while jogging in Tuscany. Her body was found on Oct 5. The driver of a car turned himself in on Oct 6 after his vehicle was filmed on roadside anti-speeding cameras.
(AP, 10/5/11)(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 3, An Italian appeals court dramatically overturned the conviction of Amanda Knox, an American student, of sexually assaulting and brutally slaying her British roommate. The family of victim Meredith Kercher (21) appeared overwhelmed at the ruling, saying they were shocked and bewildered by the stunning reversal of the 2009 decision. Knox’s one-time boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, was also released.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 10, Pirates of Somalia attacked the Italian cargo ship Montecristo carrying a crew of 23. US and British Navy ships freed the ship and 11 pirates were apprehended.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 11, Italy’s defense minister said armed forces can be deployed on Italian ships sailing in dangerous waters and that ship owners requesting the service would need to reimburse the ministry.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 11, Two Italians, who say they were sexually abused by priests, completed a 19-day, 340-mile (550-km) protest march to the Vatican and tried unsuccessfully to obtain an audience with the pope.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 15, In Italy hooded rioters in Rome hijacked a peaceful protest and smashed bank and store windows, tore up sidewalks and torched vehicles. Damages were estimated to be at least euro1 million ($1.4 million).
(AP, 10/16/11)
2011 Oct 17, In Italy Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a US Catholic priest who supports ordination for women, was detained by police after marching to the Vatican to press the Holy See to lift its ban on women priests.
(AP, 10/17/11)
2011 Oct 18, A Milan court refused to indict Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi in a tax fraud case involving his Mediaset media company. The court, however, indicted Berlusconi's eldest son, Pier Silvio Berlusconi, Mediaset chairman Fedele Confalonieri and nine other defendants.
(AP, 10/18/11)
2011 Oct 20, Italian energy giant ENI announced a giant natural gas discovery off the coast of Mozambique, which could be the largest in company's history.
(AFP, 10/20/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Italy renowned international law expert Antonio Cassese (b.1937) , died after a long battle with cancer. He had served as first president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal (1993-197) and later as president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 23, In Algeria gunmen kidnapped three aid workers, two Spaniards and an Italian, from the Rabuni refugee camp near Tindouf, injuring one of the hostages and a local guard in the late night attack. Security sources in Nouakchott and Bamako later said those responsible belonged to a Sahrawi wing of the north African Al-Qaeda branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM). The group later demanded 30 million euros ($39 million) to free the 3 aid workers held in northern Mali. Spaniards Enric Gonyalons and Ainhoa Fernandez del Rincon and Italian Rossella Urru were released on July 18, 2012, in exchange for three Islamists.
(AP, 10/23/11)(AFP, 12/5/11)(AFP, 3/3/12)(AP, 7/19/12)
2011 Oct 23, In Malaysia Italian rider Marco Simoncelli (24) died after crashing and being hit by two other riders at the Sepang MotoGP motorcycle race. This raised the number of recorded deaths in MotoGP to 47 since it was founded in 1949.
(AP, 10/23/11)
2011 Oct 27, Italian soldiers and civilian rescue workers battled knee-deep mud as they searched for survivors after flash floods and mudslides inundated picturesque villages around coastal areas of Liguria and Tuscany. At least 9 people died and 6 others were missing.
(AP, 10/27/11)
2011 Oct 27, Pope Benedict XVI joined Buddhist monks, Islamic scholars, Yoruba leaders and a handful of agnostics in Assisi making a communal call for peace, insisting that religion must never be used as a pretext for war or terrorism. The event commemorated the 25th anniversary of a daylong prayer for peace here called by Pope John Paul II in 1986.
(AP, 10/27/11)
2011 Nov 5, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi said improper construction in flood plains was partly to blame for devastating floods that have killed at least 6 people in the port city of Genoa. Tens of thousands of opposition activists demonstrated in Rome for the ouster of Berlusconi.
(AP, 11/5/11)(SSFC, 11/6/11, p.A4)
2011 Nov 8, Italy’s PM Berlusconi offered a conditional resignation after he failed to reach a parliamentary majority in a key vote. He said he would step down if Parliament passes an austerity package demanded by the EU.
(SFC, 11/9/11, p.A3)
2011 Nov 10, In Italy Pres. Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party made it clear that it would back an emergency government of national unity led by a nonpolitician, which would require a majority in Parliament.
(SFC, 11/11/11, p.A3)
2011 Nov 11, Italy sped a package of reforms toward approval and prepared to hand its dysfunctional government over to a technocrat, who Europe hopes can save the country from going broke. Financial markets around the world rallied in relief. Mario Monti, a distinguished economist, was expected to succeed PM Berlusconi.
(AP, 11/11/11)
2011 Nov 12, Italy’s PM Berlusconi resigned after lawmakers rushed through a budget bill seen as the first step toward winning back investor confidence.
(SSFC, 11/13/11, p.A8)
2011 Nov 13, Italy’s Pres. Giorgio Napolitano asked Mario Monti, a former European commissioner, to become prime minister.
(Econ, 11/19/11, p.53)
2011 Nov 16, Italy’s new premier Mario Monti (68) formed a new government of bankers, diplomats and business executives.
(SFC, 11/17/11, p.A5)
2011 Nov 17, In Italy anti-austerity protesters clashed with riot police as PM Mario Monti appealed to Italians to accept sacrifices to save their country from bankruptcy.
(SFC, 11/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Nov 30, In Italy a judge, politician and police official were among 10 people detained in a crackdown on the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate in Milan and southern Reggio Calabria.
(AP, 11/30/11)
2011 Nov, Maria Assunta (94) left a $13 million fortune to her beloved kitty Tommaso when she died two weeks ago. The feline's newfound riches include cash, as well as properties in Rome, Milan and land in Calabria.
(ABCNews, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 1, Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) said corruption is hampering efforts to tackle the eurozone debt crisis, as Greece (80) and Italy (69) scored badly in a list of nations seen to be the most sleaze-ridden. Nepal ranked 154th out of 183 countries. New Zealand ranked the cleanest, while the US ranked 24th. Afghanistan ranked 180.
(AFP, 12/1/11)(cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/)(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 6, In Italy an emergency budget under new PM Mario Monti came into force.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.57)
2011 Dec 7, Italian police captured Michele Zagaria, one of the country’s most-wanted fugitive mobsters, arresting the last major boss of the Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan Camorra, one of Italy's bloodiest mafia clans.
(AP, 12/7/11)
2011 Dec 8, German authorities said a letter bomb has been intercepted by Deutsche Bank employees intended to chief executive Josef Ackerman. They it was apparently sent by an Italian anarchist organization.
(SFC, 12/9/11, p.A4)
2011 Dec 9, In Italy a letter bomb exploded at an office of the tax collection agency, Equitalia, slightly wounding the organization's director. The Italian group, known as the "Informal Anarchist Federation" claimed responsibility for package bombs sent to three Rome embassies around Christmas last year. A week later another bomb was intercepted at Equitalia.
(AP, 12/9/11)(Econ, 1/7/12, p.45)
2011 Dec 14, Italian far-right author Gianluca Casseri (50) shot dead two Senegalese men and wounded three others before killing himself in a daylight shooting spree in Florence that prompted outpourings of grief.
(AFP, 12/14/11)
2011 Dec 22, Italy’s Senate voted to give final approval to a $40 billion austerity and growth package designed to eliminate its budget deficit by 2013.
(SFC, 12/23/11, p.A2)
2011 Dec 24, In southern Italy Ettore Bruscella (77) shot and killed three members of a family who owned a laundromat, apparently incensed by a years-long battle over the smoke and fumes emitted by the washing machines in the tiny town of Genzano Di Lucania.
(AP, 12/24/11)
2011 Dec 29, Italian PM Mario Monti announced a series of measures designed to relaunch the country’s struggling economy.
(SFC, 12/30/11, p.A7)
2011 Italian author Elena Ferrante (pseudonym) published “My Brilliant Friend," the first of her four “Neapolitan Novels." The 4th volume “The Story of the Lost Child" was published in English in 2015.
(Econ, 8/29/15, p.66)
2011 David Gilmore authored “The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples."
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.89)
2011 Peter Robb authored “Street Fight in Naples: A City’s Unseen History."
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.87)
2012 Jan 13, The cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off the tiny island of Giglio, off the coast of Tuscany, with more than 4,200 people aboard. Captain Francesco Schettino (52) was soon detained on charges of manslaughter. The final death toll was put at 30 dead and 2 missing. The last missing person was discovered on Nov 3, 2014, by workers dismantling the ship in Genoa.
(AP, 1/14/12)(AP, 1/15/12)(SFC, 1/16/12, p.A3)(AP, 1/17/12)(SFC, 3/23/12, p.A2)(AP, 11/3/14)
2012 Jan 27, In Italy Costa Cruises, the Italian operator of the Costa Concordia luxury liner, offered a settlement of some $14,000 to each uninjured passenger in the Jan 13 shipwreck. The Carnival Corp. unit also offered reimbursement of an estimated $4,000. A class-action suit was expected to seek $165,000 per passenger.
(SFC, 1/27/12, p.A4)
2012 Jan 27, Fitch ratings downgraded the debt of Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain even as European finance chiefs gathering in Davos sought to reassure global business leaders that Europe is on track to solve its debt crises.
(SFC, 1/27/12, p.A4)
2012 Jan 29, In Italy Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (93), a past president (1992-1999) who helped write Italy’s post-war constitution, died. He was a founding member of the former Christian Democrats.
(AP, 1/29/12)
2012 Feb 9, Ecuador's foreign minister said police in Italy found nearly 90 pounds (40 kilos) of cocaine last month in diplomatic mail sent to the Mediterranean country and two suspects have been arrested. The crates had been inspected by police dogs before leaving Ecuador, but had traveled to Italy through a third country.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 14, Italian prosecutors asked the country's highest criminal court to reinstate the murder convictions of American Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend in the brutal slaying of a British student.
(AP, 2/14/12)
2012 Feb 15, Guards on an Italian cargo ship, the Enrica Lexie, fired at an Indian fishing boat off Kerala state that it mistook for a pirate vessel, killing two fishermen. Indian police took two Italians into custody on Feb 19. Rome warned that the two were soldiers who enjoyed immunity. The 2 Italian marines were granted conditional bail on May 30.
(AP, 2/16/12)(AFP, 2/19/12)(AFP, 5/30/12)
2012 Feb 17, Swiss authorities said they have confiscated $6 trillion in counterfeit US bonds at the request of Italian prosecutors. In Italy eight people were arrested across the country and placed under investigation for fraud and other crimes. The bonds, carrying the false date of issue of 1934, had been transported in 2007 from Hong Kong to Zurich, where they were transferred to a Swiss trust.
(AP, 2/17/12)
2012 Feb 25, In Italy a Milan court ended a corruption trial against Silvio Berlusconi, ruling that the statute of limitations had run out on the case and essentially handing Italy's former premier another victory in a long string of judicial woes he has faced. He was accused of paying a British lawyer David Mills $600,000 to lie during two 1990s trials to shield the politician and his Fininvest holding company from charges related to his business dealings.
(AP, 2/25/12)
2012 Feb 27, The Italian cruise ship Costa Allegra, from the same fleet as the tragedy-struck Costa Concordia, went adrift off the Seychelles with more than 1,000 people on board following a fire. A French fishing ship soon began towing the Allegra to the Seychelles. The ship reached the Seychelles on March 1 with all passengers and crew safe.
(AFP, 2/27/12)(AFP, 2/28/12)
2012 Mar 8, In Nigeria a British-Nigerian operation involving 100 troops, military trucks and a helicopter attempted to rescue a pair of British and Italian hostages. At least two hostage-takers were killed in the operation in Sokoto. Italian engineer Franco Lamolinara (48) and his British colleague Chris McManus (28) were shot by their captors. Italy’s PM Monti was only informed by Britain’s PM Cameron once the operation was under way. The two hostages were kidnapped by heavily armed men who stormed their apartment in Kebbi state in May 2011. Nigerian authorities detained five Islamist militants suspected of involvement in the kidnapping.
(AFP, 3/9/12)(AP, 3/9/12)Reuters, 3/10/12)
2012 Mar 28, Italy seized more than 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of assets controlled by the Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi's family including stakes in top companies, land and a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
(AFP, 3/29/12)
2012 Apr 5, In Italy Umberto Bossi (70), the firebrand founder of a populist anti-immigrant party, whose crucial support kept Silvio Berlusconi in power in three governments, resigned as Northern League secretary amid a widening corruption scandal over party funds.
(AP, 4/5/12)
2012 Apr 23, Italian police arrested an Italian man, identified as Andrea Campione (28), in a crackdown in several Italian cities on an Islamic extremist network suspected of supporting international terrorism.
(AP, 4/23/12)
2012 Apr 24, In London Gianfranco Techegne (49) was arrested at the Broadway Post Office by detectives from Scotland Yard's extradition unit. He has been wanted by Italian police since 1982 in connection with the armed robbery of a car rental agency in Naples during which a young police officer was fatally wounded.
(AP, 4/28/12)
2012 May 3, The Italian government said citizens could now click on a government website and indicate where state funds are being wasted.
(SFC, 5/4/12, p.A2)
2012 May 5, In northern Italy a bus bringing retired police officers to a national convention veered off a highway and plunged into a canal, killing at least five people.
(AP, 5/5/12)
2012 May 11, In Italy an anti-nuclear anarchist group, the Informal Anarchist Federation's Olga unit, that previously targeted the tax collection agency claimed responsibility for shooting and wounding the chief executive of a nuclear engineering firm earlier in the week. Roberto Adinolfi was shot in the leg on may 7 near his Genoa home by an unknown masked gunman.
(AP, 5/11/12)
2012 May 19, In southern Italy a bomb exploded outside a vocational school in Brindisi, named after a slain anti-Mafia prosecutor, as students arrived for class, killing one girl (16) and wounding several other classmates. On June 6 police arrested Giovanni Vantaggioto (68), a fuel vendor on suspicion of multiple homicide.
(AP, 5/19/12)(SFC, 6/8/12, p.A5)
2012 May 20, In northeast Italy a 6.0 earthquake rattled the region around Bologna, killing at least 7 people, collapsing factories and sending residents running out into the streets. A report in 2014 linked this and a May 29 earthquake to high-pressure water pumped by Padana Energia into the nearby Cavone oilfield in 2011 to squeeze out more oil.
(AP, 5/20/12)(Reuters, 5/20/12)(SFC, 5/22/12, p.A4)
2012 May 29, In northern Italy a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook the region around Bologna, killing at least 17 people.
(AP, 5/29/12)(AP, 5/30/12)
2012 Jun 16, In Italy tens of thousands of workers demonstrated in Rome to protest pension cuts, tax hikes and labor reforms imposed by the government.
(SSFC, 6/17/12, p.A4)
2012 Jul 3, In Italy Sergio Pininfarina (85), former head of Pininfarina SpA, died overnight in Turin. The family company was known for its designs of sleek Ferraris and other cars.
(AP, 7/3/12)
2012 Jul 9, A spokeswoman for Italian oil major Eni SpA said in a statement that repair work was ongoing on its Nembe-Obama pipeline and blamed sabotage for the spill from one of its pipelines in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta.
(AP, 7/9/12)
2012 Jul 14, An Italian Alpine rescue team military official said the bodies of a Polish woman and Spanish man were found 4,400 meters (14,436 feet) up on the Mont Blanc Dome du Gouter peak on the Italian-French border after spending more than 24 hours in a snow hole.
(AP, 7/15/12)
2012 Jul 23, Spain's market regulator says it has temporarily banned short-selling of shares on its stock indexes owing to volatility in Spanish and European markets. It noted that Italy took similar steps today.
(AP, 7/23/12)
2012 Jul 24, Mayors from across Italy, holding up flags and wearing their tricolor sashes, demonstrated in front of the Italian Senate against spending cuts planned by the government.
(AP, 7/24/12)
2012 Aug 1, Italian oil company Eni SpA said it discovered more natural gas off the coast of Mozambique, expanding the yield of a major field off the southeast African nation that's the company's largest find.
(AP, 8/1/12)
2012 Aug 7, In Italy official government statistics showed that the economy contracted by 0.7 percent in the second quarter compared with the previous three months, shrinking for the fourth quarter in a row.
(AP, 8/7/12)
2012 Aug 10, The Italian government announced a shake-up of the judiciary aimed at reducing inefficiency.
(Econ, 8/18/12, p.50)
2012 Aug 10, Carlo Rambaldi (86), a special effects master and 3-time Oscar winner, died in southern Italy. His Oscars were won for special effects in “King Kong" (1976), “Alien" (1979), and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982).
(SFC, 8/11/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 11, Italian police raided an underground passageway in Rome, built during the era of Benito Mussolini, and seized a sprawling marijuana farm with a crop valued at an estimated $3.7 million.
(SFC, 8/15/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 12, In Italy Hundreds of Wind Jet airline passengers became stranded due to the failure of Alitalia's deal to purchase the Sicily-based low-cost carrier.
(AP, 8/12/12)
2012 Aug 16, In Italy 6 of 10 horses crashed during the latest Palio bareback horse race in Siena. One horse broke a front leg. Some 50 horses have died during the race since 1970.
(SFC, 8/18/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 23, In Italy a gunman shot and killed Gaetano Marino (48), a boss from the Neapolitan Camorra, clad in a swimsuit as he walked from a beach to join his family at a hotel in a resort town south of Rome. Marino had lost both hands in an explosion while planting a bomb in the 1990s.
(AP, 8/24/12).
2012 Sep 7, Italian and NATO rescue crews searched the waters off the small Mediterranean island of Lampedusa for survivors of an apparently sunken migrant boat after some of the 56 rescued passengers reported that dozens more were missing. One body was recovered.
(AP, 9/7/12)
2012 Sep 19, Italy’s Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 23 Americans for the 2003 abduction of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hasan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, in Milan.
(SFC, 9/20/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 12, Italy’s top court sided with doctors who blamed a non-cancerous brain tumor in businessman Innocenzo Marcolini on electro-magnetic radiation from his cell phone.
www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/19/us-italy-phones-idUSBRE89I0V320121019)
2012 Oct 26, In Italy a Milan court sentenced former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, to four years in prison and barred him from public office for five years after convicting him in a decade-old case involving the purchase of TV rights of U.S. films for his media empire.
(AP, 10/27/12)
2012 Oct 31, Italian architect Gae Aulenti (84) died at her home in Milan. Her work included the 1986 makeover of a Parisian train station into the Musee D’Orsay as well as the 2003 makeover of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.
(SSFC, 11/4/12, p.C12)
2012 Nov 24, In Italy a car was struck by a train near the southern city of Cosenza. 6 Romanian farm workers were killed.
(SSFC, 11/25/12, p.A6)
2012 Nov 25, Italians voted in a primary for a center-left candidate to run in spring general elections that will in large part determine how Italy's tries to fix its troubled finances and emerge from a grinding recession. The race is expected to come down to a faceoff between Pier Luigi Bersani (61), the leader of the main center-left Democratic Party, and challenger Matteo Renzi (37), the mayor of Florence.
(AP, 11/25/12)
2012 Nov 26, An Italian court ordered the seizure of the Ilva steel plant in Taranto, claiming pollutants from the plant, the largest in Europe, have driven up cancer in the area. Workers the next day stormed the locked gates. 20,000 jobs were at stake.
(SFC, 11/28/12, p.A2)
2012 Dec 2, In Italy somebody broke into the estate of Gianfranco Soldera in tuscany and emptied the massive oak casks of 62,600 liters of his 2007-2012 Sangiovese wine.
(Econ, 12/8/12, p.70)
2012 Dec 8, Itallian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi confirmed that he's running to be premier again for a fourth term.
(AP, 12/8/12)
2012 Dec 17, Italy's government said an Italian technician and two other employees at a Syrian steel plant near Latakia have been kidnapped.
(AP, 12/17/12)
2012 Dec 17, A Milan court fined Moroccan woman Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby, for failing to appear as a witness twice at the former premier's trial. It ordered her to testify in January. She is at the center of Silvio Berlusconi's sex-for-hire scandal €500 ($650).
(AP, 12/17/12)
2012 Dec 20, A Thai court ordered the extradition of Vito Roberto Palazzolo (65), a fugitive Italian banker found guilty of laundering money for some of Italy's top mobsters through New York pizzerias from 1975-1984. Palazzolo has written about his legal woes and getting swept up in the Pizza Connection probe on his website, www.vrpalazzolo.com.
(AP, 12/20/12)
2012 Dec 21, Italy’s PM Mario Monti resigned following Parliament’s confidence vote on the 2013 budget. Monti had said he would step down after the budget was passed.
(SFC, 12/22/12, p.A5)
2012 Dec 30, Rita Levi Montalcini (b1909), Italian scientist and Nobel Prize winner, died. She shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986 with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.
(Econ, 1/5/13, p.74)
2012 Jennifer Clark authored “Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Power of a Dynasty."
(Econ, 1/28/12, p.80)
2012 Bill Emmott authored “Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why Italy Must Conquer Its Demons to Face the Future." This was an updated English version of his “Forza Italia" (2010).
(Econ, 7/7/12, p.75)
2012 Robert Hughes authored “Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History."
(SSFC, 3/4/12, p.F5)
2012 In Italy the Fdi (Brothers of Italy) originated as a splinter party from the right of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative alliance.
(Econ., 12/12/20, p.55)
2012 In Italy the northern city of Parma elected Federico Pizzarotti as mayor, giving the M5S its first big electoral success.
(Econ, 10/22/16, p.46)
2012 Italian PM Mario Monti liberalized Sunday trading, despite pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and unions who said the country needed to keep its traditional day of rest. In 2018 Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio the new government will introduce a ban on Sunday shopping in large commercial centers before the end of the year as it seeks to defend family traditions.
(Reuters, 9/9/18)
2012 Italy introduce a new tax on boat ownership and people leasing boats over 10 meters. Italian tax evasion was estimated at about 18% of GDP.
(Econ, 8/25/12, p.43)
2013 Jan 4, A small plane disappeared off the Venezuelan coast with six people aboard, including Vittorio Missoni (58), a top executive in Italy's Missoni fashion house. Wreckage of the plane was found in June.
(AP, 1/5/13)(AP, 6/27/13)
2013 Jan 4, Six Russians were killed and two seriously injured when the snowmobile and sled they were riding veered off an Italian Alpine ski slope at night, slammed into a barrier and flew through the air into a ravine.
(AP, 1/5/13)
2013 Jan 7, In Italy former Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced a deal with the Northern League, his fractious coalition partner in three governments, to jointly run in Italy's election next month.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 8, A European court ruled that Italy's woefully overcrowded prisons violate the basic rights of inmates, fined the government €100,000 ($131,000) and ordered it to make changes within a year. The finding came three years after Italy's government recognized the problem itself but failed to pass legislation designed to correct it.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Feb 1, In Italy a Milan appeals court vacated acquittals for a former CIA station chief and two other Americans, and instead convicted them in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The court sentenced former CIA Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli to seven years, and handed sentences of six years each to Americans Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando. All three were tried in absentia at both levels.
(AP, 2/1/13)
2013 Feb 12, A Milan appeals court convicted two former Italian spy chiefs for their role in the kidnapping of a terror suspect as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The court sentenced Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italian military intelligence, to 10 years, and Marco Mancini, a former deputy and head of counterintelligence, to nine. Three other Italian agents also were convicted and handed six-year sentences. All the convictions can be appealed.
(AP, 2/12/13)
2013 Feb 16, A court in L'Aquila, Italy, convicted four people in the collapse of a university dormitory during the 2009 earthquake in that Apennine mountain town. Eight students died in the collapse during the powerful quake, which struck in the pre-dawn hours of April 6, 2009.
(AP, 2/16/13)
2013 Feb 16, Italian sailor Giovanni Soldini led an 8-member team of the Maserati to a record 47-day trip from NYC around Cape Horn to San Francisco, beating a 1998 monohull record.
(SSFC, 2/17/13, p.A12)
2013 Feb 24, Italy began 2 days of parliamentary elections.
(AP, 2/24/13)
2013 Feb 25, Italians voted for a second day in a national election. Italy faced political paralysis as near-complete results in crucial national elections showed no clear winner and raised the possibility of a hung parliament. Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) won no less than 163 of 945 elected members.
(AP, 2/25/13)(Econ, 3/2/13, p.50)
2013 Mar 7, A Milan court convicted former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi of breach of confidentiality for the illegal publication of wiretapped conversations related to a failed bank takeover in a newspaper owned by his media empire. His brother, Paolo Berlusconi, was convicted of the same charge and sentenced to two years and three months.
(AP, 3/7/13)
2013 Mar 18, India's Supreme Court indefinitely extended its order barring the Italian ambassador from leaving the country and rejected his explanation of his country's refusal to return two Italian marines charged with killing two Indian fishermen.
(AP, 3/18/13)
2013 Mar 22, Italy's Pres. Giorgio Napolitano tapped center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani to form a new government following national elections that produced no clear winner.
(AP, 3/22/13)
2013 Mar 22, Italy returned Marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone to India to face murder charges in the shooting deaths of two fishermen, reversing a decision that escalated diplomatic tensions.
(AP, 3/22/13)
2013 Mar 26, Italy's foreign minister Giulio Terzi resigned to protest his government's decision to send two marines back to India to face trial in the deaths of two fishermen.
(AP, 3/26/13)
2013 Mar 26, Italy's highest criminal court overturned the murder acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the slaying of British roommate Meredith Kercher and ordered a new trial.
(AP, 3/26/13)
2013 Mar 30, Italy’s Pres. Giorgio Napolitano named 10 outside experts to try to help end political gridlock that has prevented the formation of a government more than a month after inconclusive national elections.
(SSFC, 3/31/13, p.A5)
2013 Apr 3, Italy's anti-Mafia investigators said they have seized a record €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) in cash and property from Vito Nicastri (57) for tax fraud. The Sicilian alternative energy entrepreneur was alleged to have close ties to the Mafia.
(AP, 4/3/13)
2013 Apr 5, Italy's Pres. Giorgio Napolitano pardoned Joseph Romano, a US Air Force colonel, convicted in absentia by Italian courts in the CIA-conducted abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street. He hoped the move would keep American-Italian relations strong, especially on security matters.
(AP, 4/5/13)
2013 Apr 9, A judge in Tuscany fined Italian cruise line Costa Crociere SpA 1 million euros in administrative sanctions for the 2012 wreckage of the Concordia cruise ship that killed 32 people.
(AP, 4/10/13)
2013 Apr 15, The annual Goldman Environmental Prize was awarded to six activists for their efforts to protect the world ecosystem. They included Nohra Padilla (50) of Colombia, who began organizing waste pickers in Bogota in 1990 into the Bogota Recyclers’ Assoc.; Rossano Ercolini (57) of Italy for setting up a trash collection and conservation system; Kimberly Wasserman (36) of Chicago her grassroots campaign to close polluting coal-fired power plants; Aleta Baun (50) of Indonesia for organizing villages on west Timor against mining companies clearing forests for marble; Azzam Alwash (54) of Iraq for his efforts to restore Mesopotamian marshland; Jonathan Deal of South Africa for his efforts against hydraulic fracturing in Karoo.
(SFC, 4/15/13, p.A10)
2013 Apr 20, Italy's Parliament re-elected Giorgio Napolitano to an unprecedented second term as president, after party leaders persuaded the 87-year-old to serve again in hopes of easing the hostility that has thwarted formation of a new government.
(AP, 4/20/13)
2013 Apr 24, Italy’s Pres. Giorgio Napolitano nominated Enrico Letta, the deputy head of the Democratic Party, as prime minister.
(SFC, 4/25/13, p.A3)
2013 Apr 27, Italy’s center-left leader Enrico Letta (46) forged a new government in a coalition with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives, an unusual alliance of bitter rivals that broke a two-month political stalemate from inconclusive elections.
(AP, 4/27/13)
2013 Apr 28, In Italy a gunman shot and wounded two policemen in a crowded square outside the premier's office in Rome. The man "wanted to shoot politicians, but given that he couldn't reach any, he shot the Carabinieri" police at the edge of Chigi Square.
(AP, 4/28/13)
2013 Apr 30, Italy’s hybrid center-left and center-right government won its second vote of confidence. Premier Enrico Letta supported his choice of Cecile Kyenge (48), a black woman, to be minister of integration.
(AP, 5/1/13)
2013 May 6, Giulio Andreotti (b.1919), Italy's former seven-time premier and a symbol of post-war Italy, died at his home in Rome.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 7, In Italy a cargo ship slammed into a control tower late at night in the port of Genoa, toppling it into the harbor and leaving at least 7people dead. 2 people remained unaccounted for.
(AP, 5/8/13)(AP, 5/8/13)
2013 May 8, In Italy former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison sentence were upheld on the first appeal.
(AP, 5/8/13)
2013 May 9, In northern Italy Ottavio Missoni (b.1921), the patriarch of the iconic fashion brand of zigzag-patterned knitwear, died.
(AP, 5/9/13)
2013 May 11, In northern Italy thousands of supporters of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi rallied in Brescia to protest the media mogul's recent conviction by a Milan appeals court for tax fraud.
(AP, 5/11/13)
2013 May 11, In Italy an illegal immigrant from Ghana went on a rampage with a pickaxe in Milan at dawn, killing a passerby and wounding four others in an apparently random attack. Mada Kabobo (21) was jailed while he is investigated for murder.
(AP, 5/11/13)
2013 May 15, The Arctic Council, meeting in Sweden, agreed to expand membership and provide observer status to 6 new nations including China, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
(SFC, 5/16/13, p.A4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Council)
2013 May 18, A union of Italian metal workers led thousands of people in a march through the heart of Rome to press the new government for measures to spur job creation.
(AP, 5/18/13)
2013 Jun 1, Italy’s health minister confirmed that 3 people were being treated in Tuscany for a new respiratory virus related to SARS. The patients included a man recently back from a visit to Jordan, a related child and a work colleague.
(SSFC, 6/2/13, p.A6)
2013 Jun 5, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Germany and Italy will join the United States as "lead nations" in regions of Afghanistan after NATO transitions into a noncombat mission there after 2014.
(AP, 6/5/13)
2013 Jun 19, In Italy a Milan court convicted the designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of tax evasion. They were found guilty of failing to declare 200 million euros ($268 million) through a Luxembourg company to authorities and given a one year and eight months suspended jail sentence. They were also ordered to pay a penalty of 500,000 euros (about $670,000) to tax authorities.
(AP, 6/19/13)
2013 Jun 24, In Italy former premier Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from politics for life for paying an underage prostitute for sex during infamous "bunga bunga" parties and forcing public officials to cover it up. He still had two levels of appeal.
(AP, 6/25/13)
2013 Jun 28, Vatican official Monsignor Nunzio Scarano and two others were arrested by Italian police for allegedly trying to illegally bring 20 million euros ($26 million) in cash into the country from Switzerland with a private jet.
(AP, 6/28/13)(SFC, 6/29/13, p.A3)
2013 Jun 29, Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack (95) died in the Adriatic Sea town of Trieste. She had explained her research on the stars in plain language for the public and championed civil rights.
(AP, 6/29/13)
2013 Jul 6, In Colombia Roberto Pannunzi, a suspected Italian mafia boss, was arrested and deported to Italy. He was described as Europe's most wanted drug trafficker and the world's biggest cocaine importer.
(Reuters, 7/6/13)
2013 Jul 12, Italian police conducted raids on companies across the country linked to the construction of Venice's flood barrier. They arrested 7 people, suspected of rigging lucrative contracts for the multi-billion euro Moses Project.
(Reuters, 7/12/13)
2013 Jul 13, Roberto Calderoli, vice president of Italy's Senate, said at a political rally in the northern town of Treviglio, "I love animals - bears and wolves, as everyone knows - but when I see the pictures of Kyenge I cannot but think of, even if I'm not saying she is one, the features of an orangutan." Cecile Kyenge, an Italian citizen born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been the target of repeated racial slurs since her appointment as integration minister in April.
(Reuters, 7/14/13)
2013 Jul 17, Robert Seldon Lady (59), a former CIA base chief convicted in the 2003 abduction of a terror suspect from an Italian street, was detained in Panama after Italy requested his arrest in one of the most notorious episodes of the US program known as extraordinary rendition. After barely a day in detention, he was put on a plane to the US by the Panamanian government.
(AP, 7/18/13)(AP, 7/19/13)
2013 Jul 19, In Italy a Milan court convicted three of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's former associates of procuring aspiring show girls willing to prostitute themselves during the media mogul's infamous "bunga bunga" parties.
(AP, 7/19/13)
2013 Jul 20, An Italian court convicted five employees of an Italian cruise company over the Jan, 2012, Costa Concordia shipwreck that killed 32 crew and passengers, handing down a maximum sentence of two years and 10 months reached in plea bargains. The ship's captain was denied a plea bargain and was being tried separately.
(AP, 7/20/13)
2013 Jul 25, The Venice Film Festival marked its 70th edition with films starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts adrift in space, Scarlett Johansson as a seductive alien roaming the Scottish countryside and Judi Dench as a single Roman Catholic woman searching for a son she was forced to give up decades before.
(AP, 7/25/13)
2013 Jul 25, In central Italy at least one person was killed and 3 seriously injured after a fireworks factory exploded in Picciano.
(Reuters, 7/25/13)
2013 Jul 26, Italian police said a mafia clan in Calabria staged hundreds of fake car crashes every year to get millions of euros in insurance payouts to buy drugs and weapons.
(AP, 7/26/13)
2013 Jul 26, Italy's coastguard helped rescue 22 migrants and coordinated a search for missing people after receiving a distress call from a boat that ran into difficulties off the coast of Libya. 31 people were reported still missing on July 28.
(Reuters, 7/26/13)(Reuters, 7/28/13)
2013 Jul 28, An Italian tour bus plowed through cars, crashed through the side wall of a highway bridge and plunged into a ravine, killing at least 38 people near the town of Monteforte Irpino.
(AP, 7/29/13)
2013 Aug 1, Italy’s supreme court upheld Silvio Berlusconi's conviction for tax fraud.
(Reuters, 8/2/13)
2013 Aug 7, Italy allowed 102 migrants who were stranded on a tanker in the Mediterranean to disembark on the Sicilian coast after Malta refused them entry for three days despite European Union calls for it to help on humanitarian grounds.
(Reuters, 8/7/13)
2013 Aug 7, British police arrested Domenico Rancadore (64), a senior member of an Italian mafia clan. He had been sentenced to seven years in jail while on the run and was detained in west London under a European arrest warrant.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Italy's parliament approved measures to ease some of the worst prison overcrowding in Europe by cutting pre-trial detentions and using alternative punishments for minor offences.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 17, In Italy a German tourist died in Venice after the gondola he was riding in crashed into a larger boat ferrying passengers along the Grand Canal.
(AP, 8/17/13)
2013 Aug 28, The 70th edition of the Venice Film Festival opened with "Gravity," a 3-D techno-drama set in outer space.
(AP, 8/28/13)
2013 Sep 7, The Italian film "Sacro GRA," a documentary about life along the highway that circles Rome by director Gianfranco Rosi, won the Golden Lion for best film at the 70th edition of the Venice Film Festival.
(AP, 9/7/13)
2013 Sep 16, Engineering teams on the Italian island of Giglio began lifting the wrecked Costa Concordia liner upright in one of the most complex and costly maritime salvage operations ever attempted.
(Reuters, 9/16/13)
2013 Sep 17, In Italy the Costa Concordia liner was pulled upright off the island of Giglio. The vessel will remain in place for some months while it is stabilized and refloated before being towed away to be broken up for scrap.
(Reuters, 9/17/13)
2013 Sep 21, The Italian government announced that police in The Netherlands have arrested Francesco Nirta, a senior mafia boss and one of Italy's 10 most wanted men.
(AP, 9/21/13)
2013 Sep 21, Italy’s coast guard said more than 400 refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war were intercepted near Sicily in the past 14 hours, and one 22-year-old woman died during the passage.
(Reuters, 9/21/13)
2013 Sep 25, The Italian Coastguard said three boats carrying more than 700 asylum-seekers, some of whom were Syrian refugees, have landed on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.
(AP, 9/25/13)
2013 Sep 30, Italian authorities said at least 13 people on a migrant boat arriving in Sicily drowned close to the coast near the eastern city of Ragusa, apparently after trying to disembark from their stranded vessel.
(Reuters, 9/30/13)
2013 Oct 2, In Italy Silvio Berlusconi acknowledged defeat and announced he would support the government of Premier Enrico Letta in a confidence vote, a stunning about-face after defections in his party robbed him of the backing he needed to bring down the government.
(AP, 10/2/13)
2013 Oct 3, A smuggler's boat, carrying migrants from Eritrea, Ghana and Somalia, capsized off Italy’s southern island of Lampedusa. 160 bodies were soon recovered and 155 people rescued. 366 lives were lost. On Nov 8 police said dozens of the asylum-seekers had been raped and tortured in Libya before starting their journey. Three traffickers were under arrest.
(AP, 10/3/13)(AP, 10/4/13)(AP, 10/6/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Italy, in the 3rd trial of Amanda Knox, mobster Luciano Aviello testified that his brother, Antonia Aviello, killed Meredith Kercher in November 2007. Aviello had previously testified that his brother killed Kercher, but then recanted.
(SFC, 10/5/13, p.A2)
2013 Oct 5, Italian state news media reported that filmmaker Carlo Lizzani (91), a much-lauded protagonist of Italian Neorealism, has died. The Academy of Italian Cinema awarded him best director for his 1968 film "The Violent Four" about a manhunt for bank robbers.
(AP, 10/5/13)
2013 Oct 7, A French oceanographic vessel rescued 29 Syrian refugees, part of a group of 363 asylum-seekers that have landed in Italy in the past 24 hours.
(AFP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 8, Divers in Italy recovered 18 more bodies, bringing the total to 250, from the Oct 3 shipwreck in which only 155 of the estimated 500 African asylum seekers, most if not all from Eritrea, survived.
(AFP, 10/7/13)(SFC, 10/8/13, p.A2)
2013 Oct 9, The head of the European Commission announced during a visit to Lampedusa that Italy would receive an additional 30 million euros ($40 million) in EU funds to help settle and receive new refugees, after the sinking of a migrant boat off the Sicilian island killed at least 302 people.
(AP, 10/9/13)(AFP, 10/9/13)
2013 Oct 11, Alitalia’s board of directors approved a €500m salvage package. €300m would come from fresh capital and €200m from new credit lines. The government planned to involve the state-owned postal service in the rescue.
(Econ, 10/19/13, p.56)
2013 Oct 11, In Italy Erich Priebke (100), a former Nazi SS captain, died. He had been sentenced to life in prison for his role in in the 1944 massacre of 335 civilians by Nazi forces at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome.
(AP, 10/11/13)(Econ, 10/26/13, p.102)
2013 Oct 12, In Italy divers found an additional 20 bodies off the island of Lampedusa, bringing the still provisional death toll from an October 3 shipwreck to 359.
(AFP, 10/12/13)
2013 Oct 19, In Italy a Milan appeals court set Silvio Berlusconi's political ban in his tax fraud conviction at two years. Demonstrators clashed with police as tens of thousands marched through Rome to protest against unemployment, government cuts and big construction projects they say take money away from social services.
(AP, 10/19/13)(Reuters, 10/20/13)
2013 Oct 24, Italian weekly L'Espresso reported that US and British intelligence services have monitored Italian telecoms networks, targeting the government and companies as well as suspected terrorist groups.
(Reuters, 10/24/13)
2013 Oct 24, Italian Augusto Odone (80), a former World Bank economist, died in Acqui Terme. defied skeptical scientists to invent a treatment (Lorenzo’s Oil) to try to save the life of his little boy (d.2008), wasting away from a neurological disease (ADL. The film “Lorenzo’s Oil" (1992) was based on Odone’s efforts to save his son.
(AP, 10/25/13)(Econ, 11/16/13, p.98)
2013 Oct 25, Italian vessels rescued another 700 migrants while the two-day EU summit was going on. EU leaders failed to take new action to ease the plight of thousands of boat refugees trying to cross from North Africa.
(AP, 10/25/13)
2013 Oct 29, Italian police arrested 17 suspected gangsters thanks to information on brutal gang wars that a mafia informant had provided before being murdered.
(AFP, 10/29/13)
2013 Oct 31, Italian police said they have busted an international ring of former special forces agents hired to "recover" children involved in custody battles who were spirited across borders by one of their parents.
(AP, 10/31/13)
2013 Nov 5, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper reported that a group of Italian computer boffins have launched a new website, Mafialeaks, aimed at encouraging victims of organised crime and former gangsters to spill the beans.
(AFP, 11/5/13)
2013 Nov 16, "Tir," by director Alberto Fasulo, an Italian film about a truck driver's travels across Europe, took the top award of best film at the Rome film festival.
(AP, 11/16/13)
2013 Nov 16, In Italy thousands of families marched in Naples to demand a quick cleanup of toxic waste that has been dumped by the local Camorra crime syndicate for decades.
(AP, 11/16/13)
2013 Nov 19, Italian declared authorities declared a state of emergency in Sardinia as Cyclone Cleopatra dropped 450mm of rain in an hour and a half overnight. 16 people were reported dead.
(Reuters, 11/19/13)(AFP, 11/19/13)(Reuters, 11/20/13)
2013 Nov 27, In Italy three-time former Premier Silvio Berlusconi was ousted from Parliament after two decades as a lawmaker. Losing parliamentary immunity he defiantly calling it "a day of mourning for democracy" and pledged to continue in politics.
(AP, 11/28/13)(Econ, 11/30/13, p.51)
2013 Nov, In Italy Francesco Bidognetti, a top Camorra boss, was convicted of poisoning the water table in the town of Gugliano with toxic waste and received a 20-year sentence. Camorra mobsters since 1991 have systematically dumped, burned or buried nearly 10 million tons of waste, almost all of it coming from factories that either don't seek to know where the waste ends up or are complicit in the crimes.
(AP, 12/20/13)
2013 Dec 1, In Italy at least 7 people died and three injured when the illegal Chinese-owned Teresa Moda garment factory in an industrial zone in the town of Prato, outside Florence, burned down.
(Reuters, 12/1/13)(SSFC, 10/19/14, p.A20)
2013 Dec 3, Italian PM Enrico Letta announced measures to try to combat a fresh rubbish emergency in the area around the southern city of Naples where organized crime and widespread abuse have created a chronic environmental crisis.
(Reuters, 12/3/13)
2013 Dec 7, The Italian foreign ministry said Marcello Rizzo (55) has been kidnapped in the Niger felta of Nigeria. Rizzo was said to have disappeared several days earlier.
(Reuters, 12/7/13)
2013 Dec 11, Italian PM Enrico Letta won a parliamentary confidence vote triggered by the fall of Silvio Berlusconi, promising to push through a pro-European reform agenda and fight populism.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Italy grass roots protests dubbed the Pitchfork Protests continued for a 4th day in cities and towns reflecting the pain of a continuing recession.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A2)
2013 Dec 13, Italian police said they have arrested 30 people linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, the head of Cosa Nostra, including his sister and several cousins in western Sicily.
(AFP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 16, Moncler, a luxury goods manufaturer, made its debut on the Italian stock exchange at €10.20 per share. On Dec 30 its shares closed at €15.80 making its boss Remo Ruffini a paper billionaire.
(Econ, 1/4/14, p.48)
2013 Dec 18, In Italy frustrated and angry, thousands of students, jobless and tax-weary workers have moved their days-long protest against "useless politicians" to Rome.
(AP, 12/18/13)
2013 Dec 20, Italy's justice minister has announced that Bartolomeo Gagliano, a serial killer who failed to return to prison after a two-day good-behavior pass, has been recaptured in France.
(AP, 12/20/13)
2013 Dec 20, Italian authorities said that the Camorra syndicate's mobsters have expanded their multibillion-euro toxic-waste disposal racket to Tuscany and beyond Italian borders to eastern Europe.
(AP, 12/20/13)
2013 Dec 21, In Italy 9 detained illegal immigrants stitched their lips together with thread from their bedsheets in a protest to demand their release.
(Reuters, 12/22/13)
2014 Jan 2, Italy-based Fiat secured full ownership of Chrysler in a $4.35 billion agreement.
(SFC, 1/3/14, p.C4)
2014 Jan 3, The Italian navy over the last 24 hours rescued more than 1,000 migrants from boats trying to reach Europe.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 20, Claudio Abbado (80), conductor, died in Bologna. He was a star in the great generation of Italian conductors who was revered by musicians in the world's leading orchestras for developing a strong rapport with them while still allowing them their independence.
(AP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 21, Vatican Monsignor Nunzio Scaran, already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy, was arrested in Salerno in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 22, Italian police seized 27 pizzerias, cafes and other eateries in the heart of Rome and elsewhere in a probe highlighting the seemingly legitimate business fronting for organized crime in places far from the mobsters' Naples base.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 26, Italian police and campaigners said 13 Moroccan migrants held in a reception center in Rome for more than two months have sewed their mouths shut in protest at the length of their detention. They sewed their mouths shut the previous evening, repeating a protest they staged at the end of last year.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Italy Amanda Knox (26) and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted a 2nd time for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher (21) in 2007 while the two were students together in the Italian university town of Perugia. Neither her 28½-year sentence nor the 25-year prison term handed to Sollecito will have to be served pending further appeals.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Feb 7, India acceded to Italy's request and said it won't invoke an anti-piracy law carrying the death penalty when it tries two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 11, Police in Italy and New York broke up a major trans-Atlantic mafia ring, arresting 24 people accused of plotting to move hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs between South America, Italy and the USA.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 12, Italy's constitutional court struck down a drug law that tripled sentences for selling, cultivating or possessing cannabis and which has been blamed for causing prison overcrowding.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 13, Italian leftist leader Matteo Renzi called for a new government in his first direct challenge to PM Enrico Letta.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 14, Italy’s Premier Enrico Letta drove himself to the president's palace and resigned after he was sacked by his own party in a back-room mutiny designed to catapult Florence's young Mayor Matteo Renzi into the helm of Italy's government.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 19, An Italian court sentenced Rafaelle Lombardo, a former governor of Sicily, to six years and eight months in prison for links to the Mafia. He resigned in 2012 following an indictment.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 20, Italy's parliament passed a law that will phase out state financing of political parties, in response to public anger over its high cost and the tendency for it to breed waste and corruption.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 22, Italy swore in a new coalition government under Matteo Renzi (39). His Democratic Party was propped up by supporters of former premier Mario Monti and former loyalists of Silvio Berlusconi.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 24, Indian attorney general Ghoolam Vahanvati told the Supreme Court the prosecution did not intend to proceed against Italian marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, accused of killing two fisherman, under the anti-piracy section of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts. The sailors said they mistook two fishermen for pirates during the incident in February 2012, off the coast of Kerala state.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Mar 9, Italian authorities in the northern city of Lecco arrested an Albanian mother who confessed to stabbing to death her three young daughters. The father had departed for Albania a day earlier, and the mother had no job.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 17, A British judge ruled that Domenico Rancadore (65), a convicted Mafia boss, will be allowed to return to his comfortable home in west London rather than sent back to Italy and put in prison. The judge cited concerns about conditions in Italian prisons.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 20, Italian authorities said they have rescued more than 4,000 would-be migrants at sea over the past four days as the war in Syria and instability in Libya spawn new waves of refugees.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 24, Italian financial police arrested a former executive of the state-controlled Finmeccanica defense contractor in a bribery investigation. Stefano Carlini, former head of external relations, was one of four people placed under house arrest.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Belgium and Italy said they had moved excess nuclear materials to the United States for disposal or downgrading under the terms of past agreements, at the start of a nuclear summit in the Netherlands.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 28, Italian bishops published guidelines adopting a Vatican-backed sex abuse policy that says they have no obligation to inform police if they suspect a child has been molested.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Apr 2, Italian police arrested 24 alleged separatists for terrorism after thwarting a plan to take over St Mark's Square in Venice armed with guns and a rudimentary "tank" made from a digger.
(AFP, 4/2/14)
2014 Apr 3, Italian police arrested Nicola Cosentino, a former member of Silvio Berlusconi's government, accusing him of colluding with the mafia to quash competition against his family's petrol distribution business near Naples. Twelve others were also arrested on suspicion of extortion and unfair competitive practices.
(Reuters, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 4, British police re-arrested Domenico Rancadore in London after they received a new arrest warrant request from Italy. The warrant alleges that the 65-year-old has an "outstanding sentence of seven years of imprisonment to serve for participation in Mafia association" from 1987 to 1995 in Sicily.
(AP, 4/5/14)
2014 Apr 4, In Italy Curtis Bill Pepper (96), a long-time foreign correspondent for Newsweek and author of eight books, in Todi, Umbria.
(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Apr 12, Police in Lebanon arrested Marcello Dell’Utri, the man who created Forze Italia! in the 1990s. He had disappeared in the face of a 7-year sentence for aiding and abetting mobsters.
(Econ, 4/19/14, p.47)
2014 Apr 15, An Italian court ordered former PM Silvio Berlusconi (77) to serve a tax fraud sentence by doing community service and set travel restrictions that will limit his ability to campaign for next month's European Parliament elections.
(Reuters, 4/15/14)
2014 Apr 27, Dominican Rep. police arrested Nicola Pignatelli (43), an alleged high-ranking member of the Italian mafia. He had fled Italy in 2011 to avoid a prison sentence.
(SFC, 4/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Apr 30, In Italy fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were sentenced to one year and six months each in jail, over charges of hiding hundreds of millions of euros from tax authorities.
(Reuters, 4/30/14)
2014 May 8, In Italy Claudio Scajola, a former minister in several of Silvio Berlusconi's center-right governments, was arrested in a luxury Rome hotel for allegedly helping Amedeo Matacena, a prominent businessman convicted of Mafia association, flee to Dubai last summer.
(AP, 5/8/14)
2014 May 8, In Italy seven managers and ex-members of parliament were arrested over alleged attempts to influence public tenders for Milan's Expo 2015, casting a shadow over plans to stage an international showcase event and help kick-start the economy.
(Reuters, 5/9/14)
2014 May 9, In Italy plumber Riccardo Viti (55) confessed to the recent slaying of a prostitute whose body was tied, crucifixion-style, to metal bars in the countryside near Florence. His DNA was being compared to samples from 10 other similar cases.
(AP, 5/9/14)
2014 May 12, Italian authorities said a boat carrying hundreds of migrants has sunk south off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. At least 14 people were killed with 206 rescued.
(Reuters, 5/12/14)(SFC, 5/13/14, p.A4)
2014 May 21, In Italy Milan's 5,000 taxi drivers sought curbs on San Francisco-based Uber as representatives met with the transport minister. Milan's taxis have been idle for five days to protest Uber’s ride-hailing app.
(AP, 5/21/14)
2014 May 22, Italy’s statistical body (Istat) said that from October it would include drug trafficking, prostitution, and alcohol and tobacco smuggling in its economic output numbers.
(Econ, 5/31/14, p.64)
2014 May 26, Italian police arrested a former environment minister for allegedly embezzling 3.4 million euros ($4.6 million) from ministry funds earmarked for a water resources project in Iraq. Corrado Clini, who served in the government of ex-premier Mario Monti, was put under house arrest.
(AP, 5/26/14)
2014 Jun 4, In Italy Venice Mayor Giorgio Orsoni and more than 30 other people were arrested in a sweeping corruption scandal in which politicians are accused of financing election campaigns with some 25 million euros ($34 million) in bribes from the consortium building underwater barriers to protect the lagoon city from flooding.
(AP, 6/4/14)
2014 Jun 6, In Italy Sister Cristina Scuccia (25) clinched the top prize with five songs in the country’s musical competition “The Voice."
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCi_LgPgaQo)(SFC, 6/7/14, p.a2)
2014 Jun 13, In Italy Venice mayor Giorgio Orsoni resigned under pressure, a day after being freed from house arrest under a plea deal linked to a bribery scandal involving the construction of underwater barriers to protect the lagoon city from flooding.
(AP, 6/13/14)
2014 Jun 13, In Italy Marcello Dell'Utri, a longtime ally of former PM Silvio Berlusconi, was extradited to Italy under Interpol guard and transferred to a prison in the northern city of Parma. Authorities said he had fled to Lebanon to escape a prison sentence for Mafia association.
(AP, 6/13/14)
2014 Jun 13, Italian sailors recovered 10 bodies of migrants after their rubber dinghy sank off the Libyan coast. Thirty-nine migrants were rescued after the vessel sank.
(AP, 6/14/14)
2014 Jun 25, Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad Airways said it had reached a deal in principle to buy a 49 percent stake in struggling Italian carrier Alitalia. In return Alitalia agreed to cut 20% of its work force.
(AP, 6/25/14)(Econ, 6/28/14, p.58)
2014 Jun 29, Italy's navy rescued thousands of people trying to cross from North Africa over the weekend. Off the coast of Sicily the corpses of 30 migrants were found on a boat carrying nearly 600 migrants.
(Reuters, 6/30/14)(SFC, 7/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Jul 1, Italy's "Mare Nostrum" ("Our Sea") rescue operation saved 27 people off Sicily. Survivors said another 75 migrants were lost at sea.
(AP, 7/2/14)
2014 Jul 2, Italy reported 70 migrants lost at sea.
(Econ, 7/5/14, p.44)
2014 Jul 7, Italy’s navy said its search and rescue mission saved more than 2,600 migrants from boats in the Mediterranean over the weekend, as the number reaching Italy from Africa this year surged to a record.
(Reuters, 7/7/14)
2014 Jul 9, Spain’s Interior Ministry said police in Madrid have arrested 32 suspected members of Italy's Camorra crime group involved in drug trafficking, extortion, fraud and money laundering. Four arrests were also reported in Italy.
(Reuters, 7/9/14)
2014 Jul 11, Michigan-based Whirlpool said will pay more than $1 billion for a controlling stake in Indesit, the appliance maker's counterpart in Italy.
(AP, 7/11/14)
2014 Jul 18, An Italian appeals court acquitted former Premier Silvio Berlusconi (77) in a sex-for-hire case.
(SFC, 7/19/14, p.A3)
2014 Aug 6, Italy’s government statisticians disclosed that the country was back in recession as GDP fell by 0.2% in Q2.
(Econ, 8/9/14, p.46)
2014 Aug 6, The Italian foreign ministry said two Italian aid workers have been kidnapped while working on humanitarian projects in Aleppo, Syria.
(Reuters, 8/6/14)
2014 Aug 8, Etihad, the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates, agreed to inject a further $750 million into Alitalia in return for a 49% stake.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.55)
2014 Aug 24, The Italian navy recovered 24 bodies after a fishing boat capsized in the Mediterranean. 364 migrants were rescued. Italian rescue operations over the weekend picked up some 3,500 refugees.
(SFC, 8/25/14, p.A2)(AP, 8/26/14)
2014 Aug 27, The European Commission agreed to Italian demands to replace the “Mare Rostrum" refugee rescue operation with an EU-wide project.
(SFC, 8/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Sep 8, The Italian foreign ministry said 3 missionary nuns have been found slain in their convent in Burundi.
(SFC, 9/9/14, p.A2)
2014 Oct 8, In Italy hundreds of people protested against PM Matteo Renzi's plans to reform hiring-and-firing rules outside the congress center where European leaders were due to meet for a conference on jobs.
(Reuters, 10/8/14)
2014 Oct 9, Italy’s Senate voted to approve PM Matteo Renzi’s “Jobs Act." It was meant to increase permanent workers with temporary tax breaks while also making it easier to fire full-time workers.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Renzi)(Econ, 4/22/17, p.45)
2014 Oct 10, In Italy at least one person died when flood waters swept through the northwestern city of Genoa following unexpectedly heavy overnight rain.
(Reuters, 10/10/14)
2014 Oct 16, An Italian appeals court said Silvio Berlusconi paid a teenage nightclub dancer for sex but there is no proof he knew her age at the time, explaining its decision to overturn the former prime minister's "bunga bunga" conviction.
(Reuters, 10/16/14)
2014 Oct 17, Meeting in Milan, Italy, Russia and Ukraine made progress towards resolving a row over gas supplies, but European leaders said Moscow had to do much more to prop up a fragile ceasefire and end fighting in eastern Ukraine.
(Reuters, 10/17/14)
2014 Oct 18, Rome's left-wing mayor Ignazio Marino registered 16 gay marriages carried out abroad in defiance of Italian law, which does not recognize same-sex unions.
(AFP, 10/18/14)
2014 Oct 19, Italy’s PM Matteo Renzi announced a tax break for mothers of about $101 per month for the first three years o their children’s lives.
(Econ, 10/25/14, p.55)
2014 Oct 24, In Italy striking workers took to the streets in cities across the country to protest against cuts to public services and labor reforms proposed by PM Matteo Renzi.
(Reuters, 10/24/14)
2014 Oct 25, In Italy demonstrators from across the country filled the streets of Rome to protest against labor market reforms which the government of PM Matteo Renzi has made a cornerstone of its policy.
(Reuters, 10/25/14)
2014 Oct 28, Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano gave unprecedented testimony in a major trial that accuses the state of holding secret talks with the Sicilian Mafia in the 1990s.
(Reuters, 10/28/14)
2014 Oct 31, Italy confirmed the end of its search and rescue operation "Mare Nostrum", which has saved the lives of tens of thousands of boat migrants in the Mediterranean.
(AFP, 10/31/14)
2014 Nov 1, The EU’s “Operation Triton" replaced Italy’s “Mare Nostrum" search and rescue operation. Triton was run by Frontex, the EU’s border control agency, but remained under Italian control.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Triton)(Econ., 4/25/15, p.22)
2014 Nov 6, The European Court of Justice upheld a decision against Italy over toxic waste treatment, ruling it had failed to act against illegal dumps dotting the countryside around the southern city of Naples.
(Reuters, 11/6/14)
2014 Nov 11, In northern Italy the regions of Tuscany, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna were all badly affected by torrential rain and flooding. An elderly couple was believed to be buried under a mudslide.
(Reuters, 11/11/14)
2014 Nov 12, In Italy floods continued to engulf northern parts of the country as heavy rain continued. A landslide killed one man.
(Reuters, 11/12/14)
2014 Nov 13, In Italy a Milan appeals court reduced the sentences of three former aides to Silvio Berlusconi for their roles in procuring prostitutes for the ex-premier's infamous "bunga bunga" parties.
(AP, 11/13/14)
2014 Nov 15, Italian engineer Gianluca Salviato, abducted last March in Libya, returned home. He was working on a sewer construction project for an Italian company when he went missing in Tobruk.
(AP, 11/16/14)
2014 Nov 15, Italian authorities said that more than 900 people have been rescued at sea in the last 24 hours, in a blow to hopes that the approach of winter would stem the flow of migrants attempting perilous crossings of the Mediterranean.
(AP, 11/15/14)
2014 Nov 16, On the Italian-Swiss border at least 4 people were killed as landslides triggered by torrential rain slammed into houses and buildings on either side of the border.
(AFP, 11/16/14)
2014 Nov 19, Italy’s Court of Cassation threw out a conviction against Stephan Schmidheiny, a Swiss businessman, for some 3,000 asbestos-related deaths blamed on contamination from the Swiss Eternit construction company. The statute of limitations started ticking in 1986 when Eternit closed its four Italian plants.
(AP, 11/20/14)
2014 Nov 23, Italian PM Matteo Renzi's center-left Democratic Party (PD) won regional elections in Calabria and Emilia Romagna but a low turnout suggested growing disillusion among many voters.
(Reuters, 11/24/14)
2014 Nov 24, Italy’s health ministry said an Italian doctor, who has been working in Sierra Leone, has tested positive for the Ebola virus and is being transferred to Rome for treatment. In Freetown Dr. Aiah Solomon Konoyeima also tested positive for Ebola.
(AP, 11/24/14)(AP, 11/25/14)
2014 Nov 24, A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station, including Italy's first female astronaut.
(Reuters, 11/24/14)
2014 Dec 2, In Italy a probe of ties between gangsters and allegedly corrupt city politicians. netted 37 arrests. Dozens of other suspects, including Gianni Alemanno, Rome's previous mayor, were notified they are being investigated.
(AP, 12/3/14)
2014 Dec 4, In Italy Ignazio Marino, the mayor of Rome, ordered a review of city contracts after a police investigation revealed a web of corrupt relationships between politicians and criminals in the Italian capital.
(Reuters, 12/4/14)
2014 Dec 4, Slovakia's PM Robert Fico said his government is terminating the lease of a major state-owned hydro power plant to Enel, an Italian energy company. Enel owns a 66 percent stake in Slovakia's major power producer, Slovenske elektrarne, and is currently trying to sell its share. The government owns the remaining 34 percent.
(AP, 12/4/14)
2014 Dec 10, In Italy police in Perugia launched Operation Fourth Step against the “Ndrangheta, the mafia from Calabria. 61 people were arrested.
(Econ, 12/13/14, p.55)
2014 Dec 12, Striking Italian union workers marched through more than 50 Italian cities to protest government economic reforms that they say erode their rights.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 16, Italian police said they have arrested 59 suspects in a probe of ties between the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate and Milan businessmen, including alleged efforts to snare San Siro stadium's catering business.
(AP, 12/16/14)
2014 Dec 19, Italian police seized construction companies, apartments, villas and a yacht belonging to Cristiano Guarnera, a businessman who authorities allege consorted with a Mafia-like gang in Rome with ties to local politicians.
(AP, 12/19/14)
2014 Dec 22, Italian authorities said they have cracked a neo-Fascist plot to attack immigrants and political targets, including magistrates.
(AP, 12/22/14)
2014 Dec 27, Libya said it has called on Italy to send firefighters to prevent a fire spreading out of control at Es Sider, the country's biggest oil port. The fire had spread to a total of five oil tanks. The fire was reported extinguished on Jan 2.
(Reuters, 12/27/14)(Reuters, 1/2/15)
2014 Dec 28, The Italian-flagged Norman Atlantic ferry radioed for help after fire broke out on its lower deck 44 nautical miles northwest of the Greek island of Corfu. Italy's Coast Guard later said 477 people were rescued. At least 11 people were killed. On Dec 30 two Albanian seamen were killed during an operation to salvage the multideck car ferry. An Italian prosecutor later said up to 98 were unaccounted for while Greece put that number at 18 saying Italy's list is full of duplications and misspellings.
(AP, 12/28/14)(Reuters, 12/29/14)(AP, 12/30/14)(AP, 1/1/15)(SFC, 1/6/15, p.A2)
2014 Dec 28, The Turkish ship Gokbel with 11 crew members sank after the collision with the Belize flagged Lady Aziza in poor visibility a mile from the Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna. Two people drowned and four were missing at sea and feared dead.
(Reuters, 12/28/14)
2014 Dec 31, Some 970 mostly Syrian migrants arrived in Italy on the Blue Sky M cargo ship after apparently being abandoned by its crew in the Adriatic Sea.
(Reuters, 12/31/14)
2014 R.J.B. Bosworth authored “Italian Venice: A History."
(Econ, 8/23/14, p.77)
2015 Jan 2, The Icelandic Coast Guard ship Tyr towed a cargo vessel to Italy with about 450 migrants after Italian rescue teams managed to secure the wave-tossed Ezadeen for towing toward the southern Calabrian region. The migrants were abandoned by smugglers, leaving the vessel in rough seas without a crew.
(AP, 1/2/15)
2015 Jan 11, Anita Ekberg (b.1931), Swedish-born actress, died in Rome. Her films included “La Dolce Vita" (1960), “Clowns" (1971) and “Intervista."
(SFC, 1/12/15, p.A6)
2015 Jan 16, Italian aid workers Greta Ramelli (20) and Vanessa Marzullo (21), abducted in northern Syria on the night of July 31-August 1, 2014, flew home straight into a row over whether Al-Qaeda's Syrian arm was paid $12 million to release them.
(AFP, 1/16/15)(SFC, 1/17/15, p.A2)
2015 Jan 20, Italian police seized more than 600 kg (1,320 pounds) of cocaine and hashish in Rome and fanned out to arrest 31 suspected mobsters in what they say further indicates the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate is making the capital a strategic base for its global operations.
(AP, 1/20/15)
2015 Jan 21, Italian authorities unveiled what they said was a record haul of rare antiquities illegally looted from Italy and discovered during raids on Swiss warehouses belonging to accused Sicilian art dealer Gianfranco Becchina.
(AP, 1/21/15)
2015 Jan 28, Italian police conducted a huge dragnet against a Calabrian mafia clan operating in the north, arresting 110 people and seizing more than 100 million euros ($114 million).
(Reuters, 1/28/15)
2015 Jan 31, Italian lawmakers elected Sergio Mattarella, a constitutional court judge and veteran center-left politician, as president.
(Reuters, 1/31/15)
2015 Jan, Italian police raided and closed a chain of more than 20 pizzerias allegedly belonging to the Camorra, a mafia of the southern city of Naples and its surrounding area, Campania.
(Econ, 9/5/15, p.58)
2015 Feb 2, Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (78) was granted a request to end his community service sentence for tax fraud 45 days early for good behavior.
(Reuters, 2/2/15)
2015 Feb 3, Italy's new Pres. Sergio Mattarella (73) assumed office with a ringing call to the nation to root out organized crime and corruption devouring public resources and solve a protracted economic crisis depriving young people of their future.
(AP, 2/3/15)
2015 Feb 6, Italian judicial sources said Dino Maglio (35), a policeman who posed as an amiable host on the Couchsurfing website, has been charged with drugging and raping a 16-year-old Australian and may have sexually assaulted up to 15 other women. He will go on trial in Padua near Venice from March 17.
(AFP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 8, Two Italian patrol boats picked up 105 migrants late today from the boat drifting in extreme sea conditions. At least 29 migrants died of hypothermia aboard Italian coast guard vessels. Survivors later confirmed the existence of a fourth rubber boat that left Libya with as many as 300 people unaccounted-for.
(Reuters, 2/9/15)(SFC, 2/10/15, p.A2)(AP, 2/11/15)
2015 Feb 11, In Italy Francesco Schettino, former captain of the capsized Costa Concordia, was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison for manslaughter, causing the Jan 13, 2012, shipwreck that claimed 32 lives. Schettino lost his final appeal in 2017 and began serving his 16-year sentence.
(SFC, 2/12/15, p.A2)(SFC, 5/13/17, p.A2)
2015 Feb 13, An Italian court sentenced Somali trafficker Mouhamud Elmi Muhidin (34) to 30 years in prison. He had raped and attacked migrants he had led through the desert to Libya to make the perilous crossing to Italy in October 2013.
(AFP, 2/14/15)
2015 Feb 13, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Italy became the latest countries to withdraw embassy staff from Yemen as an exodus of foreign diplomats gathered pace due to growing insecurity.
(AFP, 2/13/15)
2015 Feb 14, Michael Ferrero (89), Italy’s chocolate king, died. He took over the family’s hazelnut-chocolate business after his father died in 1949 and soon added vegetable oil to make it spreadable. In 1964 he invented the name Nutella and in 1983 took it to America.
(Econ., 2/21/15, p.90)
2015 Feb 15, Italy closed its embassy in Libya due to the worsening conflict there and stepped up its call for a UN mission to help calm the situation.
(Reuters, 2/15/15)
2015 Feb 15, Italy's coast guard went to the rescue of at least 1,000 migrants in difficulty in the sea between Europe and North Africa, the third operation of its kind in as many days.
(Yahoo News, 2/15/15)
2015 Feb 20, Italy’s left-right coalition, headed by Matteo Renzi, approved two decrees enacting the core of an employment reform that parliament broadly endorsed last year.
(Econ., 2/28/15, p.47)
2015 Feb 20, A British court overturned a previous ruling that prison overcrowding in Italy could breach his human rights allowing convicted Sicilian mafioso Domenico Rancadore (65) to be extradited. He had spent two decades living incognito in Britain.
(Reuters, 2/20/15)
2015 Feb 21, In the Swiss Alps an avalanche swept away a group of Italian skiers leaving 4 dead.
(AFP, 2/22/15)
2015 Feb 24, French president Francois Hollande and Italian PM Matteo Renzi signed an agreement for a long-standing rail project to ease transport of freight across the Alps. The line would not open before 2028.
(AP, 2/24/15)
2015 Feb 24, Finmeccanica, Italy’s state-controlled aerospace and defense groups said Japan’s Hitachi will buy its rail businesses.
(Econ., 2/28/15, p.58)
2015 Feb 27, Italian lawmakers backed a non-binding resolution that encourages the government to recognize Palestine as a state.
(Reuters, 2/27/15)
2015 Feb 28, In Italy thousands of Northern League protesters poured into Rome from their political base in the north to demand the Italian government keep out immigrants.
(AP, 2/28/15)
2015 Mar 2, The principality of Monaco signed an accord with Italy aimed at ending banking secrecy, days after Switzerland and Liechtenstein inked similar pledges to exchange financial information with Rome.
(AP, 3/2/15)
2015 Mar 3, Italian police said they have arrested Palermo Chamber of Commerce president Roberto Helg, an anti-corruption crusader, for allegedly pocketing 100,000 euros ($110,000) he demanded to allow a pastry shop to operate at Palermo's airport.
(AP, 3/3/15)
2015 Mar 3, An Italian coast guard ship rescued 121 people after their boat capsized some 50 miles north of Libya. Ten bodies were recovered. Tunisian naval forces rescued all 81 migrants onboard another boat that had started taking on water off near the Tunisian island of Djerba. Several merchant ships assisted in migrant rescues from seven separate boats in a 24-hour period, bringing to safety almost 1,000 migrants, including 30 children and 50 women, one of them pregnant.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)
2015 Mar 10, Italy's highest court confirmed former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's acquittal on charges he paid an underage Moroccan prostitute for sex and then used his influence to cover it up.
(AP, 3/11/15)
2015 Mar 17, Germany, France and Italy followed Britain in announcing that they plan to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a proposed Chinese-led Asian regional bank, swinging Europe's biggest economic powers behind a project that is viewed with concern in Washington.
(AP, 3/17/15)
2015 Mar 19, Officials from the United States, Italy and Saudi Arabia led 2-days talks in Rome among a group of countries seeking to combat the financial activities of Islamic State militants. The Counter-ISIL Finance Group (CIFG) includes Australia, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Qatar, Spain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. The EU also participates.
(AP, 3/20/15)
2015 Mar 20, Italy unveiled the newly restored ancient city of Pompeii. It had been destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
(SFC, 3/21/15, p.A2)
2015 May 22, It was announced that China National Chemical Corp. (CNCC), a state-owned conglomerate, would buy Pirelli, an Italian tire maker, for $7.7 billion.
(Econ., 3/28/15, p.70)
2015 Mar 26, Italian police and Europol said eight people have been arrested in a half-dozen European countries for allegedly operating a diesel import scam that avoided taxes by disguising the fuel as it transited across the continent.
(AP, 3/26/15)
2015 Mar 27, Italy’s highest criminal court acquitted Ms. Knox, an American, and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.
(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Apr 1, Italy and the Holy See signed an accord to cooperate on fiscal matters, as the Vatican works to improve transparency after a string of financial scandals.
(AP, 4/1/15)
2015 Apr 4, Italian navy and coast guard ships rescued around 1,500 migrants aboard five boats in the southern Mediterranean.
(Reuters, 4/5/15)
2015 Apr 9, In Italy Claudio Giardiello, on trial for bankruptcy, shot dead a judge, a lawyer and a co-defendant in the Palace of Justice in central Milan. A fourth person was found dead in the court buildings with no apparent sign of injury.
(Reuters, 4/9/15)
2015 Apr 12, A vessel capsized off the Libyan coast, with survivors who were brought to Italy telling charity workers that as many as 400 others perished.
(AFP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 13, The Italian coastguard said it recovered 9 bodies and rescued 145 people after a boat carrying migrants sank off Libya. Italian coastguards intercepted 42 boats over the last two days as a surge of attempted illegal immigration to Europe saw almost 6,000 other migrants rescued since April 10.
(AFP, 4/13/15)(AFP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 14, Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was to travel abroad after a court in Milan declared that he had fully served his sentence for tax fraud, although he will still be prevented from running for election.
(Reuters, 4/14/15)
2015 Apr 16, Italian police said they had arrested 15 African migrants after witnesses said they had thrown 12 passengers overboard following a brawl between Muslims and Christians on a boat heading to Italy. Four survivors told Italian police that their inflatable vessel carrying 45 people sank on the crossing from Libya.
(AFP, 4/16/15)
2015 Apr 17, The Italian navy and coastguard patrols rescued more than 300 migrants. More than 11,000 migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean and taken to Italy in the past six days with hundreds more expected.
(AFP, 4/17/15)
2015 Apr 17, President Barack Obama and Italian PM Matteo Renzi compared notes on a range of issues, including Ukraine, Libya and Islamic State militants.
(AP, 4/17/15)
2015 Apr 18, A migrant ship sank off Sicily with an estimated 700-800 people aboard in one of the worst known tragedies of the Mediterranean migrant crisis.
(AP, 6/29/16)
2015 Apr 24, Italian police arrested 18 people suspected of belonging to an armed group linked to al Qaeda who were plotting attacks on the Vatican as well as in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 4/24/15)
2015 May 1, In Italy black-clad protesters in Milan torched two cars and clashed with police, who responded with tear gas as violence broke out at a demonstration at the start of the Expo 2015.
(Reuters, 5/1/15)
2015 May 3, Italian Coast Guard and commercial vessels came to the rescue of at least 16 boats of migrants, saving hundreds of them and recovering 10 bodies off Libya's coast, as smugglers took advantage of calm seas to send packed vessels across the Mediterranean. Some 40 migrants in a crowded rubber boat fell into the sea and likely drowned as the commercial vessel, the Zeran, approached the rubber boat to rescue migrants between Libya and Sicily.
(AP, 5/3/15)(AP, 5/5/15)(Reuters, 5/5/15)
2015 May 4, Italy's parliament approved a radical new electoral law designed to end decades of political instability by ensuring that elections always produce governments with working majorities.
(AFP, 5/4/15)
2015 May 5, In Italy 652 migrants from Ghana, Nigeria and Gambia arrived aboard the Italian navy ship Bettica. The Phoenix, a 130-foot refitted yacht, arrived in Pozzallo, Sicily, with 369 mostly Eritrean migrants who were rescued by the crew of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station.
(AP, 5/5/15)
2015 May 7, In Italy a fire badly damaged part of Rome's Fiumicino airport and closed it to most traffic.
(AP, 5/7/15)
2015 May 9, In Iraq the Venice Biennale contemporary art fair opened for a seven-month run. It was curated by Okwui Enwezor, a Nigerian art critic and museum director.
(AP, 5/9/15)
2015 May 12, Italy’s health ministry said a nurse who returned from Sierra Leone last week has tested positive for Ebola.
(SFC, 5/13/15, p.A2)
2015 May 18, France, Germany and Italy agreed to develop a European drone program for reconnaissance and surveillance, seeking to inject momentum into a proposal first considered in 2013.
(Reuters, 5/18/15)
2015 May 20, Italian police said they have arrested a Moroccan man (22) on suspicion of involvement in the March attack on the National Museum in Tunisia.
(SFC, 5/21/15, p.A2)
2015 May 29, The Italian Coast Guard rescued more than 4,000 migrants off Libya's coast in 22 separate operations in one day, with rescuers finding 17 people dead aboard a rubber dinghy.
(AP, 5/30/15)
2015 May 31, The Italian navy brought ashore the corpses of 17 migrants in Sicily along with 454 survivors as efforts intensified to rescue people fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.
(Reuters, 5/31/15)
2015 Jun 7, European rescue boats were bringing hundreds of migrants saved at sea to Italian ports, prompting the country's center-right politicians to vow that their regions won't shelter any more of them.
(AP, 6/7/15)
2015 Jun 8, Italy's government attempted to call the country's powerful northern regions to order after they point-black refused to accommodate more migrants.
(AP, 6/8/15)
2015 Jun 14, Italy threatened to turn to a Plan B to deal with migrants which "would hurt Europe" if the country is not given greater help with the crisis, as Austria and France expelled asylum seekers back onto Italian soil.
(AFP, 6/14/15)
2015 Jun 15, The Italian newsweekly L’Espresso published a draft copy of an encyclical on the environment by Pope Francis calling for urgent action to fight global warming.
(SFC, 6/16/15, p.A3)
2015 Jun 20, Italian prosecutors sought to indict 297 people and the Bank of China in connection with a massive money-laundering investigation. The Bank of has denied any wrongdoing.
(SFC, 6/22/15, p.A2)
2015 Jun 20, In Italy hundreds of thousands gathered in Rome to demonstrate against gay unions and the teaching of gender theories in schools, as PM Matteo Renzi worked to push a civil union bill through parliament.
(AFP, 6/20/15)
2015 Jun 20, Italian pizza makers in Milan won a Guinness World Record for creating a pizza 1.59 km long.
(SSFC, 6/21/15, p.A3)
2015 Jun 26, The EU decided to share 40,000 refugees landing in Greece and Italy.
(SFC, 6/27/15, p.A3)
2015 Jul 5, A dramatic breach at Italian surveillance company Hacking Team soon laid bare the details of government cyberattacks worldwide. Hacking Team's spyware was used by a total of 97 intelligence or investigative agencies in 35 countries, according to South Korean National Intelligence Service chief Lee Byoung Ho, who explained himself to lawmakers on July 14 after it became clear his organization was among the Milan-based company's clients.
(AP, 7/16/15)
2015 Jul 8, Italian authorities said they have seized assets worth more than 1.6 billion euros ($1.75 billion) from a family of five Sicilian pensioners believed to have links to a prominent mafia clan. The haul belonged to Carmelo Virga (66), his brothers Vincenzo (78), and Francesco (71), and their sisters Anna (76) and Rosa (68).
(AFP, 7/8/15)
2015 Jul 11, In Egypt the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack at the Italian consulate in Cairo. One person was killed.
(Reuters, 7/11/15)
2015 Jul 15, In Italy a Milan court convicted 11 former Pirelli managers, including two former CEOs, on charges of manslaughter and gave them prison sentences for the deaths of about 20 workers who developed tumors or lung disease after being exposed to asbestos.
(AP, 7/15/15)
2015 Jul 20, Italy’s Foreign Ministry said four Italian construction workers working in Mellitah, Libya, have been kidnapped.
(SFC, 7/21/15, p.A2)
2015 Jul 22, Italian police seized assets worth 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) and issued 41 arrest warrants in raids on gambling companies in Italy and abroad run by the 'Ndrangheta mafia organization.
(Reuters, 7/22/15)
2015 Jul 22, Italian police arrested two men suspected of supporting the Islamic State group and plotting to carry out attacks in the country.
(AFP, 7/22/15)
2015 Jul 24, Residents in a chic Rome suburb and a northern Italian village staged angry anti-immigrant protests, with villagers setting mattresses ablaze in a bid to stop authorities from housing migrants. Italy was hosting more than 80,000 migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean fleeing war, persecution or poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
(AFP, 7/28/15)
2015 Jul 24, In Italy at least 7 people died in an explosion at the Bruscella fireworks factory in Modugno on the Adriatic coast.
(AP, 7/24/15)
2015 Jul 25, The Italian coastguard said more than 1,200 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and Syria, arrived in Sicily, after having been picked up in the Mediterranean.
(AFP, 7/25/15)
2015 Aug 1, Italy's coast guard rescued about 1,800 migrants from seven overcrowded vessels, while 5 corpses were found on a large rubber boat carrying 212 others.
(Reuters, 8/2/15)
2015 Aug 3, Italian police arrested 11 suspects linked to the fugitive head of the Sicilian Mafia, including a former boss who ran a secret message system for the mobster using a sheep-based code. Matteo Messina Denaro (53) had been on the run since 1993.
(AFP, 8/3/15)
2015 Aug 5, The Italian Coast Guard rescued 367 migrants and recovered 25 bodies after a fishing boat carrying an estimated 600 capsized in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya. The Irish Navy patrol boat LE Niamh carried the survivors and the dead to Palermo. At least 185 migrants were feared to have drowned.
(AP, 8/5/15)(AFP, 8/5/15)(SSFC, 8/9/15, p.A4)
2015 Aug 7, Italy arrested five North African men on suspicion of multiple homicide and human trafficking in the presumed drowning of more than 200 people, saying they used clubs and knives against migrants.
(Reuters, 8/7/15)
2015 Aug 10, Italian customs police said they have seized 49 kg (108 pounds) of pure cocaine hidden in a container transporting frozen totani, a kind of squid, on a cargo ship from Argentina.
(AP, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 10, The European Commission approved 2.4 billion euros ($2.6 billion) of aid over six years for countries including Greece and Italy that have struggled to cope with a surge in numbers of immigrants.
(Reuters, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 11, In northern Italy Francesco Seramondi (65) and his wife Giovanna Ferrari (63) were shot repeatedly with sawn-off shotguns inside their takeaway pizzeria in Brescia. Pakistani national Mohamed Adnan (32) and Indian Sarbjit Singh (33) later admitted to the mafia-style slaying.
(AFP, 8/17/15)
2015 Aug 11, Italian rescuers picked up more than 1,500 migrants from other seven vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. Up to 50 migrants went missing after a large rubber dinghy sank.
(Reuters, 8/12/15)
2015 Aug 15, Some 49 migrants died in the hold of an overcrowded fishing boat off the Italian coast. The victims were apparently asphyxiated by fuel fumes and were primarily married men who had given spots on the deck to their wives. Some 312 survivors were pulled off the boat. On August 18 Italian police said eight suspected human traffickers have been arrested on suspicion of homicide.
(AFP, 8/16/15)(Reuters, 8/18/15)
2015 Aug 20, In Italy the funeral of purported mobster Vittorio Casamonica featured a gilded, horse-drawn carriage carrying his casket and a band playing "The Godfather" theme outside the church. Police and Carabinieri patrols accompanied the funeral procession. A helicopter pilot flew low over Rome to drop flower petals.
(AP, 8/20/15)
2015 Aug 21, Italy's civil aviation authority suspended the license of the helicopter pilot who flew low over Rome a day earlier to drop flower petals during the over-the-top funeral of a purported local crime boss, the first head to roll in a scandal that has outraged city residents.
(AP, 8/20/15)
2015 Aug 22, Italy's coastguard said it was coordinating the rescue of up to 3,000 migrants from waters off Libya after receiving SOS calls from 18 different crowded vessels. Operation Triton rescued some 4,400 migrants on this day alone.
(AFP, 8/22/15)(Econ, 8/29/15, p.41)
2015 Aug 27, Italy's government put Rome city hall under close supervision following allegations it had fallen under the sway of organized crime, but allowed beleaguered Mayor Ignazio Marino to stay in office.
(Reuters, 8/27/15)(Econ, 9/5/15, p.58)
2015 Aug 30, Italian energy giant ENI announced the discovery of the "largest ever" offshore natural gas field in the Mediterranean inside Egypt's territorial waters. The Zohr field would meet Egypt's own natural gas demands for decades.
(AFP, 8/30/15)(Econ, 8/19/17, p.40)
2015 Sep 10, Kuwait agreed to buy 28 Typhoon warplanes, becoming the third country in the Gulf region to order the combat aircraft. Eurofighter is a partnership between Italy's Finmeccanica, Britain's BAE Systems and civilian plane maker Airbus.
(AFP, 9/12/15)
2015 Sep 19, The Italian coast guard said twenty rescue operations picked up over 4,500 people off the Libyan coast.
(AFP, 9/19/15)
2015 Oct 1, Italy said it has told the European Commission that it will ban growing crops with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under a rule that allows European Union countries to opt out of GMO cultivation.
(AP, 10/1/15)
2015 Oct 1, The foreign minister and the people of the Marshall Islands were honored for taking legal action against the nuclear powers for failing to honor disarmament obligations. Tony de Brum and the people of the Pacific island group shared the honorary portion of the 2015 Right Livelihood Award, sometimes referred to as the "alternative Nobel." This year's 3-million-kronor ($358,500) cash award was shared by Canada's Sheila Watt-Cloutier, for her supports to Inuit causes; Uganda's Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, for her struggle for sexual minorities' rights; and Italian surgeon Gino Strada, for providing medical assistance to victims of war.
(AP, 10/1/15)
2015 Oct 5, In Portugal Sabrina De Sousa, a former CIA operative convicted of the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric as part of the extraordinary renditions program, was detained and awaited a decision on whether she will be turned over to Italy to serve a six-year sentence. De Sousa was among 26 Americans, mostly CIA agents, convicted in absentia over the of kidnapping of Milan cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, in broad daylight from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.
(AP, 10/8/15)
2015 Oct 8, In Italy Ignazio Marino (60) stepped down as mayor of Rome over a scandal centered on 20,000 euros ($22,600) of restaurant bills settled with a city hall credit card over the course of his 28 months in office.
(AFP, 10/9/15)
2015 Oct 13, The Italian Senate approved sweeping constitutional reform that would turn the Senate into a 100-member house of regional and municipal representatives with the power to question, but not veto, legislation. It will be put to a referendum in 2016.
(Econ, 10/17/15, p.58)
2015 Oct 13, Italian finance police arrested Mario Mantovani, a high-ranking politician in the Lombardy regional government, for corruption just before he was due to attend a conference promoting legality in the public administration.
(Reuters, 10/13/15)
2015 Oct 16, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon marked World Food Day with a visit to the Milan Expo World's Fair, which is focused on food security and nutrition.
(AP, 10/16/15)
2015 Oct 16, Italian police reported finding more than 20 tons of hashish with an estimated street value of 200 million euros ($230 million) hidden in the hull of a cargo ship. They spent more than 18 days searching before finally finding the drugs. The ship's captain and nine crew members, all Syrian, were arrested.
(Reuters, 10/16/15)
2015 Oct 18, The Italian navy said 8 bodies have been recovered from a rubber boat carrying migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean.
(Reuters, 10/18/15)
2015 Oct 21, Ferrari, an Italy-based car company owned by Fiat Chrysler, went public with a 10% stake on the NYSE and closed up almost 6% at $55.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C5)(Econ, 10/17/15, p.69)
2015 Oct 28, An Italian court rejected Tunisia's extradition request for Abdelmajid Touil, a Moroccan arrested on suspicion of involvement in a deadly museum attack, because he risks the death penalty.
(AFP, 10/28/15)
2015 Oct 30, In northern Italy two pilots of helicopter maker AgustaWestland were killed in an accident during a prototype test flight.
(AP, 10/30/15)
2015 Nov 10, Italy arrested 41 people after uncovering a criminal ring that charged people thousands of euros for illegal entry to the country to work in circuses.
(Reuters, 11/10/15)
2015 Nov 12, Police announced a swoop on a European jihadist network that was allegedly planning to kidnap diplomats and carry out attacks to try to spring its leader out of detention in Norway. Seventeen arrest warrants were issued and 13 people were detained in Britain, Italy and Norway.
(AFP, 11/12/15)
2015 Nov 19, In Italy 17 masterpieces were stolen from the Castelvecchio Museum. Pasquale Silvestri Riccardi, a guard at the museum, was later convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to ten years and eight months in prison. In May, 2016, Ukrainian border guards recovered the paintings during an attempt to smuggle them into Moldova. They were returned to the museum on Dec 21, 2016.
(http://tinyurl.com/jylpt62)(SFC, 12/23/16, p.E4)
2015 Nov 20, Italian police arrested six members of Sicily's Cosa Nostra mafia as part of an inquiry that uncovered a threat of violence against Interior Minister Angelino Alfano.
(Reuters, 11/20/15)
2015 Nov 26, Italian police said they have seized almost 800 shotguns bound for Belgium from Turkey from a truck that arrived in the northeastern port of Trieste.
(Reuters, 11/26/15)
2015 Dec 14, In Italy police in Rome said they had seized 3,500 fake Vatican parchments that were being sold to unsuspecting pilgrims taking part in Pope Francis' Holy Year celebrations.
(AP, 12/14/15)
2015 Dec 16, PM Matteo Renzi said Italy will deploy 450 troops near the front line with Islamic State militants in Iraq to protect workers carrying out repairs to the Mosul hydro-electric dam, the country's biggest.
(Reuters, 12/16/15)
2015 Dec 22, The Italian coastguard more than 650 people have been plucked to safety in the Mediterranean and one body recovered.
(AFP, 12/22/15)
2015 Dec 23, German investigators in North Rhine-Westphalia state arrested a 40-year-old Italian man, who wasn't identified, in Gelsenkirchen as he left his hiding place. Investigators later said he was a member of the Sacra Corona Unita group, based in southeastern Italy, and will soon be extradited to Italy.
(AP, 12/29/15)
2015 Dec 28, Milan, Italy, began a 3-day ban for six hours per day in a bid to alleviate persistent smog.
(SFC, 12/25/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 30, Italian prosecutors said Apple has agreed to pay Italy about $350 million in taxes for years 2008-2013.
(SFC, 12/31/15, p.A5)
2015 Dec 30, An Italian parliament-mandated health survey confirmed higher-than-normal incidents of death and cancer among residents in and around Naples, thanks to decades of toxic waste dumping by the local Camorra mob.
(AP, 1/2/16)
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1930 Feb 18, Luigi Pirandello's "Come Tu Mi Vuoi," premiered in Milan.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1930 Apr 21, Silvana Mangano, actress (Death in Venice, Barabbas), was born in Rome, Italy.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1930 Jun 29, Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist, was born.
(HN, 6/29/01)
1930 Jul 23, Earthquake struck Ariano, Italy, and some 1,500 were killed.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1930 Gino Severini, artist, published Fleurs et Masques in London.
(SFEM, 2/1/98, p.6)
1930 Futurist Italian poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti denounced pasta as obsolete and urged Italians to try more avant-garde combinations like cooked salami sauced in espresso and spiked with eau de Cologne.
(WSJ, 12/29/95, p.A-11)
1930 In Italy Battista “Pinin" Farina founded Pininfarina SpA, a car design firm.
(SFC, 8/8/08, p.B5)
1930 Mt. Stromboli in Italy erupted and hurled 30-ton rocks onto houses 3 km away and caused a tidal wave as the entire island mountain rose.
(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.30)
1931 Sep 16, Omar Mukhtar (b.1862), Libyan hero, was hanged by Italian authorities in the concentration camp of Solluqon. From 1912 he had led an insurrection against Italian invaders.
(Econ, 11/14/09, p.101)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Mukhtar)
1932 Jan 5, Umberto Eco, Italian novelist who wrote "The Name of the Rose," was born.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1932 Apr 17, Graziella Sciutti, Italian opera singer, was born.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1932 Aug 4, Luigi Beccali (1907-1990), Italian athlete, won Olympic gold in the 1500 meters. He gave a Fascist salute at the winners’ podium.
(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.R2)(http://tinyurl.com/6al4up)
1932 Sep 11, Valentino, fashion designer for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1932 Oct 25, Mussolini promised to remain dictator for 30 years.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1932 Nov 5, Mussolini freed 16,000 criminals.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1933 Mar 19, Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini proposed a pact with Britain, France and Germany.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1933 Jun 26, Claudio Abbado, composer, conductor (London Symph-1982), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1933 Jul 1, Italian Air Force Gen. Italo Balbo led a flight of twenty-four flying boats on a round-trip flight from Rome to the Century of Progress in Chicago, Illinois. The flight had seven legs and ended on Lake Michigan near Burnham Park on Aug 12. In honor of this feat, Mussolini donated a column from Ostia to the city of Chicago; it can still be seen along the Lakefront Trail, a little south of Soldier Field.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Balbo)
1933 Giulio Einaudi (d.1999 at 87) founded the Giulio Einaudi Editore in Turin, a publishing house that he built into a wellspring of fine literature, intellectual thought and political theory. In 1994 the firm became part of Mondadori, part of the media empire of Silvio Berlusconi.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C5)
1933 Mussolini decided to transform Campione, a destitute fisherman’s village, into a showcase for Italy’s prosperity. Subsidies were curtailed in 2001.
(WSJ, 1/16/00, p.A1)
1933 Francesco Illy founded Illycafe in Trieste, Italy. He invented the compressed air coffee machine (patented in 1934), the predecessor of the espresso machine as we now know it.
(http://indiacoffee.org/newsletter/2005/august/in_the_news1.html)
1934 Feb 18, Aldo Ceccato, conductor (Detroit Symph Orch 1973-77), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1934 Feb 24, Renata Scotto, soprano (Violetta, La Traviata), was born in Savona, Italy.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renata_Scotto)
1934 Jun 23, Italy gained the right to colonize Albania after defeating the country.
(HN, 6/23/98)
1934 Sep 20, Sophia Loren, actress (Desire Under the Elms, Black Orchid), was born in Rome.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1934 Dec 5, Italian and Ethiopian troops clashed at the Ualual on disputed Somali-Ethiopian border.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1934 Attilio Bertolucci (1912-2000) published his 1st collection of poems "November Fires."
(SFC, 6/15/00, p.A34)
1934 The Italian film "La Signora di Tutti" starred Isa Miranda and was directed by Max Ophuls.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, DB p.50)
1934 Charles Ponzi, Italian immigrant, check forger and scam artist, was deported from the US to Italy where he got work in Mussolini’s treasury and embezzled money from the fascists.
(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.G2)
1935 Feb 18, Rome reported sending troops to Italian Somalia.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1935 Feb 27, Mirella Freni, lyric soprano (Madame Butterfly), was born in Modena, Italy.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1935 Mar 23, France, Italy and Britain agreed to present a unified front in response to Germany.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1935 Jul 18, Ethiopian King Haile Selassie urged his countrymen to fight to the last man against the invading Italian army. He had previously warned the League of Nations of the dangers of appeasement.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1935 Oct 3, Italy invaded Ethiopia.
(DoD, 1999, p.237)(www.onwar.com/aced/data/india/italyethiopia1935.htm)
1935 Oct 6, Italian army occupied Adua, Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
(MC, 10/6/01)
1935 Oct 11, The League of Nations met and voted 50 to 4 (Austria, Hungary, Italy and Albania opposed) to condemn Italy for the attack on Ethiopia.
(http://nazret.com/history/)
1935 Oct 12, Luciano Pavarotti, Italian opera tenor, was born in Modena, Italy.
(AP, 10/12/07)
1935 Dec 30, Italian bombers destroyed a Swedish Red Cross unit in Ethiopia.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1935 Mussolini presented a gift of 3,000,000 gold francs to Albania; other economic aid followed.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1935 Mussolini exiled Carlo Levi (1902-1975), Italian journalist, artist and doctor. As a Jew and for his antifascist activities he was exiled until 1936 to two isolated villages in the province of Lucania.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/clevi.htm)
1935 Bruno Ducati (d.2001) and his brothers Adriano and Marcello began producing condensers and radio equipment in Italy. They switched to motorcycle production after WW II.
(SFC, 5/17/01, p.A25)
1935-1936 The Italian army used chemical warfare against Ethiopia in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
(NH, 10/98, p.18)
1936 Jan 5, Daggha Bur, Ethiopia, was bombed by the Italians.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1936 Mar 1, Giulio Bargellini (b.1869), Italian artist, died in Rome.
(www.comune.calenzano.fi.it/redaz/web/I/3B0241D3.htm)
1936 Mar 23, Italy, Austria and Hungary signed Pact of Rome.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1936 Mar 29, Italy firebombed the Ethiopian city of Harar.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1936 Apr 18, Ottorino Respighi (56), Italian composer (Pines of Rome), died.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1936 May 2, With the Italian invasion Ethiopia’s Emp. Haile Selassie left for French Somaliland. He went into exile for 5 years during which time he was based in Bath, England.
(http://tinyurl.com/ahqhm)
1936 May 5, Italian troops occupied Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1757 Italians and 1593 Eritreans were killed, more than 275,000 Ethiopians were killed.
(http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Prelude05.html)(http://nazret.com/history/)
1936 May 9, Fascist Italy took Addis Abba and annexed Ethiopia as Benito Mussolini celebrated in Rome.
(AP, 5/9/97)(HN, 5/9/98)
1936 Jun 30, Haile Selassie asked the League of Nations for sanctions against Italy.
(www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_400.html)
1936 Jul 4, The League Council voted to end economic sanctions against Italy with the collapse of Ethiopia. The cancellation of economic sanctions against an aggressor state marked the failure of collective security under the League and was a harbinger of conflict in the upcoming years.
(http://www.indiana.edu/~league/1936.htm)
1936 Sep 29, Silvio Berlusconi, later 2-time PM of Italy, was born to middle-class parents in Milan.
(WSJ, 3/30/06, p.A12)
1936 Nov 1, In a speech in Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini described the alliance between his country and Nazi Germany as an "axis" running between Rome and Berlin after Count Ciano’s visit to Germany.
(AP, 11/1/97)(HN, 11/1/98)
1936 Nov 18, Germany and Italy recognized the Spanish government of Francisco Franco.
(AP, 11/18/97)
1936-1939 The Spanish Civil War has been commonly referred to as "a rehearsal for World War II" by historians because of the intervention by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, and their use of the war to test new weapons and military techniques. It was fought between the liberal Second Spanish Republic government and right-wing rebel forces, including the fascist Falangists, monarchists and Nationalists. The rebels had the support of the Roman Catholic Church, in addition to Germany and Italy. The Government supporters, called Loyalists, had the support of communists, socialists, anarchists, the Soviet Union and volunteers from around the world who formed the International Brigades. Between 400,000 and 1 million were killed in the war, ultimately won by the rebels. In 2008 Paul Preston authored “We Saw Spain Die: Foreign correspondents in the Spanish Civil War." In 2012 Paul Preston authored “The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain."
(HNQ, 9//00)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.97)(Econ, 3/24/12, p.86)
1937 Jan 9, Italian regime banned marriages between Italians and Abyssinians.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1937 Feb, More than 30,000 Ethiopians were reportedly massacred by Italian forces in Addis Ababa. Italian estimates numbered between 600 and 2,000. Later studies put the number at around 20,000.
(http://nazret.com/history/)(Econ 7/22/17, p.66)
1937 Apr 27, Antonio Gramsci (b.1891), Italian communist, philosopher and political theorist, died. He said that to eliminate the bourgeois state one must seize the institutions that reproduce the dominant class’s thought patterns.
(Econ, 8/22/09, p.33)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci)
1937 Jun 10, Luciana Paluzzi (Fiona Volpe), actress (Five Fingers, Thunderball), was born in Rome, Italy.
(www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/bond-villains/luciana)
1937 Jul 20, Guglielmo Marconi (b.1874), Italian engineer, inventor of wireless telegraphy, marquis (radio, Nobel 1909), died in Rome.
(ON, 11/99, p.10)(MC, 7/20/02)
1937 Sep 6, The Soviet Union accused Italy of torpedoing two Russian ships in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1937 Sep 25, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler met with Italian Premier Benito Mussolini in Munich.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1937 Dec 11, Italy withdrew from the League of Nations.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1937 Dec 23, London warned Rome to stop the anti-British propaganda in Palestine.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1937 Italy occupied Albania. [see Apr 8, 1939]
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)
1937 An Italian Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Cabriolet, later called one of the finest classic cars in existence, was produced. In 1999 it sold for $4 million.
(SFC, 8/31/99, p.A26)
1937 The 1,700 year-old Axum Obelisk was dismantled and removed from Ethiopia by Italian forces. Mussolini used it to commemorate the 15th anniversary of his march on Rome. In 1998 Italy agreed to return it. The border war delayed the return to 2003.
(AM, 5/01, p.10)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.A2)
1938 Mar 1, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Italian poet, writer and political leader, died. In 2013 Lucy Hughes-Hallett authored “The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet Seducer and Preacher of War."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_d%27Annunzio)
1938 Jun 19, The Italian soccer team performed the fascist salute in Colombes Stadium, Paris, before the start of the World Cup soccer final match against Hungary. Italy defended its World Cup title, beating Hungary 4-2. It would keep the Jules Rimet Trophy for another 12 years as the world descended into war.
(AP, 5/16/18)
1938 Jul 14, Italian Premier Mussolini published an anti-Jewish and African manifesto prepared by Italian "scientists."
(http://specialcollections.library.wisc.edu/exhibits/Fascism/Race.html)(Econ, 11/21/09, p.55)
1938 Sep 1, Mussolini cancelled the civil rights of Italian Jews.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1938 Sep 5, Achille Gaggia, Italian barman, applied for a patent for an espresso maker that forced boiling water through coffee at high pressure. The Gaggia company was founded in 1947 and formally formed in 1948.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.6)(www.gaggia.com/storia_espresso.asp)
1938 Sep 29, British, French, German and Italian leaders signed the Munich Agreement, which was aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, inhabited by a German-speaking minority. The treaty ceded three areas of Czechoslovakia to other powers: the Sudetenland was annexed into Germany, the Teschen district was given to Poland, and parts of Slovakia went to Hungary. British PM Neville Chamberlain gained a brief peace agreement from Hitler at Munich and without consulting the Czechs agreed that Nazi forces could occupy Sudetenland. Some mark this "appeasement policy" as the decisive event of the century. Chamberlain predicted "peace in our time." French PM Edouard Daladier was very depressed from the meeting. In 1980 Telford Taylor published "Munich: The Price of Peace." It is a detailed political & diplomatic history of the 1930's in Europe, culminating in the Munich conference. Taylor later helped write the rules for Nuremberg Trials. In 2008 David Vaughan authored “Battle for the Airwaves: Radio and the 1938 Munich Crises."
(http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Chlup/chluplinks/munich.html)(SFC, 6/9/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 6/16/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)(AP, 9/29/06)(SFC, 5/26/98, p.B2)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.115)
1938 Nov 10, Fascist Italy enacted anti-Semitic legislation.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1938 Nov 17, Italy passed its own version of anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1938 Dec 17, Italy declared the 1935 pact with France invalid, because ratification's had not been exchanged. France denied the argument.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1938 King Victor Emmanuel III supported dictator Benito Mussolini and signed racial laws that expelled Jews from government and university jobs and the military and restricted their work, schooling and right to own property. Some 8,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps from which only about 600 survived.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.A11)
1938 In the Langhe region of Italy Giacomo Morra initiated the Int’l. Truffle Fair in Alba.
(SFEC, 9/27/98, p.T4)
1938 In Italy Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963), neurosurgeon, and psychiatrist Lucio Bini (1908-1980) pioneered the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), electric shock, to cure patients of depression.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh38el.html)
1938 Enrico Rebuschini, a northern Italian priest, died. In 1997 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
(SFC, 5/5/97, p.A8)
1938 G. Trolli, an Italian physician working in the Belgian Congo (Zaire), reported a condition called konzo meaning "tied legs." It was later related to cyanide poison from improper preparation of cassava root.
(NH, 7/96, p.14)
1939 Feb 24, Hungary signed an anti-Communist pact with Italy, Germany and Japan.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1939 Apr 7, Italy invaded Albania, which offered only token resistance. Less than a week later, Italy annexed Albania. [see Apr 8]
(AP, 4/7/99)
1939 Apr 8, Italy, under Fascist dictatorship led by Benito Mussolini seized the country of Albania. The Albanian parliament voted to unite Albania with Italy; King Zog fled to Greece. Under Mussolini’s totalitarian rule Italy embarked on expansion and military conquest. Ethiopia fell victim, conquered by Italy in 1936. Italy’s foreign policy cooperation with Germany began in 1936 and both joined forces to intervene in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Francisco Franco’s rebel forces. Italy’s military alliance with Germany was struck in 1939. [see Apr 7]
(HN, 4/8/98)(www, Albania, 1998)
1939 May 7, Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
(AP, 5/7/97)
1939 May 22, The foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a "Pact of Steel" committing Germany and Italy to a military alliance forming the Axis powers.
(HN, 5/22/99)(AP, 5/22/07)
1939 The Italian film "Ossessione" (Obsession) featured the debut of Massimo Giroti (d.2003 at 84). It was a loose adaptation of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and was directed by Luchino Visconti.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.A17)
1939 Italy passed a law for the Protection of Artistic Patrimony. It required that art over 50 years old be offered to the government for acquisition before export.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.64)
1940 Mar 5, The British surprised Mussolini by taking seven Italian coal ships.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1940 Mar 9, Britain freed captured Italian coal ships on the eve of German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop's visit to Rome.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1940 Mar 18, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass across the Alps during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1940 Apr 12, Italy annexed Albania.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1940 Apr 28, Luisa Tetrazzini (b.1871), celebrated Italian soprano, died in Milan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Tetrazzini)
1940 May 16, Bernardo Bertolucci, director (1900, Last Emperor), was born in Parma, Italy.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1940 Jun 10, Italy declared war on France and Britain; Canada declared war on Italy.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1940 Jun 11, The Italian Air Force bombed the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1940 Jun 24, France signed an armistice with Italy after the axis country attacked a portion of southern France during Germany's blitzkrieg.
(AP, 6/24/97)(HN, 6/24/99)
1940 Jun 28, Italian fascist Marshall Italo Balbo (b.1896) was killed when his plane was shot down over Tobruk, Libya, by friendly fire.
(SSFC, 7/5/15, DB p.50)
1940 Aug 11, Italian forces attacked Observation Hill in British Somaliland. Capt. Wilson and Somali gunners under his command beat off the attack and opened fire on the enemy troops attacking Mill Hill, another post within his range. The enemy finally overran the post at 5 p.m. on the 15th August when Capt. Wilson, fighting to the last, was reportedly killed. 2 months later he was awarded a Victoria Cross. In April 1941, however, Wilson was found alive in a prisoner of war camp in Eritrea. Wilson died at age 96 on Dec 23, 2008.
(AP, 12/30/08)
1940 Sep 12, Italian forces began an offensive into Egypt from Libya.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1940 Sep 9, Italian troops under Marshal Graziani attacked Egypt. Rodolfo Graziani (1882-1955) became known as the “Burtcher of Ethiopia."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodolfo_Graziani)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.20)
1940 Sep 27, Nazi-Germany, Italy and Japan signed a formal alliance called Tripartite Pact, a 10 year military and economic alliance strengthening the Axis alliance.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 25, The Greek Army beat back an invasion by Mussolini’s forces.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 25, Hitler visited Mussolini in Florence.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 28, Greece said no to an ultimatum from Benito Mussolini who demanded that PM Metaxas allow the Italian army free passage to enter and occupy strategic sites in Greece unopposed. Italy invaded Greece, launching six divisions on four fronts from Albania, which it had occupied the previous year. Greece successfully resisted Italy's attack. From 1942 Greeks celebrated From 1942 Greeks celebrated October 28 as Ohi Day (No Day).
(www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/oxi-day.html)(AP, 10/28/97)(HN, 10/28/98)
1940 Oct 28, A meeting between Hitler and Mussolini took place in Florence.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1940 Nov 11, Britain’s Royal Navy attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1940 Dec 9, British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II and seized 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
(AP, 12/9/97)(HN, 12/9/98)
1940 The film "Piccolo Mondo Antico" was directed Mario Soldati.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1940 The film "St. John the Baptist Beheaded" starred Toto.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1940-1943 This period in Italy was cover by Roderick Bailey in his book “"Target Italy: The Secret War against Mussolini" (2014).
(Econ, 6/21/14, p.80)
1941 Jan 20, Hitler met with Mussolini and offered aid in Albania and Greece.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1941 Jan 22, British and Australian troops captured Tobruk from Italians.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1941 Feb 6, The RAF cleared the way as British took Benghazi, Libya, trapping thousands of Italians.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1941 Feb 16, The Italians lost their last position in the Sudan.
(HN, 2/16/98)
1941 Mar 9, Italians launched a large-scale counterattack across the center of the front against Greece, which, despite the superiority of the Italian armed forces, failed. After one week and 12,000 casualties, Mussolini called off the counterattack and left Albania 12 days later.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Greece)
1941 Mar 21, The last Italian post in East Libya fell to the British.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1941 Mar 28, The Italian fleet was routed by the British at the Battle of Matapan off the coast of Greece. More than 2,000 Italian sailors died and five Italian ships were destroyed. Mavis Batey (1921-2013) of British intelligence had decoded a message that signaled the attack three days earlier.
(HN, 3/28/99)(SFC, 11/29/13, p.C4)
1941 Mar 29, Terence Hill, actor (Super Fuzz, They Call Me Trinity), was born in Venice, Italy.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1941 Mar 29, The British sank five Italian warships off the Peloponnesus coast in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1941 Mar 30, The U.S. seized Italian, German and Danish ships in 16 ports.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1941 Apr 6, Italian-held Addis Ababa surrendered to British and Ethiopian forces.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1941 Apr 17, Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany ending 11 days of futile resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. More than 300,000 Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. Italian and Albanian forces attacked and jointly occupied Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A20)(AP, 4/17/97)(MC, 4/17/02)
1941 May 18, Italian army under General Aosta surrendered to Britain in Ethiopia.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1941 Jul 28, Riccardo Muti, conductor (Philadelphia Orch), was born in Napoli, Italy.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1941 Nov 18, Mussolini's forces left Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
(MC, 11/18/01)
1941 Dec 9, China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1941 Dec 11, The US declared war on Germany and Italy. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(TL, 1988, p.112)(AP, 12/11/97)
1941 The British seized Eritrea from the Italians.
(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.A22)
1942 Jan 29, German and Italian troops took Benghazi in North Africa.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1942 Aug 27, Cuba declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1942 Dec 4, U.S. bombers struck the Italian mainland and Naples for the first time in World War II.
(AP, 12/4/97)(HN, 12/4/98)
1942 Dec 18, Hitler met with Mussolini and Pierre Laval.
(HN, 12/18/98)
1942 The film "Malombra" was directed Mario Soldati.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1942 Lev Nussimbaum (37), Orientalist and writer (aka Essad Bey or Kurban Said), died in Italy, while researching a biography of Mussolini. In 2005 Tom Reiss authored “The Orientalist," a biography of Nussimbaum, whose books included the novel “Ali and Nino" (1937), translated to English in 1970.
(WSJ, 2/17/05, p.D8)(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B3)
1943 Jan 14, Italian occupation authorities refused to deport any Jews living on their territories in France.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1943 Jan 22, Battle of Anzio: Italy.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1943 Apr 28, German-Italian forces launched a counter offensive in North-Africa.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1943 May 18, Allied bombers attacked Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1943 Jun 2, 99th Pursuit Squadron flew its 1st combat mission over Italy.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1943 Jun 11, The Italian island of Pantelleria surrendered after a heavy air bombardment.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1943 Jun 15, The 8,000-ton Rosandra, an Italian merchant ship, sank after being torpedoed by a British submarine a day earlier off Albania's southern coast. 6 people died but 173 were safely evacuated to land. In 2010 underwater archeologists reported the discovery of the ship.
(AP, 6/14/10)(www.uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/3507.html)
1943 Jul 9, American and British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily. The 'man who never was' pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in military history--after his death.
(HN, 7/9/98)
1943 Jul 10, During World War II, U.S. and British forces completed their amphibious landing in Sicily.
(AP, 7/10/97)(HN, 7/10/01)
1943 Jul 19, More than 150 B-17 and 112 B-24 Allied bombers attacked Rome for the first time.
(AP, 7/19/97)(HN, 7/19/98)
1943 Jul 22, The American Seventh Army forces led by Gen. George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily. Gen Patton moved his troops across Sicily through August.
(TMC,1994,p.1943)(WSJ,12/8/95,p.A-14)(AP, 7/22/07)
1943 Jul 25, Benito Mussolini was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III and placed under arrest. Fascist Grand Council, reeling from the invasion of Sicily and fearing a subsequent destructive invasion of the mainland, forced Dictator Benito Mussolini to resign. Mussolini was later rescued by the Nazis and re-asserted his authority.
(AP, 7/25/97)(HN, 7/25/98)(The National Interest, 8/25/19)
1943 Jul 26, Otto Skorzeny's commando group arrived in Rome.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1943 Aug 13, The British bombed Milan. Elmer Alifano was an injured American held captive in a Milan hospital during the bombing where he received more injuries and where a third of the Allied prisoners were killed.
(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A19)
1943 Aug 17, The Allied conquest of Sicily was completed as U.S. and British forces entered Messina.
(AP, 8/17/97)(HN, 8/17/98)
1943 Aug 28, Mussolini was transferred from La Maddalena Sardinia to Gran Sasso.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1943 Aug, Italy's surrender to Allied forces weakened Italian hold on Albania; Albanian resistance fighters overwhelmed five Italian divisions.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1943 Sep 3, The British Eighth Army invaded Italy, landing at Calabria, during World War II. Italy signed a secret armistice with the Allies, but it was not announced until Sep 8.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)
1943 Sep 4, British 8th army landed at Taranto in South Italy.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1943 Sep 8, Italy surrendered to the Allies in WW II.
(www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsItaly.htm)
1943 Sep 9, Allied forces in operation Avalanche landed at Salerno and Taranto during World War II. They encountered strong resistance from German troops.
(AP, 9/9/97)(HN, 9/9/98)(MC, 9/9/01)
1943 Sep 10, German troops occupied Rome and took over the protection of Vatican City.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1943 Sep 12, German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. 107 Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny (1908-1975) freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains. Paratroopers in 12 gliders took the Italian Carabinieri guards by surprise without firing a single shot, and whisked ex-dictator Mussolini away in a Storch airplane to Rome. The rest of the commando team escaped by cable car. Skorzeny then flew Mussolini to meet with Hitler.
(AP, 9/12/97)(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A15)(The National Interest, 8/26/19)
1943 Sep 13, Germans counter attacked at Salerno.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1943 Sep 14, German troops abandoned the Salerno front in Italy.
(HN, 9/14/98)
1943 Sep 23, Benito Mussolini formed a rival fascist government in Italy.
(www.cifr.it/Chapter_05.html)
1943 Sep 24, German forces executed 117 Italian officers on the Greek island of Cephalonia. The massacre became the basis for the 1994 bestseller Captain Corelli's Mandolin by British writer Louis de Bernieres. On Oct 18, 2013 an Italian court handed a life sentence in absentia to former German army corporal Alfred Stork (90) for his role in the execution.
(AFP, 10/18/13)
1943 Sep 29, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice aboard the British ship Nelson off Malta.
(AP, 9/29/97)
1943 Sep, Trieste was occupied by the Germans and held until the end of the war. Many of the city’s Jews perished at the nearby Risiera di San Sabba Nazi death camp.
(SFC, 2/3/97, p.C3)
1943 Sep, Pope Pius XII offered Vatican assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis and in Italy ran an extensive network of hideouts for escaping Jews.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1943 Oct 1, Allied forces captured Naples during World War II. British troops in Italy entered Naples and occupied Foggia airfield.
(HFA, '96, p.38)(AP, 10/1/97)(HN, 10/1/98)
1943 Oct 12, The U.S. Fifth Army began an assault crossing of the Volturno River in Italy.
(HN, 10/12/98)
1943 Oct 13, During World War II, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
(AP, 10/13/97)
1943 Oct 16, In Italy the Nazi SS police and Waffen SS began rounding up the Jews of Rome. There was an anti Jewish riot in Rome as the Jewish quarter was surrounded by Nazis, and Jews were evacuated to Auschwitz. Pope Pius XII made no public protest, though he did send some messages of disapproval through intermediaries. In total, nearly 8,000 Italian Jews died in concentration camps in World War II.
(WSJ, 10/18/99, p.A46)(AFP, 10/27/18)
1943 Dec 2, Italy’s Bari harbor was attacked by German bombers. They achieved a complete surprise bombing shipping and personnel operating in support of the Allied Italian campaign. 27 cargo and transport ships and a schooner were sunk. The release of mustard gas from one of the wrecked cargo ships added to the loss of life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.20)
1943 Dec 3, Battle of Monte Cassino, Italy began.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1943-1947 Thousands of Italians were killed by Yugoslav partisans in and around the Istrian peninsula, which had fallen to Italy after the 1st world war. Mussolini’s fascists had brutally Italianized the peninsula prior to the arrival of the partisans.
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.48)
1944 Jan 4, The British Fifth Army attacked Monte Cassino, Italy.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1944 Jan 6, In Italy lava began flowing from the conelet of Mount Vesuvius. Lava flows continued into March with several explosions thru the end of March.
(http://vulcan.fis.uniroma3.it/vesuvio/1944eng.html)
1944 Jan 15, The U.S. Fifth Army successfully broke the German Winter Line in Italy with the capture of Mount Trocchio.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1944 Jan 20, Allied forces began unsuccessful operations to cross the Rapido River and seize Cassino, Italy.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1944 Jan 22, US troops under Major General John P. Lucas made an amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio, Italy, just south of Rome. Major General Lucas commanded Operation Shingle, a surprise landing behind German lines in Italy. General Lucas harbored grave doubts about the chances for success in this, the most daring operation of the Italian campaign. The seaborne operation was planned as a way of outflanking German strength on Italy’s Gustav Line and swiftly capturing Rome, but almost nothing went according to plan.
(HNQ, 4/4/01)(AP, 1/22/08)
1944 Jan 30-1944 Feb 2, At Cisterna, Italy, some 250-300 US Rangers died as part of the battle of Anzio. 8 rangers escaped and hundreds were captured.
(AP, 3/20/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cisterna)
1944 Feb 2, The Germans stopped an Allied attack at Anzio, Italy.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1944 Feb 7, The Germans launched a [counteroffensive] second attack against the Allied beachhead at Anzio, Italy. They hoped to push the Allies back into the sea.
(AP, 2/7/97)(HN, 2/7/99)
1944 Feb 15, American bombers attacked the Abbey of Monte Cassino in central Italy in an effort to neutralize it as a German observation post. In 2003 Matthew Parker authored "Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II."
(HN, 2/15/99)(Econ, 9/20/03, p.80)
1944 Mar 2, A train disaster killed 521 people in Salerno, Italy.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)
1944 Feb 15, American bombers attacked the Abbey of Monte Cassino in an effort to neutralize it as a German observation post in central Italy.
(HN, 2/15/99)
1944 Mar 1, Massive strikes took place in Northern Italian towns.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1944 Mar 2, In Salerno, Italy, fumes from a locomotive stalled in a tunnel suffocated 521 people.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1944 Mar 4, Anti-German strikes took place in North Italy.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1944 Mar 15, Allied bombers again raided German-held Monte Cassino, Italy.
(AP, 3/15/07)
1944 Mar 19, At Cisterna, Italy, Germans, increasingly worried about resistance, rounded up the entire town and marched them north. Many ended in labor camps and farms as far north as Tuscany.
(AP, 3/20/10)
1944 Mar 23, A bomb assassination against Southern Tirol congregation in Rome killed 33.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1944 Mar 24, In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans, who the day before killed 32 [33] German soldiers [policemen]. The Ardeatine Cave massacre near Rome, Italy, took place. In retaliation to the systematic murder of Nazi officers by the Italian underground, an SS officer ordered that 10 Italian civilian men be shot for every Nazi officer killed. The age of the civilians did not matter and so many teenagers and boys were among the dead found in the caves. Argentina extradited former Nazi officer, Erich Priebke, to Rome in 1995 to face trial for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre.
(AP, 3/23/97)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-21) (WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-1)(HN, 3/24/98)
1944 Apr 22, Hitler and Mussolini met at Obersalzburg.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1944 May 11, Allied forces launched a major offensive against German lines in Italy.
(AP, 5/11/07)
1944 May 13, Allied forces in Italy broke through the German Gustav Line into the Liri Valley.
(HN, 5/13/99)
1944 May 15, A partisan attack on a movie theater killed 5 German soldiers in Genoa. 4 days later SS Officer Friedrich Engel ordered the killing of 59 Italian prisoners in reprisal. In 2002 Engel (93) was sentenced to 7 years in prison for the order.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A14)(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May 17, Polish poet Felix Konarski (1907-1991) wrote the song “Red Poppies on Monte Cassino" on the night before the Allied attack that crushed the German defense at Monte Cassino. Alfred Schutz (d.1999) composed the music.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trv_4epO6vw)(SFC, 9/23/15, p.A2)
1944 May 18, The Allies in Italy finally captured Monte Cassino, Europe's oldest Monastic house, after a four-month struggle that claimed some 20,000 lives. The Polish 2nd Army corps, at a staggering loss of life, captured the convent of Monte Cassino.
(HN, 5/18/99)(AP, 5/18/02)(SC, 5/18/02)
1944 May 19, The Gustav line, the German defense line in Italy, collapsed under heavy assault by Allied troops.
(DTnet, 5/19/97)
1944 May 19, Friedrich Engel (1909-2006), a Nazi SS officer, oversaw the massacre of 59 Italian prisoners near Genoa. An Italian military court convicted Engel in absentia in 1999 and sentenced him to life for war crimes connected to a total of 246 deaths. In 2002 a German court convicted Engel of 59 counts of murder and handed him a suspended seven-year term.
(AP, 2/14/06)
1944 May 29, British troops occupied Aprilia, Italy.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1944 May 30, Caligula’s ships, extracted from Lake Nemi, were set ablaze and destroyed. Blame was cast on German soldiers and American artillery.
(AM, 5/01, p.31)
1944 Jun 3, Nazis pulled out of Rome.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1944 Jun 4, The US Fifth Army under Gen. Mark Clark, entered Rome, beginning the liberation of the Italian capital during World War II.
(AP, 6/4/97)(Econ, 4/12/08, p.94)
1944 Jun 7, Italian partisans shot at least one German soldier in a radio transmitter unit that included Matthias Defregger. Eventually, 17 men, ranging from 17 to 65, were shot in retaliation, and much of the village of Filetto di Camarda was burned. Defregger later became a Bishop and faced charges in 1969 for the murders. The charges were dropped in 1970.
(www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901076,00.html)
1944 Jun 26, German troops near the Italian village of Falzano di Cortona herded 11 civilians into a barn and blew it up. Gino Massetti (15) survived and in 2008 testified in the trial of former Wehrmacht Lt. Josef Scheungraber, the company commander accused of ordering the reprisal killings and four others after two German soldiers were killed. In 2009 Scheungraber (90) was convicted of 10 murders and jailed for life.
(AP, 10/7/08)(AFP, 8/11/09)
1944 Jun, German soldiers in the Hermann Goering division, named after the head of Adolf Hitler's air force, shot and killed more than 200 civilians and destroyed most of the homes in the Tuscan town of Civitella to avenge a deadly attack by partisans. In 2008 Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of the massacre. Germany rejected the ruling.
(AP, 10/22/08)
1944 Aug 4, British 8th army reached the suburbs of Florence, Italy.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1944 Aug 11, German troops abandoned Florence, Italy, as Allied troops closed in on the historic city.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1944 Aug 12, Churchill and Tito met in Naples.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1944 Aug 28-1944 Sep 9, In Italy 10 citizens from Forli were killed "without need and without any justified motive" by a platoon led by German officer Heinrich Nordhorn. In 2006 an Italian military tribunal convicted Nordhorn (86) in absentia in the killings of the 10 civilians.
(AP, 11/4/06)(http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/1175818.php)
1944 Aug 31, The British Eighth Army penetrated the German Gothic Line in Italy.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1944 Aug, Some 300 SS troops surrounded Sant'Anna, Italy, which had been flooded with refugees, ostensibly to hunt for partisans. Instead, they rounded up and shot villagers, according to survivors. Others were herded into enclosed areas such as basements and killed with hand grenades. In 2005 a local court convicted 10 Nazi SS in absentia.
(AP, 6/22/05)
1944 Sep 5, Flight Sgt. Maximilian Volke, a German ace pilot, took off from a northern Italian air base with three other fighters to intercept a group of American bombers. He was shot down by gunners in one of the US planes. His plane and remains were found in 2007.
(AP, 8/14/07)
1944 Sep 29-1944 Oct 5, Nazi murders took place in Marzabotto, Italy, under SS-major Reder. Retreating Nazi troops killed some 1,000 women, children and elderly while allegedly pursuing resistance fighters. In 2002 German Pres. Rau apologized for the massacre. In 2007 an Italian military tribunal gave life sentences in absentia to 10 German former SS men for massacring about 800 Italian villagers. They had laid waste to the villages of Marzabotto, Grizzana and Vado di Monzuno near Bologna, as the Germans retreated before Allied troops.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marzabotto_massacre)(USAT, 4/18/02, p.4A)(Reuters, 1/14/07)
1944 Oct 20, A US air raid targeted an industrial complex near Milan, Italy, but a second wave of bombers went off course and released their bombs southeast of the target to lighten their loads as they returned to base. The bombing raid killed 184 elementary school children.
(AP, 10/20/19)
1944 Dec 2, Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (b.1876), Italian ideologue, poet, and editor, died in Bellagio, Italy. He was main founder of the Futurist movement [see 1909]. In 2006 Gunter Berghaus edited “Critical Writings by F.T. Marinetti," translated by Doug Thompson.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7v7f3)(SFC, 10/24/06, p.E2)
1944 Dec 26, In Italy two platoons of the segregated 92nd Infantry Division fought the German 14th Army at Sommocolonia. Of 70 "Buffalo Soldiers" and 25 Italian Partisans only 18 survived. In 1977 Lt. John Fox and 6 other black Americans were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. By the end of the war 2,916 Buffalo soldiers fell breaking the Gothic Line.
(SFC, 7/13/00, p.A15)(Ind, 1/11/03, 5A)
1944 The US 10th Mountain Division expelled the Nazis from the mountains of northern Italy.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C3)
1944-1945 This period in Italy was covered by James Holand in his 2008 book “Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945."
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.93)
1944-1945 In Italy the Bolzano camp in the Alpine South Tyrol area served as a transit point for Jews, Italian resistance fighters, Italians drafted for factory work and German army deserters who were being shipped north.
(AP, 11/7/10)
1945 Jan 28, The US Army 10th Mountain Division first entered combat in the Apennine Mountains of northern Italy.
(ON, 4/2011, p.7)
1945 Feb 6, In northern Italy a B-25 Mitchell dubbed "Maybe" was damaged during a bombing run near Trento during World War II. Pilot Earl Remmel of Hooker, Oklahoma, and co-pilot Leslie Speer of Jeffersontown, Kentucky, kept the plane steady long enough for the other five crew members to bail out.
(AP, 9/19/14)
1945 Mar 12, Italy's Communist Party (CPI) called for armed uprising in Italy.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Apr 17, Mussolini fled from to Milan.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1945 Apr 23, US troops in Italy crossed the river Po.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1945 Apr 27, US 5th army entered Genoa.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1945 Apr 27, Italian partisans captured Mussolini.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1945 Apr 28, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country. In 1961 Charles F. Delzell, a historian at Vanderbilt Univ., wrote "Mussolini's Enemies: The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance." In 2005 R.J.B. Bosworth authored "Mussolini’s Italy." In 2007 Philip Morgan authored “The Fall of Mussolini. In 2009 the diaries of Clara Petacci were published as a book.
(AP, 4/28/97)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)(Econ, 10/8/05, p.92)(Econ, 7/14/07, p.89)(Econ, 11/21/09, p.55)
1945 Apr 29, The German Army in Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Venice and Mestre were captured by the Allies. In 1956 Norman Kogan, historian at the Univ of Connecticut, wrote "Italy and the Allies."
(HN, 4/29/99)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)(MC, 4/29/02)
1945 Apr 30, In Italy a vehicle known as a DUKW (pronounced duck) sank while crossing Lake Garda during the last days of fighting in Europe The dead included 24 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division and a 25th soldier from another unit.
(AP, 4/29/16)
1945 May 2, German Army in Italy surrendered.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1945 May 2, Yugoslav troops occupied Trieste.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1945 May 2, The Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin and the Allies announced the surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria.
(AP, 5/2/97)
1945 Aug 2, Pietro Mascagni (81), Italian composer (Cavalleria Rusticana), died.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1945 Carlo Levi (1902-1975), Italian journalist, artist and doctor, authored “Christ Stopped at Eboli," his first documentary novel.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/clevi.htm)
1945 John Hersey won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel "Bell for Adano." It was later made into a Broadway play and a movie. The story was modeled on Major Frank E. Toscani (d.2001 at 89), military governor of Licata, Italy.
(SFC, 1/30/01, p.A22)
1945 The Italian film “Rome Open City" was directed by Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). It was about the German occupation of Rome and was the first film of his war trilogy.
(SFC, 1/22/10, p.E2)
1946 Apr 28, Domenico Leccisi (d.2008 at 88) and 2 other Italians marked the first anniversary of the death of Mussolini by digging up his body in a Milan cemetery. They passed the body to 2 monks, who buried it in a nearby monastery. The theft sparked a nationwide manhunt for the group. The body was later returned for burial in Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace.
(SFC, 11/5/08, p.B15)
1946 May 9, Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III, known as "sciaboletta", or small sabre, due to his stature, abdicated the throne in favor of his son Umberto II in a vain effort to avert a plebiscite to decide whether Italy should remain a monarchy or become a republic. Umberto II (d.1983) ruled for just 26 days before he was sent into exile after a June referendum abolished the monarchy. After the referendum Victor Emmanuel III went into exile in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died the following year.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.A11)(SFC, 6/3/96, p.A12)(SFC, 1/30/01, p.C2)(Reuters, 12/17/17)
1946 May, The Teatro alla Scala reopened under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. It closed at the end of 2001 for restoration to be completed in 2004.
(SSFC, 1/27/02, p.C9)
1946 Jun 2, The Italian monarchy was abolished by referendum in favor of a republic.
(AP, 6/2/97)(HN, 6/2/98)
1946 Jun 10, Italy replaced its abolished monarchy with a republic.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1946 Nov 2, Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor, was born in Venice, Italy.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1946 Curzio Malaparte, an Italian fascist intellectual, authored “Kaputt," an autobiographical novel that described the cruelty of Nazi fanaticism.
(WSJ, 1/19/08, p.W8)
1946 The Italian film “Paisan" was directed by Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). It was comprised of 6 short films dealing with the Allied liberation of Italy. This was the 2nd film of his war trilogy.
(SFC, 1/22/10, p.E2)
1946 Enrico Piaggio designed the 1st Vespa motor scooter as a practical solution to transportation needs in postwar Italy. Corradino D’Ascanio, helicopter pioneer, came up with the idea for the 2-wheeled Vespa scooter.
(SFC, 8/16/03, p.F1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.64)
1946 In Italy the Carpigiani firm, a maker of ice-cream making machines, was founded. Bruto Carpigiani (d.1945) had designed the first machine and his brother Poerio did the marketing.
(Econ, 8/18/07, p.55)
1946 In Italy Mediobanca was founded to rebuilt the country’s industry in the aftermath of WWII.
(Econ, 6/14/14, p.68)
1947 Dec 27, The new Italian constitution was promulgated in Rome.
(HN, 12/27/98)
1947 Dec 28, Victor Emmanuel (b.1869-1947), also known as Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy (1900-1946), Emperor of Ethiopia (1939-1943) and King of Albania (1939-1943), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Emmanuel_III_of_Italy)
1947 Georgio Strehler (d.1997) founded the Piccolo Theater in Milan.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.B6)
1947 The Ferrari automobile began to be manufactured.
(WSJ, 6/9/97, p.A1)
1948 Feb 2, The United States and Italy signed a pact of friendship, commerce and navigation.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1948 Mar 25, The Italians banned a compromise with Yugoslavia and demanded the return of Trieste.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1948 Jun, In Rome Father Karol Jozef Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, completed his thesis “The Problems of Faith in the Works of St. John of the Cross" and earned a doctorate in philosophy. In July he returned to Poland as an assistant pastor at Niegowic.
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.A12)
1948 The Italian film “Germany Year Zero" was directed by Roberto Rossellini (1906-1977). It was the 3rd of his war trilogy and was about the privations of German survivors in postwar Berlin.
(SFC, 1/22/10, p.E2)
1948 In Italian general elections the Communist Party won 31% of the vote.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.9)
1948 Italy’s new constitution outlawed the Fascist Party. It spread power equally between the lower Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. It also gave significant autonomy to four distinct regions: Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d’Aosta and Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A15)(Econ, 11/26/16, p.20)
1948 African and Indian three-wheelers (tuk-tuks) began following the original design of the Piaggio Ape C, which was originally based on the Italian Vespa.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw)
1949 Apr 4, The (NATO) North Atlantic Treaty Organization pact was signed by the US, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada. It provided for mutual defense against aggression and for close military cooperation.
(www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm)(TOH, 1982, p.1949)
1949 Nov 21, The UN Assembly decided for the eventual independence of Italy’s former colonies. In the meantime they remained under UN supervision. United Nations granted Libya its independence in the year 1952.
(EWH, 1968, p.1176)(HN, 11/21/98)
1949 The Italian film "Bitter Rice" (Riso Amaro) starred Silvana Mangano. It was directed by Giuseppe de Santis (d.1997).
(SFC, 5/19/97, p.A24)(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E1)
1950 Nov 4, The European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome. 5 protocols were added later. Alleged violations were handled by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
(www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html)(WSJ, 4/26/06, p.A1)
1950 The Italian film "Mamma Mia, Che Impressione!" starred Alberto Sordi in his first role.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1950 Giaur was formed in Italy by the great Berardo Taraschi (previously of Urania) and the Giannini brothers, the name coming from Giannini and Urania. The engines were mainly Giannini units, although Fiat and Crosley items were also used.
(http://ferrariexperts.com/giaur.htm)(SSFC, 7/20/08, p.J3)
1951 Jan 10, [Harry] Sinclair Lewis (65), American author of 23 novels and 3 plays (Nobel 1930), died in Rome of a nervous disorder. In 2002 Richard Lingeman authored "Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street."
(HNQ, 5/18/98)(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.W8)(MC, 1/10/02)
1951 Apr 18, Jean Monnet, French civil servant, and Robert Schuman, French foreign minister, helped found the European Union with agreements between 6 countries on the pooling of coal and steel resources. Ministers from Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and France put their names on the Treaty of Paris, the founding document of what in four decades would become the European Union.
(Econ, 9/25/04, Survey p.3)(Econ, 6/18/16, p.45)
1951 Sep 11, Stravinsky's opera "Rake's Progress," premiered in Venice.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1951 Sep 19, Italian civil servants struck for a pay increase.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1951 Nov 26, Illona Staller, Italian member of Parliament (La Cicciolina), was born in Budapest, Hungary.
(MC, 11/26/01)(AP, 11/26/02)
1952 May 6, Maria Montessori (b.1870), Italian physician, educationist, died In Holland. She opened her 1st school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori)(SFC, 1/6/07, p.B1)
1952 The film "La Provinciale" starred Gina Lollobrigida and was directed Mario Soldati and based on a novel by Alberto Moravia.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1952 An Italian law made the praise of fascism a crime.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A15)
1953 Feb 20, Riccardo Chailly, conductor (West Berlin Symph Orch), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1953 Jul 15, Eugenio Balzan (b.1874), Italian journalist, died in Lugano. In 1933 he moved to Switzerland, living in Zurich and Lugano, where he invested his fortune with success. He left a substantial inheritance to his daughter Angela Lina Balzan (1892–1956), who at the time was suffering an incurable disease. Before her death, she left instructions for a foundation, the Balzan Prize Foundation. Since then it has two headquarters, the Prize administered from Milan, the Fund from Zurich.
(AP, 9/6/10)(www.balzan.org/en/history_1698.html)
1953 Nov, In Italy the Iso Isetta microcar was introduced in Turin. The car originated with the Italian firm of Iso SpA. In the early 1950s the company was building refrigerators, motor scooters and small three-wheeled trucks. Iso's owner, Renzo Rivolta, decided he would like to build a small car for mass distribution. By 1952 the engineers Ermenegildo Preti and Pierluigi Raggi had designed a small car that used the scooter engine and named it Isetta—an Italian diminutive meaning little ISO.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.102)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta)
1953 Dec 5, Italy and Yugoslavia agreed to pull troops out of the disputed Trieste border.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1953 The Italian film "I Vitelloni" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1953 Italy founded ENIPower, a state attempt to break the oligopoly of the “Seven Sister," the major oil companies of the day.
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.53)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.64)
1954 Jul 31, Italians Lino Lacedelli (1925-2009) and Achille Compagnoni (1915-2009) first scaled Pakistan’s K-2, the world's second-highest mountain. In 2004 Lacedelli authored “K2: The Price of Conquest."
(AP, 7/27/04)(SSFC, 11/29/09, p.C8)
1954 The Italian film "The Poor and the Noble" starred Toto (Antonio de Curtis) and Sophia Loren.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1954 The Italian film "Senso," a historical romance, starred Farley Granger and Alida Valli. It was made by Luchino Visconti.
(SFEM, 9/10/00, p.21)(SFC, 3/30/11, p.C4)
1954 The film "La Strada" was directed by Federico Fellini.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.42)
1954 Amintore Fanfani (d.1999 at 91) became the head of government. He resigned after 12 days following a vote of no confidence in Parliament. He later became head of the UN Gen'l. Assembly.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.C6)
1954 Italy regained Trieste, which had been held by the United Nations. In 2001 Jan Morris authored "Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere."
(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.R2)(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.R2)
1954 Ardito Desio (d.2001 at 104) of Italy organized the 1st expedition to reach the top of K2 in Kashmir, the world’s 2nd highest peak. In 1962 Desio became the 1st Italian to reach the South Pole.
(SFC, 12/14/01, p.A33)
1955 Aug 16, Fiat Motors ordered the 1st private atomic reactor.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1955 The film "Toto Against the Four" starred Toto.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1955 Marco Pannella (1930-2016) helped found Italy's Radical Party and rose to fame as the movement's leader in the 1960s and 1970s.
(Reuters, 5/19/16)
1956 Feb 2, Figure skater Tenley Albright became the first American woman to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Italy. She achieved this despite an ankle injury.
(NYT, 2/3/1956, p. 26)
1956 Jul 25, The Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm in 200 feet of water 50 miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Mass. 46 people of its 1,706 passengers and crew were killed. The Dorea was headed from Genoa, Italy, to NY, and sank eleven hours after the crash.
(WSJ, 5/30/97, p.A1)(AP, 7/25/97)(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A16)(SFC, 7/30/99, p.D5)(AP, 1/14/12)
1956 Nov 1, Pietro Badoglio (85), Italian general (1922-43), Premier of Italy (1943-44), died.
(www.fact-index.com/p/pi/pietro_badoglio.html)
1956 Giorgio Bassani, author, won the Strega literary award for his work: "Five Stories About Ferrara."
(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
1957 Jan 16, Arturo Toscanini (b.1867), Italian-US conductor (NBC), died in NYC. He led the NBC Symphony from 1937-1954. In 1978 Harvey Sachs wrote a biography of Toscanini. In 2002 Sachs edited "The Letters of Arturo Toscanini," his correspondence with Ada Mainardi. In 2017 Sachs authored a 2nd biography “Toscanini."
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9073009/Arturo-Toscanini)(HN, 3/25/01)(WSJ, 4/30/02, p.D7)(Econ 6/24/17, p.75)
1957 Mar 10, Thousands of soccer fans rioted in Italy.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1957 Mar 25, The Treaties establishing the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community were signed in Rome. The Treaty of Rome enabled people, goods, services and money to move unchecked throughout the Union. The Council of Ministers represents the governments of the members. Major decisions are made by the Council of Foreign Ministers. A 20-member Commission composed of appointed representatives of each member state serves as the administrative arm and members represent the Union. The Commission proposes and executes laws and policies. A European Parliament is composed of 626 members elected by the electorates of the member states and they sit in party groups. The Commission proposes, the Parliament advises, and the Council decides. The goal was to create a common market for all products but especially coal and steel.
(AP, 3/25/97)(HN, 3/24/98)(http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/eec.htm)
1957 May 9, Ezio F. Pinza, Italian bass (La Scala of Milan, NY Met Opera, Broadway musicals), died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1957 Jul 4, In Italy the new 13 horsepower Fiat 500 (Cinquecento) was launched in Turin. In 1965 Fiat introduced the 500 F model. The car could get 58 mpg from its 4.25-gallon tank.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.69)(SSFC, 5/1/11, p.J1)(SFC, 4/13/12, p.F1)
1957 Jul 23, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (b.1896), Sicilian aristocrat and writer, died in Rome. His classic novel “Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard), was published in 1958. It was about Sicilian blue bloods struggling to adopt to the changes ushered in by Italian unification in the 1860s and included the line: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." David Gilmour later authored the biography “The Last Leopard" (1991). In 1963 the film "Leopard" starred Burt Lancaster as the prince who makes the ceremonial cut into the timballo. It was directed Luchino Visconti and based on the novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
(WSJ, 12/9/06, p.P24)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.61)(SFC, 10/2/96, zz1 p.8)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.56)
1957 Jul 28, The Situationist International (SI) was formed at a meeting in the Italian village of Cosio d'Arroscia with the fusion of several extremely small avant-garde artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an off-shoot of COBRA), and the London Psychogeographical Association. The groups came together intending to reawaken the radical political potential of surrealism. The group also later drew ideas from the left communist group Socialisme ou Barbarie.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International)
1957 Italo Calvino, Italian writer, authored his novel “Il Barone Rampante" (The Baron in the Trees). It tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baron_in_the_Trees)
1957 The Italian film "La Grande Strada Azzurra" ("The Wide Blue Road") starred Yves Montand and Alida Valli. The tale of a fishing community was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006).
(AP, 10/13/06)
1957 The film "Nights of Cabiria" by Federico Fellini featured his wife, Giulietta Masina, as a Roman prostitute.
(SFEC, 10/11/97, DB p.36) (WSJ, 8/7/98, p.W4)
1957 The Italian Mille Miglia automobile race, begun in 1927, was cancelled following the crash of a Ferrari driven by the Marquis de Portago. He and his co-driver were killed along with 10 bystanders when the car ran off the road at 90 mph.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A13)
1957 At this time only 2% of Italian homes had refrigerators. By 1974 this increased to 94%.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.63)
1958 Mar 1, Giacomo Balla (b.1871), Italian composer and painter, died. He was a signatory to the 1910 Futurist Manifesto, and designed and painting Futurist furniture. He also created Futurist "antineutral" clothing.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.71)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Balla)
1958 Edward Banfield, American sociologist, authored “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society." It was about poverty in southern Italy.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.12)
1958 Domenico Modugno made a hit with "Volare." The Italian song won the 1958 Eurovision contest.
(SFC, 11/30/02, p.D1)(Econ, 5/14/05, p.57)
1958 The film "Big Deal on Madonna Street" starred Vittorio Gassman and Toto. It was directed by Mario Monicelli.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1958 A new law shut down the state-controlled brothels.
(SFC, 9/25/00, p.A12)
1959 Jan 21, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, was established in Rome on the basis of Article 19 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights)
1959 Oct 7, Mario Lanza (b.1921), undisciplined opera singer and temperamental movie star, died of a heart attack in Rome. Born with a glorious Italian tenor, Lanza resisted all professional urgings. He first came to light while in the Army, then started singing publicly, first on radio, then in movies. He signed a contract with MGM studios, where he made such movies as "The Toast of New Orleans," and "The Great Caruso." His heroic bellow sold records and filled concert halls. Lanza put several teachers through hell because he would not learn to read music, and he began to believe his hype as the century's greatest talent since Enrico Caruso (a thought which made Mrs. Caruso gag and Met Opera General Manger Rudolf Bing to ask: "Mario Who?"). He spent money as fast as he earned it, pampering himself through his life. He was fired by MGM because of his unpredictably in weight, ranging from compactness to obesity, often within a month's time.
(www.lanzalegend.com/bio.htm)(www.nndb.com/people/994/000091721/)
1959 The Italian film "The Great War" starred Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)
1959 The Italian film "Kapo" told the story of a Jewish girl trying to escape from a concentration camp. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006).
(AP, 10/13/06)
1959 In Italy Steno Marcegaglia founded the Marcegaglia steel works.
(www.marcegaglia.com/news/18_03_06_steel.html)
1960 Feb 27, Adriano Olivetti (58), Italian engineer, manufacturer, died.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1960 Jul 1, Italian Somaliland joined the British Somaliland Protectorate to form the Republic of Somalia. The French Somali Coast (Côte française des Somalis) continued as a French colony until 1967 when it became an overseas territory of France as ‘Territoire Francais des Afars et des Issas’, achieving independence in 1977 as Djibouti.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Somaliland)(Econ, 3/22/08, p.55)
1960 Aug 25, The 17th summer Olympics opened in Rome. Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994), was the first African American to win three gold medals in a single Olympiad. Her athleticism was remarkable since Rudolph contracted polio as a small child and spent six years in a steel brace. With therapy and hard work, Rudolph overcame her handicap to excel in basketball and track. As a celebrity, she worked to break many gender and racial barriers. Rudolph died of brain cancer.
(WSJ, 7/19/96, p.R6)(HN, 6/23/98)(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1960 Aug, Rafer Johnson (1934-2020) carried the American flag into Rome’s Olympic Stadium as the first Black captain of a United States Olympic team. He went on to win gold in a memorable decathlon duel, bringing him acclaim as the world’s greatest all-around athlete.
(NY Times, 12/3/20)
1960 Sep 11, The 17th Summer Olympics closed in Rome. In 2008 David Maraniss authored “Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Summer_Olympics)
1960 The Italian film "La Dolce Vita" starred Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996), Anita Ekberg and Laura Betti (d.2004).
(SFC, 12/20/96, p.A4)(SFC, 8/3/04, p.B6)
1960 The Italian film "The Passionate Thief" starred Toto and Anna Magnani.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1960 The Italian film "The Traffic Policeman" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1961 Nov 11, Congolese soldiers murdered 13 Italian UN pilots.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1961 Calisto Tanzi dropped out of university to concentrate on the a family delicatessen business near the Parma railway station: Calisto Tanzi & Sons - Salamis and Preserves. In 1966 Calisto Tanzi adopted the new ultra-high temperature (UHT) Swedish pasteurizing technique to produce long-life milk. In 2003 the company filed for bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 12/22/03, p.A6)(WPR, 3/04, p.18)
1961 Leonardo Del Vecchio founded Luxottica, a maker of eye shades and prescription glasses, in Belluno, Italy. In 1990 the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.73)
1962 Apr 5, St. Bernard Tunnel was finished and Swiss and Italians workers shook hands.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1962 Jul 14, Borehole for Mont Blanc-tunnel, between France and Italy, was finished. [see Aug 14]
(MC, 7/14/02)
1962 Aug 14, French and Italian workers broke through at the Mount Blanc Vehicular Tunnel. [see Jul 14]
(MC, 8/14/02)
1962 Giorgio Bassani (d.2000 at 84) authored his semi-autobiographical novel: "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis." In 1971 a film version by Vittorio De Sica with Dominique Sanda won a Hollywood Oscar for the Best Foreign Film.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, DB p.40)(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
1962 Nicolo Tucci ( d.1999 at 91) published his first English novel "Before My Time." Tucci had worked for the propaganda ministry of Benito Mussolini, but moved to NY in 1938 and took up anti-fascist propaganda.
(SFC, 12/16/99, p.A33)
1962 The Italian film "Mafioso" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1962 The Italian film "Momma Roma" was directed by Paolo Pasolini.
(SFC, 11/11/99, p.B1)
1962 The Italian film “Il Sorpasso" was directed by Dino Risi. It starred Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant in one of the great road movies of all time.
(SFC, 4/20/17, p.E8)
1962 Valuables stripped from Jews during the war were moved to a vault in central Rome.
(SFC, 2/3/97, p.C3)
1962 Gianna Beretta Molla (39), an Italian pediatrician, died a week after giving birth to her 4th child. In 2004 she was among six new saints named by Pope John Paul II because she'd refused to end her pregnancy despite warnings it could kill her.
(AP, 5/16/05)
1963 Feb 16, 1st round-trip swim of Straits of Messina, Italy, was made by Mary Revell of US.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1963 Jul 25, Ugo Cerletti (b.1877), Italian neurosurgeon, died. In the 1930s he and Lucio Bini pioneered the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), electric shock, to cure patients of depression.
(Econ, 6/3/06, p.78)(www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/511.html)
1963 Sep 9, In Italy a landslide into Vaiont Dam emptied a lake and killed 3-4,000 people. [see Oct 9]
(MC, 9/9/01)
1963 Sep 29, The second session of Second Vatican Council opened in Rome.
(AP, 9/29/97)
1963 Oct 9, A dam in Piave valley of Italy, broke and about 2,000 died. [see Sep 9]
(MC, 10/9/01)
1963 Oct 10, A dam burst in Italy, and over 3,000 died. [see Sep 9, Oct 9]
(MC, 10/10/01)
1963 Dec 30, Alessandra Mussolini, actress (Ferragosto OK), was born in Naples, Italy.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1964 Jun 18, Georgio Morandi (b.1890), reclusive Italian painter, died in Bologna.
(WSJ, 11/11/08, p.D7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Morandi)
1964 Robert Rauschenberg won the grand prize at the Venice Biennale. This established him in the art world with his idea that art is reality reshuffled.
(SFC, 8/20/98, p.E1)
1964 Italian fisherman pulled a bronze Greek statue, the "Victorious Youth," from the sea. It dated from 300 to 100BC and in 1977 it was purchased by the California-based Getty Museum for $4 million. In 2018 Italy's highest court rejected a Getty appeal of a ruling ordering the artwork returned to Italy.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A6)
1964 In Italy the five sisters opened the first Fendi store in Rome's historic center. A year later they hired a young designer named Karl Lagerfeld who helped catapult the Italian brand into global fame, with a focus on designing luxury furs. They sold to the French luxury group LVMH in 1999.
(AP, 6/20/17)
1965 Mar 13, Corrado Gini (b.1884), Italian statistician, died. He developed the Gini coefficient, a measure of the income inequality in a society. Gini was also a leading fascist theorist and ideologue who wrote “The Scientific Basis of Fascism" in 1927.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrado_Gini)(Economist, 10/13/12, SR p.4)
1965 Apr 2, Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy," which blamed Pope Pius XII for war crimes, was banned in Italy.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1965 Jul 16, Mount Blanc Road tunnel between France & Italy opened.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1965 New Directions published "Eugenio Montale: Selected Poems." Montale (1896-1981), an Italian poet writer and translator, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.8)
1965 The film "Hawks and Sparrows" starred Toto and was directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1965 Luciano Benetton was one of 4 family members who launched the Italian Benetton clothing group.
(Econ, 11/3/07, p.82)
1966 Nov 4, In Florence, Italy the River Arno overflowed and damaged the Uffizi Gallery. Whole libraries of valuable ancient documents were soaked. 33 people died in the flood and blame fell principally on Enel, Italy’s largest power company. In 2008 Robert Clark authored “Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces."
(WSJ, 10/29/96, p.A21)(SFC, 4/6/01, p.D4)(Econ, 11/1/08, p.97)
1966 Nov 4, A devastating flood swamped Venice, damaged monuments and covered the city in mud. 5,000 people were made homeless.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D4)(WSJ, 3/8/02, p.AW9)
1966 Dec 19, Alberto "La Bomba" Tomba, Italian skier (Olympic-gold-1988, 92), was born.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1967 Jan 27, Luigi Tenco (29), one of Italy's most famous modern singers, was found dead in his hotel room with a single gunshot wound to the head, hours after learning that his song had been eliminated from a national music competition. In 2006 prosecutors exhumed his body and said they had laid to rest suspicions that he had been murdered.
(Reuters, 2/16/06)
1967 Robert Katz (d.2010 at 77), American writer and historian, authored "Death in Rome." It was a meticulous reconstruction of an infamous 1944 Nazi massacre. A subsequent movie based on it, called "Massacre in Rome," stirred controversy because it suggested Pope Pius XII did not intervene to stop the massacre even though he knew about the Nazis' plans.
(AP, 10/21/10)
1967 A ski-lift was built from Cavalese to the top of Mount Cermis.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.B10)
1967 Italy passed a set of labeling laws similar to the French 1935 Appellation d’Origine Controlee (controlled place of origin). The AOC laws were meant to protect growers and properly identify a wine’s origin. They were not intended as an indicator of quality. The Italian DOC laws (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) regulated grape growing zones and wine production practices.
(SFC, 1/8/96, zz-1 p.4)(SFC, 6/30/99, Z1 p.6)
1967 Film actor Toto (b.1898 as Antonio de Curtis) died.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.D1)
1968 Mar 16, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (b.1895), Italian composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Castelnuovo-Tedesco)
1968 Michelangelo Pistoletto, artist, rolled around Turin his giant ball of pulped newspaper. The exploit was captured on film.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.E4)
1968 The Sant’Egidio community was started in Rome by a high school student with ideals of prayer, mission and solidarity wit the poor. By 2008 it had 60,000 members in 70 countries and had become active in faith-based peacemaking.
(Econ, 7/5/08, p.72)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Sant'Egidio)
1968-1985 In Italy serial killings during this period left 16 people dead in the Tuscan countryside. In 1994 Pietro Pacciani (69) was convicted of 14 murders and sentenced to life in prison following trial that was televised. He was cleared in 1996 and ordered to face a retrial, but died in 1998. Pacciani's friend, Mario Vanni (70) and Giancarlo Lotti (54) were convicted of their involvement in five of the double murders. Vanni was given a life sentence and Lotti received a sentence of 26 years in prison. In 2001 Florentine authorities reopened the case amid speculation they were investigating up to a dozen wealthy Italians who orchestrated the ritualistic killings by manipulating a trio of voyeuristic peasants. In 2006 Mario Spezi, a journalist who has worked with the American thriller author Douglas Preston on a book about the killings, was arrested and accused of slander and sidetracking the investigation.
(AP, 4/9/06)
1969 Feb 2, Giovanni Martinelli (b.1885), Italian opera singer, died. He enjoyed a long career at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and appeared at other international theatres.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Martinelli)
1969 Feb 27, President Nixon arrived in Rome from West Berlin amid protests by thousands of students.
(www.historynet.com/today_in_history?tihMonth=2&tihDay=27)
1969 Jul 4, The Italian coalition government under Mariano Rumor (1915-1990) fell apart.
(www.speedylook.com/Mariano_Rumor.html)
1969 Jul 4, Erwin Blumenfeld (b.1897), German-born fashion photographer and artist, died in Rome. His books included “My One Hundred Best Photos" (1981) and the autobiography “Eye to I," published in English in 1999. In 1996 William Ewing authored “Blumenfeld: A Fetish for Beauty."
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.E13)(www.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blumenfeld.html)(Econ, 11/9/13, p.88)
1969 Oct 18, The painting "Nativity" by Caravaggio was stolen from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. Peter Watson, English novelist, later wrote "The Caravaggio Conspiracy," an account of his 1981-1982 attempt to recover the work.
(www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/dec/22/caravaggio-art-mafia-italy)(WSJ, 12/11/96, p.A20)
1969 Oct 22, Giovanni Martinelli, Italian opera singer (NY Met), died on his 84th birthday.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1969 Nov 23, The South Tyrolean People's Party (Südtiroler Volkspartei or SVP), founded in 1945 and which had lobbied for more than 20 years for greater autonomy for the German-speaking people of Italy's South Tyrol province, approved the Italian government's proposals to settle the dispute regarding the status of the border region and granting many of the Party's demands. At the urging of SVP leader Silvius Magnago, delegates to the SVP convention voted 583 to 492 to accept the package, paving the way for an agreement between Italy and neighboring Austria.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1969#November_23,_1969_(Sunday))
1969 The film “The Italian Job" starred Michael Caine and Noel Coward. The crime fable was set in Turin, Italy.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E10)
1969 The Italian film "Qeimada" starred Marlon Brando in a tale against colonialism. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006).
(AP, 10/13/06)
1969 The Italian film "Satyricon" was directed by Federico Fellini with music by Nino Rota. It was based on a satiric novel by Petronius Arbiter.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.E3)
1969 The Italian film “Una Storia d’Amore" featured American opera star Anna Moffo (1932-2006) in what appeared to be a nude scene.
(SSFC, 3/12/06, p.B7)
1969 In Italy the Albertini family gave Capuchin Friar Armando Lavini (Padre Pietro 1927-2015)) title to the church of San Leonardo and surrounding land. In 1971 he began restoring the ruined church by hand. A bell was hung in the campanile in 2007.
(Econ, 8/22/15, p.78)
1969 Right-wing militants carried out a series of bombings that Italian authorities and the media pinned on anarchists. Giuseppi Pinelli, one anarchist that was interrogated by the police, was reported to have fallen from a 4th floor window during interrogation. The event inspired Dario Fo to write his 1970 play: "Accidental Death of an Anarchist."
(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.A20)
1970 Jun 27, Reinhold and Gunther Messner of Tyrol, Italy, reached the 26,650-foot peak of Nanga Parbat in northern Pakistan. Gunther (24) died during the descent.
(WSJ, 12/10/03, p.A1)
1970 Jul 18, Arthur Brown (b.1942), English rock singer, was arrested for stripping on stage in Palermo, Sicily.
(www.godofhellfire.co.uk/60s.htm)
1970 Dec 25, Federico Fellini’s “The Clowns," part documentary and part fantasy, was released in Italy for television and the next day as a film.
(SFC, 1/12/15, p.A6)(TVM, 1977, p.139)
1970 Mario Soldati won Venice's Campiello Prize for his novel: "L'Attore" (The Actor), a study of psychological evil.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)
1970 The film "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" was directed by Franco Zeffirelli and shot in Assisi, Italy.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A21)
1970 In Italy divorce became legal following a titanic parliamentary battle.
(SFC, 1/29/00, p.E3)(Econ., 5/2/15, p.45)
1970 In northern Italy radicals linked up to form the Red Brigades, led by sociology students Renato Curcio and Margherita Cagol.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1970 Colonel Qaddafi expelled 20,000 Italians from Libya.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Italians)
1970 An International Federation ruled current depth records too dangerous and refused to accept further records after French diver Jacques Mayol (1927-2001) and Italian diver Enzo Maiorca (1931-2016) reached 249 feet (about 73m). Their rivalry inspired much of the 1988 film, "Big Blue," directed by Luc Besson.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Maiorca)(AP, 11/13/16)
1971 Jan 25, In Milan, Italy, firebombs damaged the Pirelli tire factory.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1971 Apr 5, In Sicily, Italy, Mount Etna began a series of eruptions.
(http://boris.vulcanoetna.com/ETNA_erupt2.html)
1971 Nov 26, Giacomo Alberione (b.1884), Italian priest who also believed in using modern means to bring God to the faithful, died. He had founded the Paoline Family, which includes a publishing operation printing many religious books as well as Famiglia Cristiana, a top-selling weekly that covers issues of daily life, from homemaking to education, and religious life.
(AP, 4/27/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Alberione)
1971 Dec 29, In Italy Giovanni Leone (1908-2001) became president. He resigned 6 months before the end of his 7-year term amid allegations of links to a payoff scandal involving Lockheed Corp.
(SFC, 11/12/01, p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Leone)
1971 The film "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" by Vittorio De Sica with Dominique Sanda won a Hollywood Oscar for the Best Foreign Film. The film was based on the book by Giorgio Bassani (d.2000 at 84).
(SFEC, 11/17/96, DB p.40)(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
1971 The Italian film "Handsome, Honest, Australian Emigrant, Looking for an Italian Virgin to Marry" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1971 Italy’s Ferrari Daytona was the world’s fastest car, capable of 174 mph.
(Econ, 3/12/15, p.11)
1972 Feb 17, Giulio Andreotti (1919-2013) began serving his first term as the 41st prime minister of Italy.
(AP, 5/6/13)
1972 May 5, Alitalia’s DC-8 Flight 112 crashed west of Palermo, Sicily; killing 115.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alitalia)
1972 May 17, In Italy Luigi Calabresi, head of the political dept. of the Milan police, was killed. He had been falsely suspected of having killed the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli in 1969. In 1988 Leonardo Marino, a former far left Lotta Continua militant, confessed that he drove a getaway car and that Adriano Sofri (b.1942), a writer, had masterminded the killing. On July 28, 1988, Sofri was arrested with Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio Pietrostefani for the alleged murder of Calabresi. Sofri was convicted in 2000.
(WSJ, 3/12/02, p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriano_Sofri)
1972 Aug 15, The Italian town of Grazie di Curtatone began its Int’l. Street Painting Festival. This revived a 16th century practice by itinerant artists who traveled from village to village for religious and folk festivals.
(WSJ, 5/16/06, p.D6)
1972 Italo Calvino (1923-1985), Italian novelist, authored “Invisible Cities." Nominally a series of tales that Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan, it is actually a collection of layered, labyrinthine meditations on cities, memory, desire and language.
(Econ, 12/8/12, IL p.12)(Econ., 8/22/20, p.70)
1972 The Italian film "The Most Beautiful Evening of My Life" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1972 The Italian film "The Scientific Cardplayer" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1972 The Italian film “The Seduction of Mimi" starred Giancarlo Giannini. It was directed by Lina Wertmuller.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E10)
1972 Luigi Calabresi, head of the political dept. of the Milan police, was killed. In 1988 Leonardo Marino, a former far left Lotta Continua militant, confessed that he drove a getaway car and that Adriano Sofri, a writer, had masterminded the killing. Sofri was convicted in 2000.
(WSJ, 3/12/02, p.A22)
1973 Jul 10, Italian Red Brigades kidnapped and held hostage Jean Paul Getty III (1956-2011), nephew of Gordon Getty. Only after his ear was chopped off and sent to a Rome paper did his father J. Paul Getty II, agree to lend money for a ransom. After 5 months Getty senior negotiated a deal and got his grandson back for $2.7 million. Paul III was permanently affected by the trauma, and became a drug addict.
(SFC, 1/8/95, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Paul_Getty)(SFC, 2/9/11, p.A4)
1973 Sep 26, Anna Magnani (b.1908), Academy Award winning Italian actress, died in Rome.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Magnani)
1973 Nov 13, Bruno Maderna (53), Italian-born composer and conductor (Satyricon), died in Germany.
(www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Maderna-Bruno.htm)
1973 Nov 13, Elsa Schiaparelli (b.1890), Italian fashion designer, died in France. In 2014 Meryle Secrest authored “Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_Schiaparelli)(Econ, 10/18/14, p.86)
1973 Dec 10, In Italy the personnel chief of Fiat was kidnapped and held for 8 days.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1973 Nino Rota (1911-1979), Italian composer, composed his "Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano."
(WSJ, 3/5/99, p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota)
1973 Italian tire maker Pirelli introduced steel-belted radial tires.
(Econ, 2/27/10, TQ p.5)
1974 Apr 18, In Genoa, Italy, the Red Brigade kidnapped deputy attorney Mario Sossi. He was held for 35 days.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)(http://tinyurl.com/39vg4e)
1974 Jun 17, In Italy 2 people died in a Red Brigades attack on a right-wing party’s office.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades)
1974 Sep 8, In Italy Renato Curcio and another Red Brigades leader were arrested.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1974 Nov 13, Vittorio de Sica (b.1902), Italian film actor and director, died in France.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0001120/)
1974 Nov 16, In Rome the first UN World Food Conference ended. At the conference, which had opened on Nov. 5, governments examined the global problem of food production and consumption, and solemnly proclaimed that "every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop their physical and mental faculties."
(SFC, 11/18/96, p.A10)(www.un.org/esa/devagenda/food.html)
1974 Cesare Sirtori, a Milan heart researcher, encountered a patient with a high cholesterol level. In 1979 Sirtori found that the patient carried a mutant gene, apolipoprotein A-1, a crucial component of HDL involved in clearing LDL from the body. This led to a new drug in 2003 that seemed to shrink arterial blockages.
(WSJ, 11/5/03, p.B3)(SFC, 11/5/03, p.A15)
1975 Feb 17, Art in by Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, and van Gough, valued at $5 million, was stolen from the Municipal Museum in Milan.
(HN, 2/17/98)
1975 Feb 18, Italy broadened its abortion law.
(www.crlp.org/pub_art_mosaic_conclusion.html)
1975 Feb 18, In Italy Renato Curcio, Red Brigades leader, was freed in a daring prison assault led by Margherita Cagol. She was later killed while trying to kidnap a businessman and Curcio was recaptured.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1975 Aug 26, An international plan began to show significant results to stop Venice from sinking into the sea. Venice was built on 118 small islands. By the early 1960s, rising seawater and floods threatened Venice. Scientists determined that Venice was sinking, and that much of the city would disappear if swift measures were not taken.
(http://twotrees.www.50megs.com/attic/history/08/26.html)
1975 Sep 30, In Rome Donatella Colasanti (17) was found bloodied and battered, but alive in the boot of a car. Beside her was the dead body of her friend Rosaria Lopez (20). Both had undergone hours of torture before Lopez was finally drowned in a bath. Colasanti had escaped the same fate only by playing dead. Andrea Ghira was found guilty in the "Circeo Massacre," named for the town near Rome where two girls were held captive for 36 hours and then left wrapped in plastic in a car trunk, where one girl died. He was convicted in absentia for the slaying. In 2005 his body was found in a cemetery in a Spanish enclave in Morocco, where he was buried in 1994.
(AP, 10/29/05)(http://rome.wantedineurope.com/articles/complete_articles.php?id_art=559)
1975 Oct 6, Chilean Vice Pres. Bernardo Leighton and his wife, Anita Fresno, were shot in Rome. Anita was left permanently disabled. In 2000 Chilean authorities arrested former Gen. Eduardo Iturriaga for the shooting.
(SFC, 3/15/00, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leighton_case)
1975 Oct 16, Vittorio Gui (b.1885), Italian composer (Batture d'aspetto), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Gui)
1975 Oct, Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), Italian poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1999 two collections of his poetry were translated and published in English: Collected Poems 1920-1954" and "Satura 1962-1970."
(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.8)
1975 Nov 1, Pier Paolo Pasolini (b.1922), Italian poet, author and director was murdered. A young male prostitute was tried and convicted for the murder in 1976.
(http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasolini.htm)
1975 Nov 15, The first Summit of 6 leading industrialist nations, G-6, met in Rambouillet, France, for discussions on currency and oil prices. The Group of Six included leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. They were joined a year later by Canada making the "G7". The group was originally established as a vehicle for leading industrialized democracies to discuss the global economy. It later expanded its scope to issues such as peace, the environment and terrorism. Russia, which attended the summit as a guest in 1992, was in 1998 allowed for the first time to attend all summit meetings. The grouping was officially renamed the "G8". In 2014 Vladimir Putin's Russia was suspended from the G8 after it annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and sanctions were imposed on Moscow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_G6_summit)(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A16)(AFP, 6/9/18)
1975 The Italian film "Profumo di Donna" starred Vittorio Gassman.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)
1975 Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1999 2 collections of his poetry were translated and published in English: Collected Poems 1920-1954" and "Satura 1962-1970."
(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.8)
1976 May 6, An earthquake struck Italy’s northern region at Friuli-Venezia Giulia, affecting 11 villages near the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. The earthquake killed more than 1,000 people in a 3,300-square-mile area and left 80,000 homeless.
(http://tinyurl.com/dvzp6)(SFC, 12/17/05, p.F1)
1976 Mar 9, A ski cable car, running from Cavalese to the Alpe Cermis in the Italian Alps, crashed to the ground due to a mechanical failure and killed 42 skiers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable-car_disaster_%281976%29)
1976 Jul 10, There was an explosion at a factory in Seveso, Lombardy, Italy, owned by ICMESA with a Swiss parent company. It produced a cloud of Dioxin which settled over several adjacent communities. The people exposed became nauseated, experienced eye and throat irritations, developed burn-like sores on exposed skin, headaches, dizziness and diarrhea -- the same symptoms recorded by exposed Vietnamese and Cambodian populations. In the next two days, small animals in the area began to die. The contamination led to a high incidence of birth defects.
(www.theveteranscoalition.org/educational_material/agent_orange.htm)(WSJ,2/12/97, p.A8)
1976 Aug 15, Former SS Colonel Herbert Kappler dramatically escaped from prison hospital in Rome with the aid of his wife and taken to Germany.
(http://tinyurl.com/yvulbh)
1976 The wolves of Italy received official protection.
(NH, 12/96, p.52)
1976 Italian carmaker Fiat began manufacturing cars in Brazil.
(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.6)
1977 Apr 28, In Italy the Red Brigades assassinated Fulvio Croce, the president of the Turin Bar Association.
(http://tinyurl.com/ywxupv)
1977 Jun 3, Roberto Rossellini (b.1906), Italian director, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Rossellini)
1977 Sep 2, Italian journalist Indro Montanelli (1909-2001) was shot in the legs by the Red Brigades. In 1969 he acknowledged having had a 12-year-old Eritrean bride during Italy’s colonial occupation in the 1930s. Montanelli was one of Italy’s most revered journalists, honored by the Vienna-based International Press Institute in 2000 as among the 50 World Press Freedom Heroes.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indro_Montanelli)(AP, 6/14/20)
1977 The Italian film "An Average Little Man" starred Alberto Sordi.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1977 In Italy the Red Brigades abducted a leading businessman. He was freed with a ransom after 81 days. This year the Red Brigades also killed a lawyer, several prison officials and a journalist.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1978 Mar 16, Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped Aldo Moro, Italian politician and 5 time PM, and killed 5 of his bodyguards. Moro, who was planning to form a government combining his Christian Democrats and the Communist Party, was later murdered by the RB. Alessio Casimiri a member of the Red Brigades was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his role in the abduction. Casimiri escaped to Nicaragua and opened a restaurant. It was later reported that police decided not to rescue Moro.
(WSJ, 4/25/96, p.A-1)(AP, 3/16/97)(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1978 May 9, The bullet-riddled body of former Italian PM Aldo Moro, who'd been abducted by the Red Brigades, was found in an abandoned automobile in the center of Rome. In 2000 French police arrested Alvaro Loiacono in northern Corsica for his alleged role in the murder.
(AP, 5/9/97)(SFC, 6/3/00, p.A12)
1978 May 22, Italy legalized abortion. Voters upheld the law in a 1981 referendum.
(http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/population/abortion/Italy.abo.htm)(AP, 5/13/12)
1978 Sep 28, Pope John Paul I [Albino Luciano] died after 33 days as pope. He was found dead the next day in his Vatican apartment.
(www.prose-n-poetry.com/display_work/10583/)(AP, 9/29/97)
1978 Italian artist Luigi Serafini, after 30 months of work, completed his Codex Seraphinianus, an illustrated encyclopedia dealing with a parallel world and written in an unintelligible alphabet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus)
c1978 Pres. Giovanni Leone (d.2001 at 93) resigned 6 months before the end of his 7-year term amid allegations of links to a payoff scandal involving Lockheed Corp.
(SFC, 11/12/01, p.A19)
1978 In Italy the murders of 4 women were related to Maurizio Minghella (23). In 1982 he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the killings. In 1995 he was given partial liberty and prosecutors say he then killed 4 prostitutes. In 2002 his trial continued in Turin. In early 2003 he escaped and was soon captured and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 1/3/03)(http://tinyurl.com/2psh6t)
1978 In Italy Mediaset was founded by Silvio Berlusconi as TeleMilano. It grew to the largest commercial broadcaster in the country.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediaset)
1979 Mar 20, In Rome, Italy, the Mafia killed Mino Pecorelli, a magazine editor. In 1996 Premier Giulio Andreotti went on trial for allegedly turning to the Mafia to kill the troublesome journalist. Andreotti was acquitted by a jury in 1999. 5 others were also acquitted. In 2002 an appeal court in Perugia sentenced Giulio Andreotti to 24 years imprisonment for ordering the murder of Pecorelli.
(http://foi.missouri.edu/jouratrisk/italysexpm.html)(SFC, 4/12/96, p.A-12)(SFC, 9/25/99, p.A14)
1979 Apr 10, Nino Rota (b.1911), Italian composer (Torquemada, Romeo & Juliette), died from cancer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota)
1979 Aug 4, Francesco Cossiga (1928-2010) began serving as the 63rd prime minister of Italy. He continued to Oct 18, 1980. In 1985 he became it In 1985 he became Italy’s 8th president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
1979 Nov 3, Raffaele Bendandi (b.1893), Italian seismologist, died. he believed earthquakes were the result of the combined movements of the planets, the moon and the sun and were perfectly predictable. In 1923 he forecast a quake would hit the central Adriatic region of the Marches on January 2 the following year. He was wrong by two days.
(Reuters, 5/9/11)(http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffaele_Bendandi)
1979 The Italian film "My Asylum" (Chiedo Asilo) starred Roberto Benigni and was directed by Marco Ferreri.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.C3)
1979 Nilde Lotti (d.1999 at 79) became the first female president of the lower house of parliament. She changed from Communist to Left Democrat after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
(SFEC, 12/5/99, p.C15)
1980 Mar 29, Annunzio Mantovani (b.1905), Italian orchestra leader (Mantovani), died at his home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantovani)
1980 Jun 27, Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870, an Italian domestic jetliner, exploded in flight and crashed near the island of Ustica. 81 people were killed. In 1999 it was reported that a fight by warplanes led to the crash and coverup charges were filed against Italian military officials. Among theories for the jet's demise was a bomb planted by domestic terrorists, or an errant US or French missile allegedly fired at a Libyan MiG streaking over the Mediterranean. In 2013 Italy's top criminal court ruled that there is "abundantly" clear evidence that a stray missile caused the Italian passenger jet to crash.
(www.emergency-management.net/avi_acc_1979_1989.htm)(WSJ, 9/2/99, p.A1)(AP, 8/17/10)(AP, 1/28/13)
1980 Aug 2, In Bologna, Italy, a Fascist bomb attack killed 85 people at the train station.
(AP, 8/2/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_massacre)
1980 Aug 20, Reinhold Messner of Italy became the 1st to solo ascent Mt. Everest.
(www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9052253)
1980 Nov 23, Some 2,600 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A12)(AP, 11/23/07)
1980 The "Index Thomisticus" was printed in 56 volumes. It covered the context of all 10 million words written by Thomas Aquinas. Italian Jesuit Roberto Busa (1913-2011) had begun the project using index cards in 1941 and later switched to IBM's punch card machines. Busa was a pioneer in the usage of computers for linguistic and literary analysis.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Busa)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.39)
1980 Italian philosopher Umberto Eco authored "The Name of the Rose," and established a new genre of learned who-dunit novels.
(WSJ, 6/1/01, p.W12)(SSFC, 10/20/02, p.M1)
1980 The Italian film “City of Women" was written and directed by Federico Fellini.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Women)
1980 The Italian film "Ogro was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006). It was set in Spain in the years of dictator Francisco Franco. This was Pontecorvo’s last film.
(AP, 10/13/06)
1980 The Italian film "Terrazza" starred script writer Leonardo Benvenuti and was directed by Ettore Scola.
(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
1980 Italian Pres. Sandro Pertini (d.1999 at 90) appointed Leo Valiani a senator-for-life.
(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)
1980 In Italy Paolo Fazioli, a Roman engineer and pianist, moved to Sacile and opened a piano factory with plans to produce the world’s best pianos. By 2016 his factory was turning out 140 grand pianos a year.
(Econ, 5/7/15, p.80)
1980-1990 The government spent some $30.3 billion in emergency funds to rebuild Naples and Campania. Most of the money disappeared into private pockets and incomplete projects.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A12)
1981 May 13, John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca. The shots hit the pope’s hand and penetrated his abdomen. John Paul forgave Agca 4 days later.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(TMC, 1994, p.1981)(AP, 5/13/97)(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(SFC, 6/14/00, p.A12)
1981 Jun 10, In Frascati, Italy, 6-year-old Alfredo Rampi fell down an artesian well; the story ended tragically as efforts to rescue him proved futile.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1981 Dec 17, Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped Brigadier General James Dozier, the highest-ranking US NATO officer in southern Europe, from his home in Verona, Italy. Dozier was rescued 42 days later.
(HN, 12/17/98)(AP, 12/17/04)
1981 Ettore Sottsass (b.1917), Milanese designer, started the Memphis design movement. The 1996 book "Ettore Sottsass: Ceramics" covers his work.
(SFEM, 9/22/96, p.36)(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Sottsass)
1981 Italian officials discovered Propaganda Due (P2), a rogue Masonic lodge with a mission to infiltrate the organs of the state. Membership included politicians, soldiers, spooks and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. This prompted the outlawing of secret societies.
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.52)
1981 Cesare Battisti escaped from an Italian prison while awaiting trial on four counts of murder committed when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism. In 2007 he was arrested in Rio de Janeiro. In 2008 Brazil's top prosecutor recommended his extradition.
(AP, 4/4/08)
1982 Jan 28, Italian anti-terrorism forces rescued U.S. Brigadier General James L. Dozier, 42 days after he had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades.
(AP, 1/28/98)
1982 Apr, In southern Italy the Grotta delle Formelle chapel in Caserta, was looted. In 2009 two precious Byzantine-era frescos were recovered as part of investigations into Marion True, a former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The frescos, which date from the 11th to the 13th centuries and depict saints, were found in the home of Greek shipping heiress Despoina Papadimitriou.
(AP, 5/20/09)
1982 May 19, Sophia Loren (b.1934) began serving 18 days in an Italian prison for failing to pay her taxes.
(www.answers.com/topic/sophia-loren?cat=entertainment)
1982 Jun 18, The body of Roberto Calvi (1920–1982), an Italian banker, was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in the financial district of London. Calvi, director of Banco Ambrosiano, allegedly hanged himself following the fraudulent bankruptcy of the bank. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with building bricks, and he was carrying around $15,000 of cash in three different currencies. Calvi, dubbed by the press as "God's Banker" due to his close association with the Vatican, had gone missing on June 10. The Holy See was the main shareholder in the bank, which had been accused of laundering money for the Sicilian mafia. In 1992 Carlo De Benedetti, the chairman of Olivetti SpA, was convicted for contributing to the bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano. In 1996 courts upheld his conviction and that of 30 others. In 2003 RAI state television said prosecutors believed the Mafia killed Roberto Calvi because he lost their money and knew too much about their operations. In 2005 a trial began for 5 people in the murder of Calvi. In 2007 a jury acquitted all 5 defendants charged with the murder of Calvi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvi)(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A10)(AP, 7/24/03)(AP, 10/6/05)(AP, 6/6/07)(AP, 11/2/18)
1982 Jul 11, The Italian soccer team won its first World Cup in 44 years.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_FIFA_World_Cup)
1982 Sep 24, US, Italian and French peacekeeping troops began arriving in Lebanon. Some 400,000 Israelis gathered at the first of many demonstrations to protest the Lebanon War.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/usmnf.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/2o8vkl)
1982 Oct 16, Mario del Monaco (b.1915), Italian opera singer, died of kidney disease.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_del_Monaco)
1982 The Italian film "You Disturb Me" (Tu Mi Turbi) was the directing debut for Roberto Benigni.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.C3)
1982 The Vatican Bank, aka Works for Religion (IOR), was involved in the collapse of Italy’s Banko Ambrosiano.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.67)
1982 Umberto Romano (b.1905), Italian born artist, died in NYC.
(http://americanart.si.edu/search/artist_bio.cfm?StartRow=1&ID=4113)
1983 May 7, Mirella Gregori (15) went missing in Rome. In 2018 the news agency ANSA reported that prosecutors were focusing on whether the remains found in an annex of the Holy See's embassy in Rome could be linked either to Gregori, or to Emanuela Orlandi, another 15-year-old girl who went missing a month later.
(AP, 10/31/18)
1983 Jun 22, Emanuela Orlandi (b.1968), the daughter of a Vatican messenger, disappeared after a music lesson in Rome. She was 15 at the time. Her self-proclaimed kidnappers demanded the release of Ali Agca, who wounded the Pope in 1981, for her freedom. They never offered any proof they had the girl or that she was alive.
(AP, 1/10/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuela_Orlandi)
1983 Dec 11, The 1st visit to Lutheran church by a pope was made by Pope John Paul II in Rome.
(www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1983/december/index.htm)
1983 Vittorio Mussolini (d.1997 at 80), 2nd son of dictator Benito, made a documentary film of his father.
(SFC, 6/14/97, p.C2)
1984 Mar 5, Tito Gobbi (b.1923), Italian baritone (Scarpia in Tosca), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito_Gobbi)
1984 In Italy the government of Premier Bettino Craxi signed a decree securing a virtual monopoly of private television for businessman Silvio Berlusconi.
(Econ, 1/9/10, p.53)
1984 In Italy the Vatican paid $244 million for its part in a bank scandal that saw the collapse of another Italian bank.
(SFEM, 1/19/97, p.10)
1984 In Italy the Red Brigades split into two movements: the majority faction of the Communist Combatant Party (Red Brigades-PCC) and the minority of the Union of Combatant Communists (Red Brigades-UCC). The second position later morphed into the Politico-military Communist Party (PCPM). The same year, four imprisoned leaders, Curcio, Moretti, Iannelli and Bertolazzi, rejected the armed struggle as pointless.
(Econ, 2/17/07, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades)
1985 May 29, At Heysel Stadium rioting erupted between British and Italian spectators at the European Cup soccer final in Brussels, Belgium. 39 people were killed when rioting broke out and a wall separating British and Italian soccer fans collapsed. This led to a 5-year ban on English clubs playing on the Continent.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.A28)(AP, 5/29/08)
1985 Sep 19, Italo Calvino (b.1923), Italian writer, died. A collection of his essays was soon published titled "The Literature Machine." In 1999 the original 11 essays and 25 others were published under the title: "Why Read the Classics," translated by Martin McLaughlin. In 2003 McLaughlin published “Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings By Italo Calvino."
(SFEC, 10/24/99, BR p.5)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M4)
1985 Sep 23, Italian journalist Giancarlo Siani (b.1959) was killed after he ran investigative reports on the Mafia in the Naples daily Il Mattino. In 1997 6 Naples gangsters were sentenced to life terms for the murder.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giancarlo_Siani)
1985 Oct 7, Four Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians held by Israel. 413 people were held hostage for 2 days in the seizure that was masterminded by Mohammed Abul Abbas. American Leon Klinghoffer was shot while sitting in his wheelchair and thrown overboard. A case was filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and were turned over to Italy which let Abbas slip out of the country. Abbas was captured in Baghdad in 2003.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4)(AP, 10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)(SFC, 4/16/03, p.A16)
1985 Oct 8, The hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, dumping his body and wheelchair overboard. A case was filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and were turned over to Italy which let Abbas slip out of the country.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4) (AP, 10/8/97)
1985 Nov 25, Elsa Morante (b.1912), Italian writer, died. Her books included “House of Liars" (1948). In 2008 Lily Tuck authored the biography “Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante."
(WSJ, 9/27/08, p.W11)
1985 Dec 27, Palestinian guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; a total of twenty people were killed, including five of the attackers, who were slain by police and security personnel. Abu Nidal was considered responsible. President Reagan blamed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
(AP, 12/27/97)(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A6)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1985 Christopher Hibbert authored “Rome: The Biography of a City."
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.70)
1985 Franco Modigliani (d.2003 at 85), Italian economist at MIT, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his research on savings habits of people and the market value of businesses.
(WSJ, 9/26/03, p.A1)(Econ, 11/14/09, p.88)
1985 Francesco Cossiga (b.1928) was elected president of Italy. He resigned in 1992.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
1985 Pernod Ricard SA acquired the Italian bitters group Ramazzotti.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
1985 Italian journalist Giancarlo Siani was killed after he ran investigative reports on the Mafia in the Naples daily Il Mattino. In 1997 6 Naples gangsters were sentenced to life terms for the murder.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A9)
1985-1991 In Italy a mafia war during this period claimed the lives of almost 600 people. Giovanni Tegano, a senior gangster in Reggio Calabria, was a key participant.
(Econ, 5/8/10, p.54)
1986 Feb 10, The largest Mafia trial in history, with 474 defendants, opened in Palermo, Italy. The trial ended on December 16, 1987, almost two years after it commenced. Of the 474 defendants, both those present and those tried in absentia, 360 were convicted. 2,665 years of prison sentences were shared out between the guilty, not including the life sentences. A total of 114 defendants were acquitted.
(HN, 2/10/97)(www.answers.com/topic/maxi-trial)
1986 Feb 19, Adolfo Celi (b.1922), Italian film actor and director (Thunderball), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Celi)
1986 Mar 22, World financier Michele Sindona died two days after ingesting cyanide in his Italian prison cell in what authorities later ruled a suicide.
(AP, 3/22/06)
1986 Mar 29, A court in Rome acquitted six men in a plot to kill the Pope.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1986 Apr 14, Italy, which opposed an American strike against Libya, warned Libya a day before the strike, which was launched from a NATO base on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
(AP, 10/30/08)
1986 Apr 15, The United States launched an air raid with F-111 warplanes against Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5; Libya said 41 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Tripoli and Benghazi. The step-daughter of Moammar Gadhafi was among those killed near Tripoli by the US bombing.
(HN, 4/15/98)(WSJ, 8/30/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/19/08)(AP, 10/31/08)
1986 The Italian film "Demons" was produced.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.C1)
1986 Rita Levi Montalcini (1909-2012), Italian scientist, shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.
(AP, 4/19/09)(Econ, 1/5/12, p.74)
1986 In Italy 62 founding members met to inaugurate Arcigola, the forerunner of Slow Food.
(www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/history.lasso)
1986 In Italy the first McDonald's Hamburger restaurant opened in Rome.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, Z1 p.2)
1986 Italian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi bought the AC Milan soccer team. He had to quit the club’s presidency for two years in 2004 when a law preventing conflicts of interest for politicians was passed. In 2016 Berlusconi said Chinese investors Sino-Europe Sports Investment Mangement Changxing would pay €740m for the club and take on €220m of tis debt.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.70)(http://tinyurl.com/klwzhl)(Econ, 8/13/16, p.48)
1987 Apr 11, Primo Levi (b.1920), Italian chemist, Auschwitz survivor and writer, died in Italy. In 2002 Carole Angier authored: "Primo Levi: A Biography." His books included the 1947 memoir "If This Is a Man" and "The Periodic Table." In 2002 Carole Angier authored the biography "The Double Bond."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi)(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.M1)(WSJ, 6/14/02, p.W10)
1987 Jun 3, President Reagan arrived in Italy to prepare for a summit of major industrialized democracies, the 13th such gathering of world leaders.
(AP, 6/3/97)
1987 Nov 7, Italian citizens began voting in a 2-day referendum to close down 3 nuclear power plants.
(AP, 11/13/03)(Econ, 6/6/09, p.66)(www.radicalparty.org/ambiente/dilascia_ing.htm)
1987 In Italy porn actress Ilona Staller (known by her stage name of Cicciolina), a member of the Radical Party, was successfully elected to parliament.
(Reuters, 5/19/16)
1988 Apr 16, In Forli, Italy, the Red Brigades-PCC killed Italian senator Roberto Ruffilli, an advisor of Italian PM Ciriaco de Mita. After that, the group activities all but ended after massive arrests of its leadership.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades)
1988 Apr, The Japanese Red Army bombed a US military recreational club in Naples. 5 people were killed.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1988 Jun 11, Giuseppe Saragat (89), president of Italy (1964-71), died.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9065724)
1988 Aug 14, Enzo Ferrari (b.1898), Italian sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Ferrari)
1988 Aug 28, At least 40 people were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show at the US Air Base in Ramstein, West Germany, sending flaming debris into the crowd of spectators. Over the next 2 months the death toll rose to 69.
(AP, 8/28/98)(www.sos.se/sos/publ/REFERENG/9003031E.htm)
1988 Oct 13, In Italy Cardinal Archbishop Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero was forced to announce that the Shroud of Turin did not contain the image of Christ. Scientists at 3 leading universities carbon-dated samples to some time between 1260-1390. In 1998 it was reported that the dating work was not definitive. Lab tests showed Shroud of Turin was not Christ’s burial cloth. The Shroud of Turin Research Project (Sturp) performed radiocarbon dating on fibers of the shroud and found that the linen dated to between 1260 and 1390 AD. Ian Wilson wrote the 1978 book "The Shroud of Turin" and in 1998 "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence That the Most Sacred Relic Is Real."
(WSJ, 4/10/98, p.W6)(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A24)(http://tinyurl.com/zuanz)
1988 Italy enacted a mandatory seat belt law.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.E3)
1988 Controls on capital movement across borders were abandoned by France, Italy and other member states of the European Community.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-44)
1989 Feb 8, In the Azores 144 people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with Italian tourists slammed into fog-covered Santa Maria mountain.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1989 Apr 30, Sergio Leone (60), Italian director (Good, Bad & Ugly), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0001466/)
1989 Milton Friedman authored “Agnelli, Fiat and the Network of Italian Power."
(Econ, 1/28/12, p.80)
1989 The Italian film "The Voice of the Moon" (La Voce Della Luna) starred Roberto Benigni and was the last work directed by Federico Fellini.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.C3)
1990 Sep 21, Italian judge Rosario Livatino (b.1952) was killed by the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. His story inspired a novel, Il giudice ragazzino ("The Boy Judge"), written by Nando Dalla Chiesa in 1992, and this was made into a film with the same title in 1994 by director Alessandro di Robilant. In 1993 Pope John Paul II hailed him a “martyr of justice and, indirectly, of the Christian faith." In 2020 Pope Francis said he was a martyr for the faith and could be beatified, or declared "Blessed." In 2021 he was beatified by the Roman Catholic church in the last formal step before possible sainthood.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosario_Livatino)(Reuters, 12/22/20)(AP, 5/9/21)
1990 Sep 26, Alberto Moravia, Italian writer (Woman in Red), died at 82.
(http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/moravia.htm)
1990 Oct 24, The existence of Gladio, a “stay-behind" espionage operation, was acknowledged by Giulio Andreotti, head of the Italian government. It was sponsored by the CIA and NATO to counter communist influence after World War II in Italy, as well as in other European countries.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio)
1990 Nov, In Naples 2 oil paintings and 17 busts were stolen from the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli alle Croci. In 2009 one of the busts was found in the home of a North Carolina couple who had no idea it was stolen. Authorities told The Charlotte Observer the trail went cold until two years ago, when officials in Rome let federal agents know an Italian citizen sold a similar statue to an antiques dealer from Greensboro.
(AP, 3/21/09)
1990 The Pritzker Int’l. Prize for Architecture was awarded to Aldo Rossi (d.1997) of Italy. He had designed the World Theater in Venice and the Museum of Maastricht in the Netherlands.
(SFC, 9/5/97, p.A24)
1990 In Naples some $60 million vanished in incomplete construction sites for the soccer World Cup Tournament.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A12)
1990 In Pisa the Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed off to tourists for fear of its falling over. The tilt was reduced by 16 inches over the next 11 years and re-opening was scheduled in 2001.
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A1)(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A11)
1990 In Italy the Northern League began annual rallies as a cry for independence.
(Reuters, 7/3/18)
1991 Mar 29, Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona was suspended by the Italian League for testing positive on March 17 for cocaine use.
(http://tinyurl.com/e34y9)
1991 Jun 16, The seventh International Conference on AIDS opened in Florence, Italy. The conference was marked by pleas from African and Asian countries for more help and criticism directed at the United States for its refusal to allow visits by foreigners infected with the AIDS virus.
(AP, 6/16/01)
1991 Aug 29, Libero Grassi, Italian underwear manufacturer, anti mafia, was gunned down in Palermo.
(www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art105.htm)
1991 Aug, 18,000 Albanians crossed the Adriatic to seek asylum in Italy; most were returned. The People's Assembly passed a law allowing private ownership, foreign investment and private employment of workers.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1991 Tano Grasso was placed under police protection after he founded Italy’s first anti-racket association. In 2011 Grasso and Lirio Abate held the Trame literary festival in Lamezia Terme focusing on books about the Mafia.
(Econ, 7/9/11, p.84)
1991 The Italian Communist Party (PCI) disbanded to form the Partito Democratico della Sinistra (PDS), with membership in the Socialist International. It later came to be known as the Left Democrats (DS).
(Econ, 4/28/07, p.62)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Communist_Party)
1991 In Italy Umberto Bossi founded the Northern League, a regionalist-cum-separatist movement.
(AP, 4/5/12)
1991 In Italy Giulio Andreotti was made a senator for life.
(SFEC, 10/27/99, p.A17)
1991 In Italy an anti-laundering act put a limit of 20 million lire on all cash transactions, but no penalties for passbooks containing sums above that amount.
(Econ, 1/29/05, p.71)
1991 In Italy Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest group bribed a judge to win control of Mondadori, the country’s largest publishing house. In 2007 Cesare Previti was convicted of buying this judgment. In 2009 a Milan judge ruled that Fininvest should pay damages of $1.1 billion.
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.53)
1991 Italian authorities allowed several ships with about 25,000 Albanians into the port of Bari. When another wave of immigrants showed up a few months later the policy was reversed and they were sent back home.
(NG, 5/93, p.104)
1991 Ermenegildo Zegna became the first Italian luxury company to enter the Chinese market. By 2007 it had some 52 shops there.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.82)
1991-1992 Luigi Ramponi served as head of the SISMI, the Italian Military Intelligence Service.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A10)
1992 Feb 17, Italian police arrested Mario Chiesa, the first one to be picked up in what would become Italy's massive corruption scandals. This date became considered a watershed moment in recent Italian history. Italy’s "Clean Hands" (Tangentopoli) corruption scandal originated in Milan. A series of bribery cases led to the conviction and flight of Socialist Bettino Craxi.
(AP, 3/31/09)(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T11)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.10)
1992 Apr 28, Francesco Cossiga (b.1928), president of Italy, resigned 2 months before the end of his term.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
1992 May 23, In Sicily anti-Mafia investigator Giovannii Falcone was murdered on a highway outside Palermo. Falcone’s wife and 3 bodyguards were also killed. Sicilian politician Salvo Lima was also murdered. Anti-Mafia investigator Paolo Borsellino was killed in another blast some months later. In 1997 Pietro Aglieri, aka "U Signurinu" (The Little Gentleman), was arrested for involvement in all three murders. 24 mobsters were convicted in the murder in 1997, including Leoluca Bagarella. Salvatore Riina was later credited with ordering Falcone’s murder.
(http://giovanni-falcone.foosquare.com/)(SFC, 9/27/97, p.A12)(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.A23)(Econ 6/10/17, p.53)
1992 May 25, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was elected President of Italy.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1992 Jul 19, Paolo Borsellino, Italian anti-mafia judge, was murdered by mafia. In 2014 An Italian newspaper reported that the remote control to detonate the bomb that killed anti-Mafia prosecutor Paolo Borsellino was hidden inside the intercom at his mother's Palermo residence. Salvatore Riina was later credited with ordering the murder.
(http://paolo-borsellino.biography.ms/)(AP, 3/12/14)(Econ 6/10/17, p.53)
1992 Jul 31, In Italy the scala mobile wage index, which maintained a rigid link between Italian wages and prices, was scrapped after a long struggle.
(www.eurofound.europa.eu/emire/ITALY/SLIDINGSCALEMECHANISM-IT.htm)(Econ, 6/13/09, SR p.9)
1992 Aug 15, Giorgio Perlasca, Italian anti-fascist (saved 5,200 Jews), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio)
1992 Sep 3, An Italian relief plane was shot down by ground-to-air missiles outside of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. (AP, 9/3/97)
1992 Sep 14, The Italian Lira was devalued 7%. This forced Italy to withdraw from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), a pre-euro system of semi-pegged currencies.
(http://tinyurl.com/eh943)(Econ, 7/16/11, p.79)
1992 Oct 22, The US space shuttle Columbia was launched on a 10-day mission that included deployment of an Italian satellite.
(AP, 10/22/97)
1992 Oct 26, Italy ratifies the Treaty on the European Union.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 Nov 29, Emilio Pucci (b.1914), Italian fashion designer (Jackie Kennedy), died in Florence, Italy. In 2000 his firm was acquired by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
(http://tinyurl.com/7ec3n)(WSJ, 8/22/03, p.B1)
1992 Dec, Italy sent 2,500 combat troops to Somalia as part of the US-sponsored multinational force.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A8)
1992 The film "Noto Mandorli Vulcano Stromboli Carnevalle" was shot in Sicily by Michelangelo Antonioni for the Italian pavilion at the Seville Expo in Spain.
(SFEC, 1/17/99, DB p.43)
1992 An Italian court sentenced Marina Petrella, a member of the Red Brigades, in absentia to life in prison on charges including murder and kidnapping. In 2007 French police arrested Petrella for a petty crime and planned to extradite her to Italy. In 2008 a French court ordered her that she be freed from prison because of health problems.
(AP, 8/23/07)(AP, 8/5/08)
1992 The Italian Mafia demanded that sentences passed against some 400 Mafiosi at a mass trial in 1987 be softened and that a law that imposed a harsh prison regime for Mafiosi be repealed. A list of 12 demands was written by written by the son of Salvatore "The Beast" Riina on a scrap of paper while his father was still at large during alleged secret negotiations between the state and the Mafia. The note was only made public in 2009.
(Reuters, 10/19/09)
1992-1993 Giuliano Amato served as the Socialist Premier.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A9)
1992-1994 Warrant Officer Francesco Aloi kept a diary while in Somalia and documented instances of rape, torture and other brutality against the Somalis.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A10)
1992-1996 Giorgio Pressberger was the artistic director for the MittelFest, a theater and musical festival in Cividale del Friuli that links Italy with nine central European countries.
(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A8)
1993 Jan 15, In Sicily Salvatore "The Beast" Riina was arrested. "Toto" Riina, the Sicilian boss of bosses, was arrested for his role in the murder of prosecutor Giovanni Falcone. Bernardo Provenzano was considered to have taken over as boss of the Sicilian Mafia following Riina’s arrest. Provenzano’s right-hand man was Mariano Troia.
(USAT, 9/16/98, p.14A)(www.answers.com/topic/salvatore-riina)(SFC, 1/22/00, p.A11)
1993 Feb 20, Ferrucio Lamborghini (76), Italian auto-designer (Lamborghini, Miura), died.
(www.conceptcarz.com/view/makeHistory/88,8843/makeHistory.aspx)
1993 Mar 16, Mohammed Hussein Nagdi, Iran diplomat, resistance fighter, was murdered in Rome, Italy.
(http://farrid.20m.com/sr.html)
1993 Apr 19, In a national referendum Italians voted by 83% to elect three-quarters of their Senate with a U.S-style 'first-place-takes-all,' single-member district voting system. The Italian Chamber of Deputies, which has far more political power than the Senate, is now expected to modify the 'pure' party list proportional representation system used to elect its members.
(www.fairvote.org/reports/1993/katz.html)(Econ, 9/17/05, p.53)
1993 Apr 28, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi began serving as prime minister of Italy as the country's post- war order, dominated by Christian Democrats and Communists, was falling apart. He continued in office until May 10, 1994. From 1999 to 2006 he served as president.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Azeglio_Ciampi)
1993 May 18, Italian police arrested Mafia boss Benedetto "Nitto" Santapaola.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1993 May 27, Five people were killed in a bombing at the Uffizi museum of art in Florence, Italy; some three dozen paintings were ruined or damaged. Giovanni Brusca was believed to have led teams that damaged the Uffizi museum in Florence with car bombs. He is believed by many to be the leader of the Italian Mafia teams. In 1996 he was arrested in Sicily and charged with masterminding the murder of Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards in 1992. In 1998 Mafia boss Lelluca Bagarella and 13 others were sentenced to life in prison for the May and July bombings.
(AP, 5/27/98)(SFC, 5/21/96, p.A-11)(SFC, 8/24/96, p.A12)(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.A23)
1993 Jul 27, Bombs exploded in Rome and Milan, killing at least five people.
(AP, 7/27/98)
1993 Jul, The modern art museum in central Milan was damaged by bombs. Two churches in Rome were also damaged, including the Basilica of St. John Lateran, between May and July. [see May 20]
(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.A23)
1993 Oct 31, Federico Fellini, Italian film director, died in Rome at age 73. He made some 24 films including "La Strada," "La Dolce Vita," "8 1/2," and "Amarcord" through the 50’s and 60’s.
(WSJ, 4/19/95, p.A-14)(AP, 10/31/98)
1993 Nov 21, The Neo-fascist MSI won 36% of municipal elections in Rome.
(www.nationarchive.com/Summaries/v257i0020_07.htm)
1993 Robert Putnam authored "Making Democracy Work." Here he tried to understand why for many decades northern Italy had been richer than the south.
(Econ., 9/5/20, p.57)
1993 Italy abolished parliamentary immunity, however members of parliament could only be jailed with parliamentary authorization. In 2008 Silvio Berlusconi restored immunity for himself and three other office holders.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.63)(Econ, 12/3/16, p.16)
1993 Silvio Berlusconi created his Forza Italia! party.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.57)
1993 Antonio Basolino was elected mayor of Naples. Before his election the post was appointed by local party leaders. The city had been mired in corruption for decades and the new mayor began to clean it up.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A1,12)
1993 In Italy a federal law granted people in illegal dwellings the right to use public utilities but warned that illegal structures would be demolished. Demolitions began in 1998.
(SFC, 7/22/00, p.A10)
1993 Antonio Fazio became governor of the Bank of Italy.
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.58)
1993 Italy’s Fiat Auto SpA bought Maserati.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.B1)
1993 Maurizio Gucci sold his remaining stake in Gucci to Investcorp, a Bahraini firm.
(WSJ, 11/5/03, p.A1)
1994 Mar 19, Giuseppe Diana, Italian anti-mafia priest, was murdered.
(http://tinyurl.com/7plc8)
1994 Mar 20, Ilaria Alpi (32), a journalist, was shot and killed in Somalia along with her cameraman, Miran Hrovatin, on the same day that Italian troops left the country. She had collected evidence of brutality by Italian officers against Somalis along with evidence of illegal gun-running.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A8)
1994 Mar 23, Actress Giulietta Masina (b.1921 ), wife of Federico Felini, died in Rome.
(AP, 3/23/99)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0556399/)
1994 Mar 27, Italians went to the polls in general elections that resulted in big gains for a right-wing coalition. Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right grouping won the election.
(AP, 3/27/99)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.10)
1994 Jun 3, President Clinton, continuing his tour of Italy, visited the graves of American soldiers killed in the Anzio landing during World War II.
(AP, 6/3/99)
1994 Jun, Carlo Toto, an Italian contractor, purchased a Boeing 737 at a court auction and began a small-charter airline service that became Air One.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.A13)
1994 Jul 17, Brazil defeated Italy to win its fourth World Cup title in Los Angeles. The 15th FIFA World Cup was hosted by the United States.
(AP, 7/17/99)(http://tinyurl.com/m6z96z3)
1994 Sep 29, Gunmen in Italy fired at the rental car of the Green family of Bodega Bay, Ca., and killed their young boy, Nicholas Green. The parents donated his organs and saved 7 lives in Italy. An appeals court in 1998 found 2 men guilty of the botched highway robbery. Michelle Ianello was sentenced to life in prison and Francesco Mesiano was sentenced to 20 years.
(SFEC, 10/27/96, p.B8)(SFC, 6/6/98, p.A10)
1994 Jul 8, Leaders of the Group of Seven nations opened their 20th annual economic summit in Italy. Silvio Berlusconi hosted the G-7 summit in Naples.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.A12)(AP, 7/8/99)(Econ, 1/22/05, p.46)
1994 Jul 9, Members of the Group of Seven (G-7) nations concluded their economic summit in Naples, Italy.
(AP, 7/9/99)
1994 The Italian government introduced instant lotteries.
(WSJ, 11/1/96, p.A1)
1994 The National Alliance was created as a broad based successor to the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which was created after WW II to keep alive the ideals of Mussolini.
(Econ, 12/6/03, p.44)
1994 Istria was the first region of the former Yugoslavia to be officially designated as a "Region of Europe". The Istria of 2005, alternatively called Istra and Istrija, is politically divided into three separate countries: Croatia, Slovenia and Italy.
(www.istrians.com/istria/maps/)
1994 Roberto Pannunzi, Italian mobster, was arrested in Colombia. He had forged links with Colombian cartels for transatlantic trade in cocaine. He was extradited to Italy and released when his detention expired. He was rearrested in 2004 but disappeared in 2009 when sent to a private clinic near Rome following a heart attack.
(Econ, 5/8/10, p.54)
1995 Jan 13, Italy named Treasury Minister Lamberto Dini its prime minister. He pledged to resign after approval of a deficit cutting budget.
(AP, 1/13/00)(WSJ, 10/27/95, p.A-1)
1995 Mar 27, In Italy Maurizio Gucci (46), businessman, was shot to death in Milan. He was the last family member to have held shares in the Gucci fashion company, now part of the Bahrain-based Investcorp. In 1997 police arrested his former wife, a psychic, a doorman, and two hitmen for their roles in the murder. In 1998 Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli (50) was convicted and sentenced to 29 years in prison. The psychic got 25, the doorman got 26, the driver got 29 and the gunman got life. Reggiani was furious that after 13 years of marriage he had abandoned her for another woman, leaving her to bring up their two young daughters. Reggiani's sentence was cut short for good behavior and she was released in 2017.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.A12)(SFC, 11/4/98, p.A13)(The Telegraph, 1/11/21)
1995 Oct 10, Paolo Gucci (64), Italian entrepreneur and accessories designer, died.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9112125?tocId=9112125)
1995 Nov 21, Former Nazi Capt. Erich Priebke was extradited from Argentina to Italy to face trial for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre. A court found him guilty in 1996 but released him because too much time had elapsed since the crime. There was a major uproar and he was again arrested and a 1997 trial convicted him and co-defendant Major Karl Hass. Priebke was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Hass was convicted but released due to mitigating circumstances. face charges in the massacre of 335 Italian civilians in Nazi-occupied Rome.
(AP, 3/23/97)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-21) (WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 7/23/97, p.A9)
(AP, 11/21/02)
1995 Nov, Air One launched service between Rome and Milan, a route on which Alitalia had held a monopoly.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.A13)
1995 Italian interest rates began to fall in anticipation of its joining the EU.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.108)
1995 The Italian port at Gioia Tauro began handling container ships. The local mafia, ‘Ndrangheta, tried to extort $1.50 for every container, but the demand was overcome.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.78)
1996 Jan 29, In Venice, Italy, the 204-year-old La Felice opera house burned down. It was scheduled to be reconstructed and finished by Sep 27, 1999. It was later determined by experts to have been caused by arson. In 2003 Italy's top criminal court upheld convictions on arson charges for Enrico Carella and fellow electrician Massimiliano Marchetti, sentencing them to seven and six years in jail respectively. In 2005 John Berendt authored “The City of Falling Angels," which centered on the burning of La Fenice. In 2007 Carella was arrested in Mexico.
(SFC, 6/27/96, p.D3)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.E4)(AP, 1/29/01)(WSJ, 9/24/05, p.P12)(AP, 3/3/07)
1996 May 16, Romano Prodi was named head of the center-left Olive Branch alliance that won April elections. PM Prodi led Italy’s 55th postwar government with the leftists in power for the first time in 50 years.
(WSJ, 5/17/96, p.A-1)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.10)
1996 May 20, Giovanni Brusca (36), believed by many to be the leader of the Italian Mafia, was arrested in Sicily. He is charged with masterminding the murder of Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards in 1992.
(SFC, 5/21/96, p.A-11)
1996 May 25, Renzo De Felice (67), scholar and historian of Italy’s Fascist period, died in Rome.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A15)
1996 Jun 2, Separatists in northern Italy celebrated their growing campaign to split off from the south on the 50th anniversary of the Italian republic. Umberto Bossi is the head of the Northern League and founder of the self-declared Republic of Padania. At a rally in Pontida, near Milan, ministers in Bossi’s "government" swore allegiance to Padania, a name derived from the valley of the Po. Their proposed republic includes everything from Florence to the Alps.
(SFC, 6/3/96, p.A12)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Jun 9, The latest unemployment rate was 12.4%.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Parade, p.9)
1996 Jun 10, The center-left government announced a new privatization calendar that included the sale of stakes in insurance, banking, and oil companies.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A9B)
1996 Sep 15, Umberto Bossi, populist politician and leader of the Northern League, planned to declare the independence of the Federal Republic of Padania.
(WSJ, 9/13/96, p.A6)
1996 Sep 15, Lorenzo Necci, head of the state-run railroad, was arrested for corruption, embezzlement, abuse of office, falsification of balance sheets and fraud.
(SFE, 9/17/96, p.A12)
1996 Sep 26, The foreign minister announced that the country would no longer make land mines that are used against people.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A16)
1996 Sep 27, In Milan 50,000 metal workers marched on strike.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)
1996 Nov 17, The World Food Summit concluded a five-day meeting in Rome, with delegates promising a wide-ranging effort to ease hunger around the globe.
(AP, 11/17/97)
1996 Dec 19, Marcello Mastroianni (b.1924), Italian actor, died at age 72. He appeared in 171 films and had just finished shooting "Journey to the Beginning of the World.
(WSJ, 12/20/96, p.A1)(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A9)
1996 Dec 25, Some 280 migrants from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were suspected of having drowned in the Mediterranean while being transshipped in the Malta-Sicily channel. At least 283 people died while on the illegal voyage from Alexandria to Italy.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.A13)(Econ., 4/18/15, p.21)
1996 Frances Mayes published "Under the Tuscan Sun." In 1999 she followed it up with "Bella Tuscany."
(SFEC, 4/25/99, BR p.2)
1996 Flooding of 32 inches or more hit Venice a record 101 times in this year.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D4)
1996 The government assigned a Central Commission for Worldwide Italian-Restaurant Standards to certify that authenticity of Italian restaurants outside Italy.
(WSJ, 4/14/99, p.A1)
1996 Ludovico Filotti, a former employee of Barings, persuaded his new employer, a large Japanese bank, to purchase Italian zero coupon postal bonds in an arbitrage scheme under falling interest rates. Other bankers followed and within days $3.6 billion worth of bonds were sold. They matured after the euro deadline and were not counted as current debt.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.108,110)
1996-1998 Some 15% of all new structures in Italy were built illegally.
(SFC, 7/22/00, p.A10)
1997 Feb, In Italy Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady" went missing from Ricci-Oddi modern art gallery. In 2019 the painting was found stashed within the walls of the gallery. The painting gained notoriety the year before its disappearance when a young art student discovered that it was Klimt's only 'double' portrait, with the visible painting completed on top of another, 'Portrait of a Young Lady', which had not been seen since 1912.
(The Telegraph, 12/11/19)
1997 Apr 11, In Italy, fire damaged the 500-year-old San Giovanni Cathedral, home of the Shroud of Turin, which some consider Christ's burial cloth.
(AP, 4/11/98)
1997 Apr 12, In Turin the Shroud of Turin was recovered from a fire that began in the Guarini chapel of the city’s 15th century cathedral.
(WSJ, 4/14/97, p.A1)
1997 May 9, Eight Venetian separatists took over the bell tower at St. Mark’s Square. They were overpowered by police after 7 1/2 hours.
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A10)
1997 May 9, Marco Ferreri (b.1928), film director, died. His work included "The Wheelchair" (El Cochecit 1960), "Le Lit Conjugal" (The Conjugal Bed 1963), "Dillinger Is Dead" (1969), "La Grande Bouffe" (1973), "La Derniere Femme" (1976), and "Bye Bye Monkey’ (1978).
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A20)
1997 May 16, Giuseppe De Santis, film director, died at 80. His films included "Bitter Rice" (1949), "Obsession," "Tragic Hunt," "Under the Olive Tree," and "Rome 11 O’Clock."
(SFC, 5/19/97, p.A24)
1997 May 22, In Italy the Grand Princess was launched at the Fincantieri Monfalcone shipyard. It was the world’s largest passenger cruise ship at 109,000 gross tons and was scheduled for interior completion in the spring of 1998.
(SFEC, 5/26/97, p.A11)
1997 May 22, In Italy the Grand Princess was launched at the Fincantieri Monfalcone shipyard. It was the world’s largest passenger cruise ship at 109,000 gross tons and was scheduled for interior completion in the spring of 1998.
(SFEC, 5/26/97, p.A11)
1997 Sep 26, In Sicily a court convicted 24 mobsters for the 1992 bombing of the top anti-Mafia prosecutor. Salvatore "Toto" Riina, the reputed "boss of bosses" was among those convicted for having plotted the assassination of Giovanni Falcone.
(SFC, 9/27/97, p.A12)
1997 Sep 26, Two earthquakes hit central Italy east of Umbria and at least 11 people were killed. The basilica of Assisi, St. Mary of the Angels, built on the site where St. Francis died, was severely damaged. 4 people were killed while assessing damage from the first quake. An estimated 100,000 buildings in the Umbria and Marche regions were damaged.
(SFC, 9/27/97, p.A1)(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.A18)
1997 Sep 26, In Italy Bob Dylan performed at a religious congress in Bologna before a crowd 200,000 and Pope John Paul II.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A3)
1997 Oct 9, Dario Fo (71), an Italian playwright and performer, received the Nobel Prize in literature. The leftist playwright had been prosecuted by Italy, denounced by Roman Catholic Church leaders and barred from the United States. His work included: "Archangels Don’t Play Pinball" (1960), "Mistero Biffo," (Comic Mystery) written in 1969, and "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" (1970), "We Can’t Pay, We Don’t Pay" (1974) and "Orgasmo Adulto Escapes From the Zoo."
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 8/23/98, DB p.13)(AP, 10/9/98)
1997 Oct 9, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi resigned after his Marxist allies refused to accept welfare cuts. The 17-month old government was the first leftist-dominated and 55th government since WW II. Pres. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro asked Prodi to stay on as caretaker while a new government is formed.
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.D3)
1997 Oct 13, The Communist Refounding Party reopened talks that were expected to restore Prodi to power and leave his budget intact.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A10)
1997 Oct 26, In Italy the Northern League party of Umberto Bossi held a symbolic election to choose a "parliament" for independent Padania.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.A9)
1997 Nov 16, In weekend municipal elections center-left parties won a landslide victory bolstering support for Prime Minister Prodi’s government.
(WSJ, 11/18/97, p.A1)
1997 Nov Kidnappers of industrialist Giuseppe Soffiantini sent a slice of his left ear and demanded a ransom payment of $12 million by Dec 20.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.B12)
1997 Dec 27, In Italy Some 825 illegal immigrants, mostly Kurds, were rescued by Italian tugboats from the Turkish ship Ararat. They were attempting to smuggle into Italy from Turkey.
(SFEC,12/28/97, p.A19)
1997 Dec 30, Danilo Dolci, advocate of nonviolent social reform, died at age 73. His writings and poetry chronicled Sicily’s beauty and despair. His books include: "Report From Palermo," "Waste," and "Sicilian Lives" (1981).
(SFC, 1/1/98, p.A25)
1997 Dec, Word began to spread that Dr. Luigi Di Bella (85) had found a cure for cancer, a cocktail of drugs that stopped tumor growth.
(WSJ, 4/21/98, p.A1)
1997 The film "Land in Between" (Terra di mezzo) was directed by Matteo Garrone. It was about an immigrant in Italy.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Marianna Ucria" was directed by Robeto Faenza. It was based on a novel by Dacia Maraini about an 18th century Sicilian deaf mute.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Moon Spins Between land and Sea" (Giro di lune tra terre e mare) was directed by Giuseppe Gaudino. It was a tale of the ancient town Pozzuoli set in the present and the time of Nero.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Physical Jerks" (In barca a vela contromano) was directed by Stefano Reali. It was jab at the public health system about a patient who checks into a hospital for surgery.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "Pizzicata" was about a US fighter pilot shot down in 1943.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The comedy film "Satisfaction or Your Money Back" (Consigli per gli acquisti) was directed by Sandro Boldoni. It was a spoof on modern consumerism.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 The film "We All Fall Down" (Tutti giu per terra) was directed by Davide Ferrario. It was about a young virgin man who had spent his adolescence with an aunt in Rome and then returns home to Turin.
(SFEC,11/16/97, DB p.60)
1997 Ferrari took over Maserati. In 2000 the new $85,000 Maserati Spyder was introduced.
(WSJ, 3/25/02, p.B11)
1997 The Italian Parmalat Corp. acquired Beatrice Foods.
(WSJ, 12/22/03, p.A6)
1997-1998 Fiat SpA of Italy said it would invest $1 bil over this period in Brazil for new engines, updated models, and new projects.
(WSJ, 5/30/96, p.A11)
1998 Jan 1, Navy patrols intercepted a 2nd ship with 386 refugees, mostly Kurds,
(WSJ, 1/2/98, p.A1)
1998 Jan 2, Italy pledged to grant political asylum to genuine Kurdish immigrants. Another 1,300 were scheduled to soon arrive from Turkey. German and Austrian officials feared the immigrants would spill over to their countries.
(SFC, 1/3/98, p.A9)
1998 Jan 25, Kidnappers of industrialist Giuseppe Soffiantini sent a slice of his ear and a note to a TV news station. The ransom was reportedly reduced to about $6 million.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.B12)
1998 Feb 3, A US surveillance aircraft cut a ski cable in Italy and caused the death of 20 skiers in a gondola cable car running from Cavalese to the Alpe Cermis. The EA-6B aircraft was normally used for patrols over Bosnia and was only slightly damaged. Lt. Col. Steven Watters was later relieved of command for telling crew members of a related squadron to destroy evidence in the investigation. The pilot did not have Italian military maps that identified the ski lift. Four crewmen were later charged by the Marine Corps with negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter and dereliction of duty. The pilot and navigator faced trial for manslaughter. Pilot Richard J. Ashby was acquitted of all charges in 1999. Navigator Joseph Schweitzer was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide charges. Schweitzer later pleaded guilty to obstruction and conspiracy charges for destroying a videotape made during the flight. The tape indicated that the plane had been flying upside down. Schweitzer was sentenced to dismissal from the Marine Corps. Capt. Ashby (32) was found guilty of obstruction of justice and conspiracy in May, 1999 and was sentenced to 6 months in prison and dismissed from the Marine Corps. Families of the victims settled for $2 million apiece in 2000.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.A7)(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A11)(SFC, 2/19/98, p.B10)(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A14)(SFC, 7/11/98, p.A2)(SFC, 3/5/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/16/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A1)(SFC, 4/3/99, p.A3)(SFC, 5/1/99, p.A4)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A4)(SFC, 5/11/99, p.A4)(SFC, 4/26/00, p.A4)
1998 Feb 11, Pres. Yeltsin completed a 3 day visit to Italy and scored $5 billion in trade and investment contracts.
(SFC, 2/12/98, p.A14)
1998 Feb 12, Over 250 cars crashed on the foggy highway A-13 between Padua and Bologna. Four people were killed and dozens were injured.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.D2)
1998 Mar 6, Francesca Trombino, lawyer, was bludgeoned to death in Pordenone. She was representing a US Marine in the Feb 3 cable-car disaster. She was also representing the wife of the captured suspect in a divorce case.
(SFC, 3/7/98, p.A7)
1998 Mar 19, In Italy suspected mafia member Giuseppe Magaddino was shot and killed. Sicilian Mafia member Claudio Adriano Giusto was later charged with killing Magaddino using a 7.65 mm firearm and then taking his wallet. Giusto was arrested in Spain in 2011 after 13 years on the run.
(AFP, 4/20/11)(http://tinyurl.com/3za9prm)
1998 Apr 12, Maria Angela Rubino (32) was found shot in a train bathroom. The murder was similar to 6 others along the Italian Riviera since March 9.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A10)
1998 Apr 20, The Goldman Environmental Awards were presented to six winners in SF. The prizes were increased to $100,000. Anna Giordano (32) of Italy won for her campaign against illegal hunting of birds in Sicily and southern Italy.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A8)
1998 May 4, In Vatican City Alois Estermann (43), the pope’s top bodyguard, was shot and killed along with his wife, Gladys Meza Romero (49) in their apartment by Cedrich Tornay (23), who then shot himself. Estermann had just been appointed the head of the Swiss Guards and was killed by Tornay due to damaged professional pride. An investigation was concluded in 1999 and suggested that marijuana and a brain cyst impaired Tornay.
(WSJ, 5/5/98, p.A1)(USAT, 5/6/98, p.6A)(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A10)(AP, 5/4/99)
1998 May 7, In southern Italy heavy rains sent a torrent of mud through Sarno and several other towns. At least 55 people were reported dead. The death toll climbed to 116.
(USAT, 5/8/98, p.7A)(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.A22)
1998 May 19-1998 May 20, Bandits stole three of Rome's most important paintings, two by Van Gogh and one by Cezanne, from the National Gallery of Modern Art.
(SFC, 5/21/98, p.A14)(AP, 5/19/99)
1998 May 24, At the 51st Cannes Film Festival the Golden Palm award went to the Greek film "Mia Eoniotita Ke Mia Mera (Eternity and a Day), directed by Theo Angelopoulos. The Grand Prize went to the Italian film "La Vita e Bella" (Life Is Beautiful) by director Roberto Benigni. It starred Benigni, Giorgio Cantarini and Nicoletta Braschi.
(SFC, 5/25/98, p.E5)(SFEC, 10/25/98, DB p.46)
1998 Jul 1, Mt. Etna erupted for 30 minutes.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A7)
1998 Jul 11, It was reported that fires in southern Italy and Sicily burned 2,500 acres of forest and grassland.
(SFC, 7/11/98, p.A8)
1998 Jul 11, Maria Soledad Rosas (24), an Argentine squatter under house arrest in Turin, was found hanged to death.
(SFEC, 7/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 13, Silvio Berlusconi, former premier, was convicted for the 3rd time since Dec. This conviction was for illegal party financing in 1991. A prior conviction was for bribing tax inspectors.
(SFC, 7/14/98, p.A10)
1998 Jul 17, In Rome UN delegates from more than 100 countries overwhelmingly approved (120-7) a historic treaty, the Statute of Rome, creating the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, with jurisdiction over individuals, ignoring strenuous U.S. objections over certain provisions. It was to be located in the Hague with 18 judges from 18 countries serving 9 year terms. It still required ratification by 60 countries to become effective. The vote passed 120 to 7 with 21 abstentions. The US, China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen voted against the International Criminal Court Treaty (ICC). In 2002 the US moved to withdraw its signature.
(SFC, 7/18/98, p.A10)(WSJ, 7/20/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/6/02, p.A1,4)(Econ, 11/22/03, p.27)
1998 Jul 17, In Viterbo anarchist vandals sprayed painted graffiti over 15th century frescoes in response to the suicide of Maria Rosas.
(SFEC, 7/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 31, Over 10,000 members of the nation’s beach workers (bagnini) went on strike and closed their umbrella stands.
(WSJ, 8/3/98, p.A1)
1998 Aug 15, A rock slide at Brenner Pass killed 5 German tourists near the town of Forteza.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A21)
1998 Aug 19, In Italy the Assicurazioni Generali insurance company announced that it will pay $100 million to Holocaust survivors and the heirs of victims for life insurance and annuity policies that it refused to honor after WW II.
(SFC, 8/20/98, p.A7)
1998 Sep 9, A 5.5 earthquake hit Italy between the towns of Castelluccio Inferiore and Laino Borgo where the regions of Calabria and Basilicata meet.
(SFC, 9/10/98, p.C2)
1998 Sep 18, In Italy the TV dubbers agreed to end their 2-month strike.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.C16)
1998 Oct 3, Communists voted to reject Prime Minister Prodi’s budget.
(WSJ, 10/5/98, p.A1,22)
1998 Oct 5, Federico Zeri, Italy’s leading art critic and historian, died at age 77. He had cataloged in 4 volumes the Italian paintings in New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
(SFC, 10/6/98, p.A22)
1998 Oct 9, The center-left coalition of Premier Romano Prodi lost a vote of confidence by one vote. Pres. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro asked Prodi to continue leading a temporary government.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A11)
1998 Oct 16, Massimo D’Alema, head of the Democratic Left Party, was asked by Pres. Scalfaro to form a new government.
(SFC, 10/17/98, p.A13)
1998 Nov 1, John Kagwe of Kenya won the NY Marathon in 2:8:45. Franca Fiacconi of Italy won among the women in 2:25:17.
(WSJ, 11/2/98, p.A1)
1998 Nov 12, In Italy Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurd PKK, was arrested in Rome.
(SFC, 11/14/98, p.A11)
1998 Nov 20, In Italy a court ordered the release of Kurdish rebel Abdullah Ocalan under a law barring extradition in death penalty cases and planned to grant him asylum.
(SFC, 11/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Dec 16, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, was freed by an appeals court in Rome. Turkish officials were outraged and renewed threats of economic retaliation.
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C4)
1998 Dec 16, In Rome an apartment building collapsed and killed 20 people.
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C5)
1998 Dec, Banca Etica, an Italian ethical bank, was authorized to start operating as a bank. Executive pay is not allowed to exceed six times the lowest wage at the bank.
(http://banca-etica.com/inglese/default.php?ID=1748&anteprima=)(Econ, 6/1/13, p.70)
1998 The Italian film "The Best Man" starred Diego Abatanuono and Ines Sastre and was directed by Pupi Avati. It was about a bride who hates her new husband and their wedding in Northern Italy at the turn of the century.
(SFC, 8/21/98, p.C5)
1998 The Italian film "Go Around the World" was directed by Davide Manuli and was about an orphan raised by a Gypsy.
{Film, Italy}
(SFEC, 10/4/98, DB)(http://tinyurl.com/33mf9m)
1998 The Italian film "Pianese Nunzio, Fourteen in May" was directed by Antonio Capuano. It was about an priest’s involvement with an altar boy.
(SFC, 6/18/98, p.E4)
1998 The Italian film "Steam" starred Alessandro Gassman and Mehmet Gunsur. It was directed by Ferzan Ozpetek.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, DB p.10)
1998 Toni Dykstra of southern California was found dead in Rome as she sought to bring her kidnapped daughter back to the US. Boyfriend Carlo Ventre was charged with her murder. In 2007 Ventre (59) died of a heart attack while testifying at his trial.
(AP, 6/26/07)
1999 Jan 1, The Maastricht Treaty specified that a monetary union will be established by this date, and laid down several criteria that EU nations must fulfill in order to join. Some of the criteria included: maximum budget deficits of 3% of GDP, a cap on government debt of 60% of GDP. The European economic and monetary union (EMU) was scheduled to start with a new "Euro" currency. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain made the transition. Public use was set for Jan 1, 2002.
(WSJ, 9/25/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 12/5/95, p.A-14)(SFC, 11/16/96, p.A1)(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A8)
1999 Jan 8, Pope John Paul II met with the new Prime Minister and former communist leader, Massimo D'Alema.
(SFC, 1/9/99, p.A9)
1999 Jan 14, In Italy police arrested 9 people in Milan who allegedly rigged the Milan Lotto using children and tampered balls for drawing wining numbers.
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A10)
1999 Feb 27, The $60 billion bid by Olivetti for Telecom Italia was ruled legally admissible by Italian stock market regulators.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, p.A24)
1999 Mar 11, In northern Italy an avalanche killed 3 German skiers.
(SFC, 3/12/99, p.A15)
1999 Mar 24, In the 7-mile Mt. Blanc tunnel between France and Italy a fire erupted from a truck transporting flour. The death toll was raised to 9 with 24 injured. The fire was extinguished after 3 days and the death toll rose to 35. Identification of the remains of at least 40 people began Mar 28. Thirty-nine people were killed when fire erupted in the Mont Blanc tunnel in France and burned for two days. It re-opened in 2002. In 2005 a French court convicted 10 people and 3 companies for safety lapses in the 2-day fire.
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.A14)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A10)(SFC, 3/29/99, p.A8)(AP, 3/24/00)(SSFC, 3/17/02, p.C4)(AP, 3/24/04)(WSJ, 7/28/05, p.A1)
1999 May 5, Ibrahim Rugova, prominent Albanian leader, flew to Rome with the permission of Yugoslav authorities for talks with Premier Massimo D'Alema and foreign Minister Lamberto Dini.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.A13)
1999 May 13, In Italy the Parliament chose Treasury Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (78) as the new president.
(SFC, 5/14/99, p.A15)
1999 May 20, In Italy Massimo D'Antona, a univ. professor of labor law and the architect of labor reforms, was shot to death as he walked to work in Rome. The Red Brigade claimed responsibility in a 28-page manifesto left in a trash bin. In 2005 Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Marco Mezzasalma and Roberto Morandi were convicted and sentenced to life terms. Paolo Broccatelli received a nine-year term.
(SFC, 5/22/99, p.A13)(AP, 7/9/05)
1999 Jun 19, Turin, Italy, was chosen as the site of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games.
(AP, 6/19/00)
1999 Jun 19, the Bologna process for the creation of the European Higher Education Area started. 29 European Ministers responsible for higher education signed the Bologna declaration in which they undertake to create a European Higher Education Area.
(www.aic.lv/ace/ace_disk/Bologna/about_bol.htm)
1999 Jun 19, Mario Soldati (b.1906), Italian writer and film director, died at age 92. He started publishing novels in 1929 although his fame came with “America primo amore" (1935), a diary about the time he spent teaching at Columbia University. He won literary awards for the work.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Soldati)
1999 Jul 31, St. Mary of the Angels Basilica in Assisi reopened following earthquake repairs due to the Sep 26, 1977, quake.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.A18)
1999 Sep 10, A 15-ton bronze horse, designed after an idea by Leonardo da Vinci, was scheduled to be unveiled at the 500th anniversary of the French occupation of the Ducal palace in Milan, when da Vinci's prototype was disfigured. It was begun by Charles Dent (d.1994), a United Airlines pilot, and finished by a foundation that he endowed. It was cast in Beacon, N.Y.
(SFC, 6/26/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep 23, The cloned bull Galileo was unveiled at the dairy cattle show in Cremona. The Health Ministry confiscated the bull the next day due to the 1998 decree forbidding cloning issued by Health Minister Rosy Bindi.
(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.A22)
1999 Sep 24, A jury acquitted former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti of the 1979 killing of a journalist.
(AP, 9/24/00)
1999 Oct 23, Giulio Andreotti (80), 7 times prime minister, was acquitted of charges that he was the Sicilian Mafia's protector in Rome.
(SFEC, 10/24/99, p.A17)
1999 Dec 18, In Italy Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema resigned and brought an end to the 56th government since WW II. Pres. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi asked him to form a new coalition.
(SFEC, 12/19/99, p.A26)
1999 Dec 22, In Italy Premier Massimo D'Alema won a vote of confidence for a new cabinet.
(SFC, 12/23/99, p.C7)
1999 Dec 23, Premier Massimo D'Alema won parliamentary approval for the 57th government. The Cabinet included 5 new members and 20 holdovers.
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.A20)
1999 Roberto Calasso's work "Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India" was translated to English by Tim Parks. Calasso, head of the Milan publishing house Adelphi, also authored "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" and "The Ruin of Kasch."
(SFEC, 1/17/99, BR p.8)
1999 The Italian film "Ferdinando e Carolina" starred script writer Leonardo Benvenuti (d.2000 at 77) and was directed by Lina Wertmuller.
(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
1999-2005 Alitalia, Italy’s national airline, accumulated net losses of some 2.6 billion euros.
(Econ, 1/6/07, p.53)
2000 Jan 19, Bettino Craxi (65), former 2-term Italian premier, died in Tunisia. He had fled Italy in 1994 to escape a corruption jail sentence.
(WSJ, 1/20/00, p.A1)(Econ, 1/9/10, p.53)
2000 Feb 6, The government proposed car-free Sunday program, "domenica a piedi," began. Some 100 cities signed up for the program to ban downtown traffic on the 1st Sunday of the month through May.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A8)
2000 Feb 21, Avalanches in Italy killed 3 skiers in the northern Venosta Valley.
(SFC, 2/22/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 30, A mandatory helmet law for motorbike riders went into effect.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.E3)
2000 Apr 13, Giorgio Bassani, author and editor, died at age 84. His books included "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis."
(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
2000 Apr 19, Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema resigned.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A9)
2000 Apr 20, In Italy the center-left parties closed ranks behind Treasury Minister Giuliano Amato following the resignation of Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema.
(WSJ, 4/21/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 21, Pres. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi gave Giuliano Amato the go ahead to form Italy’s 58th government since WW II.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A9)
2000 Jun 13, In Italy the government pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca (42), the man who wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981. Agca was flown to Turkey to finish serving 8 years for the 1979 murder of a newspaper editor.
(SFC, 6/14/00, p.A12)
2000 Jun 14, Attilio Bertolucci (88), poet and father of 2 movie directors, died in Rome. His 1984 autobiographical free verse novel "The Bedroom" was made into a movie.
(SFC, 6/16/00, p.A34)
2000 Jun 29, Vittorio Gassman, film actor, died at age 77. He had appeared in 124 films between 1946 and 1999.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.D7)
2000 Jul 1-9, In Italy the World Pride int’l. gay pride festival opened in Rome.
(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.C14)(SFEC, 7/2/00, p.A17)
2000 Jul 17, Aligi Sassu, painter, sculptor and engraver, died at age 88 on Mallorca. His early work included a futurist manifesto titled: "Dynamism and Muscular Strength." His paintings included "Uomini Rossi" (Red Men), 1931.
(SFC, 7/19/00, p.B2)
2000 Jul, Prof. Auriti began exchanging one simec, his new currency, for 2 lire in Guardiagrele. Auriti hoped to convince the world that central bankers are con artists because they insert new money through loans and thus reduce purchasing power.
(WSJ, 10/6/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul, It was reported that 3 girls (16-17) in Chiavenna killed Sister Maria Laura Mainetti. The catechism students hit her with a stone and stabbed her 19 times. Bishop Alessandro Maggiolini called it "the triumph of emptiness."
(SFC, 7/12/00, p.A8)
2000 Aug 29, Conrad Marca-Relli, artist, died in Parma at age 87. His collages served as a link between the European avant-garde and American Abstract Expressionism. He created monumental collages and in the 1950s added strips of canvas over canvas.
(SFC, 9/1/00, p.D6)
2000 Sep 10, A flood in Calabria killed at least 10 people at the Le Giare campground near Soverato.
(SFC, 9/11/00, p.B8)
2000 Sep 15, The Mafia was reported to be engaged in a $500 million business of illegal dog fighting. An estimated 5,000 dogs died annually from the fighting.
(SFC, 9/15/00, p.A16)
2000 Sep 25, Livia Turco, Social Affairs Minister, pushed to decriminalize the sale of sex and to allow prostitutes to form cooperatives.
(SFC, 9/25/00, p.A12)
2000 Sep, The reality TV show "Grande Fratello" made its debut.
(SFC, 10/29/00, p.A10)
2000 Oct 15, At least 31 people were killed as landslides due to heavy rains continued in the Alps of Switzerland and Italy. 23 died in northern Italy and 8 in southern Switzerland
(SFC, 10/16/00, p.F8)(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A14)(SFC, 10/19/00, p.C4)
2000 Oct 18, Hundreds of Italian police raided the Univ. of Messina. 79 faculty and staff were later indicted on organized crime charges.
(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A4)
2000 Oct 18, In southern Italy the bodies of 6 illegal immigrants, believed to be Kurds, were found dumped on the side of a highway.
(SFC, 10/19/00, p.C10)
2000 Oct 24, The Parliament approved a law to end the 200-year old draft in favor of an all volunteer military. The armed forces planned reductions to 190,000 from 270,000 within 7 years.
(SFC, 10/25/00, p.A16)
2000 Nov 3, Leonardo Benvenuti, film script writer and actor, died at age 77.
(SFC, 11/8/00, p.B7)
2000 Dec 17, In northern Italy at least 10 climbers and skiers were killed after ice formed overnight in the Alps.
(SFC, 12/18/00, p.E2)
2001 Jan 6, A NATO meeting was scheduled in Italy on the use of ammunition with depleted uranium following the deaths from cancer of 6 Italian soldiers following duty in the Balkans. 5 Balkan veterans from Belgium along with peacekeepers from Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic had died of cancer.
(WSJ, 1/04/01, p.A1)(SFC, 1/6/01, p.A7)
2001 Jan 29, Demonstrators in Turin clashed with police following an agreement between France and Italy to establish a high-speed rail line between Turin and Lyon.
(SFC, 1/30/01, p.A12)
2001 Jan, Italy and the US signed a treaty that requires objects dating between 900 BC and 400 CE be accompanied by Italian government certification before leaving the country.
(WSJ, 2/6/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 17, Protesters demonstrated at the third Global Forum in Naples. They clashed with police and 50 officers and 70 protesters suffered minor injuries.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.D4)
2001 Apr 20, Giuseppe Sinopoli (54) died from a heart attack while conducting at the Berlin Deutsche Opera house.
(SFC, 4/21/01, p.D5)
2001 May 13, In Italy Silvio Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms coalition led the left-of-center Olive Tree coalition in parliamentary elections. Berlusconi opposed a federal Europe and stood as a proponent of free trade and low taxes.
(SFC, 5/14/01, p.A1)(SFC, 5/15/01, p.A9)
2001 May 27, The center-left opposition won mayoral runoffs in Naples, Turin and Rome.
(SFC, 5/28/01, p.B12)
2001 Jun 10, Silvio Berlusconi (64), known as Il Cavaliere, became premier for a 2nd time and formed his Cabinet. He promised a 100-day revolution to transform the economy. All 61 single-member constituencies in Sicily went to the center-right.
(SFC, 6/11/01, p.A8)(SFC, 9/7/01, p.A15)(Econ, 3/25/06, p.56)
2001 Jul 20, A G-8 economic summit, planned in Genoa, Italy, expected over 100,000 demonstrators. The summit opened with raging street battles between police and demonstrators; one protester was fatally shot by officers. Carlo Giuliani (23) was shot and killed by police while protesting at the G-8 summit. At least 100 people were injured. In 2008 a court convicted 15 Italian officials of abusing protesters held in at police garrison following violent demonstrations during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa. In 2015 the European Court of Human Rights awarded Arnaldo Cestaro $48,900 and ruled that his unpunished police beating amounted to torture. In 2017 Europe's human rights court found Italy guilty of torture over a raid in which riot police kicked, punched and hit dozens of protesters who had gathered inside a school building during the G8 meeting in Genoa.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A6)(AP, 7/20/02)(SFC, 7/21/01, p.A1)(AP, 7/15/08)(SFC, 4/8/15, p.A2)(Reuters, 6/22/17)
2001 Jul 21, A 2nd day of violent protests turned Genoa into a war zone of rolling riots.
(SFC, 7/22/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul, Marco Tronchetti Provera, chairman of the Italy’s Pirelli tire company, won control of Telecom Italia.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.78)
2001 Jul, Mt. Etna began erupting with lava flow.
(SFC, 8/1/01, p.A8)
2001 Aug 8, In Rome police chief Gianni de Gennaro acknowledged that excessive force had been used against protesters of the Group 8 summit.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A8)
2001 Oct 8, In Milan, Italy, a Scandinavian Airlines SAS jet, Flight 686 to Copenhagen, crashed into a small Cessna on takeoff and 114 people were killed in both planes with 4 killed on the ground. The Cessna had moved onto the wrong runway as the SAS jet took off under foggy conditions.
(SFC, 10/9/01, p.B1)(WSJ, 10/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Nov 7, Italy pledged an aircraft carrier and 2,700 troops to help the American campaign in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A6)
2001 Nov, The Leaning Tower of Pisa was expected to open for tourists after being closed since 1990 to reduce the tilt.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A11)
2001 Dec 16, A state-run home for the disabled burned down near Buccino and 19 patients were killed.
(SFC, 12/17/01, p.A3)
2001 Rome declared the ruins of the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary to be a cultural heritage.
(SFC, 11/15/02, p.J1)
2001 Domenico Morosini opened a private museum at the former home of Benito Mussolini (d.1945) in Predappio. It was built between 1925-1927 and sold to Morosini for $1.2 million in 2000.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A15)
2001 Italy’s Parliament passed legislation allowing millions of Italians who had emigrated, or who were born to emigre parents, to cast ballots in Italian elections. The legislation was pushed forward by lawmaker Mirko Tremaglia (1926-2011).
(AP, 12/31/11)
2002 Jan 4, Antonio Todde, an Italian shepherd listed by Guinness as the world’s oldest man, died just shy of his 113th birthday. "Just love your brother and drink a good glass of red wine every day."
(SFC, 1/5/02, p.A22)
2002 Jan 5, Renato Ruggiero, the Foreign Minister, quit over the government’s European policy.
(SFC, 1/7/02, p.A5)
2002 Jan 6, Premier Berlusconi named himself interim foreign minister.
(SFC, 1/7/02, p.A5)
2002 Jan 30, In Italy Samuele Lorenzi (3), was found bludgeoned to death in the family's Alpine home. His mother Anna Maria Franzoni, who denied the murder, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2007 a Turin appeals court upheld the conviction but reduced her sentence to 16 years.
(AP, 4/27/07)
2002 Feb 5, In Italy the health ministry confirmed the country’s 1st case of mad cow disease.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A9)
2002 Feb 19, Italian authorities arrested 4 Moroccans in Rome, members of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat. Maps were found of the US Embassy, small quantities of cyanide, and a map of the city’s water system.
(SFC, 2/21/02, p.A16)
2002 Mar 9, The Mont Blanc tunnel reopened to connect Italy and France.
(SSFC, 3/17/02, p.C4)
2002 Mar 19, Marco Biagi (b.1950), Italian jurist, was assassinated due to his role as an economic advisor to Roberto Maroni, a minister in Silvio Berlusconi's government. Biagi had devised legislation for a temporary labor contract.
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Biagi_%28jurist%29)
2002 Mar 20, Some 928 illegal immigrants, mostly ethnic Kurds, arrived on a rusty cargo ship. Italy declared a state of emergency to deal with the problem.
(SFC, 3/21/02, p.A10)
2002 Mar 21, A tour bus traveling from Lucca to Florence collided with a truck and at least 3 Americans were killed.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A10)
2002 Apr 16, In Italy millions of workers staged the biggest strike in decades to protest government plans to make it easier to fire workers.
(SFC, 4/17/02, p.A8)
2002 Apr 18, In Italy a small plane crashed into the 25th floor of the 32-story Pirelli building in Milan. He was killed along with 2 government lawyers working inside. Pilot Luigi Fasulo (67) made a distress call and flew off course. Suicide over financial problems was later suspected.
(SFC, 4/19/02, p.A1,16)(SFC, 4/20/02, p.A9)
2002 Jun 4, Parliament approved legislation on tougher immigration policies.
(SFC, 6/5/02, p.A13)
2002 Jun 7, It was reported that Italy had committed to a $4.3 billion project for a suspension bridge linking Sicily over the 2-mile-wide straits of Messina.
(WSJ, 6/7/02, p.A1)(Econ, 11/22/03, p.75)
2002 Jun, In Italy the Parliament approved a measure to transfer all state property into a new company called Patrimonio dello Stato SpA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Economy Ministry. Some assets were planned for sale to reduce the $1.3 trillion public debt and to help finance the bridge from Calabria to Sicily.
(WSJ, 7/23/02, p.D8)
2002 Jul 4, Italian photographer Angelo Frontoni (76), known for his work with stars such as Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and Ava Gardner, died in Rome.
(AP, 7/4/02)
2002 Jul 19, Italy took steps to return the prized Axum obelisk to Ethiopia. The 1,700-year-old monument was hauled off by Italian forces after their 1937 invasion of the African country. It was returned in 2003.
(AP, 7/20/02)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.A2)
2002 Jul 30, Rome decided to have the coins collected from the Trevi fountain every day and not just on Mondays. The next day Roberto Cercelletta (50), a self-described unemployed Roman resident, self-inflicted razor cuts on his stomach in a protest and asked if the money collected has really gone to the Catholic charity Caritas in past years.
(AP, 7/31/02)
2002 Jul 31, US court papers alleged that Russia's Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (53) used his influence with members of the Russian and French skating federations to fix the outcome of the pairs and ice dancing competitions at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics last February. Tokhtakhounov was arrested in Italy. Italy’s highest court denounced an extradition bid and freed Tokhtakhounov.
(Reuters, 7/31/02)(SFC, 8/1/02, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alimzhan_Tokhtakhounov)
2002 Aug 8, In Indonesia Lorenzo Taddei (34), an Italian tourist, was shot dead in Central Sulawesi when gunmen fired on the bus he was traveling in.
(Reuters, 8/9/02)
2002 Aug 31, Five Kurdish migrants were found dead in the back of a cargo truck after they apparently suffocated during a harrowing ferry crossing from Greece to Italy.
(AP, 8/31/02)
2002 Sep 14, In Italy tens of thousands of protesters rallied in central Rome, accusing conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi of using political power for his personal benefit, and saying opposition parties were not doing enough about it.
(AP, 9/14/02)
2002 Sep 25, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi urged the United Nations to come up with a "new, strongly worded, unambiguous and exacting" resolution on Iraq that could authorize the use of force if Baghdad fails to comply with it.
(AP, 9/26/02)
2002 Oct 15, In Italy a heavily armed man fatally shot his ex-wife and six other relatives and neighbors and then killed himself in Chieri, a suburb of Turin.
(AP, 10/15/02)(SFC, 10/16/02, p.A16)
2002 Oct 31, A strong earthquake rocked central and southern Italy, trapping about 50 children in a school in San Giuliano di Puglia after the building's roof collapsed. 27 children and a teacher were killed.
(AP, 10/31/02)(AP, 11/1/07)
2002 Nov 9, Some 450,000 marched through Florence in a protest against globalization and U.S. policy in Iraq.
(AP, 11/10/02)
2002 Nov 9, A dry winter and a wet summer ravaged Italy's grapevines, causing the worst harvest in half a century. Some regions were spared the disasters, like the area in Tuscany where Chianti is produced and parts of southern Italy.
(AP, 11/9/02)
2002 Nov 16, In Italy thousands of anti-globalization demonstrators marched in Rome, Florence and Naples to protest the arrests of 20 people, including a leader of the movement, on charges stemming from violent protests last year.
(AP, 11/16/02)
2002 Nov 19, Italian newspapers reported that the 'ndrangheta, the Calabrian version of the Sicilian Mafia, received 3 percent of the multimillion dollar contracts for work on stretches of the highway that passed through their "territory."
(AP, 11/20/02)
2002 In Italy Francesco Sbano co-produced a new malavita (mafia folk music) CD: "La Musica della Mafia."
(NW, 8/26/02, p.54)
2002 An Italian study showed that one gram a day of supplementary omega-3 oil reduced death from cardiovascular disease by 30% in those who had survived a recent heart attack.
(Econ, 9/2/17, p.70)
2003 Jan 16, The European Union's Court of Justice ordered Spain and Italy to drop national rules on what constitutes chocolate, saying they can no longer bar British and Irish confections made with vegetable fats instead of cocoa butter.
(AP, 1/16/03)
2003 Jan 24, Giovanni Agnelli (81), the patriarch of the Fiat auto company, died in Turin after a months-long illness.
(AP, 1/24/03)
2003 Jan 27, A head-on train collision between French and Italian passenger trains killed two people. It appeared to be the result of human error.
(AP, 1/28/03)
2003 Jan 30, Italian police arrested 28 Pakistanis during a routine sweep for illegal immigrants. The arrested possessed explosives, hundreds of forged documents and maps of the Naples area with "sensitive" targets circled.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Feb 22, In Rome, Italy, some 2,000 cat lovers marched in the city’s 1st Cat Pride march and demanded protection for the many, local stray cats.
(SSFC, 2/23/03, A2)
2003 Feb 17, American CIA operatives snatched Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Abu Omar) from his house in Milan and took him to Egypt, where he was jailed, tortured and released. In 2005 an Italian judge ordered the arrest of 13 American suspects on charges of kidnapping. In 2009 Nasr asked for euro10 million (nearly $15 million) in damages from the American and Italian defendants charged in his abduction.
(Econ, 7/2/05, p.48)(AP, 10/7/09)(SFC, 10/8/09, p.A2)
2003 Mar 6, Italian police raided a house in Palermo and captured Salvatore Rinella (49), a top Mafia boss.
(AP, 3/7/03)
2003 Mar 11, Benetton, an Italian retailer, said it planned to attach salt-grain sized microchip transmitters to clothing at its 5,000 stores.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.B1)
2003 Mar 29, Italian Dr. Carlo Urbani (46), a WHO expert on communicable diseases, died of SARS in Thailand, where he was being treated after becoming infected while working in Vietnam. Urbani was the 1st doctor to identify SARS.
(AP, 3/29/03)
2003 May 14, In Italy Premier Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated the ambitious $4 billion "Moses" project to ease the flooding in Venice.
(AP, 5/15/03)
2003 May, In Italy construction began on a breakwater for Venice to prevent high tides from entering its lagoon.
(Econ, 9/27/03, p.80)
2003 Jul 15, Four US crew members were killed in a fiery crash of a Navy helicopter in Italy.
(AP, 7/16/03)
2003 Jul 22, Italy's state TV chief said she will resign as soon as Premier Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition passes a law opponents say will grant the business mogul even greater control over Italian media.
(AP, 7/23/03)
2003 May 28, Prometea, the world's 1st cloned horse, was born in Cremona, Italy.
(SFC, 8/7/03, p.A2)
2003 Sep 5, European Union foreign ministers met in Riva del Garda, Italy, to discuss Iraq, the tattered Mideast peace plan and their bloc's draft constitution as some 500 anti-globalization protesters blocked main roads to an Italian Alps town.
(AP, 9/6/03)
2003 Sep 11, The Italian Health Ministry said at least 4,175 more elderly Italians died in the summer heat wave that scorched Europe this year compared with the same period last year. The heat wave caused about 70,000 premature deaths across Europe.
(AP, 9/11/03)(Econ, 5/9/15, p.54)
2003 Sep 16, Italian consumer groups asked for a boycott on virtually all products and services to protest price hikes.
(AP, 9/16/03)
2003 Sep 28, A nationwide power blackout in Italy hit virtually the whole population in the dead of night. Power was out for as much as 18 hours. Problems began after a tree branch hit power lines in Switzerland.
(AP, 9/28/03)(WSJ, 10/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 10/1/03)
2003 Oct 4, In Italy anti-globalization demonstrators set fire to an employment agency, smashed cars and windows and hurled insults at government headquarters in Rome.
(AP, 10/4/03)
2003 Oct 4, A shipment of uranium-enriching centrifuge gear was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2009 Urs Tinner, suspected of involvement in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring, said in a Swiss TV documentary that he tipped off US intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/28/world/fg-network28)(WSJ, 12/31/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/22/09)
2003 Oct 5, In Somalia Annalena Tonelli (60), an Italian aid worker who dedicated 33 years of her life to helping Somalis, was shot and killed outside the hospital she founded to treat tuberculosis patients.
(AP, 10/6/03)
2003 Oct 11, In Italy 4-month-old twin Greek girls joined at the temple were successfully separated after a 13 hour operation at a Rome hospital.
(AP, 10/12/03)(SFC, 10/15/03, p.A2)
2003 Oct 12, Renato Rinino (41), a professional Italian thief who gained notoriety for stealing jewelry from Prince Charles' London palace in 1994, was shot and killed in Savona.
(AP, 10/12/03)
2003 Oct 19, An Italian coast guard crew found 13 bodies on board a rickety wooden boat in waters off Sicily and 15 other would-be illegal Somali immigrants suffering from exposure and badly in need of food and water. Some 50 bodies were consigned to the sea before the boat was found.
(AP, 10/20/03)(Econ, 10/25/03, p.48)
2003 Oct 24, In Italy police arrested 7 alleged members of the radical Red Brigades suspected of the 1999 killing of a Labor Ministry consultant.
(AP, 10/24/03)
2003 Oct 24, In Italy millions of workers stayed home to protest government plans to reform the pension system.
(AP, 10/25/03)
2003 Oct 25, An Italian court has ordered a crucifix removed from a classroom, where a law still requires public schools to display a cross.
(AP, 10/26/03)
2003 Oct 29, Italian tenor Franco Corelli (82), one of the top opera stars of the 20th century, died in Milan.
(AP, 10/31/03)(SFC, 11/1/03, p.A21)
2003 Oct 30, In Italy former Premier Giulio Andreotti was acquitted of charges he ordered the Mafia killing of a journalist in 1979, wiping out the veteran politician's previous conviction.
(AP, 10/30/03)
2003 Oct, Roberto Colannino bought a controlling stake in Piaggio, the Italian scooter maker. Debts at the time were equal to 60% of annual sales.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.64)
2003 Nov 12, In Iraq a suicide truck bomber attacked the headquarters of Italy's paramilitary police in Nasiriyah, killing 31 people, including 18 Italians, and possibly trapping others.
(AP, 11/12/03)(AP, 11/13/03)
2003 Dec 6, Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Rome to protest government plans to reform Italy's pension system, which economists say can no longer sustain itself.
(AP, 12/6/03)
2003 Dec 11, The Italian Parliament imposed controls on medically assisted reproduction.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.A17)
2003 Dec 12, Several people fell ill across Italy after drinking apparently tainted bottled mineral water, the latest in a scare that has prompted prosecutors to launch investigations across the nation.
(AP, 12/13/03)
2003 Dec 14, Venice threw itself a party to celebrate the rebirth of the La Fenice, following a $90 million restoration, with a gala concert that drew the Italian president, European royalty and Italy's glitterati.
(AP, 12/15/03)(SFC, 12/15/03, p.A2)
2003 Dec 15, In Italy Calisto Tonzi, head of Parmalat SpA, one of the world's biggest dairy firms, resigned. [see Dec 19]
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.95)
2003 Dec 19, Parmalat SpA, an Italian food giant, reported a $4.9 billion shortfall. Soon another $3.6 billion in bonds was also in question. Parmalat planned to file for bankruptcy protection in what turned into the biggest corporate fraud in Europe's history. Parmalat employed 36,000 people in 29 countries. Fausto Tonna, former chief financial officer, soon acknowledged that there was systematic falsification of accounts for some 15 years. In 2001 an auditor in Brazil had raised an alarm over financial transactions. The accounting scandal reached $17 billion.
(SFC, 12/24/03, p.B1)(WSJ, 12/26/03, p.C1)(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A3)(Econ, 8/6/05, p.57)
2003 In Italy CasaPound was founded as a group of squatters claimed housing for needy families. It took its name from Ezra Pound, the American poet who was a Mussolini sympathizer and who identified rent as a form of usury, one of the group's founding principles.
(AP, 9/28/17)
2003 PM Berlusconi’s government passed a law granting him and 4 associates immunity from criminal prosecution while serving as PM of Italy. The law was later struck down by Italy’s constitutional court.
(WSJ, 11/15/04, p.A1)(Econ, 11/26/05, Survey p.11)
2003 In Italy regional legislation recognized the prosecco district, a region just north of Venice, for sparkling wine produced with prosecco grapes.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.108)
2004 Jan 9, Norberto Bobbio (94), an Italian liberal philosopher, essayist and senator for life, died in Turin. One of his most important books is the 1955 "Politica e Cultura" ("Politics and Culture"). A 1994 essay, called "Destra e Sinistra" ("Left and Right"), was his best-selling work.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Jan 28, Italian police said they cracked a drug smuggling ring spanning four continents, arrested more than 150 people and seized more than five tons of cocaine.
(AP, 1/28/04)
2004 Feb 14, Marco Pantani (34), Italy’s favorite cyclist, died.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.83)
2004 Feb 17, A new study reported that 2 cows in Italy had been found with a new form of mad cow disease, bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE).
(SFC, 2/17/04, p.A7)
2004 Feb 22, Giorgio Armani signed a $1 billion hotel venture with Dubai’s Emaar Properties.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.61)
2004 Mar 20, Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Rome demanding that Italy pull its 2,600 troops out of Iraq.
(AP, 3/21/04)
2004 Mar, John Petters (21), a Minnesota college student, was stabbed to death in Florence after he and a friend mistakenly walked into the private grounds of a villa. In 2005 a judge convicted Alfio Raugei (55), an Italian man, of manslaughter and sentenced him to three years' imprisonment, after lawyers argued the killing was in self-defense.
(AP, 7/1/05)
2004 Apr 1, Italy, Turkey, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands arrested 41 militants in a coordinated crackdown on a Turkish Marxist group. Police in Istanbul arrested 25 suspects of the Marxist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army/Front, or DHKP-C, while security forces in the other countries detained 16 others.
(AP, 4/1/04)
2004 Apr 13, Four Italians working as private security guards for a U.S. company in Iraq were reported missing, and an Arab satellite TV broadcaster said they were kidnapped by insurgents.
(AP, 4/13/04)
2004 Apr 14, In Iraq militants executed an Italian captive.
(AP, 4/15/04)
2004 Apr 16, In Italy Premier Silvio Berlusconi's corruption trial resumed in Milan.
(AP, 4/16/04)
2004 Apr 19, Pierluigi Vigna, Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, said Italian mobsters and Islamic terrorist groups have forged links in arms and drug trafficking.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 20, Authorities in southern Italy reported that they had seized about 7,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles and other combat-grade firearms from a Turkish-flagged ship headed for New York. The weapons were destined for a company in the U.S. state of Georgia.
(AP, 4/20/04)
2004 Apr 26, Iraqi kidnappers said they would kill 3 Italian hostages unless Italians rally against Italy's participation in the occupation of Iraq.
(SFC, 4/27/04, p.A8)
2004 May 27, Umberto Agnelli (69), Fiat Chairman, died in Turin.
(SFC, 5/29/04, p.B6)
2004 May 27, Vito Bigione (52), one of Italy's most-wanted Mafia suspects, was captured in Venezuela. He was accused of a key role in international drug trafficking and flown back to Italy. Bigione had spent years living in Namibia and only recently moved to Venezuela.
(AP, 5/29/04)
2004 May 27, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo became the new chairman of Confindustria, the Italian employer’s confederation.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.60)
2004 May, An reporter in Sardinia reported that PM Berlusconi was transforming a grotto into a secret boat tunnel at his Villa Certosa property and questioned whether legal permits had been obtained. The next day the Interior Ministry claimed that all matters relating to the villa were to be protected under a state secrecy law.
(WSJ, 11/15/04, p.A1)
2004 Jun 11, In Palermo, Sicily, a court convicted and sentenced 30 top Sicilian mobsters to life imprisonment after a 10-year trial covering a total of 77 murders.
(AP, 6/12/04)
2004 Jun 11, Egon von Furstenberg (57), a Swiss-born aristocrat known as the "prince of high fashion," died in Rome.
(AP, 6/11/04)
2004 Jun 13, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party lost a sixth of its voters in the EU elections.
(Econ, 7/3/04, p.43)
2004 Jun, Some 34 Italian private secondary schools were caught up in an investigation into a vast trade in bogus exam passes.
(Econ, 6/12/04, p.49)
2004 Jul 5, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi won an endorsement from his EU colleagues for plans to narrow Italy's budget deficit with $9.2 billion in new spending cuts and tax measures.
(AP, 7/5/04)
2004 Jul 24, The 16th edition of Italy's Miss Cicciona contest (Italy's Miss Chubby) began in Forcoli, central Italy.
(AP, 7/25/04)
2004 Jul 26, Al-Qaida-linked Islamic militants threatened to "shake the earth" everywhere in Italy if Rome does not withdraw troops from Iraq. The Internet statement, attributed to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, was the 2nd such threat against the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in two weeks.
(AP, 7/26/04)
2004 Jul 28, The Italian parliament approved structural economic reforms that included raising the retirement age from 57 to 60 effective in 2008.
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.44)
2004 Jul 31, A 10-day manhunt for a murder suspect ended in a shootout near the Circus Maximus in central Rome. Luciano Liboni had allegedly killed a policeman July 22.
(AP, 7/31/04)
2004 Jul 31, Laura Betti (70), Italian film actress, died. Her debut was in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita" (1960).
(SFC, 8/3/04, p.B6)
2004 Aug 1, A militant group claiming links to al Qaeda has given Italy a 15-day deadline to withdraw its troops from Iraq or face attacks.
(AP, 8/1/04)
2004 Sep 7, An Italian aid organization said that two Italian women were kidnapped from its office in Baghdad.
(AP, 9/7/04)
2004 Sep 21, Italian and Lebanese authorities reported the arrest of 10 alleged terrorists, thwarting plans to blow up the Italian Embassy in Beirut in a car bomb attack.
(AP, 9/21/04)
2004 Sep 23, A militant group falsely claimed in a Web posting that two Italian women taken hostage in Iraq had been killed. [see Sep 28]
(AP, 9/23/04)
2004 Sep 28, In Iraq kidnappers released two female Italian aid workers and five other hostages. A $1 million ransom was alleged. In 2005 it was reported that Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraqi insurgents and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two Italian aid workers kidnapped in Baghdad.
(AP, 9/28/04)(WSJ, 9/30/04, p.A1)(AP, 8/25/05)
2004 Oct 20, Terra Madre, an international meeting of food communities, held its first meeting in Turin, Italy. It formed as a part of the Slow Food movement. The group followed with meetings every 2 years.
(SSFC, 10/26/08, p.A18)(www.worldchanging.com/archives/005321.html)
2004 Oct 20, Fiat SpA's auto unit said that it will temporarily reduce production at three factories next month, a move that will affect thousands of workers.
(AP, 10/20/04)
2004 Oct 31, In Italy unusually high tides sent sea water sweeping through Venice, covering 80 percent of the city by afternoon.
(AP, 11/1/04)
2004 Nov 20, In southern Italy 8 people from two families were killed when a gas explosion destroyed their apartment building.
(AP, 11/20/04)
2004 Nov 30, Italy ground to a halt as millions of workers observed a general strike in protest against the economic policies of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government.
(AFP, 11/30/04)
2004 Nov, Italy’s National Magistrates Assoc. (ANM) staged their 3rd one-day strike under the current parliament to protest a bill to reform the judicial system.
(Econ, 11/27/04, p.53)
2004 Dec 2, From Italy it was reported that a mob turf war claimed more than 20 lives in the last month in the Naples area, prompting police to launch an emergency security clampdown.
(AP, 12/2/04)
2004 Dec 10, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted of corruption charges that have dogged his government from the start.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 11, Marcello Dell'Utri, a close political ally of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, was convicted of ties with the Sicilian Mafia and sentenced to nine years in prison.
(AP, 12/11/04)
2004 Dec 16, Italy’s Pres. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi vetoed a bill that would have placed magistrates under government oversight and forced them to choose between careers as judges or prosecutors.
(SFC, 12/17/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 17, Italy's interior ministry said 181 people had been arrested in the past three months in a crackdown on the Camorra in Naples whose turf warfare now overshadows that of the Sicilian mafia.
(AP, 12/18/04)
2004 Dec 18, Naples police said they have broken up a mob protection racket focused on local bakeries and flour makers.
(AP, 12/18/04)
2004 In Italy the 15,000 sq.-meter Pirelli HangarBicocca art museum was founded in a former factory in Milan. In 2012 the museum re-launched its program of exhibitions and events.
(http://tinyurl.com/puvvyzj)(Econ, 6/4/16, p.83)
2004 Italy imported more shoes than it exported for the 1st time.
(WSJ, 6/13/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 1, Italy was forecast for 1.8% annual GDP growth with a population at 58.1 million and GDP per head at $31,410.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.88)
2005 Jan 7, In northern Italy a passenger train and a freight train collided in thick fog on the Bologna-Verona line, killing 17 people and injuring dozens.
(AP, 1/7/05)(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 10, New Italian legislation went into effect to stop smoking in restaurants and bars. Officials extended the initial Jan 1 date for the benefit of New Year revelers.
(SFC, 12/21/04, p.A7)(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A10)
2005 Jan 22, In Italy a war within the Camorra, the regional mafia of Naples, was reported to have claimed 35 lives over the last 4 months.
(Econ, 1/22/05, p.46)
2005 Feb 2, The EU told Italy, France and Germany, to do more to bring their budgets in balance as required by the rules of Europe's single currency.
(AP, 2/2/05)
2005 Feb 4, Gunmen seized Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist in central Baghdad, in a hail of gunfire after she had been interviewing people who fled the US assault last year on the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
(AP, 2/4/05)
2005 Feb 8, A Web posting in the name of a militant group in Iraq claimed to have executed Italian female journalist Giuliana Sgrena.
(AP, 2/8/05)
2005 Feb 16, CEO Sergio Marchionne announced Fiat SpA will buy the Maserati sportscar brand from Ferrari, a company in which it already had a majority stake, just three days after winning independence from General Motors Corp.
(AP, 2/16/05)(Econ, 4/26/08, p.88)
2005 Mar 4, American troops fired on a car taking Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad's airport and wounded her. Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence officer who negotiated her freedom, was hit by the gunfire and died in her arms. Sgrena returned to Italy the next day. In 2007 an Italian court threw out the case against the US soldier charged in the shooting of Calipari.
(AP, 3/5/05)(AP, 10/25/07)
2005 Mar 6, Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist wounded by American troops in Iraq after her release by insurgents, rejected the U.S. military's account of the shooting and declined Sunday to rule out the possibility she was deliberately targeted.
(AP, 3/6/05)
2005 Mar 15, Pres. Berlusconi announced that Italy would begin pulling its 3,300 troops out of Iraq in September. The next day he said the withdrawal date was merely a hope.
(AP, 3/16/05)(Econ, 3/19/05, p.56)
2005 Mar 17, Italian airline Alitalia SpA said that the latest strike by flight attendants could plunge the struggling carrier into bankruptcy.
(AP, 3/17/05)
2005 Mar 24, Istat reported that Italy’s economy contracted 0.4% in the previous quarter due in part to a fall in exports.
(WSJ, 3/25/05, p.A7)
2005 Mar 30, Dutch bank ABN Amro announced a 6.3 billion euros ($8.1 billion) bid for the 87 percent of Italian bank Antonveneta it does not already own, the second foreign offer for an Italian bank in as many days.
(AP, 3/30/05)
2005 Apr 7, Pres. Bush met with Premier Berlusconi and Pres. Ciampi one day after viewing the pope’s body at the Vatican.
(SFC, 4/7/05, p.A13)
2005 Apr 13, Italian regulator Consob said it has approved a bid by Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA for Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, in what would become the euro zone's largest cross-border banking takeover.
(AP, 4/14/05)
2005 Apr 15, Italy’s government teetered near collapse after 2 coalition parties said they would withdraw from PM Berlusconi’s government.
(SFC, 4/16/05, p.A7)
2005 Apr 18, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi agreed a deal with rebel ministers of the Christian Democrat UDC party to form a new centre-right government and avoid snap elections.
(AFP, 4/18/05)
2005 Apr 20, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he would step down but pledged to form a new government, an attempt to strengthen a coalition left weakened by electoral defeat and concerns over a slow economy.
(AP, 4/20/05)
2005 Apr 23, Silvio Berlusconi formed a new government and will present his choice of Cabinet ministers to Italy's legislators for approval in the hopes of avoiding new elections. Berlusconi was sworn in as head of Italy's 60th government since the end of World War II.
(AP, 4/23/06)
2005 Apr 28, Premier Silvio Berlusconi's new government won approval from the Italian Senate, ending a government crisis that followed an embarrassing defeat in regional elections.
(AP, 4/28/05)
2005 Apr 29, Italy and the United States said they had failed to agree on whether U.S. soldiers were at fault in the death of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq.
(AP, 4/30/05)
2005 Apr 29, Italy slashed its 2005 growth forecast by almost half to 1.2 percent and warned its budget deficit could hit 4 percent of gross domestic product.
(AP, 4/29/05)
2005 May 2, Italian investigators blamed US military authorities for failing to signal there was a checkpoint ahead on the Baghdad road where American soldiers killed an Italian agent, concluding in a report that stress, inexperience and fatigue played a role in the shooting.
(AP, 5/3/05)
2005 May 10, Italy's center-left opposition celebrated as returns from local elections in Sardinia and 2 northern regions dealt Premier Berlusconi's forces another embarrassing defeat.
(AP, 5/10/05)
2005 May 18, Police arrested nine terror suspects during raids in northern Italy in what they said was a crackdown on extremist cells accused of planning attacks in Italy and abroad.
(AP, 5/18/05)
2005 May 24, Italian police raided the homes and offices of 186 suspected members of a child pornography ring, including three Roman Catholic priests and a local mayor, that downloaded pictures from an exclusive Web site.
(AP, 5/24/05)
2005 May 25, In Italy a judge ordered best-selling author Oriana Fallaci to face trial on charges of defaming Islam in her recent book "The Strength of Reason." Fallaci, who is in her 70s, said she is accused of violating an Italian law that prohibits "outrage to religion."
(AP, 5/26/05)
2005 May, Italy reported that it had fallen back into recession for the 1st quarter of 2005.
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.13)
2005 Jun 5, An accident inside the Frejus Alpine tunnel between France and Italy killed at least two people. A truck loaded with tires and another carrying glue caught fire along with four other vehicles.
(AP, 6/5/05)
2005 Jun 7, The EU head office said that Italy broke the bloc's budget rules with excessive deficits in 2003 and 2004 and is likely to breach the limit again this year and in 2006.
(AP, 6/7/05)
2005 Jun 9, Clementina Cantoni (32), an Italian aid worker kidnapped at gunpoint in the Afghan capital three weeks ago, was released.
(AP, 6/10/05)
2005 Jun 12, The Venice Biennale opened under the direction of Rosa Martinez and Maria de Corral.
(Econ, 6/4/05, p.80)
2005 Jun 12, Italians voted in national referendums on whether to loosen assisted fertility legislation. 90% voted to change the law but only 26% of eligible voters bothered to turn out.
(AP, 6/12/05)(Econ, 6/18/05, p.48)
2005 Jun 12, UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank, announced the takeover HVB Group, Germany’s 2nd biggest. This gave UniCredit a commanding presence in Germany, Austria and Poland.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.70)(Econ, 10/12/13, SR p.8)
2005 Jun 13, In Italy a Vatican-backed voter boycott helped defeat efforts to ease restrictions on assisted procreation and embryo research.
(AP, 6/14/05)
2005 Jun 14, Carlo Maria Giulini (91), renowned conductor, died in Brescia, Italy.
(SFC, 6/16/05, p.B7)
2005 Jun 22, In La Spezia, Italy, 10 former members of the Nazi SS were convicted in absentia of taking part in the 1944 massacre of more than 500 villagers in the Tuscan village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 6/22/05)
2005 Jun 24, An Italian official said a judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for allegedly helping deport an imam to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. The agents are suspected in the seizure of an Egyptian-born imam identified as Abu Omar on the streets of Milan in February 2003.
(AP, 6/24/05)
2005 Jun 29, The EU gave Italy until the end of 2007 to cut its budget deficit in line with euro-zone rules, a warning that is powerless as it carries no punishment.
(AP, 6/29/05)
2005 Jun 29, Some 400 would-be immigrants from Africa landed on Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily, and air patrols spotted at least 200 more on their way.
(AP, 6/29/05)
2005 Jul 8, In Italy a judge convicted and sentenced to life in prison three members of the Red Brigades terrorist group for the 1999 killing of a government labor adviser, court officials said. A fourth was convicted and sentenced to nine years.
(AP, 7/8/05)
2005 Jul 11, A judge ordered the arrest and isolation of 3 senior officers of the Banco di Credito Cooperativo Sofige Gela, a small bank on Sicily’s southern coast. The had been under investigation for aiding and abetting the Mafia.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.72)
2005 Jul 12, Antonio Fazio, governor of the Bank of Italy, informed his friend Gianpiero Fiorani, head of Banca Popolare Italiana (BPI), that BPI’s bid for the Antonveneta bank had received a go ahead before making the news public.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.67)(WSJ, 9/13/05, p.A1)
2005 Jul 13, In Brescia, Italy, a judge convicted two North Africans of belonging to an extremist cell alleged to have planned attacks, including one against Milan's subway. Moroccan Mohamed Rafik was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison and Tunisian Kamel Hamraoui to three years and four months.
(AP, 7/13/05)
2005 Jul 20, A Milan prosecutor sought arrest warrants for six more purported CIA operatives, accusing them of helping plan the kidnapping of an Egyptian radical Muslim cleric.
(AP, 7/20/05)
2005 Jul 22, The Italian government approved a package of anti-terrorism measures that allow authorities to take DNA samples from suspects and jail those who provide explosives training.
(AP, 7/22/05)
2005 Jul 25, An appeals court in Milan, Italy, issued arrest warrants for six more purported CIA operatives accused of helping plan the 2003 kidnapping of a radical Egyptian Muslim cleric.
(AP, 7/26/05)
2005 Jul 25, Magistrates in Italy impounded BPI’s shares in Antonveneta. 2 days later Consob, Italy’s stockmarket regulator, froze BPI’s offer for up to 90 days. [see Jul 12]
(Econ, 8/13/05, p.57)
2005 Jul 29, Osman Hussain (27), a Briton with Ethiopian citizenship, was arrested in Rome after investigators traced his cell phone calls across Europe. He is accused of trying to attack the Shepherd's Bush subway station in west London.
(AP, 7/30/05)
2005 Jul, Italian police arrested two Slovenians who allegedly mailed steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and other customers around the world.
(AP, 8/1/05)
2005 Aug 6, A Tunis Air jet carrying 35 passengers went down in the sea off the Sicilian coast, and rescuers were on their way. 16 people were killed, while 23 survived. A bad fuel gauge on the Tuninter plane caused the crash. On March 23, 2009, the Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, was sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot. Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between 8 and 9 years in jail.
(AP, 8/5/05)(AP, 8/7/05)(WSJ, 9/8/05, p.A1)(Reuters, 3/24/09)
2005 Aug 13, An Italian newspaper reported that more than 100 Italian troops whose tours in southern Iraq have ended are not being replaced, apparently marking the beginning of the country's withdrawal from Iraq ahead of schedule.
(AP, 8/14/05)
2005 Aug 13, A small plane carrying tourists crashed in southern Italy, killing at least two people.
(AP, 8/14/05)
2005 Aug 15, Italy’s Interior Minister said Italy has arrested 141 people in a security swoop following the bombings in London and Egypt last month and remains at high risk from an attack by Islamic militants. Expulsion procedures had begun against 701 people.
(Reuters, 8/15/05)
2005 Aug 6, A Tunis Air jet carrying 35 passengers went down in the sea off the Sicilian coast, and rescuers were on their way. At least 13 people were killed, while 23 survived. A bad fuel gauge on the Tuninter plane cause the crash.
(AP, 8/5/05)(AP, 8/7/05)(WSJ, 9/8/05, p.A1)
2005 Sep 1, In Italy a summer music hit has sparked a war of words between left-wingers and neo-fascists who claim the Colombian pop song, "La camisa negra" ("The black shirt"), as their anthem.
(AP, 9/1/05)
2005 Sep 2, Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Cabinet approved a reform program for Italy's central bank that includes a seven-year fixed term for the Bank of Italy governor.
(AP, 9/2/05)
2005 Sep 6, Italy's Fiat SpA is to launch a new version of its Punto, Fiat's most popular model. The company has sold 6 million Puntos since launching the car in 1993. In 1997 the Punto became the best-selling car in Europe, with 600,000 models sold.
(AP, 9/5/05)
2005 Sep 9, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Cabinet approved a bill to limit the use of phone taps, legislation prompted after conversations recorded during a bank takeover investigation were leaked to the media this summer.
(AP, 9/9/05)
2005 Sep 10, Masked gunmen abducted Lorenzo Cremonesi of the Corriere della Serra daily, an Italian journalist in the Gaza Strip town of Deir El-Balah. He was released after a few hours.
(AP, 9/10/05)
2005 Sep 16, Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared Italy's mission in Iraq "an absolute and total" success, and said Italy would continue to reduce its military presence there.
(AP, 9/16/05)
2005 Sep 16, Italian officials said they have captured Paolo Di Lauro (52), an alleged top boss of the Camorra crime syndicate, dealing what they said was a serious blow to organized crime in the Naples area.
(AP, 9/16/05)
2005 Sep 20, Fiat of Italy struck a deal with Zastava of Kragujevac, Serbia, to make up to 16,000 cars a year. Zastava’s arms plant made a recent $3.8 million contract with Iraq.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.47)
2005 Sep 21, Domenica Siniscalco, Italy's economy minister, resigned in a row over the Bank of Italy and the budget, dealing a major blow to PM Silvio Berlusconi months before an election that polls say he is likely to lose.
(AP, 9/22/05)(Econ, 9/24/05, p.61)
2005 Sep 25, Italy's government stripped Bank of Italy Governor Antonio Fazio of his authority to represent the country at a World Bank meeting.
(AP, 9/25/05)
2005 Sep 26, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was cleared of charges of false bookkeeping in a case involving funding for the former Socialist party.
(AP, 9/26/05)
2005 Sep 26, Dutch bank ABN Amro said it had signed a contract with Banca Popolare Italiana and its allies to buy their 39.37 percent stake in Banca Antonveneta for a total outlay of 3.2 billion euros (3.85 billion dollars).
(AP, 9/26/05)
2005 Sep 28, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said a $5.2 billion project to build flood barriers to save Venice from its high tides will go forward.
(AP, 9/29/05)
2005 Oct 14, Italy's culture industry pledged to shut down theaters, cinemas and cancel concerts throughout the country for the day to protest planned cuts to the art budget.
(AP, 10/14/05)
2005 Oct 14, Italy’s Alitalia airline, 62.3% owned by the government, approved a revised corporate plan for 2005-2008.
(Econ, 10/22/05, p.70)
2005 Oct 16, Italy held primaries to select the center-left's candidate to challenge conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi in next year's election. Former Italian premier Romano Prodi made a sweeping victory in a nationwide primary.
(AP, 10/16/05)(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 16, In Italy center-left politician Francesco Fortugno was shot as he voted in a nationwide primary in the small Calabrian town of Locri. In March 2006 police arrested 5 suspects in Reggio Calabria.
(AP, 10/22/05)(AP, 3/21/06)
2005 Oct 18, In Rome, Italy, a teenager (15) who appeared on the roof of his family home with a pistol following the shooting deaths of his parents was taken into custody after an officer coaxed him down by telling him the couple was only wounded.
(AP, 10/18/05)
2005 Oct 19-2005 Oct 20, Police arrested total of 58 people for drug trafficking in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Serbia-Montenegro. The arrests were a response to the Oct 16 murder of Italian politician Francesco Fortugno.
(AP, 10/21/05)
2005 Oct 23, Pope Benedict XVI named five new saints at the close of a 3-week Synod of Bishops. They included: Italians Felice da Nicosia, a lay Capuchin who lived in the 1700s, and the Rev. Gaetano Cantanoso, who founded the Veronican Sisters of the Holy Face in 1934.
(AP, 10/23/05)
2005 Oct 25, Police in riot gear charged demonstrators in the streets near Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi's office as students protested university reforms sponsored by his conservative government.
(AP, 10/25/05)
2005 Oct 28, An Italian court held the first in a series of closed-door hearings to decide whether to indict Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and 13 others for alleged fraud at his family's broadcaster Mediaset.
(AP, 10/28/05)
2005 Oct 28, Police in Sicily said they have arrested two suspected mobsters accused of plotting to murder a judge with a car bomb.
(AP, 10/28/05)
2005 Nov 7, Fiat SpA and Ford Motor Co. said they had signed an agreement to collaborate on small cars, completing a deal to co-develop new models due in 2007 and 2008.
(AP, 11/7/05)
2005 Nov 8, Iraqi Pres. Jalal Talabani met with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a strong supporter of the US-led war in Iraq. Talabani is on a weeklong visit to Italy, which includes talks with the country's top officials and a meeting at the Vatican with Pope Benedict XVI.
(AP, 11/8/05)
2005 Nov 11, An Italian prosecutor said that the Milan prosecutor's office has asked for the extradition of 22 purported CIA operatives in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003.
(AP, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 11, An Italian newspaper reported that a long-awaited Vatican document, to be released Nov 29, says practicing gays, those with "deeply rooted" homosexual tendencies or those who support gay culture cannot be admitted to the priesthood.
(AP, 11/11/05)
2005 Nov 15-2005 Nov 16, Italian authorities arrested three Algerians believed to have links to an Algerian militant group that has allied itself with Osama bin Laden.
(AP, 11/17/05)
2005 Nov 16, The Italian Senate passed constitutional reform that imposed an eccentric form of proportional representation. It was designed to give the prime minister presidential powers.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.56)(www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/ital-d02.shtml)
2005 Nov 18, An Italian judge who refuses to hear cases because there are crucifixes in the nation's courtrooms was convicted of failing to carry out his official duties and sentenced to seven months in jail.
(AP, 11/18/05)
2005 Nov 19, Pope Benedict XVI and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi discussed relations between the Catholic Church and Italy, amid accusations that the church interferes in the country's domestic affairs.
(AP, 11/19/05)
2005 Nov 25, Across Italy public transportation ground to a halt, public offices shut down and thousands rallied as part of a general strike against the government's 2006 budget.
(AP, 11/25/05)
2005 Nov, In Italy opposition politicians claimed that tax evasion adds up to as much as $234 billion a year.
(Econ, 11/26/05, Italy p.12)
2005 Dec 8, It was reported that a new Italian law required businesses, that offered Internet access to the public, to ask clients for ID and to log the owner’s name a document type.
(SFC, 12/8/05, p.C5)
2005 Dec 15, French and Italian authorities said European police have broken up the biggest-ever illegal immigration ring targeting Britain by arresting dozens of suspects believed to have helped smuggle "thousands" of people into that country.
(AP, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 15, Italy's defense minister said the country will pull 300 more troops out of Iraq in January, continuing a gradual withdrawal begun earlier this year.
(AP, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 16, Italian prosecutors showed a court thank you notes and other correspondence that they contended proved a former curator at the J. Paul Getty museum knew artifacts were being illegally acquired.
(AP, 12/16/05)
2005 Dec 19, In Italy Antonio Fazio, embattled central bank chief, resigned.
(AP, 12/19/05)
2005 Dec 20, Italy’s government passed an overhaul package to scale back the power and responsibilities of the central bank governor.
(WSJ, 12/21/05, p.A14)
2005 Dec 20, Argentina Brunetti (98), a character actress who played the worried wife of Mr. Martini in the classic film "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), died in Rome. Her autobiography, "In Sicilian Company," which chronicles her family's show business adventures, was released in October.
(AP, 12/25/05)
2005 Dec 22, Italy's antitrust authority said it has opened an investigation to determine whether Premier Silvio Berlusconi violated conflict of interest rules when his government approved subsidies to Italians who buy digital-television decoders.
(AP, 12/22/05)
2005 Dec 23, An Italian judge issued EU arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in 2003. the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 EU member countries.
(AP, 12/23/05)
2005 Dec 23, Police in southern Italy arrested three Algerians on international terrorism charges and accused them of planning attacks in Iraq and Italy.
(AP, 12/23/05)
2005 Dec 29, Italy’s Newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that prosecutors accused Premier Berlusconi of ordering the payment of at least $600,000 to British lawyer David Mills in 1997 to give false testimony in two trials against the premier.
(AP, 12/29/05)
2005 Dec 29, Mario Draghi, an investment banker and former Treasury official, was named Bank of Italy governor to succeed Antonio Fazio.
(AP, 12/29/05)
2005 Dec, In Italy Daniela Santanche of the right-win National Alliance succeeded in putting a new porn tax into the 2006 budget.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.72)
2005 In Italy Mitchell Wolfson, American collector, opened his Wolfsoniana Museum at Nervi, to be run by the commune of Genoa. He specialized in collecting political propaganda and decorative art made between 1880 and 1945 illustrating the evolution of modern Western design.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.83)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Wolfson,_Jr.)
2005 Italy’s public debt climbed from 103.8 percent of GDP in 2004 to 106.4 percent, the greatest hike since 1994. In mid-2006 it reached 108% of GDP.
(http://english.people.com.cn/200603/17/eng20060317_251339.html)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.49)
2006 Jan 3, Urbano Lazzaro (81), a resistance fighter credited with arresting fascist dictator Benito Mussolini at the end of World War II, died in Vercelli, Italy.
(AP, 1/4/06)
2006 Jan 6, In Yemen 5 Italian hostages were freed in good health after six days in captivity when their kidnappers surrendered to government troops.
(AP, 1/6/06)
2006 Jan 8, Almost 500 would-be illegal immigrants have arrived on Italy's Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, between Sicily and North Africa, in the past 24 hours.
(AP, 1/8/06)
2006 Jan 12, Italy's Air One said it will buy 30 Airbus A320s under a $1.8 billion deal for delivery by 2008 and plans to exercise an option to buy 10 more planes this year.
(AP, 1/12/06)
2006 Jan 14, Tens of thousands of women marched through Milan to demand Italy keep its liberal abortion law intact while gays rallied in Rome to push for legal recognition for homosexual couples.
(AP, 1/14/06)
2006 Jan 19, Italy’s defense minister said Italy will withdraw all its troops from Iraq by the end of this year, in the first official timetable for Rome to end its mission.
(AP, 1/19/06)
2006 Jan, Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi sent out letters telling the parents of some 600,000 babies born in 2005 how to receive a 1,000 euro "baby bonus" from the state. The letter was sent to all families with a new-born, including immigrants, even though the cash bonus was meant only for Italian babies. In April the Economy Ministry asked all those who claimed the money but were not entitled to it, estimated at 3,000 immigrant families, to pay it back.
(Reuters, 4/21/06)
2006 Feb 2, Italy's government won a vote of confidence in the upper house of parliament on a broad decree that includes financing for the country's mission in Iraq.
(AP, 2/2/06)
2006 Feb 6, In Rome, Italy, a bus loaded with Turkish tourists veered off a road in the Italian capital and slid about 50 feet down a ravine, killing 12 people.
(AP, 2/7/06)
2006 Feb 8, The Italian Senate approved a bill that would dramatically increase the number of women elected to parliament in a country with one of the lowest number of female lawmakers in Europe.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 9, Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government easily won a confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies on a bill that included financing the country's military in Iraq.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 9, An Italian judge dismissed an atheist's petition that a small-town priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed. Luigi Cascioli, a 72-year-old retired agronomist, had accused the Rev. Enrico Righi of violating two laws with the assertion, which he called a deceptive fable propagated by the Roman Catholic Church.
(AP, 2/10/06)
2006 Feb 10, Opening ceremonies were held in Turin, Italy, for the 20th Winter Olympics.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Feb 10, Greece and Italy said they had found swans with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the first known cases in the European Union of wild birds with the deadly strain of the disease.
(Reuters, 2/11/06)
2006 Feb 11, Italy dissolved its parliament and scheduled elections for early April, opening a campaign that pits Premier Silvio Berlusconi against a strong center-left opponent.
(AP, 2/11/06)
2006 Feb 11, American Chad Hedrick won the 5,000 meters in speedskating at the Olympics in Turin, Italy.
(AP, 2/11/07)
2006 Feb 13, Joey Cheek (26), American speedskater, won a gold medal in the 500-meter sprint in Turin, Italy, and announced that he would donate his $25,000 award from the US Olympic Committee Olympic Aid, founded by Olav Koss in 1994 and direct it to a refugee program in Chad. Hannah Teter won gold and Gretchen Bleiler won silver in the halfpipe. Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin won the gold medal in pairs figure skating, extending Russia's four-decade dominance of the event.
(SFC, 2/14/06, p.A1)(AP, 2/13/07)
2006 Feb 14, At Turin, American Ted Ligety won Olympic gold in men's combined skiing, while Bode Miller was disqualified for straddling a gate.
(AP, 2/14/07)
2006 Feb 16, Russia's Evgeni Plushenko beat world champion Stephane Lambiel of Switzerland by an unfathomable 27.12 points to win the gold medal in men's figure skating at the Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
(AP, 2/16/07)
2006 Feb 16, In Afghanistan the bodies of two Italian aid workers were found in a guarded compound in Kabul. The Italian news agency ANSA said the two could have died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a defective stove in the compound.
(AP, 2/16/06)
2006 Feb 18, Italy's Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli resigned following deadly clashes in Libya over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that he had made into T-shirts and wore on state television.
(AP, 2/18/06)
2006 Feb 18, In Italy Kjetil Andre Aamodt of Norway outwaited the weather and outran the field to successfully defend the men's super-G title for his record eighth Olympic Alpine medal. American Shani Davis won the men's 1,000-meter speedskating in Turin, becoming the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in Winter Olympic history.
(AP, 2/18/06)(AP, 2/18/07)
2006 Feb 20, At the Turin Olympics, Tanith Belbin and partner Ben Agosto snapped the US medals drought in figure skating with a silver; Russians Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov won the gold.
(AP, 2/20/07)
2006 Feb 21, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Italy signed a deal under which it will return antiquities Italy says were looted in exchange for long-term loans of other artifacts.
(AP, 2/21/06)
2006 Feb 23, Japan's Shizuka Arakawa stunned favorites Sasha Cohen of the United States and Irina Slutskaya of Russia to claim the women's figure skating gold medal at the Turin Winter Olympics.
(AP, 2/23/07)
2006 Feb 24, Julia Mancuso won gold in the women's giant slalom at the Turin Olympics.
(AP, 2/24/07)
2006 Feb 25, Apolo Anton Ohno upset favored South Korean Ahn Hyun-soo to win the gold in the 500-meter short track speedskating event at the Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
(AP, 2/25/07)
2006 Feb 26, On the final day of the Turin Winter Olympics, Sweden beat Finland 3-2 to win the men's hockey gold. Germany led the gold medal count with 29. The US won 25 medals including 9 gold, Canada won 24, Austria 23 and Russia 22. Drew Lachey leaped to victory with professional partner Cheryl Burke on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." Shizuka Arakawa won a gold medal for Japan in figure skating.
(SFC, 2/27/06, p.A1)(SFC, 2/27/06, p.A1)(AP, 2/26/07)
2006 Mar 2, Tommaso Onofri, a 17-month-old epileptic boy, was kidnapped from his home in Casalbaroncolo, near Parma, Italy. His body was found April 1. He was killed by blows to the head with a shovel. Suspects Mario Alessi, a construction worker, and Salvatore Raimondi have been accusing each other of killing the child shortly after the kidnapping. A woman was accused of complicity in the kidnapping.
(AP, 3/7/06)(AP, 4/3/06)
2006 Mar 10, Prosecutors in Milan said they have requested that Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi be indicted on corruption charges.
(AP, 3/10/06)
2006 Mar 11, Premier Silvio Berlusconi denounced Italy's judiciary as a danger to democracy and promised changes to the system as he tries to hold on to the premiership in next month's election.
(AP, 3/11/06)
2006 Mar 14, In Italy 2 local trains collided head-on outside a station near Milan, killing at least two people.
(AP, 3/14/06)
2006 Mar 24, In Italy the film “Il caimano" (The Cayman), directed by Nanni Moretti, was released. It was loosely about PM Silvio Berlusconi, but not the anti-Berlusconi diatribe that had been expected.
(Econ, 4/1/06, p.42)
2006 Mar 27, PM Silvio Berlusconi said on radio that he does not want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country, drawing plaudits from a right-wing ally and criticism from center-left opponents.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Apr 9-2006 Apr 10, Italy held parliamentary elections. Conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi faced a strong challenge from his center-left opponent Romano Prodi in a bitter campaign marked by disenchantment over Italy's stagnant economy.
(AP, 4/9/06)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.28)
2006 Apr 11, Center-left challenger Romano Prodi claimed an outright electoral victory over Premier Silvio Berlusconi before official results were in, but the slim margin could return Italy to political paralysis and instability.
(AP, 4/11/06)
2006 Apr 11, Bernardo Provenzano (73), Italy's reputed No. 1 Mafia boss, was arrested at a farmhouse in Sicily after frustrating investigators' efforts to catch him during more than 40 years on the run.
(AP, 4/11/06)(SFC, 4/12/06, p.A7)
2006 Apr 12, Italian police arrested three people suspected of aiding Italy's No. 1 fugitive and reputed Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, who was captured a day earlier.
(AP, 4/12/06)
2006 Apr 13, Dame Muriel Spark (b.1918) died in Tuscany, Italy. Her spare and humorous novels made her one of the most admired British writers of the post World War II years. Her work of 23 novels, included the autobiographical "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1961), which was later adapted for a Broadway hit (1966) and a movie.
(AP, 4/15/06)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.83)
2006 Apr 19, A top Italian court confirmed the slim electoral victory of center-left economist Romano Prodi over Premier Silvio Berlusconi, according to Italian television.
(AP, 4/19/06)
2006 Apr 22, Alida Valli (84), Italian movie star, died in Rome. She appeared in over 100 films that included “The Third Man" (1949).
(SFC, 4/27/06, p.B7)
2006 May 2, PM Silvio Berlusconi, the longest-serving leader in postwar Italy, resigned to make way for a center-left government led by Romano Prodi.
(AP, 5/2/06)
2006 May 5, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed two Italian soldiers and wounded four as they were traveling to help Afghan police hurt in an attack near Kabul.
(AP, 5/5/06)
2006 May 10, The Italian Parliament elected Giorgio Napolitano (80), a former Communist, to be president, paving the way for a government headed by center-left leader Romano Prodi to be formed within days.
(AP, 5/10/06)
2006 May 12, Spain's Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) agreed to the French bank BNP Paribas' purchase of its 14.75-percent stake in Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), saying it will reap 567 million euros (731 million dollars) in capital gains from the sale.
(AP, 5/13/06)
2006 May 16, Italy’s top sporting body put the national football federation under emergency rule as prosecutors looked into a match-fixing scandal involving the Juventus team of Turin in 19 games in the 2004-05 season.
(Econ, 5/20/06, p.53)
2006 May 17, Romano Prodi became prime minister of Italy, forming the country's 61st postwar government more than a month after his center-left coalition narrowly won parliamentary elections.
(AP, 5/17/06)
2006 May 21, Local authorities said boats carrying more than 400 migrants have been intercepted off Lampedusa over the past 48 hours, overwhelming the tiny island south of Sicily.
(AP, 5/21/06)
2006 May 23, Italy's new deputy economics minister called the nation's economic situation "a disaster," saying the deficit in 2006 may exceed 4.5 percent of gross domestic product.
(AP, 5/23/06)
2006 May 26, Italy said it will pull 1,100 of its troops from Iraq in June, giving its first specific numbers about the planned withdrawal.
(AP, 5/26/06)
2006 May 26, In Naples, Italy, the body of a man was found in a manhole with a knife in his abdomen. He was soon identified as Lewis Brooks Miskell (49), a Canadian diplomat missing since March.
(AP, 5/29/06)
2006 Jun 10, In Calabria, Italy, killers shot a farmer who had filed complaints against people who had put a squeeze on him. Calabria’s ‘ndrangheta, a homebred Mafia, would often present bullets by post to intended targets.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.71)
2006 Jun 20, Italian police arrested at least 45 people in an anti-Mafia crackdown in Sicily, including top bosses who had allegedly been in touch with Bernardo Provenzano, the reputed No. 1 boss picked up earlier this year.
(AP, 6/20/06)
2006 Jun 25, Italians voted in a constitutional referendum on whether to give regions more clout and shift power to the premier to encourage more stability in a country that has had 61 governments since World War II.
(AP, 6/24/06)
2006 Jun 26, Near-final returns showed Italians soundly rejected massive changes to the country's postwar constitution that proponents had argued would increase political stability and modernize the country.
(AP, 6/26/06)
2006 Jun 27, Italy's ruling coalition agreed to withdraw as many as 400 soldiers from Afghanistan, dealing another blow to US-led military efforts overseas.
(AP, 6/27/06)
2006 Jun 28, Italy's center-left government won a confidence vote, a motion it had called itself in a political maneuver to gain more time to implement a package of reforms.
(AP, 6/28/06)
2006 Jun 30, Pierluigi Bersani, Italian minister for economic development, rushed a decree through cabinet abolishing some of the more abstruse regulations in the services industry that throttled economic activity. This sparked wildcat protests by taxi drivers. The taxi strikes ended July 17 following concessions from the government.
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.59)(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.G2)
2006 Jul 5, Italian prosecutors said they had arrested two Italian intelligence officers and were seeking four more Americans as part of an investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
(AP, 7/5/06)
2006 Jul 7, Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was ordered to stand trial following an investigation into the sale of television rights at Mediaset SpA.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 9, Italy beat France 5-3 in a shootout following a 1-1 tie in the World Cup final. Zinedine Zidane, captain of the French team, was sent off for head-butting an Italian player.
(SFC, 7/10/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.49)
2006 Jul 11, In Italy Piaggio & C. SpA, the maker of the iconic Vespa scooter, defied weak market conditions that have derailed other planned public offerings recently to see its shares surge above the IPO price in their debut in Milan.
(AP, 7/11/06)
2006 Jul 18, Authorities freed about 100 Poles forced into virtual slavery as Italian and Polish police arrested 25 people involved in a human trafficking ring that brought farm workers to Italy.
(AP, 7/19/06)
2006 Jul 25, Italian carmaker Fiat Group and India's Tata Motors Ltd. announced they have signed an agreement for a joint-venture in India to make passenger vehicles, engines and transmissions for Indian and overseas markets.
(AP, 7/25/06)
2006 Aug 10-2006 Aug 11, Italian police raided Internet cafes, money-transfer offices and long-distance phone call centers catering to Muslims and arrested 40 people in a crackdown linked to Britain's announcement it had thwarted an alleged terror plot.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2006 Aug 12, In northern Italy the stabbed body of Hina Saleem (21) was found in the garden of the family home at Sarezzo. She was killed by her father because she refused to conform to an Islamic lifestyle. News reports said the family had been insisting on an arranged marriage with a cousin in Pakistan. The father and three other men, including her uncle, were charged with premeditated murder and hiding the body.
(AP, 9/7/06)(http://tinyurl.com/rfr4z)
2006 Aug 18, At least 10 people died and as many as 40 were feared missing when a small boat packed with illegal immigrants sank off Sicily, prompting Italy to call for greater cooperation to fight human trafficking.
(Reuters, 8/19/06)
2006 Aug 19, Ten bodies were found and about 20 other people were believed missing after a 2nd boat in 2 days carrying would-be immigrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 70 survivors were plucked from the water after the boat sank, several of whom said there had been 120 people on the boat.
(AP, 8/20/06)
2006 Aug 28, Italy approved 2,500 troops in a boost to an expanded international force in Lebanon.
(AP, 8/28/06)
2006 Sep 2, Italian soldiers poured into Lebanon, part of the first large contingent of international troops dispatched to boost the UN force keeping the peace between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
(AP, 9/2/06)
2006 Sep 2, A small boat of African migrants from Eritrea was intercepted off the coast of Sicily. They said eight people died during their grueling trip. They had left from Libya 10-12 days earlier.
(AP, 9/3/06)
2006 Sep 9, Italy's PM Romano Prodi said Syria has agreed "in principle" to a European Union presence on its border to help stem the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
(AP, 9/9/06)
2006 Sep 10, The Chinese film “Still Life" won the top award as the 11-day Venice Film Festival came to a close. The Chinese film was about the Three Gorges Dam project.
(SFC, 9/11/06, p.D5)
2006 Sep 15, Oriana Fallaci (76), the Italian writer and journalist best known for her abrasive interviews and provocative stances, died overnight in Florence.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 19, Police in southern Italy arrested scores of people in an overnight crackdown on organized crime, including on clans that had a grip on the local tourist industry.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 21, Italy formally handed over security responsibility of the southern Dhi Qar province to Iraqi forces, the second of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over to local control. 2 people were killed and another nine were wounded when a car bomb exploded near an electricity company office in Baghdad. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit a record-high 6,599.
(AP, 9/21/06)
2006 Oct 2, Italian police said they had smashed an Algerian Islamic fundamentalist cell that gave logistical support to suspected militants in Algeria.
(Reuters, 10/2/06)
2006 Oct 3, A Turkish Airlines plane carrying 113 people from Albania to Istanbul landed in Italy where a Turkish man surrendered and released all the passengers unharmed. The Turkish army deserter who hijacked the airliner sought asylum because he fears persecution in his Muslim homeland after his conversion to Christianity and wanted Pope Benedict XVI's protection.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/3/07)
2006 Oct 12, In Italy the government of Romano Prodi approved a bill to erode the near-monopoly over private television exercised by Silvio Berlusconi, who controls 3 of the country’s 4 main private channels.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.61)
2006 Oct 12, Gillo Pontecorvo (b.1919), Italian filmmaker, died in Rome at age 86. He directed the black-and-white classic "The Battle of Algiers" (1966).
(AP, 10/13/06)
2006 Oct 12, Carlo Acutis (15), Italian computer whiz, died of leukemia. Acutis had created a website to catalog miracles and took care of websites for some local Catholic organizations. In 2020 he was moved a step closer to possible sainthood with his beatification in the town of Assisi, where he is buried.
(AP, 10/10/20)
2006 Oct 13, Italy’s Economy Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa said tax evasion is a "disease which exists in all countries, but in Italy it is an epidemic." The next day 2005 data on tax returns by the self-employed, among whom evasion is considered particularly rife, made front page news in most of newspapers.
(AP, 10/14/06)
2006 Oct 14, Two Italian tourists, freed in Libya after being kidnapped in August in Niger, denounced their captors as bandits and said they were mistreated during their ordeal.
(AP, 10/14/06)
2006 Oct 17, The Italian bank Sanpaolo won a five-way race for control of Bank of Alexandria, the first Egyptian bank to be privatized in a selloff worth 1.6 billion dollars.
(AFP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 17, In Italy a subway train rammed into another train halted at the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II station in central Rome, killing at least one person and injuring 236.
(AP, 10/17/06)(WSJ, 10/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 19, Italian police arrested 12 alleged members of a Mafia clan accused of drug trafficking and running an extortion ring that terrorized businesses in the Sicilian town of Messina.
(AP, 10/19/06)
2006 Oct 26, The Slow Food movement, founded in 1989, sponsored Terra Madre in Turin, Italy. The 5-day event brought together representatives of food communities that produced good, clean and fair food in a responsible and sustainable way.
(www.terramadre2006.org/terramadre/welcome_eng.lasso)
2006 Oct 30, An Italian court ordered former Premier Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial on charges of corruption along with David Mills, the estranged husband of Britain's culture minister.
(AP, 10/30/06)
2006 Oct 31, Italy said it would beef up security in Naples by adding 1,000 patrol officers and surveillance cameras amid an upsurge of slayings around a city already known for street violence and organized crime.
(AP, 10/31/06)
2006 Nov 4, Swathes of Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands and went dark for up to an hour in the late evening as cold Germans rushing to switch on heaters sucked up electricity from Europe's interconnected networks.
(AP, 11/5/06)
2006 Nov 6, In Italy a Milan court sentenced Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, the accused mastermind of the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid, to 10 years in jail for membership of a terrorist organization. A second Egyptian, Yahya Mawad Mohamed Rajeh, was sentenced to five years in jail in the case.
(AFP, 11/6/06)(WSJ, 11/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Nov 8, In Italy gunmen in the Naples area used a stolen ambulance in the drive-by killing of a fellow mob member. At least 9 murders over the last two weeks in the city have prompted calls for tough measures.
(AP, 11/8/06)
2006 Nov 9, Police arrested 50 people across central Italy to break up an organization that allegedly transported cocaine and heroin from Africa to Europe using couriers who swallowed drug-filled pellets.
(AP, 11/10/06)
2006 Nov 10, Italian police said they arrested 13 people, including a judge accused of ties with the Mafia, as part of a crackdown on organized crime in southern Italy.
(AP, 11/10/06)
2006 Nov 11, In Italy police arrested 3 more thieves plaguing the railways for weeks by stealing copper electrical conductors from the tracks. Among the 22 suspects arrested since Oct 15 were 18 Romanians, three Italians and the one man from Mali.
(AP, 11/13/06)
2006 Nov 15, A court in Palermo, Sicily, convicted 46 deputies, confidants and helpers of jailed Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, many of whom helped the former fugitive evade capture, and sentenced them to terms of up to 18 years in prison.
(AP, 11/16/06)
2006 Nov 16, Spain, France and Italy unveiled a five-point Middle East peace initiative, calling Israeli-Palestinian violence intolerable and saying that Europe must take a lead role in ending the conflict.
(AP, 11/16/06)
2006 Nov 17, In Italy British musician Peter Gabriel (56) has been awarded "Man of Peace 2006" at the start of the annual summit of Nobel peace prize laureates organized by the Gorbachev Foundation and the City of Rome.
(AP, 11/17/06)
2006 Nov 17, Italy turned over Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed (35) an Egyptian Muslim militant convicted of terrorism to Spain, where he is charged as a key suspect in the 2004 Madrid terror bombing.
(AP, 11/17/06)
2006 Nov 18, Italian Premier Romano Prodi won a key confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies on the center-left government's planned 2007 budget, which included heavily protested tax increases and spending cuts.
(AP, 11/18/06)
2006 Nov 20, Italian Premier Romano Prodi’s center-left government got rid of the heads of its 3 intelligence chiefs: military service (SISMI), civil agency (SISDI) and the coordinating body CESIS.
(Econ, 11/25/06, p.48)
2006 Nov 22, Authorities in Italy, Spain, the United States and several South American countries arrested 76 people as part of a major drug crackdown in which a restaurant linked to one of Colombia's most feared warlords was seized.
(AP, 11/22/06)
2006 Nov 27, Italian Premier Romano Prodi said the last of Italy's soldiers in Iraq, some 60-70 troops, will return home this week, ending the Italian contingent's presence in the south of the country after more than three years.
(AP, 11/27/06)
2006 Dec 2, In Rome some 700,000 supporters of Silvio Berlusconi demonstrated against the government’s planned tax increases. Pier Ferdinando Casini’s Union of Christian Democrats (UDC) held its own rally in Palermo.
(Econ, 12/9/06, p.56)
2006 Dec 5, An Italian prosecutor asked for the indictment of 26 Americans and Italian secret service officials on a charge of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
(AP, 12/5/06)
2006 Dec 10, Tenor Roberto Alagna walked out of a performance of Verdi's "Aida" at Italy's famed La Scala opera house when the audience booed his rendition of the aria "Celeste Aida."
(AP, 12/10/07)
2006 Dec 16, An Italian judge rejected a paralyzed man's request to be removed from a respirator, ruling that the law does not permit the denial of lifesaving care and urging lawmakers to confront the issue. Piergiorgio Welby (60) died Dec 20 after he was taken off his respirator.
(AP, 12/16/06)(AP, 12/21/06)
2006 Dec 20, In Calabria, Italy, ‘ndrangheta, the Mafia ruling the region, broke into the workshop of the Cooperativa Valle del Marro, the 1st firm in the region to have established a legitimate business using assets once owned by the Mafia.
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.64)
2006 Dec 22, The Roman Catholic Church denied a religious funeral for Piergiogio Welby, the paralyzed Italian author who died after a doctor disconnected his respirator, saying it would treat his public wish to "end his life" as a willful suicide.
(AP, 12/22/06)
2006 Dec 24, Mario Scaramella, who met with an ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London the day the Russian fell ill from radiation poisoning, was arrested in Naples after returning from London. Rome prosecutors have accused him of arms trafficking and slander.
(AP, 12/24/06)
2006 Dec 28, Italy’s PM Romano Prodi vowed to deliver "shock therapy" to spur growth in Italy after years of a sluggish economy, outlining an ambitious 2007 agenda he hopes will reverse his decline in popularity.
(AP, 12/28/06)
2006 Roberto Saviano (b.1979) authored “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System." In 2014 it was turned into a television series in Italy. It premiered in the US in 2016.
(Econ, 1/12/08, p.76)(Econ, 8/27/16, p.50)
2006 Alexander Stille authored “The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi."
(SFC, 6/15/06, p.D7)
2006 Italy ranked 45th in the Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
(Econ, 2/10/07, p.52)
2006 In Italy the tax collection agency, Equitalia, was formed to take over tax collection operations previously carried out by reluctant banks and their subsidiaries.
(Econ, 1/7/12, p.45)
2006 Italy was taken over by Spain in GDP per head. This was made public in late 2007.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.44)
2006 Francois Pinault (b.1936), French billionaire, obtained the ownership of Palazzo Grassi in Venice to display his art collection.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Pinault)
2007 Jan 13, An Italian military tribunal gave life sentences in absentia to 10 German former SS men for massacring about 800 Italian villagers in 1944. They had laid waste to the villages of Marzabotto, Grizzana and Vado di Monzuno near Bologna, as the Germans retreated before Allied troops.
(Reuters, 1/14/07)
2007 Feb 7, An Italian judge ordered a U.S. soldier to stand trial in absentia for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad on March 4, 2005.
(AP, 2/7/07)
2007 Feb 8, In Cape Verde 3 Italian women, aged 17-33, were brutally attacked while vacationing, dragged into the woods, pelted with stones and left for dead at the bottom of a hole. One woman survived. 3 local men were arrested.
(AP, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 12, Police conducted raids across northern Italy, breaking up a leftist militant group that was allegedly planning kidnappings or kneecappings of victims to finance its plots. The group traced back to the Red Brigades. Police said they arrested 15 suspects accused of belonging to the Politico-military Communist Party (PCPM) in Milan, Turin, Padua and other northern Italian cities. Police in 7 locations across Italy arrested 17 men, including four alleged arms traffickers: Massimo Bettinotti (39), Gianluca Squarzolo (39), Ermete Moretti (55), and Serafino Rossi (64). A 5th member, Vittorio Dordi, was believed to be in Congo, apparently involved in the diamond trade. The luggage of Squarzolo had yielded the original clue to the arms deal. They were involved in a $64 million deal negotiated with Libyan officials for some 500,000 Chinese-made assault rifles. Iraqi and Italian partners had haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into Iraq.
(AP, 2/12/07)(Econ, 2/17/07, p.54)(AP, 8/13/07)(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)(AP, 4/12/08)
2007 Feb 16, An Italian judge indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect on a Milan street in what would be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The proceedings were later suspended pending a ruling on the Italian government's request to throw out the indictments.
(AP, 2/16/07)(AP, 2/16/08)
2007 Feb 17, Some 70 thousand Italians under heavy police guard protested against the expansion of a US military base in Vicenza that has divided the center-left government.
(Reuters, 2/17/07)(Econ, 2/24/07, p.61)
2007 Feb 21, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi stepped down following an embarrassing parliamentary defeat of his government's proposed foreign policy program. His center-left government had been in power for just 9 months.
(AP, 2/22/07)(SFC, 2/22/07, p.A3)
2007 Feb 24, Italy's president asked Romano Prodi to stay on as premier and put his center-left government to a new vote of confidence in parliament.
(AP, 2/24/07)
2007 Feb 28, Italian Premier Romano Prodi kept his fractious center-left coalition together to win a confidence vote in the Senate, ensuring the immediate survival of his nine-month-old government.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Mar 2, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi won a confidence vote in the lower house of parliament, formally ending Italy's political crisis.
(AP, 3/2/07)
2007 Mar 6, Italian prosecutors cleared a physician who disconnected the respirator of a paralyzed man who had asked to die.
(AP, 3/6/07)
2007 Mar 10, In Italy thousands of supporters of legislation that would grant legal rights to unmarried couples including gays rallied in Rome to urge lawmakers to resist Vatican pressure against the measure.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2007 Mar 14, In Italy 5 former members of Argentina's military were convicted in absentia of murdering three Italians during the Argentina’s "dirty war" (1976-83).
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 14, Italy and Russia said they wanted talks between Moscow and the European Union on a new strategic partnership agreement to start as soon as possible.
(AP, 3/14/07)
2007 Mar 16, It was reported that Italy has banned schoolchildren from using mobile phones in class in an attempt to stop ringtones disrupting lessons and prevent pupils messing about with video cameras.
(Reuters, 3/16/07)
2007 Mar 18, Afghanistan's Taliban said it had handed an Italian journalist, whom it captured two weeks ago and threatened to kill, to tribal elders pending a final deal for his release.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, Officials said Cesare Battisti, a former Italian communist revolutionary who went into hiding in France two and a half years ago, was arrested in Brazil. In 1993 the former revolutionary was given a life sentence by an Italian court for his role in four murders committed in 1978 and 1979.
(AFP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 19, The Italian Foreign Ministry said Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a reporter for Italian daily La Repubblica kidnapped two weeks ago in Afghanistan, has been released.
(AP, 3/19/07)
2007 Mar 26, An Italian prosecutor demanded a five-year jail sentence for conservative former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is accused of bribing a judge.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 28, Jazz musician Tony Scott (85), a clarinetist, composer and arranger who worked with such greats as Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, died in Rome.
(AP, 4/1/07)
2007 Apr 17, In Rome a US soldier went on trial in absentia for the shooting death of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari at an Iraqi checkpoint in March 2005. However, a court later threw out the proceedings against Spc. Mario Lozano, saying Italy had no jurisdiction.
(AP, 4/17/08)
2007 Apr 22-2007 Apr 23, In Italy Marco Ahmetovic (22) killed the four teenage boys after driving his van onto a pavement while under the influence of alcohol. He was sentenced to 6-1/2 years detention, but was allowed to spend most of that time under house arrest in return for cooperating with the court.
(Reuters, 11/29/07)
2007 Apr 27, Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was cleared in a high-profile corruption case involving bribing judges.
(AP, 4/27/07)
2007 May 6, Italian news said a Vatican court for the first time has issued a drug conviction, giving a former employee of the Holy See a four-month suspended sentence for cocaine use.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 11, Austrian authorities said they have arrested 40 suspects and seized thousands of videos, CDs and DVDs as part of a yearlong crackdown on child pornography. Police in Italy made two arrests in connection with the investigation, which was code-named Operation Max. The server was located in St. Petersburg, Russia, and since has been shut down.
(AP, 5/11/07)
2007 May 12, In Italy thousands of people, including families with their children, poured into a Rome piazza to protest a government bill that would give legal rights to unmarried couples, including gays and lesbians.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 12, In Italy security officials from Europe's largest countries backed a plan to profile mosques on the continent and identify radical Islamic clerics who raise the threat of homegrown terrorism.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 14, Endemol, the brains behind reality television shows like "Big Brother", fell into the hands of a consortium led by Italy's Mediaset which is looking to branch out of the saturated Italian television market.
(AP, 5/14/07)
2007 May 25, A "garbage crisis" in Naples dominated news in Italy. For weeks local and national authorities have tried to end a stalemate over mountains of rubbish rotting on the streets for lack of adequate landfill sites.
(Reuters, 5/25/07)
2007 May 29, Andrew Speaker (31), a lawyer from Atlanta with a rare and dangerous form of tuberculosis, ignored doctors' advice and took two trans-Atlantic flights, leading to the first US government-ordered quarantine since 1963. Italian officials said they were tracing the movements of Speaker, who honeymooned in Rome for two days despite being told to turn himself in to health authorities.
(AP, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/30/07)(Reuters, 6/1/07)
2007 Jun 8, In Italy the first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened in the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terrorist suspect.
(AP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 9, President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI discussed the pontiff's deep worries that Christians in Iraq would not be embraced by the Muslim majority. Bush, denounced by anti-American protesters on the streets of Rome, defended his humanitarian record as he met with the Pope. Bush met with PM Prodi for the first time several hours after seeing the pope.
(AP, 6/9/07)(AP, 6/9/08)
2007 Jun 12, Authorities said Italian police have recovered an ancient Greek temple dug up in southern Italy by a construction crew who had dumped or looted the prized artifacts and begun to pour cement over the ruins.
(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Jun 17, In Italy Gianfranco Ferre (b.1944), known as the "architect of fashion," died in Milan. He was the top designer for Christian Dior from 1989-1996.
(SFC, 6/18/07, p.A2)(AP, 6/17/08)
2007 Jun 23, Italian energy company Eni SpA and Russia's state-controlled OAO Gazprom said they signed a memorandum of understanding on the possibility of supplying Russian gas to European Union countries through a pipeline under the Black Sea.
(AP, 6/23/07)
2007 Jun 26, Sizzling temperatures in Greece, Italy and Romania brought power cuts and brush fires in a heat wave that has led to at least 38 deaths in southeast Europe in recent days.
(AP, 6/26/07)
2007 Jun 28, It was reported that Italy’s PM Romano Prodi estimated that unpaid taxes, including income from the black market, were equal to 27% of Italy’s GDP. The public debt stood at 106% of GDP.
(WSJ, 6/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Jun, Italian officials broke up a terrorist ring with the arrest of four people, three in Milan and one in London, after examining financial records showing a steady transfer of funds from Tunisia allegedly used to recruit Islamic extremists and send them to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Jul 4, In Italy some 100,000 people in Turin celebrated the launch of the new Fiat 500 (Cinquecento), 50 years following the launch of the 1st Fiat 500.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.69)
2007 Jul 7, A global poll picked the Great Wall of China, Rome's Colosseum, India's Taj Mahal, Peru’s Macchu Picchu, Jordan’s Petra, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid as the new seven wonders of the world. The campaign to name the new wonders was launched in 1999 by the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber.
(AP, 7/8/07)
2007 Jul 18, Two boats carrying would-be migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe sank between Italy and Libya, leaving five people dead, including a child. Eleven others were missing and presumed dead. An Italian Navy ship pulled 22 survivors from the water.
(AP, 7/19/07)
2007 Jul 21, Italian police arrested three Moroccans, an imam and two of his aids, they accuse of being part of a militant cell that allegedly used a mosque in a central Italian city as a terror training camp.
(AP, 7/21/07)
2007 Jul 30, Michelangelo Antonioni (b.1912), film director, died (94). He was one of Italy's most influential post-war film directors whose portrayals of modern angst and alienation won him a cult following. His films included the Oscar-nominated "Blowup," "Zabriskie Point" and the internationally acclaimed "L'Avventura" (The Adventure).
(Reuters, 7/31/07)
2007 Aug 15, In Germany 6 Italian men were fatally shot in the head in the western city of Duisburg, an execution-style killing that Italy's interior minister said appeared to be a feud between two Italian organized crime clans. On March 12, 2009, Dutch police arrested Giovanni Strangio (30), an Italian man wanted for the killings in Duisburg.
(AP, 8/15/07)(AP, 3/13/09)
2007 Aug 29, The 11-day Venice Film Festival opened for its 75th anniversary edition.
(SFC, 8/30/07, p.E5)
2007 Aug 30, Hundreds of police raided a small town in southern Italy and arrested more than 30 suspected members of organized crime clans believed to be involved in a feud that killed six Italians in Germany earlier this month.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2007 Aug 30, The Rome-based Hands Off Cain, an anti-death penalty group, reported that more people were put to death in 2006, 5,628, than in either of the previous two years. China alone accounting for 5,000 executions.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2007 Aug, In Italy over a hundred people became ill in Castiglione di Cervia, near Ravenna, with a disease that was later identified as chikungunya, a tropical disease spread by the tiger mosquito. This was the first such outbreak in modern Europe.
(SSFC, 12/23/07, p.A22)
2007 Sep 6, Legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti (71), who brought opera to the masses with his powerful voice and jovial personality, died of pancreatic cancer in Modena.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 8, Taiwan-born Ang Lee's erotic spy thriller "Lust, Caution" won the Venice Film Festival's top award, two years after he captured the same prize here with "Brokeback Mountain."
(AP, 9/9/07)
2007 Sep 13, In Italy consumer groups held nationwide protests to draw attention to the burden placed on families by the rising cost of food, especially Italians' beloved staple, pasta.
(AP, 9/13/07)
2007 Sep 18, In Italy local authorities said Milan central railway station's notorious Platform 21, which witnessed the deportation of hundreds of Jews in 1943-45, will host the city's first Holocaust memorial. The museum will open in two years' time and occupy 6,000 square meters of the underground rail network.
(Reuters, 9/18/07)
2007 Sep 22, Afghan authorities said they had seized dozens of Iranian and Chinese-made weapons after a brief battle with Taliban fighters near the border with Iran. In northern Afghanistan NATO helicopters fired on a group of suspected insurgents in response to a rocket attack. Four Afghans died and 12 were wounded. 2 Italian soldiers and their two Afghan staff on a weekend patrol disappeared in western Afghanistan. In southern Zabul province the Taliban kidnapped three Afghan men accused of spying for the US and executed them.
(AP, 9/22/07)(AP, 9/23/07)
2007 Sep 24, In western Afghanistan Italian special forces rescued two captive Italian intelligence agents from a militant convoy, killing at least eight kidnappers. Both kidnapped Italians were wounded in the raid, but one died from his wounds in Rome on Oct 4. In southern Afghanistan a Canadian soldier was killed and four were wounded during a military operation.
(AP, 9/24/07)(Reuters, 9/25/07)(AP, 10/4/07)
2007 Sep 29, In Italy PM Romano Prodi announced that the low-paid would get reduced property taxes and either an income tax break or a cash handout. He also mentioned a cut in the corporate tax rate from 33% to 27.5%.
(Econ, 10/6/07, p.59)
2007 Oct 14, In Italy projections showed Rome's mayor overwhelmingly winning a nationwide primary to become the leader of a new center-left party and the probable candidate for premier against conservative billionaire Silvio Berlusconi in the next general election.
(AP, 10/14/07)
2007 Oct 17, A man opened fire in a courtroom in northern Italy, seriously wounding his estranged wife and killing her brother before being shot to death by police.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 22, An Italian lobby group for small businesses said revenue from organized crime amounts to an estimated $127 billion annually, making it the largest segment of the economy.
(AP, 10/22/07)
2007 Oct 23, Police broke up an Italian-Canadian mafia clan that ran drug trafficking and money laundering operations, arresting 12 people and seizing millions of dollars in assets. The clan was led from Canada by Nick and Vito Rizzuto, a father and son, who were jailed for previous crimes respectively in 2006 and 2005.
(AP, 10/23/07)
2007 Oct 28, At least 15 migrants drowned in the waters off the Italian coast in two separate incidents, including the disintegration of a boat that spilled more than 100 passengers into rough seas.
(AP, 10/29/07)
2007 Oct 30, In Italy Giovanna Reggiani (47) was brutally attacked as she returned home in northern Rome. She died 2 days later. Nicolae Mailat, a Romanian Gypsy, admitted to snatching her bag but denied her murder. Her attack triggered a public outcry.
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.63)
2007 Nov 1, Italy's president signed a decree allowing the expulsion of EU citizens "for reasons of public safety" to fight "episodes of heavy violence and ferocious crime." This followed the Oct 30 attack on a 47-year-old woman as she walked along a road after dark toward barracks where she lived. She was beaten, dragged through mud and left half naked in a ditch. The woman died 2 days later. Police arrested Nicolae Mailat a Romanian in his 20s, who lives in a shack in one of several sprawling settlements on the outskirts of Rome.
(AP, 11/2/07)
2007 Nov 1, In Italy Meredith Kercher (21), a British university student, was killed [see Nov 2].
(AP, 12/5/09)
2007 Nov 2, Italy began deporting Romanians with criminal records in response to a streak of violent crime blamed on immigrants. In Rome up to 10 people wearing motorcycle helmets attacked a group of Romanians with knives, metal bars and sticks in the parking lot of a supermarket. Three Romanians were injured. As part of the crackdown, bulldozers in Rome for a second day knocked down shantytowns where thousands of foreigners lived without permits.
(AP, 11/3/07)
2007 Nov 2, In Italy Meredith Kercher (21), a British university student, was found dead with her throat slashed in the bedroom of a house in the central city of Perugia. A week later 3 suspects in the murder were remanded in custody by an Italian investigating magistrate. On Nov 19 police in Perugia identified a 4th suspect as Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast native. Guede was arrested in Germany the next day and DNA evidence confirmed that he had sex with Kercher the night she was stabbed. In 2009 roommate Amanda Knox, of Seattle, Wa., was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison. The court also convicted Knox's co-defendant and former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, and gave him a 25-year jail term for the murder. Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen, had already been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 11/2/07)(AFP, 11/10/07)(AP, 11/19/07)(AP, 11/22/07)(AP, 12/5/09)
2007 Nov 5, In Sicily Salvatore Lo Piccolo (65), who magistrates believe is the Sicilian Mafia's new "boss of bosses," was arrested after nearly a quarter of a century on the run. He was arrested with his son, Sandro (32), and two other Mafia bosses.
(Reuters, 11/5/07)
2007 Nov 6, Italian police said a Europe-wide sweep disrupted an Islamic cell that was recruiting potential suicide bombers for attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. They announced the arrests of 20 terror suspects, mostly Tunisians. Authorities in Britain, France and Portugal confirmed arrests.
(AP, 11/6/07)
2007 Nov 8, A US Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed in northern Italy, killing at least four people on board and injuring six. Two more soon died in a hospital.
(AP, 11/8/07)(AP, 11/9/07)
2007 Nov 11, In Italy a police officer accidentally shot and killed a soccer fan while trying to break up a fight by a Tuscan highway between supporters of rival teams. Enraged by the killing, hundreds of fans rioted in Rome, attacking a police station.
(AP, 11/12/07)
2007 Nov 14, NATO defense chiefs chose Italian Adm. Giampaolo Di Paola as head of the alliance's military committee.
(AP, 11/14/07)
2007 Nov 18, In Italy former Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced the creation of a new political party, saying the time felt right because his supporters had gathered so many signatures calling for the ouster of Premier Romano Prodi.
(AP, 11/19/07)
2007 Nov 29, A wildcat protest by cab drivers caused gridlock in downtown Rome, leaving Italians and tourists alike stranded at airports and train stations across the capital. Unions had been negotiating with Mayor Walter Veltroni over planned fare increases, but they walked away from the talks and called the sudden protest after authorities said they wanted to issue 500 new taxi licenses.
(AP, 11/29/07)
2007 Nov 30, In Italy a general transport strike by workers demanding more investment in the sector forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights and idled trains, ships and buses across the country.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007 Nov 30, Italian oil firm Eni and oil and gas exploration firm Burren Energy said they had agreed the terms of a takeover offer from Eni worth 1.74 billion pounds. Burren is an independent group quoted on the London stock exchange that runs oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Congo, Egypt and Yemen.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007 Dec 3, Daniele Emmanuello (43), the Mafia godfather of Gela, Sicily, was killed while trying to escape police. He was considered one of Italy's 30 most dangerous Mafia fugitives.
(AP, 12/3/07)(Econ, 12/8/07, p.62)
2007 Dec 4, In Italy Vincenzo Santapaola, a suspected Mafia boss, and scores of alleged mobsters were arrested during raids in Catania, Sicily. Police also seized weapons and drugs, and found a book that listed extortion fees and salaries of the people working for the family.
(AP, 12/4/07)
2007 Dec 11, Trucking unions cut short a meeting with the Italian transport ministry, ending hope that the chaos-causing strike disrupting traffic and petrol deliveries would end soon.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 12, It was reported that Italy's government has decided to appoint a special commissioner to try to curb price rises after inflation hit a three-and-a-half year peak in November, but economists see the move as little more than a publicity stunt. Italy's truck drivers agreed to call off a protest that has blocked highways and borders for three days, causing shortages of gasoline, medicine and perishable foods across Italy.
(Reuters, 12/12/07)(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 15, Italian authorities said they have captured, Edoardo Contini (52), a fugitive Naples crime boss who built one of the most dangerous cartels.
(AP, 12/15/07)
2007 Dec 18, An Italian team published the first full genetic sequence of a grape variety, pinot noir, in the Public Library of Science.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.137)
2007 Dec 23, In Afghanistan echoing pledges by the leaders of France and Australia, Italian PM Romano Prodi emphasized his county's long-term commitment in a meeting with President Hamid Karzai. Afghan intelligence agents detained a 50-year-old foreign woman carrying a suicide vest in eastern Afghanistan. A roadside explosion killed one policeman and wounded three others in Kunar province. Police clashed with Taliban militants in the Gelan district of central Ghazni province, killing a local insurgent leader and two of his bodyguards. Another booby-trapped body was discovered in Kandahar province.
(AP, 12/23/07)(AP, 12/24/07)
2007 Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella authored “La Casta" (The Caste), a dissection of the way tax revenue is frittered away by Italy’s political class. "The Caste: How Italian politicians have become untouchable," written by journalists from the leading daily Corriere della Sera, became best-seller soon after its publication.
(Econ, 8/25/07, p.48)(AFP, 10/12/07)
2007 In Italy Khalid Khamlich, an Islamic extremist, was convicted of terror ties. He was alleged to be part of a cell that planned attacks on the Milan subway and a cathedral. In 2010 he was expelled to his native Morocco.
(AP, 11/26/10)
2007 In Italy Oscar Farinetti set up the first Eataly food market in Turin. In 2013 his 21st store opened in Chicago.
(Econ, 11/30/13, p.62)
2007 Italian Oil company ENI SpA bought Burren Energy PLC, a small independent company that operates an oil field in Turkmenistan. ENI from that point on was denied entry visas by Turkmenistan, which was annoyed at not being consulted in the deal.
(WSJ, 4/23/08, p.B8)
2008 Jan 3, Crews in Naples, where the streets increasingly are lined with trash, began cleaning up a long disused dump in a bid to ease a mounting garbage crisis.
(AP, 1/3/08)
2008 Jan 7, Police in Naples clashed with protestors over a mafia-linked rubbish disposal crisis as the Italian government convened an emergency meeting to try and resolve the row.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 8, Some 60,000 tons of garbage were piled up in the streets of Naples.
(Econ, 1/12/08, p.44)
2008 Jan 16, Italian police arrested scores of suspected mobsters in Palermo in the latest raid on suspected Sicilian Mafia hideouts.
(AP, 1/16/08)
2008 Jan 18, A court in Palermo convicted Sicily's Gov. Salvatore Cuffaro of helping a Mafia boss and sentenced him to five years in prison.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 21, In Italy a key ally of Premier Romano Prodi pulled his party from the Cabinet amid a corruption scandal, sending the center-left governing coalition scrambling to keep the administration from falling.
(AP, 1/21/08)
2008 Jan 23, Italy’s Premier Romano Prodi won a confidence vote in parliament's lower house, but his chances for success in the upper house appeared to worsen as more allies defected amid growing pressure on the center-left leader to resign.
(AP, 1/23/08)
2008 Jan 24, In Italy Premier Romano Prodi resigned after the Senate voted 161-156 to sink his 20-month-old center-left coalition in a fiery session in which one senator was spat on, fainted and was carried out on a stretcher.
(AP, 1/25/08)
2008 Jan 31, The EU ordered Italy to clean up Naples within a month, or face legal action.
(AP, 1/31/08)
2008 Feb 3, In Italy Ernesto Illy (82), the longtime head of Italian coffee giant illycaffe SpA, died. A chemist and son of Francesco Illy, who founded the company in 1933, Ernesto traveled the world in search of the best blend of beans.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 6, Italy's Pres. Giorgio Napolitano dissolved parliament, clearing the way for early elections just two years after the last parliamentary vote. Premier Romano Prodi will continue as caretaker premier until the election.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 7, Authorities in Italy and the US conducted raids targeting dozens of alleged members of Mafia clans who controlled drug trafficking between the two sides of the Atlantic. A 169-page indictment in the US went back 3 decades and included at least 7 murders. The main targets in NY included 3 of the “five families" controlling organized crime in America: the Genovese, Bonanno and Gambino families.
(AP, 2/7/08)(Econ, 2/16/08, p.41)
2008 Feb 13, In Italy police raided sites in Calabria and issued arrest warrants for 57 people, including politicians, bankers and businessmen, in the latest mafia sweep targeting drug trafficking and extortion rackets.
(AP, 2/13/08)
2008 Feb 16, In Italy Michael Seifert (83), a former SS prison guard who was sentenced to life in prison in Italy for Nazi war crimes, was jailed near Naples, hours after he was extradited from Canada. Seifert, known as the "Beast of Bolzano," was convicted in absentia in 2000 by a military tribunal in Verona on nine counts of murder committed while he was an SS guard at a prison transit camp in Bolzano, northern Italy.
(AP, 2/16/08)
2008 Feb 18, Italian police captured Pasquale Condello (57), the top boss of a powerful organized crime syndicate. The Condello crime clan was one of the most ferocious 'ndrangheta families and Condello had received several life prison terms for four murders and other crimes.
(AP, 2/18/08)
2008 Feb 24, In Milan, Italy, masked thieves drilled a tunnel and broke into a jewelry showroom as employees were preparing for a VIP showing by Damiani, making off with gold, diamonds and rubies in a brazen daylight heist.
(AP, 2/28/08)
2008 Feb 27, Italian tax police busted a ring of auto-body shops involved in creating fake Ferraris using Pontiac Fieros.
(WSJ, 2/28/08, p.D5)
2008 Feb 29, Italy’s Eni SpA signed a major oil production agreement with Venezuela. Last month Eni said it had reached a compensation deal in which Venezuela agreed to a payment in excess of $700 million.
(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.A5)
2008 Mar 4, Italian police said they have seized 150 million euros of property and goods from feuding Calabrian mafia clans who are under investigation for the murder of six Italians outside a pizzeria in Germany last year.
(Reuters, 3/4/08)
2008 Mar 15, Thousands of Italians marched in an anti-mafia protest and called on all citizens to take a public stand against Italy's powerful crime syndicates.
(Reuters, 3/15/08)
2008 Mar 15, Alitalia, Italy’s state-owned national airline, accepted a takeover offer worth $217 made by air France-KLM, a French-Dutch airline group. The Italian government accepted the offer on March 17.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.73)
2008 Mar 22, Magdi Allam (55), Italy's most prominent Muslim, converted to Catholicism in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service. The iconoclastic writer has condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel.
(AP, 3/22/08)
2008 Mar 26, Italian officials held a crisis meeting after Japan and South Korea banned imports of mozzarella following the discovery of high dioxin levels in buffalo milk used to make the famed cheese.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Apr 3, Alitalia edged closer to bankruptcy protection after Air France-KLM abruptly broke off talks to buy the struggling national airline and Alitalia's chairman of seven months resigned in frustration.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2008 Apr 4, An executive for a prominent Tuscan wine producer said authorities confiscated some 600,000 bottles of his company's 2003 Brunello di Montalcino, alleging too many bottles were produced for it to be entirely authentic.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 7, Italian police arrested 38 suspects in a sweep against a clan of the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate accused of murder, extortion and arms and drug trafficking.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 12, Investigators in Turkey found the body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo (33), an Italian artist known as Pippa Bacca. She was last seen on March 31 hitchhiking in a wedding gown. Police detained a man suspected of killing her.
(AP, 4/12/08)
2008 Apr 13, Italians went to the polls in general elections likely to return conservative Silvio Berlusconi to the prime minister's office for a third time at the expense of new centre-left flagbearer Walter Veltroni.
(AFP, 4/13/08)
2008 Apr 14, In Italy exit polls put media mogul Silvio Berlusconi ahead in parliamentary election but suggested he was uncertain of winning the upper house majority he needs to steer the country through an economic downturn.
(AP, 4/14/08)
2008 Apr 15, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi (71) pledged to use his big election win to push through economic reforms, and vowed to close the border to illegal immigrants in a crackdown on criminals he called "the army of evil." He owed his majority in parliament to the support of the xenophobic Northern League, which won 8 percent of votes.
(Reuters, 4/15/08)
2008 Apr 17, In Italy Silvio Berlusconi returned to the world diplomatic stage by hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin at his villa in Sardinia. The event lost some of its luster when Putin was forced, before the glare of television cameras, to deny reports he had secretly divorced his wife and planned to marry an Olympic gymnast.
(Reuters, 4/18/08)
2008 Apr 22, Alitalia flew into the unknown after Air France-KLM withdrew its takeover offer, leaving Italy's long-struggling flagship airline with little choice but to contemplate bankruptcy or receivership. The outgoing center-left government allowed a loan of €300 million to Alitalia.
(AP, 4/22/08)(Econ, 4/26/08, p.68)
2008 Apr 28, Residents of Rome elected Gianni Alemanno, the Italian capital's first right-wing mayor since World War II. He took 53.6 percent of the vote to 46.3 percent for Francesco Rutelli, a former two-time center-left Rome mayor.
(AP, 4/29/08)(Econ, 5/3/08, p.61)
2008 May 1, Rescuers found the bodies of five French ski mountaineers who had been missing since the day before when they were swept away by an avalanche during an excursion on Punta Basei, a 10,000-foot peak in Italy's northwestern Alps.
(AP, 5/1/08)
2008 May 6, In Italy the data-protection authority ruled that releasing tax returns into cyberspace was illicit. Tax authorities had recently put all 38.5 million tax returns for 2005 up on the internet. A measure authorizing the released had been signed on March 5, but not enacted until the defeat of the Prodi government.
(Econ, 5/10/08, p.61)
2008 May 7, Conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi formed Italy's 62nd postwar government for his third stint as premier.
(AP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 13, Italy's new PM Silvio Berlusconi adopted a conciliatory tone with a pledge to reach out to the left-wing opposition and to turn the country around economically.
(AP, 5/13/08)
2008 May 15, Italian police announced the arrest of hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants in a sign of the new right-wing government's determination to clamp down. Police had arrested 383 people sing May 7.
(AP, 5/15/08)(WSJ, 5/16/08, p.A8)
2008 May 18, In Italy residents of Naples, fed up with the stench from months of uncollected rubbish, used the waste to barricade streets in protest at the long-running crisis.
(AP, 5/18/08)
2008 May 20, The European Parliament censured Italy for its treatment of Gypsies.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.71)
2008 May 21, Premier Silvio Berlusconi moved his Cabinet meeting to Naples, vowing to clean the city's streets of the garbage that has piled up for months and become a stinking symbol of government inadequacy.
(AP, 5/21/08)
2008 May 23, Frank Phel (74), an American tourist, was hit and killed by a train at a Rome station as he was walking on the tracks in a daze after being drugged and robbed. The suspected robber was arrested the next day.
(AP, 5/26/08)
2008 May 25, The French film “The Class" (Entre les Murs) won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah," a study of the criminal underworld in Naples, won the grand prize. Paolo Sorrentino’s “Il Divo," a portrait of former Premier Giulio Andreotti, won the jury award.
(SFC, 5/26/08, p.F5)
2008 May 26, In Italy police arrested 49 suspected mobsters in raids on the Naples-based Camorra mob, the equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia for the Naples area.
(AP, 5/26/08)
2008 May 30, Italy declared a state of emergency in the north of the country after flooding and mudslides left at least three people dead in heavy rains that also hit Belgium, Britain, France and Germany.
(AFP, 5/30/08)
2008 Jun 5, In Italy a 3-day UN summit aimed at fighting hunger worldwide ended with pledges to boost food output, calls to cut trade barriers and more research on biofuels. Just before the meeting Saudi Arabia announced a donation of $500 million.
(WSJ, 6/6/08, p.A10)(Econ, 6/7/08, p.70)
2008 Jun 13, An Italian woman (47), whose family kept her locked in a room for almost two decades, was freed by police. She had been accused of becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
(AP, 6/14/08)
2008 Jun 18, Italian police arrested 33 Sri Lankan Tamils charged with belonging to the outlawed Tamil Tigers group fighting a separatist insurgency against the government in Colombo. In addition to being charged with membership of a proscribed organization, the 33 were also accused of having helped finance the Tamil Tigers through remittances.
(AFP, 6/18/08)
2008 Jun 26, Unicredit, Italy's biggest bank by capitalization, said it would cut 9,000 jobs in western Europe and invest in central and eastern Europe to boost profits following massive acquisitions.
(AP, 6/26/08)
2008 Jul 2, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi pledged to end the garbage crisis in Naples and the surrounding area by the end of July.
(AP, 7/2/08)
2008 Jul 3, It was reported that Italian authorities have started fingerprinting tens of thousands of Gypsies living in nomad camps across the country, brushing aside accusations of racism by human rights advocates and international organizations. The Interior Ministry said prints will only be taken from people who do not have a valid Italian or EU document.
(AP, 7/3/08)
2008 Jul 7, In Italy transport workers went on strike, forcing the cancellation of thousands of bus, tram and subway lines and snarling traffic across the country.
(AP, 7/7/08)
2008 Jul 9, In Italy police in Naples arrested 44 suspected mobsters in a crackdown on drug trafficking. The latest raids led to the confiscation of apartments, cars, motorcycles, farmland and companies worth nearly $480 million.
(AP, 7/9/08)
2008 Jul 10, The European Parliament called the fingerprinting of Gypsies in Italy a clear act of racial discrimination and urged the authorities to stop it.
(AP, 7/10/08)
2008 Jul 14, Police in the Adriatic city of Pescara arrested Otttaviano Del Turco, the governor of Italy's Abruzzo region, in a health care corruption investigation. Prosecutors said at least 35 people are being investigated.
(AP, 7/14/08)(Econ, 7/19/08, p.60)
2008 Jul 15, In Italy a judge in Venice indicted Saber Fadhil Hussein for plotting a terrorist attack on US bases in Iraq using ultra-light aircraft.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.A9)
2008 Jul 16, An Italian parliamentary panel gave initial approval to a plan to fingerprint everyone in the country, a move that could defuse criticism over a mandatory program to fingerprint Gypsies.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Aug 4, Italy’s Defense Ministry deployed some 3,000 soldiers in cities across the country as part of government measures to fight street crime. The government said they will stay on the streets for at least 6 months.
(AP, 8/4/08)(Econ, 8/9/08, p.49)
2008 Aug 23, In Italy a gang of men badly beat a Dutch couple and raped the woman while they camped in an isolated field outside Rome during a cycling tour of Europe. The attackers also stole some US$2,200. Two Romanian men were soon arrested.
(AP, 8/23/08)(Reuters, 8/25/08)
2008 Aug 30, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi met in Libya to sign a "friendship pact." Italy agreed to pay Libya US$5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country, which ended in 1943. A provision stated that the parties commit themselves "not to resort to threatening or using violence."
(Reuters, 8/30/08)(AP, 8/31/08)(AP, 2/27/11)
2008 Sep 5, Mila Schoen (b.1916), an Italian designer of elegant, impeccably tailored clothes, died at her villa in northern Italy.
(AP, 9/5/08)
2008 Sep 7, Italy's foreign minister, after meeting US Vice President Dick Cheney, said the EU wants to work closely with the United States in resolving the Georgian crisis.
(AP, 9/7/08)
2008 Sep 9, An Italian study showed a new way to test for cervical cancer is more accurate than a pap smear and identified more dangerous lesions.
(Reuters, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 18, In Italy 6 immigrants from Ghana, Togo and Liberia were slain by automatic gunfire as they stood outside a store that sold ethnic goods in Castel Volturno, a town north of Naples.
(AP, 9/20/08)
2008 Sep 19, In Italy hundreds of African immigrants took their anger over the alleged mafia killing of six Africans to the streets, hurling rocks and smashing windows in Castel Volturno.
(AP, 9/20/08)
2008 Sep 19, Alitalia cancelled flights and regulators said they might soon ground the troubled flag-carrier as it hurtles toward bankruptcy after the failure of another rescue plan.
(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Sep 30, Italian police arrested scores of suspected mobsters, including three top fugitives believed linked to the gangland-style slaying of six African immigrants near Naples.
(AP, 9/30/08)
2008 Oct 4, The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy began meeting in Paris at a summit on the world financial crisis threatening banks, growth and jobs across the continent. They vowed to do all they could to prevent Wall Street's turmoil from destabilizing their banking systems. Germany's No. 2 commercial property lender, Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, said its $48 billion rescue plan had unraveled when private banks pulled out.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 11, Italian security forces including army paratroops arrested seven members of the Camorra mafia believed linked to the killing of African immigrants near Naples last month.
(AFP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 12, Pope Benedict XVI gave the Roman Catholic church four new saints, including an Indian woman whose canonization is seen as a morale boost to Christians in India who have suffered Hindu violence. They included Sister Alphonsa (1910-1946) of the Immaculate Conception, a nun from southern India and India’s first woman saint; Gaetano Errico (1791-1860), a Neapolitan priest who founded a missionary order in the 19th century; Sister Maria Bernarda, born as Verena Buetler (1848-1924) in Switzerland, who worked as a nun in Ecuador and Colombia; and Narcisa de Jesus Martillo Moran (1832-1869), a 19th century laywoman from Ecuador who helped the sick and the poor.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2008 Oct 13, Italian police arrested five people in the Calabria region, including the mayor of Rosarno, for suspected ties to the local mob.
(AP, 10/13/08)
2008 Oct 16, Italian police arrested Antonio Pelle (46), an alleged fugitive mobster, believed to be the head of an organized crime clan involved in the slaying of six people in Germany last year. His family was involved in a feud that led to the Aug. 15, 2007 killing of six Italians outside a restaurant in Duisburg, Germany.
(AP, 10/16/08)
2008 Oct 21, Italy's Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of euro1 million (US$1.3 million) to nine family members of victims of a June 1944 massacre. The next day Germany rejected the ruling by Italy's top criminal court.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 23, An Italian military helicopter crashed in northeastern France, killing all eight people on board.
(AP, 10/23/08)
2008 Nov 1, Three Tunisian men accused of terrorism links by Italian prosecutors arrived in Milan under heavy security after being extradited from Britain. Habib Ignaoua, Mohamed Khemiri and Ali Chehidi were arrested in the London and Manchester areas last year as part of coordinated raids across Europe against an alleged Italian-based network recruiting fighters for Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AP, 11/2/08)
2008 Nov 4, Italian police arrested 47 people including the wife of a jailed mafia boss in raids on a Naples-based organized crime syndicate. They also seized bank accounts and assets worth about 80 million euros ($102 million) in the raids.
(AP, 11/4/08)
2008 Nov 6, In Italy Domenico Magnoli (27), an alleged mobster, woke up in a private Italian clinic following liposuction surgery, and was arrested for trafficking in cocaine. Police alleged that Magnoli, born in Cannes, France, has links to the Piromalli crime clan in the 'ndrangheta syndicate.
(AP, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 10, Italian railway and mass transit workers staged a strike creating chaos for commuters. A wildcat protest by some of Alitalia’s staff forced the national airline to scrap dozens of flights.
(SFC, 11/11/08, p.A3)
2008 Nov 10, Miriam Makeba (b.1932), the South African folk singer and anti-apartheid activist fondly known as "Mama Africa," died in southern Italy after performing at a concert against organized crime.
(AP, 11/10/08)(SFC, 11/11/08, p.B5)
2008 Nov 18, Italian authorities in Sicily seized assets worth euro700 million ($885 million) from Giuseppe Grigoli, a supermarket chain owner, suspected of letting the Mafia use his businesses to launder money.
(AP, 11/18/08)
2008 Dec 1, In Italy the worst flooding in Venice in more than 20 years forced residents and tourists to wade through knee-high water.
(AP, 12/1/08)
2008 Dec 6, In Denmark "Gomorra," a movie by Italian director Matteo Garrone about Naples' criminal underworld, won the best film prize at the 21st annual European Film Awards.
(AP, 12/6/08)
2008 Dec 10, In Italy a bumper harvest was expected to push wine production above that of neighboring France for the first time in a decade, making Italy the world's largest wine producer.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 13, Alex Bellini, an Italian adventurer, was rescued a mere 65 nautical miles short of his goal, Australia, after rough weather sapped him of his final shreds of energy. He had spent 10 months rowing more than 9,500 nautical miles (18,000 kilometers) across the Pacific.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 16, Italian police backed by helicopters arrested almost 90 suspected mobsters and thwarted a plan by the hobbled Sicilian Mafia to reconstitute itself and form a new ruling commission to set strategy. Gaetano Lo Presti (52), the alleged Mafia boss of a Palermo neighborhood, hanged himself in jail, hours after he was arrested in a blitz against Cosa Nostra.
(AP, 12/16/08)(AP, 12/17/08)
2008 Dec 16, In Italy Fiat Group SpA for the first time shut down most of its Italian plants for a month, laying off nearly 50,000 workers for an extended holiday as it copes with the precipitous drop in demand for new cars.
(AP, 12/16/08)
2008 Dec 18, In Italy Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi was sentenced to 10 years in prison over a 14-billion-euro fraud scandal that led to one of Europe's largest corporate bankruptcies.
(AFP, 12/18/08)
2008 Dec 30, Paul Hofmann (96), Austria-born writer, died in Rome. During WWII he informed on his Nazi commanders in occupied Rome and later became a New York Times correspondent. Hofmann authored over a dozen books, including "That Fine Italian Hand," "The Seasons of Rome: A Journal" and "O Vatican! A Slightly Wicked View of the Holy See."
(AP, 1/1/09)
2008 Dec 31, The Vatican announced that it will no longer automatically adopt new Italian laws as its own, citing the vast number of laws Italy churns out, many of which are in odds with Catholic doctrine.
(AP, 12/31/08)
2008 Dec, Italy’s public debt, the world’s 3rd biggest, was the equivalent of 104% of GDP.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.61)
2008 Christopher Duggan authored “The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796."
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.89)
2008 The US signed weapons agreements this year valued a $37.8 billion, or 68.4% of all business in the global arms bazaar, up from $25.4 billion in 2007. Italy was 2nd with $3.7 billion and Russia 3rd with $3.5 billion.
(SFC, 9/7/09, p.A3)
2009 Jan 7, Freezing temperatures and exceptional snowfall caused travel delays across Europe and were blamed for at least 12 deaths, including that of a man in Milan who was crushed when a canopy collapsed under the weight of snow.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 12, Alitalia's board accepted Air France-KLM's offer to buy 25 percent of the company and become its international partner.
(AP, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 14, Italian police arrested Giovanni Setola, a top Mafia fugitive, who had eluded capture earlier this week by climbing through a trap door and into a sewer below his hideout.
(AP, 1/14/09)
2009 Jan 14, In Brazil Cesare Battisti (54), a leftist fugitive who wrote police thrillers while evading a life sentence for two political murders, was granted refugee status in Brazil and an official said he could go free this week. Italy's government protested the decision. Battisti escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 while awaiting trial on four counts of murder allegedly committed when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism. He fled to France and reinvented himself as a mystery writer. Battisti has repeatedly insisted on his innocence. On March 5, 2010, he was sentenced to two years in prison for passport fraud.
(AP, 1/14/09)(AFP, 3/6/10)
2009 Jan 19, An Atheist Bus Campaign's message, translated into Catalan, began appearing on two routes in Barcelona, with plans to extend the campaign to the rest of the country. A campaign with the concise message "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life," took to the road in Britain this month. In Italy buses with the slogan "The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that we do not need him" will begin traversing the northern Italian city of Genoa on February 4.
(AFP, 1/24/09)
2009 Jan 20, Chrysler and Italy’s Fiat confirmed they had reached an agreement on an alliance that would give Fiat a 35% stake in Chrysler, but only if Chrysler gets $3 billion more in financial help from Washington.
(WSJ, 1/21/09, p.B1)
2009 Jan 24, In Italy some 600 migrants and refugees broke out of an overcrowded immigration facility on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to protest their treatment. The migrants returned to the facility after several hours.
(AP, 1/24/09)
2009 Feb 1, In Italy an Indian (35) was attacked while sleeping on a bench in Nettuno, a town 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Rome. 3 young men were arrested for allegedly beating and setting on fire the Indian immigrant.
(AP, 2/2/09)
2009 Feb 3, Eluana Englaro (37), a woman at the center of Italy's right-to-die debate, was transferred to a hospital where she is to be allowed to die after 17 years in a vegetative state.
(AP, 2/3/09)
2009 Feb 9, In northern Italy Eluana Englaro (38) died at her clinic as the Italian Senate discussed legislation clarifying the right to die. Englaro had been in a vegetative state since a 1992 car accident and died after her family cut off her food and water.
(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 14, In Rome G-7 finance ministers strongly rejected protectionism, pledging to work together to support growth and employment and to strengthen the banking system so the world can overcome its worst financial crisis in 50 years.
(AP, 2/14/09)
2009 Feb 17, A Milan court sentenced David Mills, the British former tax lawyer of Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, to four-and-a-half years in jail for corruption.
(AFP, 2/17/09)
2009 Feb 24, France’s Pres. Sarkozy and Italy’s Premier Berlusconi signed a deal pairing utilities from each nation to study the feasibility of building nuclear power plants in Italy.
(WSJ, 2/25/09, p.A11)
2009 Mar 4, Salvatore Samperi (64), Italian director, died in his house on Lake Bracciano. He was best known for erotic comedies that challenged the morals of Italy's middle class.
(AP, 3/5/09)
2009 Mar 11, Italy's highest court sided with the government and threw out key evidence in an alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect in Italy, dealing a blow to the trial of 26 Americans charged in the case.
(AP, 3/11/09)
2009 Mar 18, Gianni Giansanti (52), an award-winning Italian photographer, died in Rome after battling bone cancer. He shot the 1978 image that for many captured the horror of that era — the bullet-riddled body of Aldo Moro, the kidnapped former Italian Christian Democrat premier, in the truck of a parked car. He also had snapped candid portraits of Pope John Paul II during his pilgrimages.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 21, Tens of thousand of people marched in Naples to commemorate the victims of the mafia and demand an end to the stranglehold of organized crime on southern Italy.
(AP, 3/21/09)
2009 Mar 31, Italian police said they have arrested Mario Chiesa for his alleged role in a scam involving garbage disposal in Milan and elsewhere in northern Italy. He was one of eight people apprehended, with two others being placed under house arrest. Chiesa was arrested in 1992 and convicted for his involvement in the Clean Hands corruption scandals. He served his sentences doing socially useful work and was freed in 2000.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Bernardo De Bernardinis, deputy chief of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, told the people in the L'Aquila region that recent tremors over the last 4 months posed no danger. He and 6 others were later indicted following the April 6 earthquake that left 308 people dead. Their trial began in 2011. On Nov 10, 2014, an appeals court cleared the seven defendants in the case. Dr. De Bernardinis received a two-year suspended sentence for the deaths of some of the victims.
(Econ, 9/17/11, p.86)(SFC, 11/11/14, p.A2)(Econ, 11/15/14, p.82)
2009 Apr 6, In central Italy a magnitude 6.3 earthquake knocked down whole blocks of buildings as residents slept, killing 309 people in L'Aquila, capital of the Abruzzo region, which was near the epicenter. It was the country's deadliest quake in nearly three decades. Tens of thousands were homeless and 1,500 were injured. 8 students were killed when their dorm collapsed in L'Aquila. Investigations into shoddy construction soon followed.
(AFP, 4/6/09)(AP, 4/6/09)(AP, 4/9/09)(AP, 10/19/09)(Econ, 10/27/12, p.80)
2009 Apr 11, Somali pirates hijacked the Italian-flagged tugboat Buccaneer, an American-owned tugboat, with 16 crew in the Gulf of Aden. The pirates abandoned the ship on August 9 and all crew members were freed. No random was paid.
(AP, 4/11/09)(AP, 4/26/09)(AP, 8/10/09)
2009 Apr 18, About 140 migrants remained stranded aboard a Turkish cargo ship for a third day as Malta and Italy argued about which country should accept them.
(AP, 4/18/09)
2009 Apr 19, Italy agreed to accept 140 migrants stranded aboard a Turkish cargo ship that rescued them in the Mediterranean, ending a four-day standoff with Malta about who would take them in.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 24, In Italy US and Russian arms negotiators held a "very productive" initial round of talks aimed at agreeing a new treaty to curb nuclear weapons as part of a broader effort to improve relations.
(AP, 4/24/09)
2009 Apr 26, Pope Benedict XVI named five new saints, including Portugal's 14th century independence leader and an Italian priest who ministered to factory workers at the dawn of the industrial era.
(AP, 4/26/09)
2009 Apr 29, Youssef Magied al-Molqui, one of the 4 Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and killed an American passenger in 1985, left prison in Palermo, Sicily, after more than 23 years in jail. Ibrahim Fatayer Abdelatif, another convicted Achille Lauro hijacker, was released last year.
(AP, 4/30/09)
2009 May 1, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has compared himself to Jesus Christ and Napoleon, boasted that he was the world's most popular leader.
(Reuters, 5/2/09)
2009 May 3, Italian media reported that PM Silvio Berlusconi's wife wants a divorce, just days after she publicly criticized his party's selection of young women to run in European elections.
(Reuters, 5/3/09)
2009 May 4, In Germany Sergio Marchionne, the boss of Italy's Fiat, drummed up support in Berlin for audacious plans to snap up General Motors' European arm and merge it with the bankrupt Chrysler to create a new global auto giant. Germany's economy minister said Fiat Group SpA wants to take over GM's Opel unit without running up debt and would preserve the three main German assembly plants if successful.
(AFP, 5/4/09)(AP, 5/4/09)
2009 May 7, In Italy Jonathan Robert Hindenach (24) of Charlotte, Michigan, killing an Italian man in Florence. He had consumed drugs and alcohol before slaying Riccardo Nistri (62).
(AP, 5/8/09)
2009 May 10, Italian police arrested a fugitive crime boss who they found holed up in a secret room of his brother's house in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Salvatore Coluccio has been a fugitive since 2005.
(AP, 5/10/09)
2009 May 12, Italian anti-terrorism investigators said two French citizens behind bars since last year on suspicion of smuggling migrants were al-Qaida propaganda point men in Europe and were heard talking in jail about a possible attack on a Paris airport. Bassam Ayachi (62) and Raphael Frederic Gendron (33) were served warrants in jail accusing them of criminal association for international terrorism. The men have been held in Bari since November when they were arrested on suspicion of smuggling two Syrians and three Palestinians into Italy.
(AP, 5/12/09)
2009 May 13, Italy's lower chamber of parliament passed a hotly debated bill making it a crime to enter or stay in Italy illegally, the latest effort by Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative forces to crack down on illegal migration. The bill included a fine of up to $13,670 and jail for people housing illegal immigrants.
(AP, 5/13/09)(SFC, 5/14/09, p.A2)
2009 May 15, In Spain police arrested of Raffaele Amato, an alleged Camorra boss who investigators say was one of Italy's top cocaine importers.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 19, Italian police arrested Franco Letizia (31), one of the country's "most-dangerous" fugitives, in raids that netted at least 70 suspected members of the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate. The search for dozens more was still under way.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 22, An Italian warship arrested nine pirates after helping a US-flagged container vessel and another ship evade brigands off the coast of Somalia.
(AP, 5/22/09)
2009 May 27, Italian police issued 61 arrest warrants against purported members of Naples’ Camorra mob for allegedly running drug and extortion rings. Suspects arrested included 9 women and several bosses of the Sarno clan.
(SFC, 5/28/09, p.A2)
2009 May, Naples began a six-month experiment hiring former convicts, including muggers, drug traffickers and con artists to guide tourists through the art-rich but crime-plagued city and use their inside knowledge of the local underworld to keep visitors safe.
(AP, 9/13/09)
2009 May, Chikungunya, a mosquito-born virus endemic to tropical Africa and Asia, was reported to have arrived in Albania and Italy.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.83)
2009 Jun 6, In Venice the Punta della Logana, an old customs building, opened as an art museum following restoration funded by French billionaire Francois Pinault.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punta_della_Dogana)
2009 Jun 10, Italy's Fiat became the new owner of the bulk of Chrysler's assets, closing a deal that saves the troubled US automaker from liquidation and places a new company in the hands of Fiat's CEO.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Jun 10, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi began his first visit to Italy with a warm embrace from Premier Silvio Berlusconi, evidence of better ties between the energy-rich desert nation and its former colonial ruler.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Jun 11, Italian police said they were carrying out arrests in Rome, Milan and other cities as part of an investigation into the activities of suspected radical leftist terrorists.
(AP, 6/11/09)
2009 Jun 12, In New Jersey an Indictment was unsealed today against three individuals who allegedly hacked into the telephone systems of large corporations and entities in the US and abroad and sold information about the compromised telephone systems to Pakistani nationals residing in Italy. Italian law enforcement conducted searches of approximately 10 locations in four regions of Italy and arrested the financiers of the hacking activity. Those financiers allegedly used the information to transmit over 12 million minutes of telephone calls valued at more than $55 million over the hacked networks of victim corporations in the US alone.
(SFC, 6/16/09, p.A2)(http://newark.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/2009/nk061209.htm)
2009 Jun 13, In Italy tens of thousands of gay rights activists demanding rights for same-sex couples marched through the streets of Rome on Saturday in a gay pride parade.
(AP, 6/13/09)
2009 Jun 13, An Italian court ordered the recall of 10,000 tons of wood fuel pellets imported from Lithuania over fears that they could have dangerous levels of radioactivity. Test results showed that they contained cesium 137, a highly toxic radioactive substance normally produced by a nuclear explosion or from the combustion of a nuclear reactor. The contaminated pellets themselves were not dangerous to humans, but danger comes from the ashes and the smoke produced when they are burned.
(AFP, 6/14/09)
2009 Jun 15, Italy's interior minister defended plans to allow citizen patrols to beef up security amid outrage over a new right-wing guard that has put Fascist and Nazi-like symbols on its uniforms.
(AP, 6/15/09)
2009 Jun 16, Italian police said they had arrested 13 people suspected of helping a top Mafia fugitive hide, communicate with other mobsters and conduct his business. Investigators said they are closing in on Matteo Messina Denaro, a fugitive who is among a handful of mobsters vying to take over the Sicilian Mafia. Most of the arrests were carried out in Trapani, a city in Western Sicily that is the power base of Messina Denaro.
(AP, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 20, Italian police in Sicily said they have arrested 14 people and placed more than 250 under investigation in the country's biggest sweep against Internet child pornography.
(AP, 6/20/09)
2009 Jun 20, In Venezuela authorities arrested Salvatore Miceli, suspected of being a key intermediary in the drug trafficking trade and one of Italy's most dangerous Mafia fugitives, as he left his apartment in Caracas. Police also picked up two other Italian suspects.
(AP, 6/21/09)
2009 Jun 22, In Italy Khaled Hussein (73), a Palestinian man who helped plan the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, died of a heart attack in a jail in Benevento.
(SFC, 6/23/09, p.A2)
2009 Jun 25, In Italy foreign ministers of the industrialized Group of Eight gathered for a 3-day meeting in Trieste. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said he hoped delegates from the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia will condemn the crackdown in Iran and urge a recount.
(AP, 6/25/09)
2009 Jun 26, Group of Eight foreign ministers, meeting in Trieste, Italy, criticized Iran's postelection violence, and urged its ruling clergy to ensure the outcome of the disputed ballot reflects the will of the Iranian people. The G8 countries also condemned North Korea's nuclear and missile tests and called on the country to return to the negotiating table.
(AP, 6/26/09)
2009 Jun 29, In Italy a freight train carrying liquefied gas derailed and exploded in the midst of the Tuscan town of Viareggio just before midnight, setting off a fire that killed 21 people, many as they slept in their homes. At least 50 were injured. An axle failure was blamed for the rail disaster.
(AP, 6/30/09)(AP, 7/1/09)(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 7, In Italy Matteo Salvini, a member of the often xenophobic, anti-immigrant Northern League party, resigned his seat in the lower chamber of Parliament after being filmed singing a racist chant about Naples and its residents.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, G8 Leaders met in L'Aquila, Italy, for talks on threats to global security and stability at a summit where climate change, a continuing global economic crisis, nuclear proliferation and world hunger took top billing.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 9, In Italy the G8 opened their summit to include the G5, which made their fifth straight appearance at the annual summit, albeit as guests, to discuss climate change, development aid, global economic growth and international trade.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Italy the 3-day G8 summit came to close. World leaders launched a $15 billion initiative to help farmers in poor countries boost production in a shift in the way the West tackles world hunger.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 22, Italian authorities seized some euro200 million ($284 million) in assets and businesses owned by the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate, including the Cafe de Paris of "La Dolce Vita" movie fame. 12 other restaurants, apartments and luxury cars were also impounded in the operation.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 24, In Europe deadly summer wild fires spread across Spain, France, Italy and Greece with holidaymakers rescued from beaches and thousands of firefighters brought into the battle.
(AFP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 30, Italy approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, drawing fierce protests by the Vatican. The Italian Drug Agency ruled that the drug cannot be sold in drug stores but can only be administered by doctors in a hospital.
(AP, 7/31/09)
2009 Aug 8, In northern Italy rules for officially condoned vigilante groups took effect.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.46)
2009 Aug 9, Italians newspapers reported that burglars earlier in the week had made off with jewels and cash worth 11 million euros (15.6 million dollars) from the hotel room of a Saudi princess in Sardinia, sparking a diplomatic incident. On Sep 15 Sardinia police said most of the jewels had been recovered.
(AFP, 8/9/09)(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Aug 20, Italian customs found a boat with five Eritrean survivors of what it called a "shocking tragedy. Around 75 African migrants died in the Mediterranean after their stranded boat ran out of food and water.
(Reuters, 8/21/09)
2009 Aug 22, In Italy a lucky lotto player in Tuscany won Italy's record euro147.8 million ($211.8 million) state lottery, pocketing what has been billed as Europe's biggest jackpot.
(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 30, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi laid the foundation stone for an ambitious highway stretching along the entire Libyan coast.
(AFP, 8/30/09)
2009 Sep 8, Mike Bongiorno (85), called Italy's "Quiz King," died. His big TV break came in the 1950s when he helped popularize the quiz show on Italian pubcaster Rai. One of his biggest hits was "Lascia o Raddoppia?" (Double or quits) the Italian version of "The $64,000 Question."
(www.variety.com/article/VR1118008405.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=2562)
2009 Sep 19, Maurizio Montalbini (56), Italian sociologist, died. He had spent months dwelling in caves to study how the mind and body cope with complete isolation. In 1987 he claimed his first world record after spending 210 days alone in a cave in the Apennine mountains.
(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 22, A sharply divided EU failed to protect the threatened bluefin tuna, as the bloc's Mediterranean nations refused to back even a temporary a ban on catching the fish prized by sushi aficionados. Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France and Italy, with strong fishermen's lobbies at home, insisted on continuing the hunt despite the precarious state of the species. Conservation groups had earlier criticized the EU for not pushing to list the bluefin tuna under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Oct 2, In Italy rivers of mud unleashed by heavy rains overnight flooded parts of the Sicilian city of Messina, leaving at least 22 people dead while sweeping away cars and collapsing buildings. 40 people remained missing.
(AP, 10/3/09)(AP, 10/4/09)
2009 Oct 3, In Rome tens of thousands of people gathered to defend freedom of the press accusing Pres. Silvio Berlusconi of trying to silence critical voices.
(SSFC, 10/4/09, p.A6)
2009 Oct 7, A top Italian court overturned a law granting Premier Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office. It had been pushed through by Berlusconi's coalition in 2008 when the premier faced separate trials in Milan for corruption and tax fraud tied to his Mediaset broadcasting empire.
(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 8, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he will go on TV and appear in courtrooms to prove that corruption and tax fraud charges in two trials against him are false.
(AP, 10/8/09)
2009 Oct 12, In Italy Mohamed Game (35), a Libyan, hurled a home-made bomb at the Santa Barbara police barracks in Milan, losing his hand from the blast and slightly wounding a policeman on duty outside. Game had lived in Italy since 2003 and had never been a suspect. Italian police detained two more suspects and found a large quantity of bomb-making chemicals during overnight searches.
(AFP, 10/12/09)(AP, 10/13/09)
2009 Oct 15, Italy and NATO denied a newspaper report that the Italian intelligence secretly paid the Taliban thousands of dollars to maintain peace in an area in Afghanistan that was under Italian control. The Times of London had just reported that Italy had paid "tens of thousands of dollars" to Taliban commanders and warlords in the Surobi district. It accused Rome of failing to inform its allies about the payments and of misleading the French, who took over the Surobi district in mid-2008, into thinking the area was quiet and safe. An ambush of the French in a mountain pass on Aug. 18, 2008, was the biggest single combat loss for international forces in Afghanistan in more than three years.
(AP, 10/15/09)
2009 Oct 25, In Italy 4 policemen were questioned for allegedly attempting to blackmail opposition leader Piero Marrazzo (51). The case centered on widespread media reports that a video shows the center-left politician in the company of a transsexual in a Rome apartment.
(AP, 10/25/09)
2009 Oct 27, An Italian appeals court upheld the conviction of British lawyer David Mills for accepting a bribe to lie in court to protect Silvio Berlusconi. A lower court found Mills guilty of corruption in May and sentenced him to 4 1/2 years. In 2010 Italy’s highest court overturned a guilty verdict against Mills, ruling that the stature of limitations had expired.
(AP, 10/27/09)(SFC, 2/26/10, p.A2)
2009 Oct 31, Italian police arrested one of the country's most wanted mafia fugitives after tearing down a wall in a dawn raid at a chicken farm near Naples where he had built a hideout. Salvatore Russo (51), the head of a Camorra clan carrying his name, had been sentenced to life in prison for homicide and links to organized crime and was on the run since 1995.
(AFP, 10/31/09)
2009 Nov 3, Europe's court of human rights ruled the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms under the continent's rights convention. The court ordered Italy to pay a $7,390 fine to a mother who has fought for 8 years to have crucifixes removed from public school classrooms. The Vatican denounced the ruling.
(AP, 11/3/09)(SFC, 11/4/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 4, An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program. The Americans and Italian agents were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Nov 7, Italian paramilitary police arrested Luigi Esposito in Posillipo, a northern coastal suburb of Naples. Esposito, on the run since 2003, was using a wig and false name when captured. Esposito was said to be an expert money-launderer, who funneled illicit cash from drug trafficking into tourism and other businesses for the Camorra crime syndicate.
(AP, 11/8/09)
2009 Nov 10, Iran announced it will use Italy to launch a communications satellite after waiting years for Russia to do the job.
(AP, 11/10/09)
2009 Nov 11, An Italian company that helped build a communications satellite for Iran said there are no plans to launch it, denying an announcement made in Tehran this week.
(AP, 11/11/09)
2009 Nov 12, Italy's top security official said that authorities have smashed an international terror cell with the arrest in Italy and elsewhere in Europe of 17 Algerians who were raising money to finance terrorism.
(AP, 11/12/09)
2009 Nov 15, Italian police captured convicted mobster Domenico Raccuglia, one of Sicily’s top mafia fugitives, in an apartment near Trapani.
(SFC, 11/16/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 16, A 3-day summit on world hunger opened in Rome. Zimbabwe’s Pres. Mugabe used the UN summit on world hunger to lash out at the West and defend land reforms blamed for plunging his people into starvation. Some 60 heads of state and dozens of minister rejected a UN call to commit $44 billion annually for agricultural development in poor countries.
(AP, 11/17/09)(SFC, 11/17/09, p.A8)
2009 Nov 18, In Italy the head of a UN food agency expressed regret that an anti-hunger summit failed to result in precise promises of funding, and critics said the meeting had only thrown crumbs to the world's 1 billion people without enough to eat.
(AP, 11/18/09)
2009 Nov 21, Italian police arrested a Pakistani father and son accused of helping fund and providing logistical support for last year's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. The day before the attacks began on Nov. 26 they allegedly sent money using a stolen identity to a US company to activate Internet phone accounts used by the attackers and their handlers.
(AP, 11/21/09)
2009 Nov 24, In Italy prostitute Patrizia D'Addario’s memoir, "Gradisca, Presidente," (At Your Pleasure, Premier), went on sale. In it she claimed that she had slept with Premier Silvio Berlusconi on the understanding he would help her set up a countryside inn but that she got "nothing" in return.
(AP, 11/24/09)
2009 Nov 30, Guantanamo detainees Adel Ben Mabrouk (39) and Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri (43) arrived in Italy for trial on int’l. terrorism charges. The 2 Tunisian men were charged for allegedly recruiting fighters for Afghanistan.
(SFC, 12/1/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 1, Italian officials said police have broken up a major mafia clan, issuing 83 arrest warrants and seizing businesses, land, race horses and a London-based online betting company. Local politicians and businessmen in the southern city of Bari were among those implicated as part of a 3-year operation, called "Domino," for collaborating with the Parisi clan.
(AP, 12/1/09)
2009 Dec 2, An Italian-led team of scientists said a robotic hand has been successfully connected to an amputee, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts. A video was shown of Pierpaolo Petruzziello (26) as he concentrated to give orders to the hand placed next to him.
(AP, 12/2/09)
2009 Dec 4, A jailed Mafia hitman linked Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi to the Cosa Nostra, telling a court that a godfather convicted for a 1993 bombing campaign had boasted of his links to the media mogul.
(Reuters, 12/4/09)
2009 Dec 4, In Italy Amanda Knox of Seattle, Wa., was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher (21), her British roommate on Nov 1, 2007. The conviction was announced at around midnight after 13 hours of deliberations. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison. The court also convicted Knox's co-defendant and former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, and gave him a 25-year jail term for the murder. Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen, had already been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 12/5/09)
2009 Dec 5, In Italy thousands of people gathered in Rome for “No Berlusconi Day," a gathering born on the Internet to protest against Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
(Econ, 12/5/09, p.61)(http://tinyurl.com/yhy5mnt)
2009 Dec 5, Italian police found convicted Mafioso Gianni Nicchi (28), alleged to be Cosa Nostra's No. 2 leader, hiding in an apartment in Palermo. Nicchi, a fugitive since 2006, was convicted last year of extortion and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Authorities in Milan arrested Gaetano Fidanzati (74) as he strolled down a street. Fidanzati is a reputed longtime Cosa Nostra boss of a Palermo crime clan and has been a fugitive for two years.
(AP, 12/5/09)
2009 Dec 5, Italian tax police said that they had seized works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and other giants of art in a crackdown on assets hidden by Calisto Tanzi, the disgraced founder of the collapsed dairy company Parmalat.
(AP, 12/5/09)
2009 Dec 5, In Haiti Francesco Fantoli (54), an Italian journalist, was mortally wounded by gunmen who may have tried to rob him outside a bank in Port-au-Prince. He recently founded a soccer school in the southern city of Jacmel, where he often lived.
(AP, 12/6/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Italy at least 5 sperm whales died after a pod of nine beached on the southern coast. Experts called it a rare and puzzling mass beaching for such a large species. Officials were considering euthanizing the last two whales still trapped in high waves.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 13, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi (73) was hospitalized in Milan with a fractured nose and two broken teeth from an attack by a mentally disturbed man who hit him in the face with a statuette. Police arrested attacker Massimo Tartaglia (42), a 42-year-old man with a history of psychological problems.
(AP, 12/14/09)
2009 Dec 15, In Italy Massimo Tartaglia, the man who attacked Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, wrote a letter to Berlusconi through his lawyers, saying he was sorry for his act as a judge considered whether he should be transferred to a psychiatric hospital.
(AP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 19, Diplomatic sources said an Italian and his wife were missing and their car was found abandoned in eastern Mauritania, near the border with Mali.
(Reuters, 12/19/09)
2009 Dec 20, Italian state-run and private television stations said a third Tunisian detainee from Guantanamo Bay is being moved to Italy to face international terrorism charges for having allegedly recruited fighters for Afghanistan. He was identified as Moez Ben Abdelkader Fezzani (40), also known as Abou Nassim.
(AP, 12/20/09)
2009 Dec 23, In Italy an unusually high tide flooded most of Venice, forcing tourists and residents to wade through knee-high waters or take to improvised, elevated boardwalks set up in St. Mark's Square and other landmarks.
(AP, 12/23/09)
2009 Dec 23, Italian carmaker Fiat became a majority owner of Serbian car manufacturer Zastava with a 67% stake.
(Econ, 1/2/10, p.39)(http://tinyurl.com/yd2lccd)
2009 Dec 27, Italian officials said 7 people, including a German teenager, have been killed by weekend avalanches in northern Italy.
(AP, 12/27/09)
2009 In Italy comedian Beppe Grillo and communications executive Gianroberto Casaleggio (1954-2016) founded the Five Star Movement (M5S) stressing environmental commitment and political reform.
(Economist, 9/29/12, p.58)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.53)
2009 In Italy some 7% of the population was made up of immigrants.
(Econ, 5/16/09, p.58)
2010 Jan 8, In Italy at least 37 people were wounded in Rosarno, following clashes between the migrants, police and local residents. The wounded included 5 migrants, 14 residents and 18 police officers.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2010 Jan 9, In Italy some 300 African migrants were bused out of Rosarno, a southern Italian town rocked by two days of clashes between the migrants, police and local residents. The rioting began after two men, one from Nigeria and the other from Togo, were lightly wounded by a pellet gun attack on Jan 7. Migrants alleged they were earning illegally low wages, as little as euro20 euros ($30), for a 12-hour day picking citrus fruit and other crops.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2010 Jan 13, Ethiopia’s biggest hydroelectric dam was opened by PM Meles Zenawi and Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. The Gilegel Gibe II dam was financed by Italy.
(AFP, 1/14/10)
2010 Jan 27, It was reported that Italian fashion house Armani has stopped selling online a T-shirt bearing a logo similar to Indonesia's national symbol, Garuda Pancasila, after some bloggers protested and other people called for the label to be sued.
(Reuters, 1/27/10)
2010 Jan 30, In Italy hundreds of judges walked out of nationwide ceremonies held to mark the start of the judicial year in protest at "destructive legislation" introduced by PM Silvio Berlusconi.
(AFP, 1/30/10)
2010 Jan 30, The European Union said Italy is to stop fishing for bluefin tuna, the lucrative but over-exploited species beloved of Japanese sushi fans, for 12 months.
(AP, 1/30/10)
2010 Feb 2, The key witness in a Mafia trial in Sicily told a court that a close ally of PM Silvio Berlusconi had direct links with the former "Boss of Bosses" of the Cosa Nostra.
(Reuters, 2/2/10)
2010 Feb 11, Italy's Fiat SpA and Russian automobile company Sollers announced a euro2.4 billion ($3.3 billion) joint venture to produce up to 500,000 vehicles per year in Russia in a bid to become the country's second-largest car maker.
(AP, 2/11/10)
2010 Feb 13, Italian police said they have confiscated 500,000 tons of counterfeit goods discovered in eight industrial hangars on the outskirts of Rome. Once labeled with Italian brands, They would have brought in several million euros for the counterfeiters. The goods were suspected of being imported from China.
(AFP, 2/13/10)
2010 Feb 13, In Italy an Egyptian youth, Hamed Mahmoud Abdel Aziz Essayyed Abdou, was stabbed to death in Milan in a killing blamed on Peruvian and Ecuadorian youths. 36 Egyptians and one Ivorian national were detained following a rampage by around 100 North Africans.
(AFP, 2/14/10)
2010 Feb 19, Pope Benedict XVI approved sainthood for Mother Mary MacKillop (1842-1909), making the woman known for her work among the needy Australia's first saint. Sainthood was also approved for Stanislaw Soltys, a 15th-century Polish priest; Italian nuns Giulia Salzano and Battista Varano; Spanish nun Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria y Barriola and a Canadian brother, Andre Bessette (d.1937). The formal canonization will take place Oct. 17 in Rome.
(AP, 2/19/10)
2010 Feb 23, In Italy an oil spill began and spread south down the Lambro to Piacenza and Cremona overnight, despite efforts to contain it. By the next day if reached the Po River, with officials warning of an ecological disaster as they scrambled to contain the sludge before it contaminated Italy's longest and most important river. Milan regional officials said the cause was certainly sabotage at a former refinery turned oil depot, since the cisterns were opened and the oil allowed to flow unimpeded into the Lambro River near Monza.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 24, An Italian court convicted three Google executives of privacy violations because they did not act quickly enough to remove an online video that showed sadistic teen bullies pummeling and mocking an autistic boy. Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three in absentia to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted. In the US, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 generally gives Internet service providers immunity in cases like this, but no such protections exist in Europe.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 26, In Italy telecoms billionaire Silvio Scaglia spent the night in police custody after flying in by private jet from the Caribbean to face charges in a money-laundering probe. Scaglia, the founder of Italy's second biggest telecoms company, Fastweb, was among 56 people for whom arrest warrants were issued in a case where prosecutors allege more than 2 billion euros (1.8 billion pound) was laundered via fake international phone service purchases and sales from 2003-2006.
(Reuters, 2/26/10)
2010 Mar 3, Italian police arrested seven people on suspicion of trafficking arms to Iran, two Iranians they believe are secret agents and five Italians. Two more Iranians were being sought. On April 29 Ali Damirchi-Lou and state television reporter Hamid Masoumi-Nejad were released from jail and placed under house arrest.
(AP, 3/3/10)(AFP, 4/30/10)
2010 Mar 10, National police in Rome said 20 warrants have been issued so far in Palermo and six arrests have been made in the United States. Police say the crackdown targeted a Palermo-based Mafia crime family, and those named in the warrants are suspected of being mobsters and running extortion, money laundering and drug trafficking operations.
(AP, 3/10/10)
2010 Mar 15, Italian police arrested the "postmen" of the Mafia's top boss, 19 close aides who delivered the notes Matteo Messina Denaro writes to impart orders from his hideout.
(AP, 3/15/10)
2010 Mar 15, British and Italian doctors carried out groundbreaking surgery to rebuild the windpipe of a 10-year-old boy using stem cells developed within his own body. Doctors at London's Great Ormond Street children's hospital implanted the boy with a donor trachea, or windpipe, that had been stripped of its cells and injected with his own.
(AFP, 3/20/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Turin, Italy, Mao Asada (19) of Japan toppled Olympic champion Yu-Na Kim in a triumphant season finale which saw her claim her second world title at the world figure skating championships.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 28, In Italy voters cast their ballots in regional elections. Premier Silvio Berlusconi emerged as the victor in the elections widely depicted as a test of his popularity. Only 64% bothered to vote.
(AP, 3/28/10)(AP, 3/30/10)(Econ, 4/3/10, p.53)
2010 Apr 9, France and Italy agreed to cooperate more closely to increase nuclear power generation and vowed to come to the aid of debt-laden Greece in order to defend the euro.
(AP, 4/9/10)
2010 Apr 10, Afghan officials said 2 Italian doctors are among nine people detained in an alleged plot to kill Helmand's provincial governor. On April 18 Afghan authorities released three Italian medical workers who had been detained for a week, clearing them of allegations they were part of a Taliban plot to kill a provincial governor.
(AP, 4/10/10)(AP, 4/18/10)
2010 Apr 12, In northern Italy a landslide threw a passenger train from its tracks near the border with Austria, killing nine people and injuring 28. A large irrigation pipe burst at a higher elevation as the 2-car train passed below.
(AFP, 4/12/10)(SFC, 4/13/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 26, Italian police arrested Giovanni Tegano (70), a veteran mobster who was on the run for 17 years, in a house in Reggio Calabria. He was among the most wanted men of the 'Ndrangheta organized crime group.
(AP, 4/27/10)
2010 May 9, A plume of volcanic ash snaked its way through southern France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, shutting down airports and disrupting flights across Europe.
(AP, 5/9/10)
2010 May 10, Italian anti-mafia police said they have broken up an unusual alliance of Italy's three main crime syndicates controlling wholesale produce markets, including price fixing.
(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 May 26, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi bowed to market concerns about his country's high debt load and bloated public sector, springing euro24 billion in spending cuts on an unsuspecting public just weeks after ruling out painful measures.
(AP, 5/26/10)
2010 May 31, Italy posted a financial-stabilization decree aimed at tax cheats.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.53)
2010 Jun 15, Italian police arrested Nicola Schiavone, a powerful mobster of the Camorra crime syndicate, in his villa in Casal di Principe, a small town north of Naples. He is the son of imprisoned mobster Francesco Schiavone, reputedly the longtime top boss of the clan. Another of the elder Schiavone's sons was arrested last month.
(AP, 6/15/10)
2010 Jun 18, In Italy Pierino Gelmini (85), a politically connected former priest, was indicted on charges he sexually molested 12 young men who were being treated at the drug rehabilitation center he founded in Italy.
(AP, 6/18/10)
2010 Jun 25, Thousands of Italians took to the streets to protest public spending cuts. Demonstrators demanded that PM Berlusconi modify his plan to freeze pubic sector salaries and slash local government funding.
(SFC, 6/26/10, p.A2)
2010 Jun 25, In southern France Giuseppe Falsone, an Italian mobster and one of the country's top 30 most wanted fugitives, was arrested in Marseille.
(AP, 6/25/10)
2010 Jul 6, An EU lawmaker urged member governments to open their secret files on UFOs. Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of the European Parliament, said that the EU needs its own "X Files" archive where anyone can see information on UFOs, including data gathered by the military.
(AP, 7/6/10)
2010 Jul 9, Italy's Fiat, which controls Chrysler Group LCC, said it will proceed with a euro700 million ($886 million) investment to move production of its new Panda compact from Poland to a plant near Naples despite an unresolved dispute with an Italian union.
(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Jul 13, Italian police launched one of their biggest operations ever against the powerful 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate, arresting 300 people including top bosses and seizing millions worth of property in pre-dawn raids.
(AP, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 20, Italian engineers launched a 3-month, 8,000-mile test drive of a robotic vehicle from Parma to China.
(SFC, 7/21/10, p.A2)
2010 Jul 22, In Italy police carried out six arrests and charged that members of the Camorra mafia won contracts to rebuild the quake-hit city of L'Aquila with the help of four bank employees.
(AFP, 7/22/10)
2010 Jul 31, In southern Italy an apartment building collapsed in Afragola, a small town near Naples. Rescue workers said they have pulled the bodies of 3 people from the wreckage, including a little girl.
(AP, 7/31/10)
2010 Aug 17, Francesco Cossiga (1928-2010), former Italian premier (1979-1980) and president (1985-1992), died. He led Italy's fight against domestic terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s but resigned after failing to save the life of a politician kidnapped by the Red Brigades.
(AP, 8/17/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga)
2010 Aug 30, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Premier Silvio Berlusconi marked a friendship treaty between their two countries amid increasing criticism here over Gadhafi's exhortation to Italians to convert to Islam.
(AP, 8/30/10)
2010 Sep 6, Italy’s Balzan Foundation said its prize for the biology of stem cells has gone to a Japanese researcher for discovering a way to transform adult cells into cells with the characteristics of stem cells. The prize to Shinya Yamanaka is one of four — two for sciences, two in humanities. Brazilian mathematician Jacob Palis was cited for his work in dynamic systems. The humanities prizes went to Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, the father of micro-history, for his contributions to the study of ordinary people in Europe, and to German Manfred Bauneck for his history of the European theater.
(AP, 9/6/10)
2010 Sep 12, The Venice film festival ended with an awards ceremony. Jury president Quentin Tarantino faced charges of favoritism after he handed out two major awards to his friends, including best picture to his ex partner Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere."
(Reuters, 9/12/10)
2010 Sep 21, Italian prosecutors launched an investigation into the Vatican bank's top executives for allegedly violating money laundering legislation, triggering a sharp rebuttal by the Vatican. The bank's top two officials were under investigation for suspected money laundering and police have frozen 23 million euros ($30.21 million) of its funds.
(AFP, 9/21/10)(Reuters, 9/21/10)
2010 Sep 23, In Italy Carabinieri investigators in southern Calabria said that an euro8 million winning ticket in the national Superenalotto numbers game was sold in a smokeshop owned by the father-in-law of a suspect jailed in a drug probe. The winner avoided taxes on interest due had the windfall been deposited in a bank. The mobsters got an excuse to open a mega-account. Italian law requires those making big deposits to prove the funds aren't illegal. Police seized millions of euros worth of assets from the jailed mob suspect.
(AP, 9/23/10)
2010 Sep 29, Two American balloonists disappeared in rough weather off the Italian coast. Richard Abruzzo (47) and Carol Rymer-Davis (65) were participating in the 54th Gordon Bennett Gas Balloon Race, in which teams try to fly the farthest on a maximum of about 1,000 cubic meters (35,300 cubic feet) of gas. Searching was called off on Oct 4. On Dec 6 an Italian fishing boat pulled the remains of the two from the Adriatic Sea.
(AP, 9/30/10)(SFC, 10/5/10, p.A2)(AP, 12/6/10)
2010 Sep, Italian police early this month arrested a Frenchman (28) of Algerian origin suspected of having links with Al-Qaida.
(SFC, 10/4/10, p.A3)
2010 Oct 6, In Italy Concetta Serrano was participating in a live TV show that focuses on missing people when the anchor told her brother-in-law had confessed to have allegedly murdered her daughter. The Italian news agencies broke the story of the alleged confession while the show was being broadcast from inside the uncle's house in the southern Italian town of Avetrana, where Sarah Scazzi (15) disappeared on Aug. 26.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Italy Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao sealed Sino-Italian business deals worth €2.25 billion ($3.15 billion), after fending off European pressure to raise the value of the yuan.
(AFP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 13, Italy became the latest NATO ally to detail plans to scale down its military presence and hand over territory to Afghan security forces by the end of next year.
(AP, 10/14/10)
2010 Oct 15, In Italy judicial sources said prosecutors have launched an investigation against PM Silvio Berlusconi for tax evasion linked to his Mediaset media empire. The allegations, which were immediately rejected by Mediaset, were linked to tax declarations for 2003 and 2004 and are part of a wider inquiry.
(AFP, 10/15/10)
2010 Oct 17, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed Australia's first saint, canonizing Mary MacKillop (1842-1909), a 19th-century nun. The Vatican also declared five other saints in an open-air Mass attended by tens of thousands. Brother Andre (1845-1937), a Canadian, Italian nuns Giulia Salzano and Battista Camilla da Varano, and Spanish nun Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria y Barriola were also canonized.
(AP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 18, Iran took part for the first time in talks in Rome with the international contact group on Afghanistan that set "sufficient stability" and basic human rights as the most realistic aims for the war-torn nation.
(AFP, 10/18/10)
2010 Oct 20, Italian police arrested Antonio Cortese. He is suspected of planting an unloaded bazooka and carrying out a bomb attack earlier this year that damaged the entrance of the Reggio Calabria courthouse in southern Italy. Turncoat Antonino Lo Giudice, a former top 'Ndrangheta boss, accused Cortese of planting the explosives in an attempt to intimidate prosecutors.
(AP, 10/20/10)
2010 Oct 20, Robert Katz (77), American writer and historian, died in Italy. His meticulous reconstruction of an infamous Nazi massacre in Rome brought him fame and sparked a trial over whether he defamed the pope. His book "Death in Rome" (1967) and the subsequent movie based on it, called "Massacre in Rome," stirred controversy because it suggested Pope Pius XII did not intervene to stop the massacre even though he knew about the Nazis' plans.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Italy demonstrators in Naples set vehicles ablaze and hurled stones and firecrackers at police over plans to build a garbage dump in the Vesuvio National Park. 20 officers were left injured.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 23, In Italy mafia fugitive Gerlandino Messina (38) was nabbed by Carabinieri in Favara, near Agrigento, his power base in Sicily. He had been on the run for 11 years before being caught.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 23, The European Commission warned Italy that it may face sanctions if it doesn’t remove some 2,400 tons of trash piled up in the streets of Naples.
(SSFC, 10/24/10, p.A6)
2010 Oct 28, A Milan court convicted three doctors of performing unnecessary surgeries. Prosecutors produced evidence that unneeded operations, including amputations, were performed on 83 patients at the Santa Rita clinic in Milan with the aim of getting large reimbursements from the state health system. Pier Paolo Brega Massone, the hospital's chief surgeon, was sentenced to 15 1/2 years in prison.
(AP, 10/29/10)
2010 Nov 5, In Pakistan a private plane chartered by an Italy-based oil company crashed near the airport in Karachi after the pilot warned of engine trouble. All 21 people on board, including an Italian, were killed.
(AP, 11/5/10)
2010 Nov 6, In Italy Michael Seifert (86), a former Nazi SS prison guard known as "the beast of Bolzano" for his cruelty, died in an Italian hospital. The Ukrainian-born Seifert was serving a life sentence at the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison in southern Italy.
(AP, 11/7/10)
2010 Nov 10, Dino De Laurentiis (91), Italian film producer, died at his home in Beverly Hills. Over 6 decades he produced over 500 films including the Oscar winning “Serpico" (1973).
(SFC, 11/12/10, p.C7)
2010 Nov 12, Italy's opposition presented a no-confidence motion against Premier Silvio Berlusconi, setting the stage for a showdown in parliament that could spell the end of the government.
(AP, 11/13/10)
2010 Nov 15, In Italy the political crisis engulfing Premier Silvio Berlusconi deepened with four members of the Cabinet quitting their jobs, a move that does not topple the government but further weakens the leader. Berlusconi stands accused of having an "uncontrollable sickness" when it comes to women, and of hosting "bunga-bunga" parties that culminate in sex.
(AP, 11/15/10)(http://tinyurl.com/2anggqg)(Econ, 11/6/10, p.63)
2010 Nov 17, Italian police captured Antonio Iovine (46), one of the country’s most wanted mobsters. He was considered the financial brains behind the Camorra crime syndicate clans.
(SFC, 11/18/10, p.A2)
2010 Nov 19, The Los Angeles Auto Show opened. Fiat, now associated with Chrysler, introduced its tiny Fiat 500. Fiat sales in America would begin in January, following a 27-year absense.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.69)
2010 Nov 23, Authorities in southern Italy arrested two women in an operation against suspected mobsters, a development that reflects the increasing role of women in running the mob's affairs. Those arrested included Carmelina Capria, wife of imprisoned clan boss Antonio Pesce, and Maria Grazia Pesce, wife of fugitive boss Roberto Matalone.
(AP, 11/23/10)
2010 Nov 23, In Brazil Roberto Puppo, a native of Bergamo, Italy, was shot and killed. His bullet-ridden body was found in Alagoas on the next day. Authorities believe the killing was ordered by da Silva's boyfriend, an Italian man "suspected of belonging to an international organized crime group." A teenager, who was not identified because he is a minor; and a private security guard identified as Cosme Alves were arrested after a few weeks and charged with the killing.
(AP, 12/31/10)
2010 Nov 25, Italian students occupied the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Rome's Colosseum to protest education cuts and university reforms being considered by parliament.
(AP, 11/25/10)
2010 Nov 27, In northern Italy 3 hikers died after being caught in an avalanche.
(AP, 11/27/10)
2010 Nov 30, In Italy police vans and lines of officers in riot gear blocked access to much of Rome's historic center to keep thousands of student protesters from reaching Parliament. Similar protests snarled other cities, including Milan, Turin, Naples, Venice, Palermo and Bari. In Genoa, students protested under the slogan "they block our future, we block the cities."
(AP, 11/30/10)
2010 Nov 30, Investors sold off government bonds from Spain, Portugal and Italy amid worries that Europe's debt crisis has not been contained by Ireland's bailout but will force more expensive rescue efforts.
(AP, 11/30/10)
2010 Nov, Italy and Montenegro agreed to build an undersea cable to let Montenegro export electricity.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.100)
2010 Dec 2, Retired Naples Cardinal Michele Giordano (80), the highest ranking church official to ever stand trial in Italy, died. The cardinal was acquitted in 2000 of charges that he supplied about $800,000 (€600,000) to finance a loan-shark ring run linked to his family. He was also accused of misappropriating another $500,000 in church funds. He had always proclaimed his innocence.
(AP, 12/3/10)
2010 Dec 5, In southern Italy a speeding car plowed head-on into a group of cyclists, killing eight of them. Police said the driver had been smoking marijuana.
(AP, 12/5/10)
2010 Dec 14, In Italy protesters set cars alight and hurled cobblestones at police in chaotic scenes in central Rome after PM Silvio Berlusconi won a crucial confidence vote in parliament. Over 100 people were injured including around police.
(AFP, 12/14/10)(Econ, 12/18/10, p.95)
2010 Dec 16, Astronauts from the US, Russia and Italy blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan on a mission to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 12/16/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 22, In Rome, Italy, all embassies were informed about a pair of package bombs that exploded at the Swiss and Chilean embassies, injuring two people who opened them. Security officials later said that an Italian group calling itself Informal Anarchist Federation claimed responsibility.
(AP, 12/23/10)(AP, 12/24/10)
2010 Dec 22, In Rome tens of thousands of students took to the streets to peacefully protest planned changes in the university system. Protests in Palermo and Milan turned violent.
(SFC, 12/23/10, p.A4)
2010 Dec 27, In Italy bomb squad experts defused a package bomb that was delivered to the Greek Embassy in Rome, four days after similar mail bombs exploded at two other embassies, wounding two people.
(AP, 12/27/10)
2010 Dec 29, Brazilian media reported that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has decided not to extradite former Italian guerrilla Cesare Battisti, a move that could hurt ties with Italy.
(Reuters, 12/29/10)
2010 Dec 31, Brazil's president granted political asylum to Italian fugitive Cesare Battisti, but the case must still be heard by the nation's Supreme Court.
(AP, 12/31/10)
2010 Manlio Graziano authored “The Failure of Italian Nationhood: The Geopolitics of a Troubled Identity."
(Econ, 6/11/11, SR p.4)
2010 In Italy Operation Gaol led to the arrest of over 40 people associated with the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime group.
(Econ, 4/26/14, p.52)
2011 Jan 4, Italian protesters rallied against the Brazilian president's refusal to extradite ex-militant Cesare Battisti, amid government assurances that relations with Brazil will not be affected.
(AFP, 1/4/11)
2011 Jan 8, An Italian association for bird protection said that over 700 dead birds have been picked up since Jan. 1 from the streets of Faenza, about 30 miles (50 km) southeast of Bologna. They appeared to have overeaten sunflower seeds, which damage their livers and kidneys. The seeds were mostly waste from a nearby oil factory.
(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 9, In Italy a 74-year-old retiree in Genoa shot dead two neighbors and then his wife before turning the gun on himself. Jealousy appeared to be behind the rampage.
(AP, 1/9/11)
2011 Jan 10, Italian auto giant Fiat said it has increased its stake in Chrysler to 25% from 20% as part of a deal signed after the iconic US brand emerged from bankruptcy in 2009.
(AFP, 1/10/11)
2011 Jan 13, In Italy a court ruling partially stripped PM Silvio Berlusconi of political immunity.
(AFP, 1/14/11)
2011 Jan 13, Italy's Mount Etna has come back to life with a brief eruption that sent lava down its slopes and a cloud of ash into the sky, forcing the overnight closure of a nearby airport. Its last major eruption was in 1992.
(AP, 1/13/11)
2011 Jan 14, Italy’s PM Berlusconi learned that he had been placed under investigation for paying for sex with an underage prostitute, Karima el-Mahroug (known as Ruby), and abusing his position by trying to cover it up.
(Econ, 1/22/11, p.63)
2011 Jan 19, Italy’s the national statistics office said one in five young Italians, or more than 2 million people, are not studying nor working, the highest percentage of "idle" youths in the European Union.
(Reuters, 1/19/11)
2011 Jan 27, In Italy PM Silvio Berlusconi faced more pressure to resign after magistrates issued new documents with fresh details of erotic parties, some with under-age girls, and of his gifts to participants.
(Reuters, 1/27/11)
2011 Jan 31, Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi said he wanted to drop from the constitution a clause imposing social obligations on entrepreneurs. He also promised tax breaks for the south and offered cooperation with the opposition.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.63)
2011 Feb 2, Italian Maria Sandra Mariani (53) was kidnapped in southeastern Algeria near the town of Djanet by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Algeria’s official news agency reported the kidnapping on Feb 4. Mariani was released on April 17, 2012.
(AP, 2/4/11)(AFP, 7/21/11)(AFP, 4/17/12)
2011 Feb 3, In southern Italy Matthias Kaspar Schepp (43), a Canadian-born resident of Switzerland, was found dead by a railway station of an apparent suicide. Swiss police said they still had no evidence of the whereabouts of his twin daughters, Alessia and Livia (6), reported missing on Jan 30. The girls were last seen on a ferry to the French island of Corsica four days before their father apparently killed himself in Italy.
(SFC, 2/8/11, p.A5)(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 4, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign a key government decree to increase the taxation powers of local authorities, dealing a blow to embattled PM Silvio Berlusconi.
(Reuters, 2/4/11)
2011 Feb 5, In Italy thousands of people attended a rally to demand Premier Silvio Berlusconi's resignation following allegations he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl and used his office to cover it up.
(AP, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 5, Israeli police arrested four men in the theft of religious items valued at more than $1 million from a synagogue in Italy. The 4 suspects, Israelis in their 20s, were accused of stealing the items from Milan's central synagogue last week and smuggling them to Israel.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 8, Somali pirates firing guns and rocket propelled grenades hijacked the Savina Caylyn, an Italian oil tanker, and diverted the medium-sized vessel towards Somalia. The tanker was reported freed on Dec 21 along with 22 crew members.
(AP, 2/8/11)(AP, 12/21/11)
2011 Feb 9, Italian prosecutors filed a request for an immediate trial of PM Berlusconi on criminal charges relating to prostitution and abuse of power.
(SFC, 2/10/11, p.A2)
2011 Feb 11, Italy warned it faces a humanitarian crisis with some 1,600 would-be migrants from Tunisia arriving in its waters over the past two weeks following unrest in their home country.
(AP, 2/11/11)
2011 Feb 12, Italian auto giant Fiat, under pressure to abandon any plan to move its headquarters to the United States, committed to invest 20 billion euros to produce 1.4 million vehicles in Italy.
(AFP, 2/12/11)
2011 Feb 13, Thousands of Italian women turned out across the country to protest against Premier Berlusconi, saying his dalliances with young women humiliate the sex as a whole.
(AP, 2/13/11)
2011 Feb 13, Tunisian immigrants clinging to small fishing boats landed in Italy, as the Italian government appealed for EU aid and said it wanted to deploy its security forces in Tunisia.
(AFP, 2/13/11)
2011 Feb 15, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi faced a potentially fatal challenge to his power when a judge ordered him to stand trial on prostitution and abuse of power charges.
(AP, 2/15/11)
2011 Feb 15, Italian news agency ANSA said Curt Knox and Edda Mellas were indicted in Perugia for libel. The charge stemmed from an interview they gave Britain's Sunday Times years ago in which the father alleged police had physically and verbally abused his daughter during questioning after Meredith Kercher's 2007 slaying.
(AP, 2/15/11)
2011 Feb 16, International migration officials said nearly 100 Egyptians have arrived in Italy in two boats, as fears rose about a wave of people trying to reach Europe because of turmoil in the Arab world.
(AP, 2/16/11)
2011 Feb 25, Italian police arrested six Moroccan men suspected of inciting hatred against Pope Benedict XVI for converting a Muslim journalist in Italy to Catholicism.
(AP, 2/25/11)
2011 Feb, A Italian convicted Pietro Lamberti for having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced him to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor. The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court. In 2013 Italy's highest court overturned the conviction of Lamberti (60) because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship."
(AFP, 12/30/13)
2011 Mar 7, French fashion colossus LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton announced that it has agreed to buy Rome-based jeweler Bulgari SpA in a cash-and-shares deal worth euro4.3 billion ($6 billion).
(AP, 3/7/11)
2011 Mar 8, Italian police picked up 31 suspects in a major crackdown on the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate. 6 suspects, all Italian citizens, were apprehended in Germany on an Italian-issued European arrest warrant. 3 suspects in Canada and one in Australia were still being sought. Among those picked up in Italy was Francesco Maisano, a boss who tried to hide in an underground bunker when police raided his home.
(AP, 3/8/11)
2011 Mar 10, In Italy the government of Premier Berlusconi approved legislation to drastically overhaul the justice system, including ending the possibility of prosecutors appealing acquittals.
(SFC, 3/11/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 18, Italy's foreign minister said his nation will allow its military bases to be used for the UN-backed military intervention to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya.
(AP, 3/18/11)
2011 Mar 19, Six Danish F-16 fighter jets landed at the US air base in Sigonella, Sicily, and a half-dozen US aircraft arrived elsewhere as the military buildup mounted in Italy for possible action against Libya.
(AP, 3/19/11)
2011 Mar 19, Libyan officials detained the crew of an Italian ship docked in Tripoli and prevented the vessel from leaving port. The "Asso 22" tug of the Naples-based shipping company Augusta Offshore SrL had 8 Italian, 2 Indian and a Ukrainian crew member aboard. Agence France-Presse journalists Dave Clark and Roberto Schmidt went missing while working in the eastern Tobruk region.
(AP, 3/20/11)(AFP, 3/20/11)
2011 Mar 29, The UN refugee agency says over 2,000 people have arrived in Italy from Libya by boat since March 26 and more are believed to be en route.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 30, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi promised to evacuate the thousands of North African migrants who have overwhelmed the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, earning cheers from residents exasperated by the arrivals.
(AP, 3/30/11)
2011 Mar 31, Italy shipped more than 2,000 migrants to detention camps on its mainland, relieving pressure on Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily which has been overwhelmed by a relentless stream of boats full of illegal arrivals from North African shores.
(AP, 3/31/11)
2011 Apr 1, Greek authorities said an Italian radical anarchist group, the Informal Anarchist Federation, has claimed responsibility for three mail bomb attacks on a Greek prison, an office of the Swiss nuclear power industry and an Italian military barracks.
(AP, 4/1/11)(SFC, 4/1/11, p.A2)
2011 Apr 4, Italy recognized opponents of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as the country's only legitimate voice, becoming the third country to do so, after France and Qatar.
(AP, 4/4/11)
2011 Apr 5, Italy and Tunisia signed a deal to choke off the flood of Tunisians heading to Italian shores. Italy agreed to take two flights a day of repatriated migrants.
(SFC, 4/6/11, p.A2)(Econ, 4/16/11, p.58)
2011 Apr 8, France and Italy announced an agreement to joint sea-and-air patrols to try to block new Tunisian migrants from sailing to European shores.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 11, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi made a rare appearance in open court but left after about 2 1/2 hours, saying the hearing at his tax fraud trial was a waste of time and accusing prosecutors of having no case against him.
(AP, 4/11/11)
2011 Apr 15, Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni (36) was found hanged in a Gaza apartment just hours after he was abducted by an al-Qaida-inspired group. Hamas soon arrested 4 people in connection with the killing, and sought others.
(AP, 4/15/11)(AP, 4/16/11)
2011 Apr 17, A train carrying Tunisian immigrants from Italy was halted at the French border in an escalation of an international dispute over the fate of North African migrants fleeing political unrest for refuge in Europe, unprecedented since the introduction of the Schengen travel-free zone.
(AP, 4/17/11)
2011 Apr 18, Italian chocolate tycoon Pietro Ferrero (47) fell off his bike while riding in South Africa and died. A heart attack was suspected.
(AFP, 4/19/11)
2011 Apr 21, Italian automaker Fiat, closing in on its goal of taking a majority stake and full control of Chrysler LLC by the end of the year, announced a deal to buy another 16 percent share sooner than expected at a price of $1.3 billion.
(AP, 4/21/11)
2011 Apr 21, Somali pirates captured an Italian cargo ship headed for Iran with 21 crew members on board, including 6 Italians and 15 Filipinos, in the Arabian Sea near Oman. The Rosalia D'Amato was released on Nov 25 after a ransom was dropped onto the ship.
(AFP, 7/24/11)(AFP, 11/26/11)
2011 Apr 23, Italian police arrested Francesco Campana (38), the alleged No. 1 boss of the organized crime syndicate based in Puglia, the region that makes up Italy’s boot-shaped heel.
(AP, 4/23/11)
2011 Apr 26, French dairy giant Lactalis offered $5 billion (€3.4 billion) for Parmalat, Italy’s biggest manufacturer of milk products.
(Econ, 5/7/11, p.70)
2011 May 3, Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said that 80 Mafiosi from two prominent crime syndicates have been arrested in separate operations. 40 were arrested for association with the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate in Calabria. Another 40 people in Naples were accused of trafficking drugs between Italy and Spain.
(AP, 5/3/11)
2011 May 5, In Italy an international meeting on Libya agreed to set up a new fund to aid Libyan rebels, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promising Washington would tap frozen assets of Moamer Kadhafi's regime.
(AFP, 5/5/11)
2011 May 6, Commuters in Italy scrambled to find the few buses and subway trains running during a one-day general strike that also affected air and rail travel, banks, public offices and schools.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 13, In Italy Rev. Riccardo Seppia (51), who had served in Sestri Ponente as pastor of Holy Spirit church for 14 years, was arrested for allegedly abusing a 16-year-old boy and giving him cocaine.
(AP, 5/15/11)
2011 May 14, Italian border police escorted a boat with 218 Tunisians aboard to tiny Lampedusa island, where tens of thousands of illegal migrants have arrived since January to escape turmoil in North Africa. Meanwhile, Africans fleeing Libya by sea reached Sicily.
(AP, 5/14/11)
2011 May 15, Italians voted in partial local elections with all eyes on the northern business hub of Milan, a center-right stronghold of embattled PM Silvio Berlusconi.
(AFP, 5/15/11)
2011 May 27, In Italy a Naples hospital said Puerto Rican tourist Oscar Antonio Mendoza (66), who was knocked to the ground by muggers trying to grab his Rolex, has died, nine days after he was hospitalized with severe head injuries.
(AP, 5/27/11)
2011 May 29, Italians began 2-days of voting to elect mayors in cities and towns across the country, with Premier Berlusconi hoping to avert defeat in his electoral stronghold of Milan.
(AP, 5/29/11)
2011 May 30, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi faced a stinging defeat in his northern stronghold of Milan. Local elections threatened to unbalance his fractious center-right coalition government. Berlusconi's candidates lost in major races like Milan and Naples, as did candidates of his ally the Northern League in northern cities like Novara where they have thrived.
(Reuters, 5/30/11)(AP, 5/31/11)
2011 Jun 3, In southern Afghanistan two coalition service members were killed in separate insurgent attacks. An Italian paramilitary Carabinieri was killed in northeastern Panjsher province. Lt. Col. Cristiano Congiu, a member of the anti-drug and security squad at the Italian embassy, was involved in an altercation on a narrow village street. He allegedly fired his pistol and wounded a youth, aged 18 or 19. Villagers then fired their own weapons and killed Congiu.
(AP, 6/4/11)
2011 Jun 3, The US Treasury reached an agreement to sell the rest of its holdings in Chrysler to Italy’s Fiat.
(Econ, 6/11/11, p.77)
2011 Jun 4, Italy-based Fiat offered $125 million to buy the Canadian government's stake in Chrysler Group LLC as it moved swiftly to strengthen its control of the US automaker.
(Reuters, 6/4/11)
2011 Jun 11, Pop star Lady Gaga performed at a large gay pride rally at Rome’s Circus Maximus. She also used the appearance to speak out in favor of full equality for gay men and lesbians, and to denounce countries that show intolerance to those who are different.
(AP, 6/11/11)(AFP, 6/11/11)
2011 Jun 13, Italian voters turned out in large numbers to defeat laws passed by Premier Berlusconi’s government to revive nuclear energy, privatize the water supply and help him avoid prosecution.
(SFC, 6/14/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 17, Italy signed an agreement with Libyan rebels meant to stem a stream of migrants fleeing unrest, prompting concerns at the UN refugee agency that people seeking asylum won't have proper protection.
(AP, 6/17/11)
2011 Jun 24, European Union leaders appointed Italy's Mario Draghi as the next president of the European Central Bank, a move that gives investors much-needed certainty over who will lead the institution in its pivotal role in the fight against the crippling debt crisis.
(AP, 6/24/11)
2011 Jun 30, The Italian government approved a $68 billion austerity sweep. The 3-year plan aimed to bring the government’s 3.9% budget deficit to near balance by 2014.
(SFC, 7/1/11, p.A2)
2011 Jul 1, In Italy a horse smashed into a barrier and died during training for a famed race around Sienna’s cobblestone piazza, leading to calls from animal rights groups for a suspension of the risky bareback contest. Some 50 horses have died since 1970.
(AP, 7/2/11)
2011 Jul 3, In Italy some 45 police and carabinieri officers were injured west of Turin as demonstrators protested construction of a high-speed rail linking Italy to France. At least five people were arrested.
(AP, 7/3/11)
2011 Jul 6, In Italy a military court in Verona convicted 9 former Nazi soldiers in the deaths of over 140 civilians in massacres in the Apennine mountains in the spring of 1944. The defendants were sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 7/7/11, p.A2)
2011 Jul 9, In Italy a Milan court ordered Fininivest, one of PM Berlusconi’s family holding companies, to pay $798 million as compensation for corrupt activities in a takeover battle.
(SSFC, 7/10/11, p.A6)
2011 Jul 12, In Italy Giovanni Strangio, the ringleader of a gangland style massacre of six people in Germany, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the Aug 15, 2007, attack that highlighted the international reach of Italy's Calabrian mafia. He was one of eight people convicted and given Italy's stiffest sentence for their roles in the violent feud that culminated in Duisburg. Three other people were convicted and sentenced to terms ranging from nine to 12 years, while three more were acquitted.
(AP, 7/12/11)
2011 Jul 15, Italy passed a $99 billion austerity package. The nation’s debt was the highest in the Eurozone at nearly 120% of GDP. The euro70 billion package did not entail any significant reduction in the wages, perks and privileges of the notoriously bloated, handsomely paid political elite, despite repeated promises such cuts would be carried out.
(SFC, 7/16/11, p.A2)(AP, 7/21/11)
2011 Jul 24, Pirates seized the Rbd Anema e Core, an Italian tanker with a crew of 23, off Benin in the Gulf of Guinea.
(AFP, 7/24/11)
2011 Aug 1, Italian officials said 25 African migrants trying to reach Italy from Libya died in the hold of a rickety boat so packed with people that the migrants could not get out as they struggled to breathe.
(AP, 8/1/11)
2011 Aug 2, Italy recalled its ambassador to Syria to protest the repression of anti-government protests and urged other European nations to do the same.
(AP, 8/2/11)
2011 Aug 2, A boat carrying 330 migrants from Libya arrived late in the day on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a day after officials found 25 people choked to death in the engine room of another Libyan refugee boat.
(AFP, 8/3/11)
2011 Aug 10, In Italy undercover police donned togas, capes and sandals to stop a turf battle among Italians who impersonate gladiators outside the Colosseum and other landmarks in Rome and make money by posing for camera carrying tourists.
(AP, 8/13/11)
2011 Aug 12, The Italian government approved $65 billion in additional emergency austerity measures over the next two years in an effort to balance the budget by 2013. Tax hikes and cuts to local government were included.
(SFC, 8/13/11, p.A2)
2011 Aug, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain introduced bans to prevent the short selling of financial stocks. The EU banned naked shorting of shares in October, effective in Nov, 2012.
(Econ, 10/22/11, p.88)
2011 Sep 1, Italian police arrested businessman Giampaolo Tarantini and his wife Angela Devenuto on charges of allegedly extorting money from Premier Silvio Berlusconi to ensure his cooperation in a probe over recruiting prostitutes to attend wild parties at Berlusconi's home. Tarantini has admitted he paid a high-end prostitute, Patrizia D'Addario, and other women to attend parties at Berlusconi's residences, but insisted the premier didn't know. Between September 2008 and May 2009 Tarantini recruited women of "young age, slender frame," and told them what to wear and how to behave at the parties.
(AP, 9/1/11)(AP, 9/16/11)
2011 Sep 4, Italian police detained a man who confessed to knocking two chunks of marble off a statue in Rome's famed Piazza Navona and of trying to damage the nearby Trevi Fountain a day earlier.
(AP, 9/5/11)
2011 Sep 12, In Italy an explosion at a fireworks factory in Arpino killed 6 people.
(SFC, 9/13/11, p.A2)
2011 Sep 26, Italian oil giant ENI said it has resumed oil production in Libya more than six months after civil unrest brought oil and gas output in the country to a near standstill.
(AFP, 9/26/11)
2011 Oct 2, In Italy Allison Owens (23), of Columbus, Ohio, was killed by a car while jogging in Tuscany. Her body was found on Oct 5. The driver of a car turned himself in on Oct 6 after his vehicle was filmed on roadside anti-speeding cameras.
(AP, 10/5/11)(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Oct 3, An Italian appeals court dramatically overturned the conviction of Amanda Knox, an American student, of sexually assaulting and brutally slaying her British roommate. The family of victim Meredith Kercher (21) appeared overwhelmed at the ruling, saying they were shocked and bewildered by the stunning reversal of the 2009 decision. Knox’s one-time boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, was also released.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 10, Pirates of Somalia attacked the Italian cargo ship Montecristo carrying a crew of 23. US and British Navy ships freed the ship and 11 pirates were apprehended.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 11, Italy’s defense minister said armed forces can be deployed on Italian ships sailing in dangerous waters and that ship owners requesting the service would need to reimburse the ministry.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 11, Two Italians, who say they were sexually abused by priests, completed a 19-day, 340-mile (550-km) protest march to the Vatican and tried unsuccessfully to obtain an audience with the pope.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 15, In Italy hooded rioters in Rome hijacked a peaceful protest and smashed bank and store windows, tore up sidewalks and torched vehicles. Damages were estimated to be at least euro1 million ($1.4 million).
(AP, 10/16/11)
2011 Oct 17, In Italy Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a US Catholic priest who supports ordination for women, was detained by police after marching to the Vatican to press the Holy See to lift its ban on women priests.
(AP, 10/17/11)
2011 Oct 18, A Milan court refused to indict Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi in a tax fraud case involving his Mediaset media company. The court, however, indicted Berlusconi's eldest son, Pier Silvio Berlusconi, Mediaset chairman Fedele Confalonieri and nine other defendants.
(AP, 10/18/11)
2011 Oct 20, Italian energy giant ENI announced a giant natural gas discovery off the coast of Mozambique, which could be the largest in company's history.
(AFP, 10/20/11)
2011 Oct 21, In Italy renowned international law expert Antonio Cassese (b.1937) , died after a long battle with cancer. He had served as first president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal (1993-197) and later as president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 23, In Algeria gunmen kidnapped three aid workers, two Spaniards and an Italian, from the Rabuni refugee camp near Tindouf, injuring one of the hostages and a local guard in the late night attack. Security sources in Nouakchott and Bamako later said those responsible belonged to a Sahrawi wing of the north African Al-Qaeda branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM). The group later demanded 30 million euros ($39 million) to free the 3 aid workers held in northern Mali. Spaniards Enric Gonyalons and Ainhoa Fernandez del Rincon and Italian Rossella Urru were released on July 18, 2012, in exchange for three Islamists.
(AP, 10/23/11)(AFP, 12/5/11)(AFP, 3/3/12)(AP, 7/19/12)
2011 Oct 23, In Malaysia Italian rider Marco Simoncelli (24) died after crashing and being hit by two other riders at the Sepang MotoGP motorcycle race. This raised the number of recorded deaths in MotoGP to 47 since it was founded in 1949.
(AP, 10/23/11)
2011 Oct 27, Italian soldiers and civilian rescue workers battled knee-deep mud as they searched for survivors after flash floods and mudslides inundated picturesque villages around coastal areas of Liguria and Tuscany. At least 9 people died and 6 others were missing.
(AP, 10/27/11)
2011 Oct 27, Pope Benedict XVI joined Buddhist monks, Islamic scholars, Yoruba leaders and a handful of agnostics in Assisi making a communal call for peace, insisting that religion must never be used as a pretext for war or terrorism. The event commemorated the 25th anniversary of a daylong prayer for peace here called by Pope John Paul II in 1986.
(AP, 10/27/11)
2011 Nov 5, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi said improper construction in flood plains was partly to blame for devastating floods that have killed at least 6 people in the port city of Genoa. Tens of thousands of opposition activists demonstrated in Rome for the ouster of Berlusconi.
(AP, 11/5/11)(SSFC, 11/6/11, p.A4)
2011 Nov 8, Italy’s PM Berlusconi offered a conditional resignation after he failed to reach a parliamentary majority in a key vote. He said he would step down if Parliament passes an austerity package demanded by the EU.
(SFC, 11/9/11, p.A3)
2011 Nov 10, In Italy Pres. Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party made it clear that it would back an emergency government of national unity led by a nonpolitician, which would require a majority in Parliament.
(SFC, 11/11/11, p.A3)
2011 Nov 11, Italy sped a package of reforms toward approval and prepared to hand its dysfunctional government over to a technocrat, who Europe hopes can save the country from going broke. Financial markets around the world rallied in relief. Mario Monti, a distinguished economist, was expected to succeed PM Berlusconi.
(AP, 11/11/11)
2011 Nov 12, Italy’s PM Berlusconi resigned after lawmakers rushed through a budget bill seen as the first step toward winning back investor confidence.
(SSFC, 11/13/11, p.A8)
2011 Nov 13, Italy’s Pres. Giorgio Napolitano asked Mario Monti, a former European commissioner, to become prime minister.
(Econ, 11/19/11, p.53)
2011 Nov 16, Italy’s new premier Mario Monti (68) formed a new government of bankers, diplomats and business executives.
(SFC, 11/17/11, p.A5)
2011 Nov 17, In Italy anti-austerity protesters clashed with riot police as PM Mario Monti appealed to Italians to accept sacrifices to save their country from bankruptcy.
(SFC, 11/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Nov 30, In Italy a judge, politician and police official were among 10 people detained in a crackdown on the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate in Milan and southern Reggio Calabria.
(AP, 11/30/11)
2011 Nov, Maria Assunta (94) left a $13 million fortune to her beloved kitty Tommaso when she died two weeks ago. The feline's newfound riches include cash, as well as properties in Rome, Milan and land in Calabria.
(ABCNews, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 1, Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) said corruption is hampering efforts to tackle the eurozone debt crisis, as Greece (80) and Italy (69) scored badly in a list of nations seen to be the most sleaze-ridden. Nepal ranked 154th out of 183 countries. New Zealand ranked the cleanest, while the US ranked 24th. Afghanistan ranked 180.
(AFP, 12/1/11)(cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/)(AFP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 6, In Italy an emergency budget under new PM Mario Monti came into force.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.57)
2011 Dec 7, Italian police captured Michele Zagaria, one of the country’s most-wanted fugitive mobsters, arresting the last major boss of the Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan Camorra, one of Italy's bloodiest mafia clans.
(AP, 12/7/11)
2011 Dec 8, German authorities said a letter bomb has been intercepted by Deutsche Bank employees intended to chief executive Josef Ackerman. They it was apparently sent by an Italian anarchist organization.
(SFC, 12/9/11, p.A4)
2011 Dec 9, In Italy a letter bomb exploded at an office of the tax collection agency, Equitalia, slightly wounding the organization's director. The Italian group, known as the "Informal Anarchist Federation" claimed responsibility for package bombs sent to three Rome embassies around Christmas last year. A week later another bomb was intercepted at Equitalia.
(AP, 12/9/11)(Econ, 1/7/12, p.45)
2011 Dec 14, Italian far-right author Gianluca Casseri (50) shot dead two Senegalese men and wounded three others before killing himself in a daylight shooting spree in Florence that prompted outpourings of grief.
(AFP, 12/14/11)
2011 Dec 22, Italy’s Senate voted to give final approval to a $40 billion austerity and growth package designed to eliminate its budget deficit by 2013.
(SFC, 12/23/11, p.A2)
2011 Dec 24, In southern Italy Ettore Bruscella (77) shot and killed three members of a family who owned a laundromat, apparently incensed by a years-long battle over the smoke and fumes emitted by the washing machines in the tiny town of Genzano Di Lucania.
(AP, 12/24/11)
2011 Dec 29, Italian PM Mario Monti announced a series of measures designed to relaunch the country’s struggling economy.
(SFC, 12/30/11, p.A7)
2011 Italian author Elena Ferrante (pseudonym) published “My Brilliant Friend," the first of her four “Neapolitan Novels." The 4th volume “The Story of the Lost Child" was published in English in 2015.
(Econ, 8/29/15, p.66)
2011 David Gilmore authored “The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples."
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.89)
2011 Peter Robb authored “Street Fight in Naples: A City’s Unseen History."
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.87)
2012 Jan 13, The cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off the tiny island of Giglio, off the coast of Tuscany, with more than 4,200 people aboard. Captain Francesco Schettino (52) was soon detained on charges of manslaughter. The final death toll was put at 30 dead and 2 missing. The last missing person was discovered on Nov 3, 2014, by workers dismantling the ship in Genoa.
(AP, 1/14/12)(AP, 1/15/12)(SFC, 1/16/12, p.A3)(AP, 1/17/12)(SFC, 3/23/12, p.A2)(AP, 11/3/14)
2012 Jan 27, In Italy Costa Cruises, the Italian operator of the Costa Concordia luxury liner, offered a settlement of some $14,000 to each uninjured passenger in the Jan 13 shipwreck. The Carnival Corp. unit also offered reimbursement of an estimated $4,000. A class-action suit was expected to seek $165,000 per passenger.
(SFC, 1/27/12, p.A4)
2012 Jan 27, Fitch ratings downgraded the debt of Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain even as European finance chiefs gathering in Davos sought to reassure global business leaders that Europe is on track to solve its debt crises.
(SFC, 1/27/12, p.A4)
2012 Jan 29, In Italy Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (93), a past president (1992-1999) who helped write Italy’s post-war constitution, died. He was a founding member of the former Christian Democrats.
(AP, 1/29/12)
2012 Feb 9, Ecuador's foreign minister said police in Italy found nearly 90 pounds (40 kilos) of cocaine last month in diplomatic mail sent to the Mediterranean country and two suspects have been arrested. The crates had been inspected by police dogs before leaving Ecuador, but had traveled to Italy through a third country.
(AP, 2/9/12)
2012 Feb 14, Italian prosecutors asked the country's highest criminal court to reinstate the murder convictions of American Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend in the brutal slaying of a British student.
(AP, 2/14/12)
2012 Feb 15, Guards on an Italian cargo ship, the Enrica Lexie, fired at an Indian fishing boat off Kerala state that it mistook for a pirate vessel, killing two fishermen. Indian police took two Italians into custody on Feb 19. Rome warned that the two were soldiers who enjoyed immunity. The 2 Italian marines were granted conditional bail on May 30.
(AP, 2/16/12)(AFP, 2/19/12)(AFP, 5/30/12)
2012 Feb 17, Swiss authorities said they have confiscated $6 trillion in counterfeit US bonds at the request of Italian prosecutors. In Italy eight people were arrested across the country and placed under investigation for fraud and other crimes. The bonds, carrying the false date of issue of 1934, had been transported in 2007 from Hong Kong to Zurich, where they were transferred to a Swiss trust.
(AP, 2/17/12)
2012 Feb 25, In Italy a Milan court ended a corruption trial against Silvio Berlusconi, ruling that the statute of limitations had run out on the case and essentially handing Italy's former premier another victory in a long string of judicial woes he has faced. He was accused of paying a British lawyer David Mills $600,000 to lie during two 1990s trials to shield the politician and his Fininvest holding company from charges related to his business dealings.
(AP, 2/25/12)
2012 Feb 27, The Italian cruise ship Costa Allegra, from the same fleet as the tragedy-struck Costa Concordia, went adrift off the Seychelles with more than 1,000 people on board following a fire. A French fishing ship soon began towing the Allegra to the Seychelles. The ship reached the Seychelles on March 1 with all passengers and crew safe.
(AFP, 2/27/12)(AFP, 2/28/12)
2012 Mar 8, In Nigeria a British-Nigerian operation involving 100 troops, military trucks and a helicopter attempted to rescue a pair of British and Italian hostages. At least two hostage-takers were killed in the operation in Sokoto. Italian engineer Franco Lamolinara (48) and his British colleague Chris McManus (28) were shot by their captors. Italy’s PM Monti was only informed by Britain’s PM Cameron once the operation was under way. The two hostages were kidnapped by heavily armed men who stormed their apartment in Kebbi state in May 2011. Nigerian authorities detained five Islamist militants suspected of involvement in the kidnapping.
(AFP, 3/9/12)(AP, 3/9/12)Reuters, 3/10/12)
2012 Mar 28, Italy seized more than 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of assets controlled by the Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi's family including stakes in top companies, land and a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
(AFP, 3/29/12)
2012 Apr 5, In Italy Umberto Bossi (70), the firebrand founder of a populist anti-immigrant party, whose crucial support kept Silvio Berlusconi in power in three governments, resigned as Northern League secretary amid a widening corruption scandal over party funds.
(AP, 4/5/12)
2012 Apr 23, Italian police arrested an Italian man, identified as Andrea Campione (28), in a crackdown in several Italian cities on an Islamic extremist network suspected of supporting international terrorism.
(AP, 4/23/12)
2012 Apr 24, In London Gianfranco Techegne (49) was arrested at the Broadway Post Office by detectives from Scotland Yard's extradition unit. He has been wanted by Italian police since 1982 in connection with the armed robbery of a car rental agency in Naples during which a young police officer was fatally wounded.
(AP, 4/28/12)
2012 May 3, The Italian government said citizens could now click on a government website and indicate where state funds are being wasted.
(SFC, 5/4/12, p.A2)
2012 May 5, In northern Italy a bus bringing retired police officers to a national convention veered off a highway and plunged into a canal, killing at least five people.
(AP, 5/5/12)
2012 May 11, In Italy an anti-nuclear anarchist group, the Informal Anarchist Federation's Olga unit, that previously targeted the tax collection agency claimed responsibility for shooting and wounding the chief executive of a nuclear engineering firm earlier in the week. Roberto Adinolfi was shot in the leg on may 7 near his Genoa home by an unknown masked gunman.
(AP, 5/11/12)
2012 May 19, In southern Italy a bomb exploded outside a vocational school in Brindisi, named after a slain anti-Mafia prosecutor, as students arrived for class, killing one girl (16) and wounding several other classmates. On June 6 police arrested Giovanni Vantaggioto (68), a fuel vendor on suspicion of multiple homicide.
(AP, 5/19/12)(SFC, 6/8/12, p.A5)
2012 May 20, In northeast Italy a 6.0 earthquake rattled the region around Bologna, killing at least 7 people, collapsing factories and sending residents running out into the streets. A report in 2014 linked this and a May 29 earthquake to high-pressure water pumped by Padana Energia into the nearby Cavone oilfield in 2011 to squeeze out more oil.
(AP, 5/20/12)(Reuters, 5/20/12)(SFC, 5/22/12, p.A4)
2012 May 29, In northern Italy a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook the region around Bologna, killing at least 17 people.
(AP, 5/29/12)(AP, 5/30/12)
2012 Jun 16, In Italy tens of thousands of workers demonstrated in Rome to protest pension cuts, tax hikes and labor reforms imposed by the government.
(SSFC, 6/17/12, p.A4)
2012 Jul 3, In Italy Sergio Pininfarina (85), former head of Pininfarina SpA, died overnight in Turin. The family company was known for its designs of sleek Ferraris and other cars.
(AP, 7/3/12)
2012 Jul 9, A spokeswoman for Italian oil major Eni SpA said in a statement that repair work was ongoing on its Nembe-Obama pipeline and blamed sabotage for the spill from one of its pipelines in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta.
(AP, 7/9/12)
2012 Jul 14, An Italian Alpine rescue team military official said the bodies of a Polish woman and Spanish man were found 4,400 meters (14,436 feet) up on the Mont Blanc Dome du Gouter peak on the Italian-French border after spending more than 24 hours in a snow hole.
(AP, 7/15/12)
2012 Jul 23, Spain's market regulator says it has temporarily banned short-selling of shares on its stock indexes owing to volatility in Spanish and European markets. It noted that Italy took similar steps today.
(AP, 7/23/12)
2012 Jul 24, Mayors from across Italy, holding up flags and wearing their tricolor sashes, demonstrated in front of the Italian Senate against spending cuts planned by the government.
(AP, 7/24/12)
2012 Aug 1, Italian oil company Eni SpA said it discovered more natural gas off the coast of Mozambique, expanding the yield of a major field off the southeast African nation that's the company's largest find.
(AP, 8/1/12)
2012 Aug 7, In Italy official government statistics showed that the economy contracted by 0.7 percent in the second quarter compared with the previous three months, shrinking for the fourth quarter in a row.
(AP, 8/7/12)
2012 Aug 10, The Italian government announced a shake-up of the judiciary aimed at reducing inefficiency.
(Econ, 8/18/12, p.50)
2012 Aug 10, Carlo Rambaldi (86), a special effects master and 3-time Oscar winner, died in southern Italy. His Oscars were won for special effects in “King Kong" (1976), “Alien" (1979), and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982).
(SFC, 8/11/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 11, Italian police raided an underground passageway in Rome, built during the era of Benito Mussolini, and seized a sprawling marijuana farm with a crop valued at an estimated $3.7 million.
(SFC, 8/15/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 12, In Italy Hundreds of Wind Jet airline passengers became stranded due to the failure of Alitalia's deal to purchase the Sicily-based low-cost carrier.
(AP, 8/12/12)
2012 Aug 16, In Italy 6 of 10 horses crashed during the latest Palio bareback horse race in Siena. One horse broke a front leg. Some 50 horses have died during the race since 1970.
(SFC, 8/18/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 23, In Italy a gunman shot and killed Gaetano Marino (48), a boss from the Neapolitan Camorra, clad in a swimsuit as he walked from a beach to join his family at a hotel in a resort town south of Rome. Marino had lost both hands in an explosion while planting a bomb in the 1990s.
(AP, 8/24/12).
2012 Sep 7, Italian and NATO rescue crews searched the waters off the small Mediterranean island of Lampedusa for survivors of an apparently sunken migrant boat after some of the 56 rescued passengers reported that dozens more were missing. One body was recovered.
(AP, 9/7/12)
2012 Sep 19, Italy’s Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 23 Americans for the 2003 abduction of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hasan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, in Milan.
(SFC, 9/20/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 12, Italy’s top court sided with doctors who blamed a non-cancerous brain tumor in businessman Innocenzo Marcolini on electro-magnetic radiation from his cell phone.
www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/19/us-italy-phones-idUSBRE89I0V320121019)
2012 Oct 26, In Italy a Milan court sentenced former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, to four years in prison and barred him from public office for five years after convicting him in a decade-old case involving the purchase of TV rights of U.S. films for his media empire.
(AP, 10/27/12)
2012 Oct 31, Italian architect Gae Aulenti (84) died at her home in Milan. Her work included the 1986 makeover of a Parisian train station into the Musee D’Orsay as well as the 2003 makeover of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.
(SSFC, 11/4/12, p.C12)
2012 Nov 24, In Italy a car was struck by a train near the southern city of Cosenza. 6 Romanian farm workers were killed.
(SSFC, 11/25/12, p.A6)
2012 Nov 25, Italians voted in a primary for a center-left candidate to run in spring general elections that will in large part determine how Italy's tries to fix its troubled finances and emerge from a grinding recession. The race is expected to come down to a faceoff between Pier Luigi Bersani (61), the leader of the main center-left Democratic Party, and challenger Matteo Renzi (37), the mayor of Florence.
(AP, 11/25/12)
2012 Nov 26, An Italian court ordered the seizure of the Ilva steel plant in Taranto, claiming pollutants from the plant, the largest in Europe, have driven up cancer in the area. Workers the next day stormed the locked gates. 20,000 jobs were at stake.
(SFC, 11/28/12, p.A2)
2012 Dec 2, In Italy somebody broke into the estate of Gianfranco Soldera in tuscany and emptied the massive oak casks of 62,600 liters of his 2007-2012 Sangiovese wine.
(Econ, 12/8/12, p.70)
2012 Dec 8, Itallian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi confirmed that he's running to be premier again for a fourth term.
(AP, 12/8/12)
2012 Dec 17, Italy's government said an Italian technician and two other employees at a Syrian steel plant near Latakia have been kidnapped.
(AP, 12/17/12)
2012 Dec 17, A Milan court fined Moroccan woman Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby, for failing to appear as a witness twice at the former premier's trial. It ordered her to testify in January. She is at the center of Silvio Berlusconi's sex-for-hire scandal €500 ($650).
(AP, 12/17/12)
2012 Dec 20, A Thai court ordered the extradition of Vito Roberto Palazzolo (65), a fugitive Italian banker found guilty of laundering money for some of Italy's top mobsters through New York pizzerias from 1975-1984. Palazzolo has written about his legal woes and getting swept up in the Pizza Connection probe on his website, www.vrpalazzolo.com.
(AP, 12/20/12)
2012 Dec 21, Italy’s PM Mario Monti resigned following Parliament’s confidence vote on the 2013 budget. Monti had said he would step down after the budget was passed.
(SFC, 12/22/12, p.A5)
2012 Dec 30, Rita Levi Montalcini (b1909), Italian scientist and Nobel Prize winner, died. She shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986 with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.
(Econ, 1/5/13, p.74)
2012 Jennifer Clark authored “Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Power of a Dynasty."
(Econ, 1/28/12, p.80)
2012 Bill Emmott authored “Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why Italy Must Conquer Its Demons to Face the Future." This was an updated English version of his “Forza Italia" (2010).
(Econ, 7/7/12, p.75)
2012 Robert Hughes authored “Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History."
(SSFC, 3/4/12, p.F5)
2012 In Italy the Fdi (Brothers of Italy) originated as a splinter party from the right of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative alliance.
(Econ., 12/12/20, p.55)
2012 In Italy the northern city of Parma elected Federico Pizzarotti as mayor, giving the M5S its first big electoral success.
(Econ, 10/22/16, p.46)
2012 Italian PM Mario Monti liberalized Sunday trading, despite pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and unions who said the country needed to keep its traditional day of rest. In 2018 Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio the new government will introduce a ban on Sunday shopping in large commercial centers before the end of the year as it seeks to defend family traditions.
(Reuters, 9/9/18)
2012 Italy introduce a new tax on boat ownership and people leasing boats over 10 meters. Italian tax evasion was estimated at about 18% of GDP.
(Econ, 8/25/12, p.43)
2013 Jan 4, A small plane disappeared off the Venezuelan coast with six people aboard, including Vittorio Missoni (58), a top executive in Italy's Missoni fashion house. Wreckage of the plane was found in June.
(AP, 1/5/13)(AP, 6/27/13)
2013 Jan 4, Six Russians were killed and two seriously injured when the snowmobile and sled they were riding veered off an Italian Alpine ski slope at night, slammed into a barrier and flew through the air into a ravine.
(AP, 1/5/13)
2013 Jan 7, In Italy former Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced a deal with the Northern League, his fractious coalition partner in three governments, to jointly run in Italy's election next month.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 8, A European court ruled that Italy's woefully overcrowded prisons violate the basic rights of inmates, fined the government €100,000 ($131,000) and ordered it to make changes within a year. The finding came three years after Italy's government recognized the problem itself but failed to pass legislation designed to correct it.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Feb 1, In Italy a Milan appeals court vacated acquittals for a former CIA station chief and two other Americans, and instead convicted them in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The court sentenced former CIA Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli to seven years, and handed sentences of six years each to Americans Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando. All three were tried in absentia at both levels.
(AP, 2/1/13)
2013 Feb 12, A Milan appeals court convicted two former Italian spy chiefs for their role in the kidnapping of a terror suspect as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The court sentenced Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italian military intelligence, to 10 years, and Marco Mancini, a former deputy and head of counterintelligence, to nine. Three other Italian agents also were convicted and handed six-year sentences. All the convictions can be appealed.
(AP, 2/12/13)
2013 Feb 16, A court in L'Aquila, Italy, convicted four people in the collapse of a university dormitory during the 2009 earthquake in that Apennine mountain town. Eight students died in the collapse during the powerful quake, which struck in the pre-dawn hours of April 6, 2009.
(AP, 2/16/13)
2013 Feb 16, Italian sailor Giovanni Soldini led an 8-member team of the Maserati to a record 47-day trip from NYC around Cape Horn to San Francisco, beating a 1998 monohull record.
(SSFC, 2/17/13, p.A12)
2013 Feb 24, Italy began 2 days of parliamentary elections.
(AP, 2/24/13)
2013 Feb 25, Italians voted for a second day in a national election. Italy faced political paralysis as near-complete results in crucial national elections showed no clear winner and raised the possibility of a hung parliament. Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) won no less than 163 of 945 elected members.
(AP, 2/25/13)(Econ, 3/2/13, p.50)
2013 Mar 7, A Milan court convicted former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi of breach of confidentiality for the illegal publication of wiretapped conversations related to a failed bank takeover in a newspaper owned by his media empire. His brother, Paolo Berlusconi, was convicted of the same charge and sentenced to two years and three months.
(AP, 3/7/13)
2013 Mar 18, India's Supreme Court indefinitely extended its order barring the Italian ambassador from leaving the country and rejected his explanation of his country's refusal to return two Italian marines charged with killing two Indian fishermen.
(AP, 3/18/13)
2013 Mar 22, Italy's Pres. Giorgio Napolitano tapped center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani to form a new government following national elections that produced no clear winner.
(AP, 3/22/13)
2013 Mar 22, Italy returned Marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone to India to face murder charges in the shooting deaths of two fishermen, reversing a decision that escalated diplomatic tensions.
(AP, 3/22/13)
2013 Mar 26, Italy's foreign minister Giulio Terzi resigned to protest his government's decision to send two marines back to India to face trial in the deaths of two fishermen.
(AP, 3/26/13)
2013 Mar 26, Italy's highest criminal court overturned the murder acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the slaying of British roommate Meredith Kercher and ordered a new trial.
(AP, 3/26/13)
2013 Mar 30, Italy’s Pres. Giorgio Napolitano named 10 outside experts to try to help end political gridlock that has prevented the formation of a government more than a month after inconclusive national elections.
(SSFC, 3/31/13, p.A5)
2013 Apr 3, Italy's anti-Mafia investigators said they have seized a record €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) in cash and property from Vito Nicastri (57) for tax fraud. The Sicilian alternative energy entrepreneur was alleged to have close ties to the Mafia.
(AP, 4/3/13)
2013 Apr 5, Italy's Pres. Giorgio Napolitano pardoned Joseph Romano, a US Air Force colonel, convicted in absentia by Italian courts in the CIA-conducted abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street. He hoped the move would keep American-Italian relations strong, especially on security matters.
(AP, 4/5/13)
2013 Apr 9, A judge in Tuscany fined Italian cruise line Costa Crociere SpA 1 million euros in administrative sanctions for the 2012 wreckage of the Concordia cruise ship that killed 32 people.
(AP, 4/10/13)
2013 Apr 15, The annual Goldman Environmental Prize was awarded to six activists for their efforts to protect the world ecosystem. They included Nohra Padilla (50) of Colombia, who began organizing waste pickers in Bogota in 1990 into the Bogota Recyclers’ Assoc.; Rossano Ercolini (57) of Italy for setting up a trash collection and conservation system; Kimberly Wasserman (36) of Chicago her grassroots campaign to close polluting coal-fired power plants; Aleta Baun (50) of Indonesia for organizing villages on west Timor against mining companies clearing forests for marble; Azzam Alwash (54) of Iraq for his efforts to restore Mesopotamian marshland; Jonathan Deal of South Africa for his efforts against hydraulic fracturing in Karoo.
(SFC, 4/15/13, p.A10)
2013 Apr 20, Italy's Parliament re-elected Giorgio Napolitano to an unprecedented second term as president, after party leaders persuaded the 87-year-old to serve again in hopes of easing the hostility that has thwarted formation of a new government.
(AP, 4/20/13)
2013 Apr 24, Italy’s Pres. Giorgio Napolitano nominated Enrico Letta, the deputy head of the Democratic Party, as prime minister.
(SFC, 4/25/13, p.A3)
2013 Apr 27, Italy’s center-left leader Enrico Letta (46) forged a new government in a coalition with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives, an unusual alliance of bitter rivals that broke a two-month political stalemate from inconclusive elections.
(AP, 4/27/13)
2013 Apr 28, In Italy a gunman shot and wounded two policemen in a crowded square outside the premier's office in Rome. The man "wanted to shoot politicians, but given that he couldn't reach any, he shot the Carabinieri" police at the edge of Chigi Square.
(AP, 4/28/13)
2013 Apr 30, Italy’s hybrid center-left and center-right government won its second vote of confidence. Premier Enrico Letta supported his choice of Cecile Kyenge (48), a black woman, to be minister of integration.
(AP, 5/1/13)
2013 May 6, Giulio Andreotti (b.1919), Italy's former seven-time premier and a symbol of post-war Italy, died at his home in Rome.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 7, In Italy a cargo ship slammed into a control tower late at night in the port of Genoa, toppling it into the harbor and leaving at least 7people dead. 2 people remained unaccounted for.
(AP, 5/8/13)(AP, 5/8/13)
2013 May 8, In Italy former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison sentence were upheld on the first appeal.
(AP, 5/8/13)
2013 May 9, In northern Italy Ottavio Missoni (b.1921), the patriarch of the iconic fashion brand of zigzag-patterned knitwear, died.
(AP, 5/9/13)
2013 May 11, In northern Italy thousands of supporters of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi rallied in Brescia to protest the media mogul's recent conviction by a Milan appeals court for tax fraud.
(AP, 5/11/13)
2013 May 11, In Italy an illegal immigrant from Ghana went on a rampage with a pickaxe in Milan at dawn, killing a passerby and wounding four others in an apparently random attack. Mada Kabobo (21) was jailed while he is investigated for murder.
(AP, 5/11/13)
2013 May 15, The Arctic Council, meeting in Sweden, agreed to expand membership and provide observer status to 6 new nations including China, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
(SFC, 5/16/13, p.A4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Council)
2013 May 18, A union of Italian metal workers led thousands of people in a march through the heart of Rome to press the new government for measures to spur job creation.
(AP, 5/18/13)
2013 Jun 1, Italy’s health minister confirmed that 3 people were being treated in Tuscany for a new respiratory virus related to SARS. The patients included a man recently back from a visit to Jordan, a related child and a work colleague.
(SSFC, 6/2/13, p.A6)
2013 Jun 5, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Germany and Italy will join the United States as "lead nations" in regions of Afghanistan after NATO transitions into a noncombat mission there after 2014.
(AP, 6/5/13)
2013 Jun 19, In Italy a Milan court convicted the designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of tax evasion. They were found guilty of failing to declare 200 million euros ($268 million) through a Luxembourg company to authorities and given a one year and eight months suspended jail sentence. They were also ordered to pay a penalty of 500,000 euros (about $670,000) to tax authorities.
(AP, 6/19/13)
2013 Jun 24, In Italy former premier Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from politics for life for paying an underage prostitute for sex during infamous "bunga bunga" parties and forcing public officials to cover it up. He still had two levels of appeal.
(AP, 6/25/13)
2013 Jun 28, Vatican official Monsignor Nunzio Scarano and two others were arrested by Italian police for allegedly trying to illegally bring 20 million euros ($26 million) in cash into the country from Switzerland with a private jet.
(AP, 6/28/13)(SFC, 6/29/13, p.A3)
2013 Jun 29, Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack (95) died in the Adriatic Sea town of Trieste. She had explained her research on the stars in plain language for the public and championed civil rights.
(AP, 6/29/13)
2013 Jul 6, In Colombia Roberto Pannunzi, a suspected Italian mafia boss, was arrested and deported to Italy. He was described as Europe's most wanted drug trafficker and the world's biggest cocaine importer.
(Reuters, 7/6/13)
2013 Jul 12, Italian police conducted raids on companies across the country linked to the construction of Venice's flood barrier. They arrested 7 people, suspected of rigging lucrative contracts for the multi-billion euro Moses Project.
(Reuters, 7/12/13)
2013 Jul 13, Roberto Calderoli, vice president of Italy's Senate, said at a political rally in the northern town of Treviglio, "I love animals - bears and wolves, as everyone knows - but when I see the pictures of Kyenge I cannot but think of, even if I'm not saying she is one, the features of an orangutan." Cecile Kyenge, an Italian citizen born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been the target of repeated racial slurs since her appointment as integration minister in April.
(Reuters, 7/14/13)
2013 Jul 17, Robert Seldon Lady (59), a former CIA base chief convicted in the 2003 abduction of a terror suspect from an Italian street, was detained in Panama after Italy requested his arrest in one of the most notorious episodes of the US program known as extraordinary rendition. After barely a day in detention, he was put on a plane to the US by the Panamanian government.
(AP, 7/18/13)(AP, 7/19/13)
2013 Jul 19, In Italy a Milan court convicted three of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's former associates of procuring aspiring show girls willing to prostitute themselves during the media mogul's infamous "bunga bunga" parties.
(AP, 7/19/13)
2013 Jul 20, An Italian court convicted five employees of an Italian cruise company over the Jan, 2012, Costa Concordia shipwreck that killed 32 crew and passengers, handing down a maximum sentence of two years and 10 months reached in plea bargains. The ship's captain was denied a plea bargain and was being tried separately.
(AP, 7/20/13)
2013 Jul 25, The Venice Film Festival marked its 70th edition with films starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts adrift in space, Scarlett Johansson as a seductive alien roaming the Scottish countryside and Judi Dench as a single Roman Catholic woman searching for a son she was forced to give up decades before.
(AP, 7/25/13)
2013 Jul 25, In central Italy at least one person was killed and 3 seriously injured after a fireworks factory exploded in Picciano.
(Reuters, 7/25/13)
2013 Jul 26, Italian police said a mafia clan in Calabria staged hundreds of fake car crashes every year to get millions of euros in insurance payouts to buy drugs and weapons.
(AP, 7/26/13)
2013 Jul 26, Italy's coastguard helped rescue 22 migrants and coordinated a search for missing people after receiving a distress call from a boat that ran into difficulties off the coast of Libya. 31 people were reported still missing on July 28.
(Reuters, 7/26/13)(Reuters, 7/28/13)
2013 Jul 28, An Italian tour bus plowed through cars, crashed through the side wall of a highway bridge and plunged into a ravine, killing at least 38 people near the town of Monteforte Irpino.
(AP, 7/29/13)
2013 Aug 1, Italy’s supreme court upheld Silvio Berlusconi's conviction for tax fraud.
(Reuters, 8/2/13)
2013 Aug 7, Italy allowed 102 migrants who were stranded on a tanker in the Mediterranean to disembark on the Sicilian coast after Malta refused them entry for three days despite European Union calls for it to help on humanitarian grounds.
(Reuters, 8/7/13)
2013 Aug 7, British police arrested Domenico Rancadore (64), a senior member of an Italian mafia clan. He had been sentenced to seven years in jail while on the run and was detained in west London under a European arrest warrant.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 8, Italy's parliament approved measures to ease some of the worst prison overcrowding in Europe by cutting pre-trial detentions and using alternative punishments for minor offences.
(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 17, In Italy a German tourist died in Venice after the gondola he was riding in crashed into a larger boat ferrying passengers along the Grand Canal.
(AP, 8/17/13)
2013 Aug 28, The 70th edition of the Venice Film Festival opened with "Gravity," a 3-D techno-drama set in outer space.
(AP, 8/28/13)
2013 Sep 7, The Italian film "Sacro GRA," a documentary about life along the highway that circles Rome by director Gianfranco Rosi, won the Golden Lion for best film at the 70th edition of the Venice Film Festival.
(AP, 9/7/13)
2013 Sep 16, Engineering teams on the Italian island of Giglio began lifting the wrecked Costa Concordia liner upright in one of the most complex and costly maritime salvage operations ever attempted.
(Reuters, 9/16/13)
2013 Sep 17, In Italy the Costa Concordia liner was pulled upright off the island of Giglio. The vessel will remain in place for some months while it is stabilized and refloated before being towed away to be broken up for scrap.
(Reuters, 9/17/13)
2013 Sep 21, The Italian government announced that police in The Netherlands have arrested Francesco Nirta, a senior mafia boss and one of Italy's 10 most wanted men.
(AP, 9/21/13)
2013 Sep 21, Italy’s coast guard said more than 400 refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war were intercepted near Sicily in the past 14 hours, and one 22-year-old woman died during the passage.
(Reuters, 9/21/13)
2013 Sep 25, The Italian Coastguard said three boats carrying more than 700 asylum-seekers, some of whom were Syrian refugees, have landed on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.
(AP, 9/25/13)
2013 Sep 30, Italian authorities said at least 13 people on a migrant boat arriving in Sicily drowned close to the coast near the eastern city of Ragusa, apparently after trying to disembark from their stranded vessel.
(Reuters, 9/30/13)
2013 Oct 2, In Italy Silvio Berlusconi acknowledged defeat and announced he would support the government of Premier Enrico Letta in a confidence vote, a stunning about-face after defections in his party robbed him of the backing he needed to bring down the government.
(AP, 10/2/13)
2013 Oct 3, A smuggler's boat, carrying migrants from Eritrea, Ghana and Somalia, capsized off Italy’s southern island of Lampedusa. 160 bodies were soon recovered and 155 people rescued. 366 lives were lost. On Nov 8 police said dozens of the asylum-seekers had been raped and tortured in Libya before starting their journey. Three traffickers were under arrest.
(AP, 10/3/13)(AP, 10/4/13)(AP, 10/6/13)
2013 Oct 4, In Italy, in the 3rd trial of Amanda Knox, mobster Luciano Aviello testified that his brother, Antonia Aviello, killed Meredith Kercher in November 2007. Aviello had previously testified that his brother killed Kercher, but then recanted.
(SFC, 10/5/13, p.A2)
2013 Oct 5, Italian state news media reported that filmmaker Carlo Lizzani (91), a much-lauded protagonist of Italian Neorealism, has died. The Academy of Italian Cinema awarded him best director for his 1968 film "The Violent Four" about a manhunt for bank robbers.
(AP, 10/5/13)
2013 Oct 7, A French oceanographic vessel rescued 29 Syrian refugees, part of a group of 363 asylum-seekers that have landed in Italy in the past 24 hours.
(AFP, 10/7/13)
2013 Oct 8, Divers in Italy recovered 18 more bodies, bringing the total to 250, from the Oct 3 shipwreck in which only 155 of the estimated 500 African asylum seekers, most if not all from Eritrea, survived.
(AFP, 10/7/13)(SFC, 10/8/13, p.A2)
2013 Oct 9, The head of the European Commission announced during a visit to Lampedusa that Italy would receive an additional 30 million euros ($40 million) in EU funds to help settle and receive new refugees, after the sinking of a migrant boat off the Sicilian island killed at least 302 people.
(AP, 10/9/13)(AFP, 10/9/13)
2013 Oct 11, Alitalia’s board of directors approved a €500m salvage package. €300m would come from fresh capital and €200m from new credit lines. The government planned to involve the state-owned postal service in the rescue.
(Econ, 10/19/13, p.56)
2013 Oct 11, In Italy Erich Priebke (100), a former Nazi SS captain, died. He had been sentenced to life in prison for his role in in the 1944 massacre of 335 civilians by Nazi forces at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome.
(AP, 10/11/13)(Econ, 10/26/13, p.102)
2013 Oct 12, In Italy divers found an additional 20 bodies off the island of Lampedusa, bringing the still provisional death toll from an October 3 shipwreck to 359.
(AFP, 10/12/13)
2013 Oct 19, In Italy a Milan appeals court set Silvio Berlusconi's political ban in his tax fraud conviction at two years. Demonstrators clashed with police as tens of thousands marched through Rome to protest against unemployment, government cuts and big construction projects they say take money away from social services.
(AP, 10/19/13)(Reuters, 10/20/13)
2013 Oct 24, Italian weekly L'Espresso reported that US and British intelligence services have monitored Italian telecoms networks, targeting the government and companies as well as suspected terrorist groups.
(Reuters, 10/24/13)
2013 Oct 24, Italian Augusto Odone (80), a former World Bank economist, died in Acqui Terme. defied skeptical scientists to invent a treatment (Lorenzo’s Oil) to try to save the life of his little boy (d.2008), wasting away from a neurological disease (ADL. The film “Lorenzo’s Oil" (1992) was based on Odone’s efforts to save his son.
(AP, 10/25/13)(Econ, 11/16/13, p.98)
2013 Oct 25, Italian vessels rescued another 700 migrants while the two-day EU summit was going on. EU leaders failed to take new action to ease the plight of thousands of boat refugees trying to cross from North Africa.
(AP, 10/25/13)
2013 Oct 29, Italian police arrested 17 suspected gangsters thanks to information on brutal gang wars that a mafia informant had provided before being murdered.
(AFP, 10/29/13)
2013 Oct 31, Italian police said they have busted an international ring of former special forces agents hired to "recover" children involved in custody battles who were spirited across borders by one of their parents.
(AP, 10/31/13)
2013 Nov 5, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper reported that a group of Italian computer boffins have launched a new website, Mafialeaks, aimed at encouraging victims of organised crime and former gangsters to spill the beans.
(AFP, 11/5/13)
2013 Nov 16, "Tir," by director Alberto Fasulo, an Italian film about a truck driver's travels across Europe, took the top award of best film at the Rome film festival.
(AP, 11/16/13)
2013 Nov 16, In Italy thousands of families marched in Naples to demand a quick cleanup of toxic waste that has been dumped by the local Camorra crime syndicate for decades.
(AP, 11/16/13)
2013 Nov 19, Italian declared authorities declared a state of emergency in Sardinia as Cyclone Cleopatra dropped 450mm of rain in an hour and a half overnight. 16 people were reported dead.
(Reuters, 11/19/13)(AFP, 11/19/13)(Reuters, 11/20/13)
2013 Nov 27, In Italy three-time former Premier Silvio Berlusconi was ousted from Parliament after two decades as a lawmaker. Losing parliamentary immunity he defiantly calling it "a day of mourning for democracy" and pledged to continue in politics.
(AP, 11/28/13)(Econ, 11/30/13, p.51)
2013 Nov, In Italy Francesco Bidognetti, a top Camorra boss, was convicted of poisoning the water table in the town of Gugliano with toxic waste and received a 20-year sentence. Camorra mobsters since 1991 have systematically dumped, burned or buried nearly 10 million tons of waste, almost all of it coming from factories that either don't seek to know where the waste ends up or are complicit in the crimes.
(AP, 12/20/13)
2013 Dec 1, In Italy at least 7 people died and three injured when the illegal Chinese-owned Teresa Moda garment factory in an industrial zone in the town of Prato, outside Florence, burned down.
(Reuters, 12/1/13)(SSFC, 10/19/14, p.A20)
2013 Dec 3, Italian PM Enrico Letta announced measures to try to combat a fresh rubbish emergency in the area around the southern city of Naples where organized crime and widespread abuse have created a chronic environmental crisis.
(Reuters, 12/3/13)
2013 Dec 7, The Italian foreign ministry said Marcello Rizzo (55) has been kidnapped in the Niger felta of Nigeria. Rizzo was said to have disappeared several days earlier.
(Reuters, 12/7/13)
2013 Dec 11, Italian PM Enrico Letta won a parliamentary confidence vote triggered by the fall of Silvio Berlusconi, promising to push through a pro-European reform agenda and fight populism.
(AFP, 12/11/13)
2013 Dec 12, In Italy grass roots protests dubbed the Pitchfork Protests continued for a 4th day in cities and towns reflecting the pain of a continuing recession.
(SFC, 12/13/13, p.A2)
2013 Dec 13, Italian police said they have arrested 30 people linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, the head of Cosa Nostra, including his sister and several cousins in western Sicily.
(AFP, 12/13/13)
2013 Dec 16, Moncler, a luxury goods manufaturer, made its debut on the Italian stock exchange at €10.20 per share. On Dec 30 its shares closed at €15.80 making its boss Remo Ruffini a paper billionaire.
(Econ, 1/4/14, p.48)
2013 Dec 18, In Italy frustrated and angry, thousands of students, jobless and tax-weary workers have moved their days-long protest against "useless politicians" to Rome.
(AP, 12/18/13)
2013 Dec 20, Italy's justice minister has announced that Bartolomeo Gagliano, a serial killer who failed to return to prison after a two-day good-behavior pass, has been recaptured in France.
(AP, 12/20/13)
2013 Dec 20, Italian authorities said that the Camorra syndicate's mobsters have expanded their multibillion-euro toxic-waste disposal racket to Tuscany and beyond Italian borders to eastern Europe.
(AP, 12/20/13)
2013 Dec 21, In Italy 9 detained illegal immigrants stitched their lips together with thread from their bedsheets in a protest to demand their release.
(Reuters, 12/22/13)
2014 Jan 2, Italy-based Fiat secured full ownership of Chrysler in a $4.35 billion agreement.
(SFC, 1/3/14, p.C4)
2014 Jan 3, The Italian navy over the last 24 hours rescued more than 1,000 migrants from boats trying to reach Europe.
(Reuters, 1/3/14)
2014 Jan 20, Claudio Abbado (80), conductor, died in Bologna. He was a star in the great generation of Italian conductors who was revered by musicians in the world's leading orchestras for developing a strong rapport with them while still allowing them their independence.
(AP, 1/20/14)
2014 Jan 21, Vatican Monsignor Nunzio Scaran, already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy, was arrested in Salerno in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.
(AP, 1/21/14)
2014 Jan 22, Italian police seized 27 pizzerias, cafes and other eateries in the heart of Rome and elsewhere in a probe highlighting the seemingly legitimate business fronting for organized crime in places far from the mobsters' Naples base.
(AP, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 26, Italian police and campaigners said 13 Moroccan migrants held in a reception center in Rome for more than two months have sewed their mouths shut in protest at the length of their detention. They sewed their mouths shut the previous evening, repeating a protest they staged at the end of last year.
(Reuters, 1/26/14)
2014 Jan 30, In Italy Amanda Knox (26) and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted a 2nd time for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher (21) in 2007 while the two were students together in the Italian university town of Perugia. Neither her 28½-year sentence nor the 25-year prison term handed to Sollecito will have to be served pending further appeals.
(Reuters, 1/31/14)
2014 Feb 7, India acceded to Italy's request and said it won't invoke an anti-piracy law carrying the death penalty when it tries two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012.
(AP, 2/7/14)
2014 Feb 11, Police in Italy and New York broke up a major trans-Atlantic mafia ring, arresting 24 people accused of plotting to move hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs between South America, Italy and the USA.
(Reuters, 2/11/14)
2014 Feb 12, Italy's constitutional court struck down a drug law that tripled sentences for selling, cultivating or possessing cannabis and which has been blamed for causing prison overcrowding.
(Reuters, 2/12/14)
2014 Feb 13, Italian leftist leader Matteo Renzi called for a new government in his first direct challenge to PM Enrico Letta.
(AFP, 2/13/14)
2014 Feb 14, Italy’s Premier Enrico Letta drove himself to the president's palace and resigned after he was sacked by his own party in a back-room mutiny designed to catapult Florence's young Mayor Matteo Renzi into the helm of Italy's government.
(AP, 2/14/14)
2014 Feb 19, An Italian court sentenced Rafaelle Lombardo, a former governor of Sicily, to six years and eight months in prison for links to the Mafia. He resigned in 2012 following an indictment.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 20, Italy's parliament passed a law that will phase out state financing of political parties, in response to public anger over its high cost and the tendency for it to breed waste and corruption.
(Reuters, 2/20/14)
2014 Feb 22, Italy swore in a new coalition government under Matteo Renzi (39). His Democratic Party was propped up by supporters of former premier Mario Monti and former loyalists of Silvio Berlusconi.
(SFC, 2/22/14, p.A2)
2014 Feb 24, Indian attorney general Ghoolam Vahanvati told the Supreme Court the prosecution did not intend to proceed against Italian marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, accused of killing two fisherman, under the anti-piracy section of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts. The sailors said they mistook two fishermen for pirates during the incident in February 2012, off the coast of Kerala state.
(Reuters, 2/24/14)
2014 Mar 9, Italian authorities in the northern city of Lecco arrested an Albanian mother who confessed to stabbing to death her three young daughters. The father had departed for Albania a day earlier, and the mother had no job.
(AP, 3/9/14)
2014 Mar 17, A British judge ruled that Domenico Rancadore (65), a convicted Mafia boss, will be allowed to return to his comfortable home in west London rather than sent back to Italy and put in prison. The judge cited concerns about conditions in Italian prisons.
(AP, 3/17/14)
2014 Mar 20, Italian authorities said they have rescued more than 4,000 would-be migrants at sea over the past four days as the war in Syria and instability in Libya spawn new waves of refugees.
(AP, 3/20/14)
2014 Mar 24, Italian financial police arrested a former executive of the state-controlled Finmeccanica defense contractor in a bribery investigation. Stefano Carlini, former head of external relations, was one of four people placed under house arrest.
(AP, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 24, Belgium and Italy said they had moved excess nuclear materials to the United States for disposal or downgrading under the terms of past agreements, at the start of a nuclear summit in the Netherlands.
(Reuters, 3/24/14)
2014 Mar 28, Italian bishops published guidelines adopting a Vatican-backed sex abuse policy that says they have no obligation to inform police if they suspect a child has been molested.
(SFC, 3/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Apr 2, Italian police arrested 24 alleged separatists for terrorism after thwarting a plan to take over St Mark's Square in Venice armed with guns and a rudimentary "tank" made from a digger.
(AFP, 4/2/14)
2014 Apr 3, Italian police arrested Nicola Cosentino, a former member of Silvio Berlusconi's government, accusing him of colluding with the mafia to quash competition against his family's petrol distribution business near Naples. Twelve others were also arrested on suspicion of extortion and unfair competitive practices.
(Reuters, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 4, British police re-arrested Domenico Rancadore in London after they received a new arrest warrant request from Italy. The warrant alleges that the 65-year-old has an "outstanding sentence of seven years of imprisonment to serve for participation in Mafia association" from 1987 to 1995 in Sicily.
(AP, 4/5/14)
2014 Apr 4, In Italy Curtis Bill Pepper (96), a long-time foreign correspondent for Newsweek and author of eight books, in Todi, Umbria.
(AP, 4/4/14)
2014 Apr 12, Police in Lebanon arrested Marcello Dell’Utri, the man who created Forze Italia! in the 1990s. He had disappeared in the face of a 7-year sentence for aiding and abetting mobsters.
(Econ, 4/19/14, p.47)
2014 Apr 15, An Italian court ordered former PM Silvio Berlusconi (77) to serve a tax fraud sentence by doing community service and set travel restrictions that will limit his ability to campaign for next month's European Parliament elections.
(Reuters, 4/15/14)
2014 Apr 27, Dominican Rep. police arrested Nicola Pignatelli (43), an alleged high-ranking member of the Italian mafia. He had fled Italy in 2011 to avoid a prison sentence.
(SFC, 4/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Apr 30, In Italy fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were sentenced to one year and six months each in jail, over charges of hiding hundreds of millions of euros from tax authorities.
(Reuters, 4/30/14)
2014 May 8, In Italy Claudio Scajola, a former minister in several of Silvio Berlusconi's center-right governments, was arrested in a luxury Rome hotel for allegedly helping Amedeo Matacena, a prominent businessman convicted of Mafia association, flee to Dubai last summer.
(AP, 5/8/14)
2014 May 8, In Italy seven managers and ex-members of parliament were arrested over alleged attempts to influence public tenders for Milan's Expo 2015, casting a shadow over plans to stage an international showcase event and help kick-start the economy.
(Reuters, 5/9/14)
2014 May 9, In Italy plumber Riccardo Viti (55) confessed to the recent slaying of a prostitute whose body was tied, crucifixion-style, to metal bars in the countryside near Florence. His DNA was being compared to samples from 10 other similar cases.
(AP, 5/9/14)
2014 May 12, Italian authorities said a boat carrying hundreds of migrants has sunk south off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. At least 14 people were killed with 206 rescued.
(Reuters, 5/12/14)(SFC, 5/13/14, p.A4)
2014 May 21, In Italy Milan's 5,000 taxi drivers sought curbs on San Francisco-based Uber as representatives met with the transport minister. Milan's taxis have been idle for five days to protest Uber’s ride-hailing app.
(AP, 5/21/14)
2014 May 22, Italy’s statistical body (Istat) said that from October it would include drug trafficking, prostitution, and alcohol and tobacco smuggling in its economic output numbers.
(Econ, 5/31/14, p.64)
2014 May 26, Italian police arrested a former environment minister for allegedly embezzling 3.4 million euros ($4.6 million) from ministry funds earmarked for a water resources project in Iraq. Corrado Clini, who served in the government of ex-premier Mario Monti, was put under house arrest.
(AP, 5/26/14)
2014 Jun 4, In Italy Venice Mayor Giorgio Orsoni and more than 30 other people were arrested in a sweeping corruption scandal in which politicians are accused of financing election campaigns with some 25 million euros ($34 million) in bribes from the consortium building underwater barriers to protect the lagoon city from flooding.
(AP, 6/4/14)
2014 Jun 6, In Italy Sister Cristina Scuccia (25) clinched the top prize with five songs in the country’s musical competition “The Voice."
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCi_LgPgaQo)(SFC, 6/7/14, p.a2)
2014 Jun 13, In Italy Venice mayor Giorgio Orsoni resigned under pressure, a day after being freed from house arrest under a plea deal linked to a bribery scandal involving the construction of underwater barriers to protect the lagoon city from flooding.
(AP, 6/13/14)
2014 Jun 13, In Italy Marcello Dell'Utri, a longtime ally of former PM Silvio Berlusconi, was extradited to Italy under Interpol guard and transferred to a prison in the northern city of Parma. Authorities said he had fled to Lebanon to escape a prison sentence for Mafia association.
(AP, 6/13/14)
2014 Jun 13, Italian sailors recovered 10 bodies of migrants after their rubber dinghy sank off the Libyan coast. Thirty-nine migrants were rescued after the vessel sank.
(AP, 6/14/14)
2014 Jun 25, Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad Airways said it had reached a deal in principle to buy a 49 percent stake in struggling Italian carrier Alitalia. In return Alitalia agreed to cut 20% of its work force.
(AP, 6/25/14)(Econ, 6/28/14, p.58)
2014 Jun 29, Italy's navy rescued thousands of people trying to cross from North Africa over the weekend. Off the coast of Sicily the corpses of 30 migrants were found on a boat carrying nearly 600 migrants.
(Reuters, 6/30/14)(SFC, 7/1/14, p.A2)
2014 Jul 1, Italy's "Mare Nostrum" ("Our Sea") rescue operation saved 27 people off Sicily. Survivors said another 75 migrants were lost at sea.
(AP, 7/2/14)
2014 Jul 2, Italy reported 70 migrants lost at sea.
(Econ, 7/5/14, p.44)
2014 Jul 7, Italy’s navy said its search and rescue mission saved more than 2,600 migrants from boats in the Mediterranean over the weekend, as the number reaching Italy from Africa this year surged to a record.
(Reuters, 7/7/14)
2014 Jul 9, Spain’s Interior Ministry said police in Madrid have arrested 32 suspected members of Italy's Camorra crime group involved in drug trafficking, extortion, fraud and money laundering. Four arrests were also reported in Italy.
(Reuters, 7/9/14)
2014 Jul 11, Michigan-based Whirlpool said will pay more than $1 billion for a controlling stake in Indesit, the appliance maker's counterpart in Italy.
(AP, 7/11/14)
2014 Jul 18, An Italian appeals court acquitted former Premier Silvio Berlusconi (77) in a sex-for-hire case.
(SFC, 7/19/14, p.A3)
2014 Aug 6, Italy’s government statisticians disclosed that the country was back in recession as GDP fell by 0.2% in Q2.
(Econ, 8/9/14, p.46)
2014 Aug 6, The Italian foreign ministry said two Italian aid workers have been kidnapped while working on humanitarian projects in Aleppo, Syria.
(Reuters, 8/6/14)
2014 Aug 8, Etihad, the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates, agreed to inject a further $750 million into Alitalia in return for a 49% stake.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.55)
2014 Aug 24, The Italian navy recovered 24 bodies after a fishing boat capsized in the Mediterranean. 364 migrants were rescued. Italian rescue operations over the weekend picked up some 3,500 refugees.
(SFC, 8/25/14, p.A2)(AP, 8/26/14)
2014 Aug 27, The European Commission agreed to Italian demands to replace the “Mare Rostrum" refugee rescue operation with an EU-wide project.
(SFC, 8/28/14, p.A2)
2014 Sep 8, The Italian foreign ministry said 3 missionary nuns have been found slain in their convent in Burundi.
(SFC, 9/9/14, p.A2)
2014 Oct 8, In Italy hundreds of people protested against PM Matteo Renzi's plans to reform hiring-and-firing rules outside the congress center where European leaders were due to meet for a conference on jobs.
(Reuters, 10/8/14)
2014 Oct 9, Italy’s Senate voted to approve PM Matteo Renzi’s “Jobs Act." It was meant to increase permanent workers with temporary tax breaks while also making it easier to fire full-time workers.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Renzi)(Econ, 4/22/17, p.45)
2014 Oct 10, In Italy at least one person died when flood waters swept through the northwestern city of Genoa following unexpectedly heavy overnight rain.
(Reuters, 10/10/14)
2014 Oct 16, An Italian appeals court said Silvio Berlusconi paid a teenage nightclub dancer for sex but there is no proof he knew her age at the time, explaining its decision to overturn the former prime minister's "bunga bunga" conviction.
(Reuters, 10/16/14)
2014 Oct 17, Meeting in Milan, Italy, Russia and Ukraine made progress towards resolving a row over gas supplies, but European leaders said Moscow had to do much more to prop up a fragile ceasefire and end fighting in eastern Ukraine.
(Reuters, 10/17/14)
2014 Oct 18, Rome's left-wing mayor Ignazio Marino registered 16 gay marriages carried out abroad in defiance of Italian law, which does not recognize same-sex unions.
(AFP, 10/18/14)
2014 Oct 19, Italy’s PM Matteo Renzi announced a tax break for mothers of about $101 per month for the first three years o their children’s lives.
(Econ, 10/25/14, p.55)
2014 Oct 24, In Italy striking workers took to the streets in cities across the country to protest against cuts to public services and labor reforms proposed by PM Matteo Renzi.
(Reuters, 10/24/14)
2014 Oct 25, In Italy demonstrators from across the country filled the streets of Rome to protest against labor market reforms which the government of PM Matteo Renzi has made a cornerstone of its policy.
(Reuters, 10/25/14)
2014 Oct 28, Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano gave unprecedented testimony in a major trial that accuses the state of holding secret talks with the Sicilian Mafia in the 1990s.
(Reuters, 10/28/14)
2014 Oct 31, Italy confirmed the end of its search and rescue operation "Mare Nostrum", which has saved the lives of tens of thousands of boat migrants in the Mediterranean.
(AFP, 10/31/14)
2014 Nov 1, The EU’s “Operation Triton" replaced Italy’s “Mare Nostrum" search and rescue operation. Triton was run by Frontex, the EU’s border control agency, but remained under Italian control.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Triton)(Econ., 4/25/15, p.22)
2014 Nov 6, The European Court of Justice upheld a decision against Italy over toxic waste treatment, ruling it had failed to act against illegal dumps dotting the countryside around the southern city of Naples.
(Reuters, 11/6/14)
2014 Nov 11, In northern Italy the regions of Tuscany, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna were all badly affected by torrential rain and flooding. An elderly couple was believed to be buried under a mudslide.
(Reuters, 11/11/14)
2014 Nov 12, In Italy floods continued to engulf northern parts of the country as heavy rain continued. A landslide killed one man.
(Reuters, 11/12/14)
2014 Nov 13, In Italy a Milan appeals court reduced the sentences of three former aides to Silvio Berlusconi for their roles in procuring prostitutes for the ex-premier's infamous "bunga bunga" parties.
(AP, 11/13/14)
2014 Nov 15, Italian engineer Gianluca Salviato, abducted last March in Libya, returned home. He was working on a sewer construction project for an Italian company when he went missing in Tobruk.
(AP, 11/16/14)
2014 Nov 15, Italian authorities said that more than 900 people have been rescued at sea in the last 24 hours, in a blow to hopes that the approach of winter would stem the flow of migrants attempting perilous crossings of the Mediterranean.
(AP, 11/15/14)
2014 Nov 16, On the Italian-Swiss border at least 4 people were killed as landslides triggered by torrential rain slammed into houses and buildings on either side of the border.
(AFP, 11/16/14)
2014 Nov 19, Italy’s Court of Cassation threw out a conviction against Stephan Schmidheiny, a Swiss businessman, for some 3,000 asbestos-related deaths blamed on contamination from the Swiss Eternit construction company. The statute of limitations started ticking in 1986 when Eternit closed its four Italian plants.
(AP, 11/20/14)
2014 Nov 23, Italian PM Matteo Renzi's center-left Democratic Party (PD) won regional elections in Calabria and Emilia Romagna but a low turnout suggested growing disillusion among many voters.
(Reuters, 11/24/14)
2014 Nov 24, Italy’s health ministry said an Italian doctor, who has been working in Sierra Leone, has tested positive for the Ebola virus and is being transferred to Rome for treatment. In Freetown Dr. Aiah Solomon Konoyeima also tested positive for Ebola.
(AP, 11/24/14)(AP, 11/25/14)
2014 Nov 24, A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station, including Italy's first female astronaut.
(Reuters, 11/24/14)
2014 Dec 2, In Italy a probe of ties between gangsters and allegedly corrupt city politicians. netted 37 arrests. Dozens of other suspects, including Gianni Alemanno, Rome's previous mayor, were notified they are being investigated.
(AP, 12/3/14)
2014 Dec 4, In Italy Ignazio Marino, the mayor of Rome, ordered a review of city contracts after a police investigation revealed a web of corrupt relationships between politicians and criminals in the Italian capital.
(Reuters, 12/4/14)
2014 Dec 4, Slovakia's PM Robert Fico said his government is terminating the lease of a major state-owned hydro power plant to Enel, an Italian energy company. Enel owns a 66 percent stake in Slovakia's major power producer, Slovenske elektrarne, and is currently trying to sell its share. The government owns the remaining 34 percent.
(AP, 12/4/14)
2014 Dec 10, In Italy police in Perugia launched Operation Fourth Step against the “Ndrangheta, the mafia from Calabria. 61 people were arrested.
(Econ, 12/13/14, p.55)
2014 Dec 12, Striking Italian union workers marched through more than 50 Italian cities to protest government economic reforms that they say erode their rights.
(AP, 12/12/14)
2014 Dec 16, Italian police said they have arrested 59 suspects in a probe of ties between the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate and Milan businessmen, including alleged efforts to snare San Siro stadium's catering business.
(AP, 12/16/14)
2014 Dec 19, Italian police seized construction companies, apartments, villas and a yacht belonging to Cristiano Guarnera, a businessman who authorities allege consorted with a Mafia-like gang in Rome with ties to local politicians.
(AP, 12/19/14)
2014 Dec 22, Italian authorities said they have cracked a neo-Fascist plot to attack immigrants and political targets, including magistrates.
(AP, 12/22/14)
2014 Dec 27, Libya said it has called on Italy to send firefighters to prevent a fire spreading out of control at Es Sider, the country's biggest oil port. The fire had spread to a total of five oil tanks. The fire was reported extinguished on Jan 2.
(Reuters, 12/27/14)(Reuters, 1/2/15)
2014 Dec 28, The Italian-flagged Norman Atlantic ferry radioed for help after fire broke out on its lower deck 44 nautical miles northwest of the Greek island of Corfu. Italy's Coast Guard later said 477 people were rescued. At least 11 people were killed. On Dec 30 two Albanian seamen were killed during an operation to salvage the multideck car ferry. An Italian prosecutor later said up to 98 were unaccounted for while Greece put that number at 18 saying Italy's list is full of duplications and misspellings.
(AP, 12/28/14)(Reuters, 12/29/14)(AP, 12/30/14)(AP, 1/1/15)(SFC, 1/6/15, p.A2)
2014 Dec 28, The Turkish ship Gokbel with 11 crew members sank after the collision with the Belize flagged Lady Aziza in poor visibility a mile from the Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna. Two people drowned and four were missing at sea and feared dead.
(Reuters, 12/28/14)
2014 Dec 31, Some 970 mostly Syrian migrants arrived in Italy on the Blue Sky M cargo ship after apparently being abandoned by its crew in the Adriatic Sea.
(Reuters, 12/31/14)
2014 R.J.B. Bosworth authored “Italian Venice: A History."
(Econ, 8/23/14, p.77)
2015 Jan 2, The Icelandic Coast Guard ship Tyr towed a cargo vessel to Italy with about 450 migrants after Italian rescue teams managed to secure the wave-tossed Ezadeen for towing toward the southern Calabrian region. The migrants were abandoned by smugglers, leaving the vessel in rough seas without a crew.
(AP, 1/2/15)
2015 Jan 11, Anita Ekberg (b.1931), Swedish-born actress, died in Rome. Her films included “La Dolce Vita" (1960), “Clowns" (1971) and “Intervista."
(SFC, 1/12/15, p.A6)
2015 Jan 16, Italian aid workers Greta Ramelli (20) and Vanessa Marzullo (21), abducted in northern Syria on the night of July 31-August 1, 2014, flew home straight into a row over whether Al-Qaeda's Syrian arm was paid $12 million to release them.
(AFP, 1/16/15)(SFC, 1/17/15, p.A2)
2015 Jan 20, Italian police seized more than 600 kg (1,320 pounds) of cocaine and hashish in Rome and fanned out to arrest 31 suspected mobsters in what they say further indicates the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate is making the capital a strategic base for its global operations.
(AP, 1/20/15)
2015 Jan 21, Italian authorities unveiled what they said was a record haul of rare antiquities illegally looted from Italy and discovered during raids on Swiss warehouses belonging to accused Sicilian art dealer Gianfranco Becchina.
(AP, 1/21/15)
2015 Jan 28, Italian police conducted a huge dragnet against a Calabrian mafia clan operating in the north, arresting 110 people and seizing more than 100 million euros ($114 million).
(Reuters, 1/28/15)
2015 Jan 31, Italian lawmakers elected Sergio Mattarella, a constitutional court judge and veteran center-left politician, as president.
(Reuters, 1/31/15)
2015 Jan, Italian police raided and closed a chain of more than 20 pizzerias allegedly belonging to the Camorra, a mafia of the southern city of Naples and its surrounding area, Campania.
(Econ, 9/5/15, p.58)
2015 Feb 2, Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (78) was granted a request to end his community service sentence for tax fraud 45 days early for good behavior.
(Reuters, 2/2/15)
2015 Feb 3, Italy's new Pres. Sergio Mattarella (73) assumed office with a ringing call to the nation to root out organized crime and corruption devouring public resources and solve a protracted economic crisis depriving young people of their future.
(AP, 2/3/15)
2015 Feb 6, Italian judicial sources said Dino Maglio (35), a policeman who posed as an amiable host on the Couchsurfing website, has been charged with drugging and raping a 16-year-old Australian and may have sexually assaulted up to 15 other women. He will go on trial in Padua near Venice from March 17.
(AFP, 2/6/15)
2015 Feb 8, Two Italian patrol boats picked up 105 migrants late today from the boat drifting in extreme sea conditions. At least 29 migrants died of hypothermia aboard Italian coast guard vessels. Survivors later confirmed the existence of a fourth rubber boat that left Libya with as many as 300 people unaccounted-for.
(Reuters, 2/9/15)(SFC, 2/10/15, p.A2)(AP, 2/11/15)
2015 Feb 11, In Italy Francesco Schettino, former captain of the capsized Costa Concordia, was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison for manslaughter, causing the Jan 13, 2012, shipwreck that claimed 32 lives. Schettino lost his final appeal in 2017 and began serving his 16-year sentence.
(SFC, 2/12/15, p.A2)(SFC, 5/13/17, p.A2)
2015 Feb 13, An Italian court sentenced Somali trafficker Mouhamud Elmi Muhidin (34) to 30 years in prison. He had raped and attacked migrants he had led through the desert to Libya to make the perilous crossing to Italy in October 2013.
(AFP, 2/14/15)
2015 Feb 13, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Italy became the latest countries to withdraw embassy staff from Yemen as an exodus of foreign diplomats gathered pace due to growing insecurity.
(AFP, 2/13/15)
2015 Feb 14, Michael Ferrero (89), Italy’s chocolate king, died. He took over the family’s hazelnut-chocolate business after his father died in 1949 and soon added vegetable oil to make it spreadable. In 1964 he invented the name Nutella and in 1983 took it to America.
(Econ., 2/21/15, p.90)
2015 Feb 15, Italy closed its embassy in Libya due to the worsening conflict there and stepped up its call for a UN mission to help calm the situation.
(Reuters, 2/15/15)
2015 Feb 15, Italy's coast guard went to the rescue of at least 1,000 migrants in difficulty in the sea between Europe and North Africa, the third operation of its kind in as many days.
(Yahoo News, 2/15/15)
2015 Feb 20, Italy’s left-right coalition, headed by Matteo Renzi, approved two decrees enacting the core of an employment reform that parliament broadly endorsed last year.
(Econ., 2/28/15, p.47)
2015 Feb 20, A British court overturned a previous ruling that prison overcrowding in Italy could breach his human rights allowing convicted Sicilian mafioso Domenico Rancadore (65) to be extradited. He had spent two decades living incognito in Britain.
(Reuters, 2/20/15)
2015 Feb 21, In the Swiss Alps an avalanche swept away a group of Italian skiers leaving 4 dead.
(AFP, 2/22/15)
2015 Feb 24, French president Francois Hollande and Italian PM Matteo Renzi signed an agreement for a long-standing rail project to ease transport of freight across the Alps. The line would not open before 2028.
(AP, 2/24/15)
2015 Feb 24, Finmeccanica, Italy’s state-controlled aerospace and defense groups said Japan’s Hitachi will buy its rail businesses.
(Econ., 2/28/15, p.58)
2015 Feb 27, Italian lawmakers backed a non-binding resolution that encourages the government to recognize Palestine as a state.
(Reuters, 2/27/15)
2015 Feb 28, In Italy thousands of Northern League protesters poured into Rome from their political base in the north to demand the Italian government keep out immigrants.
(AP, 2/28/15)
2015 Mar 2, The principality of Monaco signed an accord with Italy aimed at ending banking secrecy, days after Switzerland and Liechtenstein inked similar pledges to exchange financial information with Rome.
(AP, 3/2/15)
2015 Mar 3, Italian police said they have arrested Palermo Chamber of Commerce president Roberto Helg, an anti-corruption crusader, for allegedly pocketing 100,000 euros ($110,000) he demanded to allow a pastry shop to operate at Palermo's airport.
(AP, 3/3/15)
2015 Mar 3, An Italian coast guard ship rescued 121 people after their boat capsized some 50 miles north of Libya. Ten bodies were recovered. Tunisian naval forces rescued all 81 migrants onboard another boat that had started taking on water off near the Tunisian island of Djerba. Several merchant ships assisted in migrant rescues from seven separate boats in a 24-hour period, bringing to safety almost 1,000 migrants, including 30 children and 50 women, one of them pregnant.
(Reuters, 3/4/15)
2015 Mar 10, Italy's highest court confirmed former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's acquittal on charges he paid an underage Moroccan prostitute for sex and then used his influence to cover it up.
(AP, 3/11/15)
2015 Mar 17, Germany, France and Italy followed Britain in announcing that they plan to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a proposed Chinese-led Asian regional bank, swinging Europe's biggest economic powers behind a project that is viewed with concern in Washington.
(AP, 3/17/15)
2015 Mar 19, Officials from the United States, Italy and Saudi Arabia led 2-days talks in Rome among a group of countries seeking to combat the financial activities of Islamic State militants. The Counter-ISIL Finance Group (CIFG) includes Australia, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Qatar, Spain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. The EU also participates.
(AP, 3/20/15)
2015 Mar 20, Italy unveiled the newly restored ancient city of Pompeii. It had been destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
(SFC, 3/21/15, p.A2)
2015 May 22, It was announced that China National Chemical Corp. (CNCC), a state-owned conglomerate, would buy Pirelli, an Italian tire maker, for $7.7 billion.
(Econ., 3/28/15, p.70)
2015 Mar 26, Italian police and Europol said eight people have been arrested in a half-dozen European countries for allegedly operating a diesel import scam that avoided taxes by disguising the fuel as it transited across the continent.
(AP, 3/26/15)
2015 Mar 27, Italy’s highest criminal court acquitted Ms. Knox, an American, and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.
(AP, 3/28/15)
2015 Apr 1, Italy and the Holy See signed an accord to cooperate on fiscal matters, as the Vatican works to improve transparency after a string of financial scandals.
(AP, 4/1/15)
2015 Apr 4, Italian navy and coast guard ships rescued around 1,500 migrants aboard five boats in the southern Mediterranean.
(Reuters, 4/5/15)
2015 Apr 9, In Italy Claudio Giardiello, on trial for bankruptcy, shot dead a judge, a lawyer and a co-defendant in the Palace of Justice in central Milan. A fourth person was found dead in the court buildings with no apparent sign of injury.
(Reuters, 4/9/15)
2015 Apr 12, A vessel capsized off the Libyan coast, with survivors who were brought to Italy telling charity workers that as many as 400 others perished.
(AFP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 13, The Italian coastguard said it recovered 9 bodies and rescued 145 people after a boat carrying migrants sank off Libya. Italian coastguards intercepted 42 boats over the last two days as a surge of attempted illegal immigration to Europe saw almost 6,000 other migrants rescued since April 10.
(AFP, 4/13/15)(AFP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 14, Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi was to travel abroad after a court in Milan declared that he had fully served his sentence for tax fraud, although he will still be prevented from running for election.
(Reuters, 4/14/15)
2015 Apr 16, Italian police said they had arrested 15 African migrants after witnesses said they had thrown 12 passengers overboard following a brawl between Muslims and Christians on a boat heading to Italy. Four survivors told Italian police that their inflatable vessel carrying 45 people sank on the crossing from Libya.
(AFP, 4/16/15)
2015 Apr 17, The Italian navy and coastguard patrols rescued more than 300 migrants. More than 11,000 migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean and taken to Italy in the past six days with hundreds more expected.
(AFP, 4/17/15)
2015 Apr 17, President Barack Obama and Italian PM Matteo Renzi compared notes on a range of issues, including Ukraine, Libya and Islamic State militants.
(AP, 4/17/15)
2015 Apr 18, A migrant ship sank off Sicily with an estimated 700-800 people aboard in one of the worst known tragedies of the Mediterranean migrant crisis.
(AP, 6/29/16)
2015 Apr 24, Italian police arrested 18 people suspected of belonging to an armed group linked to al Qaeda who were plotting attacks on the Vatican as well as in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 4/24/15)
2015 May 1, In Italy black-clad protesters in Milan torched two cars and clashed with police, who responded with tear gas as violence broke out at a demonstration at the start of the Expo 2015.
(Reuters, 5/1/15)
2015 May 3, Italian Coast Guard and commercial vessels came to the rescue of at least 16 boats of migrants, saving hundreds of them and recovering 10 bodies off Libya's coast, as smugglers took advantage of calm seas to send packed vessels across the Mediterranean. Some 40 migrants in a crowded rubber boat fell into the sea and likely drowned as the commercial vessel, the Zeran, approached the rubber boat to rescue migrants between Libya and Sicily.
(AP, 5/3/15)(AP, 5/5/15)(Reuters, 5/5/15)
2015 May 4, Italy's parliament approved a radical new electoral law designed to end decades of political instability by ensuring that elections always produce governments with working majorities.
(AFP, 5/4/15)
2015 May 5, In Italy 652 migrants from Ghana, Nigeria and Gambia arrived aboard the Italian navy ship Bettica. The Phoenix, a 130-foot refitted yacht, arrived in Pozzallo, Sicily, with 369 mostly Eritrean migrants who were rescued by the crew of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station.
(AP, 5/5/15)
2015 May 7, In Italy a fire badly damaged part of Rome's Fiumicino airport and closed it to most traffic.
(AP, 5/7/15)
2015 May 9, In Iraq the Venice Biennale contemporary art fair opened for a seven-month run. It was curated by Okwui Enwezor, a Nigerian art critic and museum director.
(AP, 5/9/15)
2015 May 12, Italy’s health ministry said a nurse who returned from Sierra Leone last week has tested positive for Ebola.
(SFC, 5/13/15, p.A2)
2015 May 18, France, Germany and Italy agreed to develop a European drone program for reconnaissance and surveillance, seeking to inject momentum into a proposal first considered in 2013.
(Reuters, 5/18/15)
2015 May 20, Italian police said they have arrested a Moroccan man (22) on suspicion of involvement in the March attack on the National Museum in Tunisia.
(SFC, 5/21/15, p.A2)
2015 May 29, The Italian Coast Guard rescued more than 4,000 migrants off Libya's coast in 22 separate operations in one day, with rescuers finding 17 people dead aboard a rubber dinghy.
(AP, 5/30/15)
2015 May 31, The Italian navy brought ashore the corpses of 17 migrants in Sicily along with 454 survivors as efforts intensified to rescue people fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.
(Reuters, 5/31/15)
2015 Jun 7, European rescue boats were bringing hundreds of migrants saved at sea to Italian ports, prompting the country's center-right politicians to vow that their regions won't shelter any more of them.
(AP, 6/7/15)
2015 Jun 8, Italy's government attempted to call the country's powerful northern regions to order after they point-black refused to accommodate more migrants.
(AP, 6/8/15)
2015 Jun 14, Italy threatened to turn to a Plan B to deal with migrants which "would hurt Europe" if the country is not given greater help with the crisis, as Austria and France expelled asylum seekers back onto Italian soil.
(AFP, 6/14/15)
2015 Jun 15, The Italian newsweekly L’Espresso published a draft copy of an encyclical on the environment by Pope Francis calling for urgent action to fight global warming.
(SFC, 6/16/15, p.A3)
2015 Jun 20, Italian prosecutors sought to indict 297 people and the Bank of China in connection with a massive money-laundering investigation. The Bank of has denied any wrongdoing.
(SFC, 6/22/15, p.A2)
2015 Jun 20, In Italy hundreds of thousands gathered in Rome to demonstrate against gay unions and the teaching of gender theories in schools, as PM Matteo Renzi worked to push a civil union bill through parliament.
(AFP, 6/20/15)
2015 Jun 20, Italian pizza makers in Milan won a Guinness World Record for creating a pizza 1.59 km long.
(SSFC, 6/21/15, p.A3)
2015 Jun 26, The EU decided to share 40,000 refugees landing in Greece and Italy.
(SFC, 6/27/15, p.A3)
2015 Jul 5, A dramatic breach at Italian surveillance company Hacking Team soon laid bare the details of government cyberattacks worldwide. Hacking Team's spyware was used by a total of 97 intelligence or investigative agencies in 35 countries, according to South Korean National Intelligence Service chief Lee Byoung Ho, who explained himself to lawmakers on July 14 after it became clear his organization was among the Milan-based company's clients.
(AP, 7/16/15)
2015 Jul 8, Italian authorities said they have seized assets worth more than 1.6 billion euros ($1.75 billion) from a family of five Sicilian pensioners believed to have links to a prominent mafia clan. The haul belonged to Carmelo Virga (66), his brothers Vincenzo (78), and Francesco (71), and their sisters Anna (76) and Rosa (68).
(AFP, 7/8/15)
2015 Jul 11, In Egypt the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack at the Italian consulate in Cairo. One person was killed.
(Reuters, 7/11/15)
2015 Jul 15, In Italy a Milan court convicted 11 former Pirelli managers, including two former CEOs, on charges of manslaughter and gave them prison sentences for the deaths of about 20 workers who developed tumors or lung disease after being exposed to asbestos.
(AP, 7/15/15)
2015 Jul 20, Italy’s Foreign Ministry said four Italian construction workers working in Mellitah, Libya, have been kidnapped.
(SFC, 7/21/15, p.A2)
2015 Jul 22, Italian police seized assets worth 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) and issued 41 arrest warrants in raids on gambling companies in Italy and abroad run by the 'Ndrangheta mafia organization.
(Reuters, 7/22/15)
2015 Jul 22, Italian police arrested two men suspected of supporting the Islamic State group and plotting to carry out attacks in the country.
(AFP, 7/22/15)
2015 Jul 24, Residents in a chic Rome suburb and a northern Italian village staged angry anti-immigrant protests, with villagers setting mattresses ablaze in a bid to stop authorities from housing migrants. Italy was hosting more than 80,000 migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean fleeing war, persecution or poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
(AFP, 7/28/15)
2015 Jul 24, In Italy at least 7 people died in an explosion at the Bruscella fireworks factory in Modugno on the Adriatic coast.
(AP, 7/24/15)
2015 Jul 25, The Italian coastguard said more than 1,200 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and Syria, arrived in Sicily, after having been picked up in the Mediterranean.
(AFP, 7/25/15)
2015 Aug 1, Italy's coast guard rescued about 1,800 migrants from seven overcrowded vessels, while 5 corpses were found on a large rubber boat carrying 212 others.
(Reuters, 8/2/15)
2015 Aug 3, Italian police arrested 11 suspects linked to the fugitive head of the Sicilian Mafia, including a former boss who ran a secret message system for the mobster using a sheep-based code. Matteo Messina Denaro (53) had been on the run since 1993.
(AFP, 8/3/15)
2015 Aug 5, The Italian Coast Guard rescued 367 migrants and recovered 25 bodies after a fishing boat carrying an estimated 600 capsized in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya. The Irish Navy patrol boat LE Niamh carried the survivors and the dead to Palermo. At least 185 migrants were feared to have drowned.
(AP, 8/5/15)(AFP, 8/5/15)(SSFC, 8/9/15, p.A4)
2015 Aug 7, Italy arrested five North African men on suspicion of multiple homicide and human trafficking in the presumed drowning of more than 200 people, saying they used clubs and knives against migrants.
(Reuters, 8/7/15)
2015 Aug 10, Italian customs police said they have seized 49 kg (108 pounds) of pure cocaine hidden in a container transporting frozen totani, a kind of squid, on a cargo ship from Argentina.
(AP, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 10, The European Commission approved 2.4 billion euros ($2.6 billion) of aid over six years for countries including Greece and Italy that have struggled to cope with a surge in numbers of immigrants.
(Reuters, 8/10/15)
2015 Aug 11, In northern Italy Francesco Seramondi (65) and his wife Giovanna Ferrari (63) were shot repeatedly with sawn-off shotguns inside their takeaway pizzeria in Brescia. Pakistani national Mohamed Adnan (32) and Indian Sarbjit Singh (33) later admitted to the mafia-style slaying.
(AFP, 8/17/15)
2015 Aug 11, Italian rescuers picked up more than 1,500 migrants from other seven vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. Up to 50 migrants went missing after a large rubber dinghy sank.
(Reuters, 8/12/15)
2015 Aug 15, Some 49 migrants died in the hold of an overcrowded fishing boat off the Italian coast. The victims were apparently asphyxiated by fuel fumes and were primarily married men who had given spots on the deck to their wives. Some 312 survivors were pulled off the boat. On August 18 Italian police said eight suspected human traffickers have been arrested on suspicion of homicide.
(AFP, 8/16/15)(Reuters, 8/18/15)
2015 Aug 20, In Italy the funeral of purported mobster Vittorio Casamonica featured a gilded, horse-drawn carriage carrying his casket and a band playing "The Godfather" theme outside the church. Police and Carabinieri patrols accompanied the funeral procession. A helicopter pilot flew low over Rome to drop flower petals.
(AP, 8/20/15)
2015 Aug 21, Italy's civil aviation authority suspended the license of the helicopter pilot who flew low over Rome a day earlier to drop flower petals during the over-the-top funeral of a purported local crime boss, the first head to roll in a scandal that has outraged city residents.
(AP, 8/20/15)
2015 Aug 22, Italy's coastguard said it was coordinating the rescue of up to 3,000 migrants from waters off Libya after receiving SOS calls from 18 different crowded vessels. Operation Triton rescued some 4,400 migrants on this day alone.
(AFP, 8/22/15)(Econ, 8/29/15, p.41)
2015 Aug 27, Italy's government put Rome city hall under close supervision following allegations it had fallen under the sway of organized crime, but allowed beleaguered Mayor Ignazio Marino to stay in office.
(Reuters, 8/27/15)(Econ, 9/5/15, p.58)
2015 Aug 30, Italian energy giant ENI announced the discovery of the "largest ever" offshore natural gas field in the Mediterranean inside Egypt's territorial waters. The Zohr field would meet Egypt's own natural gas demands for decades.
(AFP, 8/30/15)(Econ, 8/19/17, p.40)
2015 Sep 10, Kuwait agreed to buy 28 Typhoon warplanes, becoming the third country in the Gulf region to order the combat aircraft. Eurofighter is a partnership between Italy's Finmeccanica, Britain's BAE Systems and civilian plane maker Airbus.
(AFP, 9/12/15)
2015 Sep 19, The Italian coast guard said twenty rescue operations picked up over 4,500 people off the Libyan coast.
(AFP, 9/19/15)
2015 Oct 1, Italy said it has told the European Commission that it will ban growing crops with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under a rule that allows European Union countries to opt out of GMO cultivation.
(AP, 10/1/15)
2015 Oct 1, The foreign minister and the people of the Marshall Islands were honored for taking legal action against the nuclear powers for failing to honor disarmament obligations. Tony de Brum and the people of the Pacific island group shared the honorary portion of the 2015 Right Livelihood Award, sometimes referred to as the "alternative Nobel." This year's 3-million-kronor ($358,500) cash award was shared by Canada's Sheila Watt-Cloutier, for her supports to Inuit causes; Uganda's Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, for her struggle for sexual minorities' rights; and Italian surgeon Gino Strada, for providing medical assistance to victims of war.
(AP, 10/1/15)
2015 Oct 5, In Portugal Sabrina De Sousa, a former CIA operative convicted of the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric as part of the extraordinary renditions program, was detained and awaited a decision on whether she will be turned over to Italy to serve a six-year sentence. De Sousa was among 26 Americans, mostly CIA agents, convicted in absentia over the of kidnapping of Milan cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, in broad daylight from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.
(AP, 10/8/15)
2015 Oct 8, In Italy Ignazio Marino (60) stepped down as mayor of Rome over a scandal centered on 20,000 euros ($22,600) of restaurant bills settled with a city hall credit card over the course of his 28 months in office.
(AFP, 10/9/15)
2015 Oct 13, The Italian Senate approved sweeping constitutional reform that would turn the Senate into a 100-member house of regional and municipal representatives with the power to question, but not veto, legislation. It will be put to a referendum in 2016.
(Econ, 10/17/15, p.58)
2015 Oct 13, Italian finance police arrested Mario Mantovani, a high-ranking politician in the Lombardy regional government, for corruption just before he was due to attend a conference promoting legality in the public administration.
(Reuters, 10/13/15)
2015 Oct 16, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon marked World Food Day with a visit to the Milan Expo World's Fair, which is focused on food security and nutrition.
(AP, 10/16/15)
2015 Oct 16, Italian police reported finding more than 20 tons of hashish with an estimated street value of 200 million euros ($230 million) hidden in the hull of a cargo ship. They spent more than 18 days searching before finally finding the drugs. The ship's captain and nine crew members, all Syrian, were arrested.
(Reuters, 10/16/15)
2015 Oct 18, The Italian navy said 8 bodies have been recovered from a rubber boat carrying migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean.
(Reuters, 10/18/15)
2015 Oct 21, Ferrari, an Italy-based car company owned by Fiat Chrysler, went public with a 10% stake on the NYSE and closed up almost 6% at $55.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C5)(Econ, 10/17/15, p.69)
2015 Oct 28, An Italian court rejected Tunisia's extradition request for Abdelmajid Touil, a Moroccan arrested on suspicion of involvement in a deadly museum attack, because he risks the death penalty.
(AFP, 10/28/15)
2015 Oct 30, In northern Italy two pilots of helicopter maker AgustaWestland were killed in an accident during a prototype test flight.
(AP, 10/30/15)
2015 Nov 10, Italy arrested 41 people after uncovering a criminal ring that charged people thousands of euros for illegal entry to the country to work in circuses.
(Reuters, 11/10/15)
2015 Nov 12, Police announced a swoop on a European jihadist network that was allegedly planning to kidnap diplomats and carry out attacks to try to spring its leader out of detention in Norway. Seventeen arrest warrants were issued and 13 people were detained in Britain, Italy and Norway.
(AFP, 11/12/15)
2015 Nov 19, In Italy 17 masterpieces were stolen from the Castelvecchio Museum. Pasquale Silvestri Riccardi, a guard at the museum, was later convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to ten years and eight months in prison. In May, 2016, Ukrainian border guards recovered the paintings during an attempt to smuggle them into Moldova. They were returned to the museum on Dec 21, 2016.
(http://tinyurl.com/jylpt62)(SFC, 12/23/16, p.E4)
2015 Nov 20, Italian police arrested six members of Sicily's Cosa Nostra mafia as part of an inquiry that uncovered a threat of violence against Interior Minister Angelino Alfano.
(Reuters, 11/20/15)
2015 Nov 26, Italian police said they have seized almost 800 shotguns bound for Belgium from Turkey from a truck that arrived in the northeastern port of Trieste.
(Reuters, 11/26/15)
2015 Dec 14, In Italy police in Rome said they had seized 3,500 fake Vatican parchments that were being sold to unsuspecting pilgrims taking part in Pope Francis' Holy Year celebrations.
(AP, 12/14/15)
2015 Dec 16, PM Matteo Renzi said Italy will deploy 450 troops near the front line with Islamic State militants in Iraq to protect workers carrying out repairs to the Mosul hydro-electric dam, the country's biggest.
(Reuters, 12/16/15)
2015 Dec 22, The Italian coastguard more than 650 people have been plucked to safety in the Mediterranean and one body recovered.
(AFP, 12/22/15)
2015 Dec 23, German investigators in North Rhine-Westphalia state arrested a 40-year-old Italian man, who wasn't identified, in Gelsenkirchen as he left his hiding place. Investigators later said he was a member of the Sacra Corona Unita group, based in southeastern Italy, and will soon be extradited to Italy.
(AP, 12/29/15)
2015 Dec 28, Milan, Italy, began a 3-day ban for six hours per day in a bid to alleviate persistent smog.
(SFC, 12/25/15, p.A2)
2015 Dec 30, Italian prosecutors said Apple has agreed to pay Italy about $350 million in taxes for years 2008-2013.
(SFC, 12/31/15, p.A5)
2015 Dec 30, An Italian parliament-mandated health survey confirmed higher-than-normal incidents of death and cancer among residents in and around Naples, thanks to decades of toxic waste dumping by the local Camorra mob.
(AP, 1/2/16)
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