‘A success for Kremlin propaganda’: how pro-Putin views permeate Italian media

Whenever Nello Scavo returns from Ukraine, he is overcome with frustration. As a war correspondent for the Italian national newspaper Avvenire, he knows the first question people will ask him is: “Is it really as bad as they say?”

“Sometimes I think that only if I come back badly injured will people start taking me seriously,” he told the Guardian. “It’s as if they don’t believe that Russia is massacring civilians. The problem is that Vladimir Putin has always enjoyed wide sympathy in Italian politics and public opinion, with the Kremlin always enjoying effective propaganda here.”

Mafia stokes violent anti-lockdown protests in Italy

ROME — The Italian mafia are doing all they can to prevent coronavirus from harming their business — including orchestrating violence at anti-lockdown protests.

According to Italian authorities, the mob planned and directed demonstrations in Naples that descended into violence and attacks on police on Friday. Similar protests have taken place across the country for the past four days, with bar and restaurant owners expressing concerns that tighter measures, brought in by the government to counter a surge in coronavirus cases in the country, will destroy their businesses.

Italy’s ‘boys’ club’ politics shuts women out of coronavirus debate

MILAN — Women are overwhelmingly on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. And yet, in Italy, when it comes to engineering an exit from lockdown, they’ve had a hard time getting heard.

Women make up two-thirds of Italy’s health workers, 80 percent of cashiers in supermarkets, 90 percent of home care workers and nearly 82 percent of teachers. But very few have a seat at the table where key decisions are being made about the policies to navigate the country’s reopening.

Italian Investigators Just Uncovered a Major Russian Election Meddling Plot

A bombshell investigation published Friday by Italy’s L’Espresso magazine reveals a plot that might sound familiar. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of the hard-right Lega Nord party, L’Espresso reports, last year sought a 3 million euro funding commitment from Kremlin-linked entities to finance his political campaign. The scheme, reportedly organized by a loyal aide and former spokesman to Salvini named Gianluca Savoini, enabled the money to flow to Lega Nord covertly, tucked behind an ordinary-seeming oil export deal between Italian and Russian companies.

Right-wing parties win regional Italian election

ROME — A coalition of right-wing Italian parties won a regional election in Abruzzo, which pit the country’s ruling parties against one another, results on Monday showed.

The right-wing alliance, which includes the League, the Brothers of Italy and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia won 48 percent, toppling a center-left coalition that took second place with 31.3 percent.

Matteo Salvini: a political chameleon thriving on fears

In the early years, when he was still a secessionist who believed northern Italy should break off and become an independent state called Padania, Matteo Salvini held his fellow countrymen in such contempt that he even supported Germany over Italy in the 2006 World Cup.

“Italy ... is the worst of the worst,” he said at the time. “My support goes to anyone who is more serious.”

Italy's Far-Right Government Leaves Hundreds Of Migrants Stranded At Sea

Italy’s new hard-line interior minister prevented a rescue ship carrying 629 migrants from docking on Italian shores, leaving them stranded at sea for a day before Spain accepted them.

The Aquarius, a rescue vessel operated by aid organizations Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières) and SOS Mediterranée, was forced to wait in the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Malta after failing to receive guidance from Italian authorities. Spain on Monday allowed the ship to dock in the city of Valencia, a rare move for a country that typically keeps its borders sealed.

Italy is facing regime change. The future will be repressive

Is Italy Europe’s new political laboratory – the country in which liberal democracy changes its hue and sinks below the horizon into populism? The question is legitimate, not only because historians have long established how, in his rise to power, Hitler took Mussolini as a model. And not only because Donald Trump was preceded on to the world stage by Silvio Berlusconi – another unscrupulous tycoon devoid of political experience, unfit for government, and with whom Trump shares more than a few personal traits. Above all the question is legitimate because, in Italy, not one but two populisms have won. Together they command more than half the votes in parliament and were until a few days ago on the verge of forming a government.

Far-Right And Anti-Establishment Parties Set To Form Italy's New Government

Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella approved the country’s far-right and anti-establishment parties’ nominee for prime minister on Wednesday, putting the nation on track to have one of the most populist and radical administrations in all of Europe.

The far-right Lega and anti-establishment Five Star parties chose law professor Giuseppe Conte as their consensus pick for Italy’s next prime minister, despite his lack of governing experience. Mattarella giving Conte a mandate to form Italy’s next government clears one of the final hurdles for the two parties before they can begin to run the country.

Far Right Surges As Italy Faces Hung Parliament

ROME (Reuters) - Italy faces a prolonged period of political instability after voters delivered a hung parliament on Sunday, spurning traditional parties and flocking to anti-establishment and far-right groups in record numbers.

With votes counted from more than 75 percent of polling stations, it looked almost certain that none of the three main factions would be able to govern alone and there was little prospect of a return to mainstream government, creating a dilemma for the European Union.

Italy's Election Is A Blow To European Unity And A Boost For The Far Right

Italy’s election on Sunday didn’t deliver a clear victory to any single party or alliance, yet there was an unmistakable winner: the populist and far-right parties that campaigned on anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-establishment views and an avowed dislike of the European Union.

The preliminary results of the vote show a fractured political landscape with no easy path for parties to negotiate a coalition government. Both established center-right and center-left parties lost support, while the populist and ideologically amorphous Five Star Movement gained the largest single share of the vote.

The terrible truth about your tin of Italian tomatoes

Two of Italy’s biggest food companies have been implicated in labour abuses of migrant workers picking tomatoes bought by thousands of British and European consumers every week, according to court documents.

Italian prosecutor Paola Guglielmi has named food giants Mutti and Conserve Italia as benefiting from “conditions of absolute exploitation” in the country’s hugely lucrative tomato industry, as part of an investigation into the death of a seasonal labourer.

Italian minister defends methods that led to 87% drop in migrants from Libya

In his eight months in office, Marco Minniti, the austere Italian interior minister, has overseen a huge reduction in the number of African migrants and refugees reaching Italian shores from Libya.

At the last count in August, the figure was 87% down on the previous year.

A former communist with deep connections with Italian intelligence and the levers of the Italian state, Minniti is one of the most controversial politicians in Europe. His success in reducing migrant flows has won him praise and popularity on the right and notoriety on parts of the left.

With Italy No Longer in U.S. Focus, Russia Swoops to Fill the Void

ROME — President Trump made the most of his short time in Italy. He was treated to a private audience with the pope, met with both the country’s president and its prime minister in Rome, flew to Sicily for a summit meeting of world leaders and visited with American troops at a nearby naval air station.

But as the sudden burst of diplomatic activity subsided with his departure, European and American officials fear a return to the new normal of American inattention as the administration struggles with political turmoil and Russia-related scandals back home.

Russia suspected over hacking attack on Italian foreign ministry

Russia is suspected by Italian officials of being behind a sustained hacking attack against the Italian foreign ministry last year that compromised email communications and lasted for many months before it was detected, according to people familiar with the matter.

An Italian government official confirmed that the attack took place last spring and lasted for more than four months but did not infiltrate an encrypted system used for classified communications.

Solar Power Is Now Just As Cheap As Conventional Electricity In Italy And Germany

Once all its costs are accounted for, the price of commercial solar power has pulled even with retail electricity rates in Italy and Germany, according to a new report.

The analysis is the third installment in a regular report by the consulting firm Eclareon, done on behalf of an international group of sustainable energy interests. This installment was also the first to look at solar power in the commercial sector rather than the residential sector. It looked at a standard 30 kilowatt solar photovoltaic system for your average commercial building, and the built a methodology to assess its “leveled cost of energy” (LCOE) in seven different countries: Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Spain.

Italian Mafia's Toxic Waste Dumping Poisons Farmlands

CAIVANO, Italy (AP) — On Ciro Fusco's farm in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, police swooped down one recent day and planted a warning sign in his broccoli fields, prohibiting any one from harvesting or even setting foot on the plot. Dozens of other fields in the area were sequestered in the same way. Decades of toxic waste dumping by the Camorra crime syndicate that dominates the Naples area poisoned wells, authorities have found in recent months, tainting the water that irrigates crops with high levels of lead, arsenic and the industrial solvent tetrachloride.

The warning came too late: Fusco had already sold some of his broccoli at nearby markets.

On the Raft of the Medusa: Italy’s Left

Rome—There was one sunny week this spring when it looked like change might finally come to Italy. A week when an ossified and gerontocratic political class looked like it might give way to new faces and new ideas. When the combined forces of youth and progress looked strong enough to defy European austerity. When—after almost twenty years!—it seemed Parliament might finally pass reforms restricting Silvio Berlusconi’s perverse claims to power once and for all.

Taking ideology out of politics

I miss hearing from those clowns in Italy: not the ones at the papal conclave, the ones in the election a few weeks ago. They were serious clowns.

Especially Beppe Grillo, the comic who heads the party that got the most votes. He wants a referendum to take Italy out of the euro because it's like a shovel with which you keep digging the hole you're in deeper. It may have sounded good in theory but in practice it's been used by bondholders in the north to torture populations in the south. Lots of people think that but he says it.

Silvio Berlusconi: Former Italian Premier sentenced to jail in wiretaps case

MILAN—A Milan court on Thursday 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.

The court sentenced him to one year in jail, but issued no orders on the carrying out of the sentence. In Italy, it is rare for anyone to be put behind bars pending a possible appeal except in the case of very serious crimes like murder.