The Local

It’s a plan which, if their counterparts across the whole of Italy go along with it, would not only give Italian children their own paradise to hang out in, but would save the govement €3 million.

Children from the middle school in Mosso, a small town in the Alpine province of Biella, have started a crowdfunding campaign to buy the uninhabited Budelli, part of the idyllic Maddalena archipelago which lies between Sardinia and Corsica, La Stampa reported.

They say that if every Italian child pitches in €0.50 then they could club together to buy the island, which they would name ‘isola dei ragazzi’ (the children’s island).

The savvy youngsters have already managed to pool €75 between the town’s 1,500 residents.

“It seems small, but it’s a first step,” they said.

“The message we want to convey is this: if all Italian school pupils donate €0.50 each we could raise the €3 million needed to win the next auction, which means this piece of heritage won’t fall into the hands of a stranger.”

The island, famous for its pink sandy beach and considered the most beautiful in the Mediterranean, was almost taken over by Michael Harte, a banker from New Zealand who paid €2.94 million when it was put up for auction in 2013.

The children campaigning to buy Budelli. Photo: ‘Non si s-Budelli l’Italia’ Facebook page.

Harte, said to have been in love with the archipelago for years, had carefully drawn up conservation plans to ensure its ecosystem was protected.

But needless to say, his offer drew protest by local politicians, who appealed to the govement to bring the paradise, whose previous owner had gone bankrupt, back under state control.

A court in Sardinia overtued a ruling allowing the sale in 2014, and the govement then passed a law that enabled the state to buy it back.

The govement reimbursed Harte but he successfully appealed, and in October last year Italy’s National Park Authority was told to hand the island back to him, while giving him 60 days to pay his original offer price.

But according to a report in La Nuova Sardegna on Saturday, Harte has since renounced his dream.

The newspaper cited a letter from his lawyer, Luca Montella, who said that the uncertainty surrounding the island’s classification as a reserve, coupled with persistent opposition, forced the entrepreneur to walk away.

Photo: Who wouldn't want this? Photo: Christopher Sammer

The idea for the school campaign came about on Monday, when a teacher asked the pupils to read the news in La Stampa’s Sunday issue for discussion as opposed to a book.

They picked up on the story about Budelli, prompting a conversation about its rich history and what fate might befall it.

“We read about the businessman trying to buy it and at the point we thought ‘we could make the dream of maintaining it in public hands a reality’,” student Francesca Grillo told La Stampa.

The group quickly formed a group and set about doing the calculations, before taking the campaign, called ‘Non si s-Budelli l’Italia’ to social media.

The girl was visiting the bank with her mother but became bored and crawled away while her mum was talking with the cashier, Il Messaggero reported.

The mischievous tot clambered into an open time-lock safe that was kept on the bank floor, shutting the door behind her.

Unfortunately for the child, the safe was set to lock itself automatically and, once closed, could not be opened for 40 minutes.

As soon as the girl's mother realized what had happened, panicked bank staff called the fire brigade to try to free the child as quickly as possible.

With the help of a hydraulic wedge, the firemen managed to force the door of the safe open in less than 15 minutes, freeing the crying - but otherwise unhurt - child.

A video of the operation can be seen below.
 

Whatever you make of the decision, one thing is for certain: Italy's 7,600-kilometer coastline is awash with picturesque towns and beautiful beaches.

The gallery below shows ten of the most beautiful places you can visit where you're guaranteed to avoid maddening throngs of tourists - and no advanced booking required!

In Pictures: Beautiful seaside towns where tourists don't tread
 

Police seized hundreds of kilograms of drugs including marijuana from Albania, cocaine from Romania and hashish from Spain, all destined to be peddled in the south of the country by the powerful 'Ndrangheta organisation.

Prosecutor Alessandra Dolci said that the immensely wealthy group, credited with controlling much of the world's cocaine trade, was thriving because "sadly in very few cases the victims denounce its presence in the north".

Police commander Canio Giuseppe La Gala in Milan joined Dolci in calling on "citizens to collaborate and help us by informing, so that the anti-mafia pool in Milan can immediately investigate and destroy the phenomenon".

Of those arrested, 11 are accused of belonging to the 'Ndrangheta, with some having already spent years behind bars after being locked up in the 1990s under Italy's notoriously strict mafia prison regime.

As well as drug trafficking, the suspects are accused of extortion, usury and armed robbery.

Police said they busted the gang thanks to information provided by a businessman from Calabria who had initially thought to make a deal with the 'Ndrangheta when the crime group first attempted to illicit protection money from him.

"The testimony from Francomanno, the businessman, is very rare. His story shows that making deals with members of organised crime, with the hope of profiting, ends instead with being slowly swallowed up by the system," Dolci said.

"In his case, he had decided to accept as a minority shareholder a convict who, from the inside and with mafia methods, managed to gnaw away at his company," finally forcing him to sell for next to nothing, she said.

Over 140 people were ordered to stand trial at the end of last year for helping the group infiltrate the affluent north, including gangster bosses, businessmen and an ex-footballer who played for Italy when it won the World Cup in 2006.

Police believe the group - which they describe as the most active, richest and most powerful syndicate in Europe - uses legitimate activities in the north to recycle the huge amounts of cash their drugs business generates.

The anti-establishment party had promised Prime Minister Matteo Renzi it would support the bill legalising gay relationships.

But in an unexpected about-tu, this week it refused to green-light a motion to speed up the draft law's adoption, opening the door to a series of wrecking amendments by opponents.

Enraged grassroots supporters accused the party known as M5S of betraying their wishes in order to spite Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD).

"The civil union bill was an unmissable moment to put Renzi in difficulty," Franco Pavoncello, political science professor at John Cabot University in Rome, told AFP, though he waed the M5S could face "fallout" over the perceived betrayal.

Italy is the last major country in Weste Europe not to offer gay civil unions. Close ties with the Vatican have sunk all previous attempts. This time the bill has met more fierce Catholic opposition over its allowing gay couples to adopt under certain circumstances.

M5S, founded in 2009 by Italy's famous acerbic comic Beppe Grillo, celebrated a shock success in the 2013 general election when it snapped up 25.5 percent of the vote, becoming the second biggest political force behind the PD.

Grillo, 67, announced last year that he was taking his bushy beard and trademark rants back to showbiz. His name has gone from the Five Star logo and he brought a new stand-up routine to Rome this week.

'Jackals, traitors, cowards'

His sharp-suited heir apparent, Luigi Di Maio, 29, defended M5S's political move on Twitter, saying it was protecting parliamentary debate - a line which sparked catcalls from Inteet users who branded the party "jackals", "traitors" and "cowards".

Gay rights groups were also furious, with protesters holding a sit-in outside Grillo's show in the Italian capital.

"It was a tactical move against the PD, but they (M5S) also want to arrive at the local elections without angering the right", where votes are up for grabs, said Francesco Maesano, Five Star expert for La Stampa daily.

Political commentator Andrea Scanzi described the move as "cutting off your balls to spite your wife".

"If they vote for the bill they clash with half of their electorate. If they don't vote for it they make the country miss a great chance to be less bigoted," he said in Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Guido Moltedo, founder of online political magazine Ytali, told AFP the movement was "just like the scorpion in the fable" where he stings and kills the frog carrying him across a river because, despite his promises, he cannot help himself.

The party, bo as a protest group, won votes from across the political spectrum with its platform against corruption and in favour of a euro-membership referendum - and refuses to make pacts with parties on the right or left.

Need to choose sides

The party's premise was that decisions should emerge from an egalitarian exchange of ideas by members on the Inteet, but in fact the movement's "guru" Gianroberto Casaleggio dictates the party line, experts say.

The movement has expelled anyone who would broker deals, hampering its own attempts to secure significant policy results in parliament.

"How long can they remain without choosing sides on key issues? I don't think very long. What they are doing (over civil unions) is very dangerous and they risk losing swathes of voters," Moltedo said.

Piergiorgio Corbetta, research director at Bologna's Cattaneo Institute and author of a book on M5S, said Grillo's dream of "direct democracy" had "proved an unattainable utopia", and the party would struggle without him.

"The Five Star movement is a child of Grillo, his personality and communication skills. It's likely to slip into a rapid decline. We've seen it here, it's listing," he said.

A poll by the Euromedia Institute this week showed the movement still has 24.5 percent of voter intentions but is slowly losing ground to Renzi's PD, which currently stands at 32 percent.

Its strength will be tested this year at local elections in Rome, though many have waed winning the mayorship could be a poisoned chalice, given scandal-hit Rome's problems.

"I hope for their sake they don't win, or they'll find themselves with an unmanageable hot potato," Corbetta said.

Two-thirds of South Carolinians are Protestants, with evangelical voters comprising the largest voting block in the state during its Republican primary, which is being held on Saturday.
   
The evangelical faithful are often suspicious of hierarchical authority, and a Pew Institute study in January said liberal Americans have a more favorable view of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church than conservatives.
   
This could serve in Trump's favor when it comes to the spat between him and the pontiff, who triggered the controversy when he said the billionaire real estate mogul is "not a Christian" because he wants to build a wall on the US southe border to keep out illegal immigrants.
   
The remarks led to a torrent of media coverage, even as Francis cautioned his statement by saying he still wanted to see if Trump had made such Idea and would "give him the benefit of the doubt."

Trump's response was swift, ste and par for the course for his campaign, in which he has refused to let a criticism go unchallenged.
   
"For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful," Trump said in a statement that he read to a campaign crowd in Kiawah Island, South Carolina.
   
Was Trump's biting response a ploy to gain evangelical support some 48 hours before the critical primary?
   
"I don't do it for that reason," he told Fox News.
   
"With me, I just tell the truth," he added, stressing that "we need borders, we have to stop illegal immigration. It's killing our country."
   
A Trump surrogate wasted no time in pointing out the apparent hypocrisy in slamming Trump for wanting to build a wall.
   
"Amazing Idea from the Pope - considering Vatican City is 100% surrounded by massive walls," Dan Scavino, Trump's director of social media, posted on Twitter.

Careful criticism

The bombshell back-and-forth dominated the campaign Thursday, with rivals Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio wading in carefully to suggest the pope's advice was not entirely welcome.
   
"I don't question anybody's Christianity because I honestly believe that's a relationship you have with your creator," Bush told reporters.
   
"It only enabled bad behavior when someone from outside our country talks about Donald Trump."
   
Bush is Catholic, as is fellow Floridian Rubio, and they appeared to send the gentle message that Francis, who had just completed a visit to Mexico, should stick to his role as a religious leader.
   
"I think the Holy Father recognizes or should recognize - and I believe he does - how generous America is," Rubio said.

"When it comes to accepting both refugees and immigrants, no nation on this planet is more welcoming, more open or more compassionate than the United States," Rubio added.
   
"Certainly a lot more welcoming in our laws than Mexico is."
   
In his historic speech before the US Congress last year, the pope urged US lawmakers to mobilize against climate change, take in more refugees and abolish the death penalty - positions opposed by many Republicans.
   
Religious figures rushed to Francis's defense.
   
Catholic League president Bill Donohue told CNN he felt Francis was "set up" by a reporter asking about Trump.
   
"I'll give him the benefit of the doubt," Donohue said of the pope's remarks.
   
Father Timothy Kesicki, president of the Jesuit Conference, said the pope was reacting less to Trump himself and more to the gospel's opposition to building barriers.
   
"I think he's attacking an issue more than a person," Kesicki said on CNN.
   
The ultimate question is whether South Carolina's evangelicals line up behind Trump on Saturday.
   
Senator Ted Cruz narrowly captured Iowa, the first state to vote in the nomination battle, thanks to evangelicals.
   
Reverend Don Flowers of Providence Baptist Church in Charleston told AFP he was "not convinced this year there is going to be an evangelical bloc of voters going to one candidate."
   
That could spell a clear victory for Trump if he neutralizes Cruz's advantage with religious voters.
   
At the nearby St. Matthew's German Evangelical Lutheran Church, Pastor James Blalock suggested Trump's remarks might have been out of line.
   
"The pope has better credentials to comment about what is Christian and what is not than Donald Trump," Blalock said.

The fireball left a trail of vapour hanging in the sky for minutes.

Not long after the unusual event, pictures of bright flashes, vapour trails and eyewitness reports started to emerge on social media, with users suggesting they had witnessed a meteorite falling to earth.

The unidentified flying object lit up skies over northe Italy, travelling east to west from Genoa to Venice at around 6.19pm.

Sightings of the object were also reported from as far away as southe France and Switzerland.

La Repubblica reported a spike in phone calls made to Italy's fire brigade to report the phenomenon.

A photo of the vapour trail, captured on a road outside Genoa, was uploaded to the Italian citizen joualism website, YouReporter.

The trail over liguria. Photo: YouReporter

“The object crossed the sky for about four seconds – I've never seen anything like it," the user, called Masdives, wrote. "This is a picture of the contrail I took, which was in the sky for about a minute.”

Moments later a similar object was seen hurtling over the skies of Venice almost 400 kilometers further east.

Angelo 1960 uploaded a photo snapped above town of Jesolo, showing a bright flaming object streaking through the sky.

“I saw it coming down rapidly, followed by a trail of smoke and fire," he wrote.

The meteorite snapped over Venice. Photo: YouReporter

Sightings of the object were not limited to Italy, with reports also emerging from as far away as southe France and Switzerland.

Twitter user Romain Magellan uploaded a pic of the object snapped above the ski resort of Valmorel in France.
 

Reports of Thursday's UFO are consistent with descriptions of a bolide – a small piece of rock or ice from outer space that bu up as they race through the earths atmosphere before hitting the ground.

Bolides are extremely bright objects – often with apparent magnitudes much brighter than the full moon.

According to American space agency Nasa, some 100 tons of dust, gravel, rock and ice enter the earth's atmosphere every day.

La Stampa reported that the Sardinia-based carrier has asked unions to agree to the job cuts as part of the partnership deal with the Gulf airline.

It was reported earlier this week that the deal could see Qatar Airways, ranked the best airline in the world in 2015, taking a minority stake of up to 49 percent in Meridiana.

A deal is expected to be reached during the first half of 2016.

Meridiana is owned by Aga Khan, a businessman and Muslim spiritual leader who invested heavily in developing Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda coastline in the 1960s, tuing Porto Cervo into a billionaires' paradise.

The job cuts would be another blow for Italy’s travel sector, especially after the Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair said earlier this month that it would axe 600 jobs in Italy as a result of a hike in taxes.

Italy’s unemployment rate also crept up again in December to 11.4 percent after a steady decline over four consecutive months.

Alitalia also laid off thousands of staff in 2014 as a result of its merger with Abu Dhabi’s Etihad.

Sting has certainly been making the most of his Tuscan estate, Tenuta Il Paglio, which he bought from an Italian duke in 1998 for €3.5 million. 

Back then it was just a dilapidated villa with 100 hectares of land.

But alongside wife Trudy Styler, the Englishman in Tuscany set about restoring the property, going on to acquire more land surrounding the villa at auction in 2003, for €6 million, with the aim of producing wine.

Over a decade on, one of the four wines produced at the estate  - Sister Moon, named after one of his songs - has been placed on an exclusive list of Italy's best wine, compiled by Wine Spectator, an American magazine.

According to Corriere della Sera, the inclusion means the wine will be on show, alongside those produced by the more established Frescobaldi and Marchesi Antinori, at the prestigious OperaWine, which takes place in Verona in April. 

When contacted by The Local, Sting's press team weren't immediately available for comment.

OperaWine is the first event of the long-running Vinitaly wine festival, which has been celebrating the best bottles Italy has to offer for 50 years.

Made from 40 percent Sangiovese grapes, 40 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cabeet Sauvignon, Sister Moon was the first wine produced on the artist's Tuscan estate in 2007.

But it doesn't come cheap: bottles of the 2008 vintage sell for €36.

A description of the wine on the estate's website boasts "aromas of black pepper and black licorice with blackberries". The wine also "fills your mouth and then caresses your taste buds".

Sting and his wife spend months each year at the property with their six children - often entertaining high-profile guests.

UK Prime Ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair have been spotted relaxing on the estate alongside American singers Madonna and Bruce Springsteen.

Sister Moon is also produced alongside three other reds, two of which are named after his hits: Message In A Bottle, When We Dance and Casino Delle Vie.

Olive oil and honey are also produced at the estate, which has recently opened its doors to tourists.

Six cottages can be let in the grounds of the villa and the artist has been known  to entertain his guests with an impromptu acoustic set. But the experience doesn't come cheap –  seven days costs €7,000.  

A probe was launched into Bilal Erdogan after Italian authorities were petitioned by Turkish businessman Murat Hakan Uzan - an exiled political opponent of Erdogan - to investigate a purported "getaway operation" from Turkey to Italy.

Erdogan's son moved to Bologna in August to complete his doctoral studies, but was accused by anti-govement parties of fleeing his homeland after being implicated in a corruption scandal.

Bilal, who lives in the north Italian city with his wife and two children, insisted he was merely winding up his PhD in inteational relations at the School of Advanced Inteational Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

The 35-year old was one of the main protagonists implicated in corruption allegations that exploded in December 2013 against the president's inner circle and were bitterly denied by Erdogan, then premier.

Leaked tapes emerged in February 2014 of Erdogan allegedly telling Bilal to dispose of some €30 million ($37 million) in cash.

Erdogan has dismissed the recordings as a "vile montage".

Uzan's petition stated that Bilal flew into Italy with a "large sum of money" and a team of armed bodyguards who were denied entry before swiftly being assigned Turkish diplomatic passports, according to Italian media reports.

Matteo Marzotto, his sister Diamante and businessman Massimo Caputi were given nominal ten-month prison sentences by a court in Milan for evading a €70 million tax bill on the family's 2007 sale of the Valentino fashion house to investment fund Permira.

The sale was organised through a company based in Luxembourg but should have been liable for Italian taxes, the judge in the case ruled.

None of those convicted will go to jail immediately, pending up to two appeals against the sentences.

Marzotto specialises in producing high-quality wool, cotton, linen and silk-based textiles for Italy's luxury and fashion sectors. Valentino now belongs to a Qatari investment fund which took over Permira.

The ingenious idea was to transform their portable vaporizers into 'e-joints', which they then loaded up with marijuana and hid inside marker pens so they could have a smoke on the sly during breaks.

But staff at Colombatto, a vocational school for tourism and hotel management, were well aware that drug-taking was rife in the institute thanks to the students' often brazen attitude towards consumption.

"A teacher told me he saw a boy waving a bag of drugs around in class, presenting it to his friends as as if it was a brioche,” The school's headmistress, Claudia Torta, told Il Messaggero.

“At that point, I decided that enough was enough.”

As well as police finding the e-joints during their investigation, plants, seeds and greenhouses were seized from the homes of several students.

The raids also exposed a network of juvenile drug dealers from Vaie, a small town just outside Turin in the Susa Valley, who were selling drugs both at school and at their local train station.

Ten students were charged with drug trafficking and selling drugs to minors, while two were placed under house arrest and another two are forced to report daily to their local police station.

“Drug dealing at school is a phenomenon that should be eliminated,” public prosecutor Annamaria Baldelli said.

“Outside of the family, school is our most important agent in human education.”  

But at a glitzy and detailed presentation of their official candidacy in Rome on Wednesday, bid candidacy president Luca Di Montezemolo admitted that keeping a watchful eye on their spending budget would be among their priorities.

"The building blocks of our project are total transparency, a 'low-cost'
approach and bringing general improvement to the city," said Di Montezemolo.

With the Colosseum as their emblem and the city's major tourist attractions as venues, Rome intends to build on its strengths and existing infrastructure to avoid, like its rivals, unnecessary and unpopular costs.

Di Montezemolo, the former Ferrari chief, claims 70 percent of the facilities required to host events around Rome, which hosted the 1960 Games, are already in place.

In a bid to avoid constructing "white elephant" stadiums or venues, the construction of temporary venues is in the pipeline.

"More than 70 percent of the sites are already available. If we had to organise the opening ceremony tomorrow, as well as the athletics and swimming events, we could," said Di Montezemolo.

The race to host the 2024 Olympics began in eaest Wednesday with the four bid cities - Budapest, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome - all presenting their initial candidature files to the Inteational Olympic Committee (IOC).

Rome believes the stunning backdrop of some of its famous historical sites offers competitors, spectators and millions of viewers around the the chance to take a unique trip back in time.

Athletes would step up to receive their medals in front of the Colosseum, the cycling road races would be held around the ancient sites of the Fori Imperiali and archery events would be held at the Baths of Caracalla.

The marathon races would pass by St. Peter's Basilica, a synagogue and a mosque and the Circus Maximus - in antiquity, the venue that hosted brutal chariot races.

A Rome Olympics would be held around three key centres: the Foro Italico, built in the 1920s and completed, notably the Stadio Olimpico, ahead of the 1960 Games, the Fiera di Roma and Tor Vergata, which would host the Olympic Village.

Di Montezemolo said their budget for permanent venues (principally the Olympic Village and the press centre), would rise to €2.1 billion.

"It's our plan to build temporary venues. We don't want to be left with any white elephants," he said.

At least that's according to a report by the UK-based business adviser, Willis Towers Watson.

The 2016 Global 50 Remuneration Planning Report ranked the average salaries paid for full-time, entry-level jobs - those usually aimed at recent graduates or people who have recently finished specific training courses.

Among the 15 weste European nations ranked, Italy came last – paying an average gross salary of €27,400 a year.

The figure marks a stark contrast with Switzerland, which ranked in first place, paying an average pre-tax salary of a whopping €83,600.

Italy's closest counterparts were Spain, where entry-level workers can expect to take home €30,700, and France, where average eaings were slightly better at €33,400.

After the Swiss, the Danes were the next most handsomely paid – taking home an average of €51,400 a year. Germany and Norway came fourth and fifth, respectively, with average salaries of €45,800 and €45,800 a year.

Italy's inability to pay its young workers competitive wages is one of the key factors driving the 'brain-drain'.

Every year thousands of skilled Italians leave the country, enticed by the higher wages and better opportunities on offer abroad.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Those who stay – and manage to find a job - see their eaings increase considerably as their career progresses, according to the report.

In terms of net salaries paid to workers in middle-management positions, Italy was ranked a more respectable 11th place out of the 15 countries – with average gross salaries of €70,900 per year.

That's higher than wages paid for similar roles in northe European powerhouses Sweden (€68,300) and Finland (€64,100).
 

It's been a bleak start to the year for Italy's economy, despite Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s rapid reform efforts and a glimmer of hope in the middle of last year.

The only good news has been that consumer confidence reached a record high in January, although business confidence was at its lowest in almost a year.

Some might argue that Italy, often dismissed as a basket case, has always been listless and that a crash is a foregone conclusion.

When the country somewhat blindly sailed into the euro in 2000, the cost of living almost doubled oveight, as salaries stagnated.

But back then there were at least more jobs and bank credit was easier to come by.

The global financial meltdown of 2008 changed all of that, with Italy's economy limping along ever since. In fact, the size of the Italian economy is roughly where it was over a decade ago.

Bankrupt Greece might have stolen the limelight over the past few years, but Italy, Europe’s third-largest economy and the world’s eighth largest, has been closely watched.

And even more so now as the country teeters on the edge of a banking crisis and conce mounts that it could now go the way of its southe European neighbour.

And if Italy goes the way of Greece, the impact will be monumental, not just for Europe, but the entire world economy.

Here are five reasons why Italy is making the world jittery.

1. Banking crisis - depositors starting to pull their money out

Photo: Fabio Muzzi/AFP

Banks across Europe aren’t in healthy state right now, but in Italy, the situation is far worse.

The number of “bad loans” - that is the number of loans that are not being paid back as per the agreement between the borrower and lender - held by Italian banks amounted to €200 billion at the end of December.

That figure that has been growing since 2008 and amounts to a dizzying 17 percent of GDP.

Italy’s major banks and corporations are starting to feel the pain, with stocks in Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Carige, Unicredit and Fiat falling dramatically in mid-January.

The problem is, because of new EU rules, Italy can’t bail-out its banks, while an attempt to create a “bad bank” last year to relieve the Italian banking system of some of these toxic loans flouted state-aid rules.

This is why Renzi’s patience with the EU over the past few weeks has been wearing thin - he is constrained by EU regulations to fix the problem, but the EU, with its austerity policy, won’t fix it either.

But what does this mean for you?

Firstly, it means that the more bad loans a bank has on its books, the less they have to lend to you and, crucially, to businesses that want to grow.

People are also starting to wonder how safe their money is in Italian banks.

Fabrizio Viola, the CEO of Monte dei Paschi, Italy’s third-biggest bank and the most troubled one, admitted in January that some customers had started to pull their savings out of the bank.

Although Renzi moved to reassure people that the country’s banking system is robust, the market volatility no doubt spooked depositors - especially with the suicide of an Italian pensioner, who lost his entire savings as a result of the “bail-in” of the four smaller banks in December - still fresh in their minds.

That said, some moves have been made to soothe the jitters.

Italy has managed to strike a deal with the European Commission to help its banks sell their non-performing loans. Although analysts have waed that the deal wouldn’t fully solve the problem, it will significantly reduce potential losses.

The other positive news, according to analysts at Fitch ratings agency, is that Italian banks, despite the huge amount of bad loans, appear to have “adequate solvency”, at least enough to avert total collapse.  

2. The two trillion euro question

Matteo Renzi. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Italy is drowning in public debt. The figure stood at almost €2.2 trillion at the end of December - €38 billion higher than at the end of 2014.

That’s the second highest in the EU, after Greece.

So unless Renzi wins more concessions from the EU, he will struggle to reduce that debt pile over the next year.

Here’s why: Italy’s recovery from recession has virtually stalled, and growth forecasts of 1.6 percent for this year are beginning to look unachievable.

Italy also just doesn’t get enough back in tax revenues - even though tax rates are among Europe's highest - to help alleviate the debt.

And the EU simply doesn’t have the money to rescue Italy in the way it did Greece. 

3. Lack of productivity

Photo: Dan Strange

Italy has a dismal record when it comes to productivity - that means the amount of value a worker creates over time; a crucial element of a thriving economy.

Italian workers might be clocking longer hours, but they’ve been producing less for over a decade.

This wasn’t always the case. Back in the 1970s, Italy thrived when it came to production.

But that growth fell rapidly thanks to low investment, a low-quality workforce and lousy goveance in the decades that followed.

It doesn’t help that the labour market is still so highly regulated and the country still so heavily unionized.

The cumbersome and costly bureaucracy also prevents producers from actually producing.

The extent of Italy’s dismal productivity came to the fore more recently through the embarrassing exposés on the hundreds of public sector staff who’ve been shirking work to indulge in more appealing pursuits. All the while being paid.

Meanwhile, industrial production fell in November and December and manufacturing output eased in January.

Italy is also a country made up mostly of family-run, small or medium-sized businesses, which lack the funding to help them grow and make them more competitive. 

4. High unemployment

Photo: AFP

The abysmal rate of production has resulted in high unemployment, especially among Italy’s youth - i.e., the segment that is meant to be propping up the pension payments for Italy’s ageing population.

Leaders may have patted themselves on the backs when the jobless rate fell steadily over a four month period towards the end of last year, but it crept up again to 11.4 percent in December.

Youth unemployment might have fallen during the same month - most likely due to young people fleeing the country for work rather than jobs being created - but it was still at a very high 37.9 percent.

The situation is more acute in Italy’s southe regions, where the economy is even worse than that of Greece’s.

The south's gross domestic product declined for the seventh year in a row in 2014, while its economic output grew by just 13 percent between 2001 and 2014.

Such figures paint a picture of an ever-widening wealth gap between Italy's north and south, with one in three people at risk of poverty in the south, compared to one in 10 in the north.

A dwindling population is also hindering chances of a southe revival: in 2014, just 174,000 births were registered in the south - the lowest in 150 years. 

Meanwhile, young people are fleeing in their droves, sick at the slow pace of change and lack of opportunities, something which threatens to tu many small southe Italian cities into ghost-towns.

5 - An ageing population

Photo: Caspar Diederik

Regulation, a shortage of jobs and an ageing population all play into the hands of Italy’s main economic killer: weak production.

Italy’s birth rate has more than halved since the ‘baby boom’ of the 1960s, with the number of babies now being bo averaging about 500,000 a year. 

A lack of jobs and money is preventing young people from leaving home and starting a family, while little has been done by the govement to encourage people to have children.

Italians are also living longer, thus depending more on pensions, but with no jobs for the young people whose taxes are expected to fund them.

The Italian composer was allegedly so jealous of the Austrian prodigy that he once tried to poison him - a claim rejected by experts as the collaboration was performed in Prague.

"The part composed by Mozart is, shall we say, more ingenious and dramatic, while the other two verses are more lyrical," musician Lukas Vendl told reporters after playing the four-minute composition on a harpsichord.

"But it's impossible to deduce from it who was a better composer."

The cantata from 1785 is "key to a new understanding of the relationship between Mozart and Salieri," according to Timo Jouko Herrmann, the German musicologist and composer who found the work.

Herrmann said it suggests the men were "colleagues who worked together" rather than rivals and undermines a legend suggesting Salieri may have played a role in Mozart's untimely death at 36 in 1791.

Titled "Per la ricuperata salute di Offelia" (To Ophelia's health) the cantata was jointly composed by Mozart, Salieri and an unknown musician named Coetti.

It accompanies a libretto by Italian poet Lorenzo Da Ponte and is dedicated to popular English soprano Nancy Storace (1765-1817), who retued to the stage after losing her voice for a spell.

The score lay unidentified in the Czech Museum of Music since the 1950s but Herrmann was finally able to attribute it to the two composers thanks to access to new information on the Inteet, according to a museum statement.

Scores of the cantata had been distributed at the time by a Viennese merchant, Artaria and Comp. The Prague copy is the only one to have survived.

False portrayal

The discovery is especially interesting in light of a legend discounted by historians: Salieri was said to have fatally poisoned Mozart out of jealousy over the Austrian wunderkind's talent

First appearing in Alexander Pushkin's 19th-century poetic drama "Mozart and Salieri," the rumour was later featured in the play and 1984 film "Amadeus", which historians say grossly exaggerated Salieri's rivalry with Mozart.

"We all know the film 'Amadeus.' Salieri is mischaracterised in it," said Ulrich Leisinger from the Inteational Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg.

"He didn't poison Mozart. The two composers regularly met up and collaborated in Vienna."

The film was shot in the Czech capital, where Mozart spent considerable time in the 18th century as it was then part of the Austrian Empire.

Prague played host to the premiere of his celebrated opera Don Giovanni in October 1787, which later had a lukewarm reception in the empire's capital Vienna.

Mozart debuted another opera, The Clemency of Titus, in Prague in 1791.

This year marks the 260th anniversary of Mozart's birth and the 225th anniversary of his death.

"As far as I know, it's the only piece jointly written by Mozart and Salieri," said Herrmann.

"But who knows: in a treasure house like this, anything can happen," he said of Prague's music museum.

The task force, dubbed "cultural peacekeepers", will be dispatched - when logistically possible - to assess the damage to globally-prized monuments or works in the wake of conflicts, earthquakes, floods or other disasters.
   
The main aim is to stop the looting and selling of heritage by militants to fund "terrorist activities", UNESCO said.
   
The task force will "assess risk and quantify damage done to cultural heritage sites, develop action plans and urgent measures, provide technical supervision and training for local national staff," the Italian ministry said in a statement.
   
It will also help transfer movable objects to safety "and strengthen the fight against looting and illegal trafficking of cultural property," the ministry said.
   
Thirty police art detectives and 30 archaeologists, restorers and art historians "are already operational and ready to go where UNESCO sends them," said Culture Minister Dario Franceschini.
   
Italy's art police have an inteational reputation for tracking down and recovering stolen works.
   
The hope, UNESCO director Irina Bokova said Tuesday, was that other countries would follow Rome's example and join the heritage fight.
   
The idea for an Italian, cultural version of the United Nations peacekeepers - known by their distinctive blue helmets - was voted in by the UN after the destruction of sites including in Syria's Palmyra by the Islamic State group.
   
IS seized control of Palmyra in May and has realized inteational fears by destroying some of the most prized sites in the UNESCO World Heritage listed ancient city.
   
The militants have carried out a sustained campaign of destruction against heritage sites in areas under their control in Syria and Iraq, including the important Iraqi sites of Hatra, Nimrud and Khorsabad, the ancient Assyrian capital.
   
Islamist militants are also accused of being behind attacks on 10 religious and historic monuments in the UNESCO World Heritage city of Timbuktu in Mali.
 

The Austrian govement announced on Tuesday it would step up border controls at checkpoints along its southe frontier with Italy, Slovenia and Hungary to slow the migrant influx.

"There will be different structural measures from containers to further barriers" similar to the short mesh fence recently set up at Austria's main border crossing with Slovenia at Spielfeld, Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

The govement also plans to create on Wednesday a daily cap on the number of migrants allowed into the country, she added.
   
The checkpoints Mikl-Leitner referred to are located in the states of Carinthia, Styria, Burgenland as well as Tyrol, which shares a border with Italy.
   
Austria has adopted an increasingly hardline stance as Europe struggles to cope with its worst migration crisis since the Second World War.
   
The country of nearly nine million people last year received 90,000 asylum claims, one of the bloc's highest rates per capita.
   
In response to the influx, Vienna already waed last month it would cap this year's number of asylum claims at 37,500 and deport at least 12,500 people.

The denial came after reports in the Italian media speculated that the 28-year-old had collaborated with a London intelligence agency, Oxford Analytica.

The doctoral student had a contract with the agency between 2013 and 2014, La Repubblica reported. The company has declined to comment.

The media has also suggested that he worked for AISE, an Italian spy agency.

Regeni went missing in Cairo on January 25th and his body was found in early February in a ditch in the outskirts of the Egyptian capital.

The corpse showed signs of torture, but Egyptian authorities have dismissed accusations that security forces were behind the murder.

Speaking via their lawyer, Regen’s family denied he was an agent or collaborator for any secret service, either Italian or foreign.

Quoted by Ansa, they said that to try to push such a theory “offended the memory of a young university student who made field research a legitimate ambition of study and life”.

Many Italians believe he was abducted and killed by elements of the Egyptian security services.

Thousands of university lecturers and researchers have also signed a letter accusing Egypt of using torture against its own citizens and demanding an independent probe into Regeni’s death. 

In the past, Italy has been criticized for never fully condemning the darkest episode in its recent political history.

As a result many people across Italy still hold some respect for the fascist dictator. 

“Unlike other countries, Italy has never really squared up to it. Any discussion on fascism's darker side has been mute or even actively repressed,” Christopher Duggan, a history professor at the University of Reading in the UK told The Local. 

And according to La Stampa, the Italian govement is readying €2 million to keep that episode alive by way of a museum in Benito Mussolini's home town of Predappio. 

Critics say it will provide yet another focal point for neo-fascists, who already flock to the town each year in their droves. 

Pro-Mussolini messages fill the visitor's book at his grave, while fascist pilgrims have spurred a roaring trade in all manner of right-wing paraphealia, from Mussolini calendars to baby grows.

SEE MORE: Revealed: the Italians who worship Mussolini

Some fear that the new museum will amount to nothing more than an expensive endorsement of fascism funded by public money - but organizers say they are keen to avoid this happening.

The museum is being pushed by Mayor Giorgio Frassineti, who told La Stampa that the project was not about celebrating Italy's notorious fascist dictator, but an attempt to "do something important for the history of our country." 

Luca Lotti, the under-secretary of state for the centre-left Democratic Party, visited the town in late January to assure local officials that the museum could count on govement funding. 

The museum would be housed in the former seat of the fascist party, a derelict building located 500 meters from the home in which Il Duce was bo. 

The site is just over a kilometer from Mussolini’s crypt, a place which already attracts thousands of neo-fascists each year.

Fascist memorabilia on sale in Predappio includes 'I Love Il Duce' t-shirst. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

The total cost of the project comes in at some €5 million – of which another €2 million is expected to come from EU money, while the rest will be financed locally and through a private investment fund.

Organizers are keen to stress that the museum won’t take a positive view of the late dictator.

“We have collaborated on the project too," said Carlo Sarpieri, president of Anpi, the national partisan's association which commemorates the men and women who fought against fascism during the Second World War and is advising on the project.

"We hope our presence can eliminate all celebratory aspects of the museum," Sarpieri added. 

"We will be keeping an eye on things to make sure it's done with the due historical and scientific rigour."