The Local

Pasquale Kevin Bruzzese, originally from Mintuo, in the Lazio province of Latina, was killed a day after his 65th birthday.

His death was announced by his nephew, Vincenzo Fidele, on Facebook.

The businessman had lived in Ecuador for several years. According to the latest official figures, 413 people were killed, although the search for survivors continues.

Aerial view of Pedeales, one of Ecuador's worst-hit towns. Photo: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP

On Monday night, six people - including a three-year-old girl and baby of nine months - were rescued from the ruins of a hotel near Manta, a coastal town.

The earthquake, which also injured some 2,500 people, is the worst tragedy to have affected Ecuador in seven decades, the country’s President Rafael Correa said, adding that rebuild costs would run into billions of dollars.

Italian cinema great Marco Bellochio, 76, saw his latest film "Fai Bei Sogni" (Sweet Dreams) chosen to open the increasingly prized sidebar competition, after being snubbed in the Palme d'Or selection.

The film about a boy coping with the death of his mother is his first to be shown at Cannes since "Vincere" (To Win) was shown in the main competition in 2009.

The other two Italian films are "Fiore" by Claudio Giovannesi, set in a juvenile detention centre, and "La Pazza Gioia" (Like Crazy) - about two patients who escape a mental institution.

They are among 18 feature films chosen for the Director's Fortnight, which often offers up some of the most raved about films during Cannes.

"This year there is a mixture of the veterans, Jodorowsky, Bellochio, and the youth," said Director's Fortnight artistic director Edouard Waintrop.

Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, 87, will present his autobiographical feature "Poesia sin Fin" (Endless Poetry).

Another film initially slated to be included in the main competition that ended up in the Director's Fortnight is "L'Economie du Couple", a tale of a divorced couple who continue to live under the same roof for economic reasons, by Belgian director Joachim Lafosse.

Chilean director Pablo Larrain's "Neruda", starring Gael Garcia Beal as an inspector hunting for poet Pablo Neruda, who became a wanted man in Chile in the late '40s for his communist sympathies, also got the nod.

Indian director Anurag Kashyap - who directed the acclaimed psychological thriller "Ugly", shown at Cannes in 2013 - retus to the genre with "Psycho Raman" about a serial killer terrorising Mumbai in the '60s.

American director Laura Poitras, who won an Oscar for "Citizenfour" about fugitive US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden, will be showing her latest documentary "Risk" focusing on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The independent competition will end with "Dog Eat Dog" by Paul Schrader, director of the 1980 crime drama American Gigolo and author of numerous screenplays for Martin Scorsese films, including "Taxi Driver".

Starring Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, "Dog Eat Dog" follows three ex-cons trying to adapt to life outside bars.

The traditional animated film entry will this year be Claude Barras' debut "Ma Vie de Courgette" (My Life as a Courgette) about a nine-year-old boy making it in a foster home after his mother's sudden death.

The commission, the EU's executive arm, is empowered to apply strict limits on public deficit and debt levels in the European Union, but the auditors said Brussels went too easy on offenders.

The commission "must be more strict," Milan Martin Cvikl, the member of the Court of Auditors responsible for the report, said in a press statement.

"It is not sufficiently aware of what is happening on the ground and it is not applying the rules consistently," he said.

Since the debt crisis, the EU has been empowered to slap penalities on countries that violate pre-agreed deficit or debt targets, but the commission has yet to apply these newly-acquired measures to the rule breakers.

The 120-page report said that even though "detailed procedures and guidelines" on budgetary discipline exist, "there are problems with the commission's implementation of these tasks.

"This is because the Commission did not make full use of its powers to enforce" compliance by member states in applying the rules.

The report also cites a lack of resources and "poor record-keeping" from the commission's teams.

The report was based on studies of the work between 2009 and 2015 with six EU countries: Italy, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Malta.

Italy and France have consistently come in the cross-hairs of the European Commission for repeated violation of public spending targets.

But the countries, two of the most powerful members of the EU, have eluded punitive measures by the commission, which has drawn criticism that Brussels will not dare challenge govements on so sensitive an issue.

As an example, the auditors said last year's recommendation to grant France another reprieve "did not contain data in support of the baseline scenario... or any detail of additional discretionary revenue measures" France had promised in retu for the delay.

At a news briefing, Commission spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said the EU welcomed the court's work, "which can contribute positively to our own continuous effort to improve the functioning of the ... process".

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said earlier this month that the country would keep its pledge to reduce its debt ratio in 2016 for the first time in eight years.

The economy grew by 0.8 percent in 2015 after three consecutive years of contraction. But growth has been sluggish since, with forecasts for the first and second quarter of this year at 0.3 percent.

Growth would need to pick up speed in the second half of the year in order to reach the 1.2 percent target for 2016, down from the previous forecast of 1.6 percent.
 

In a sensational report on Tuesday, the German daily, Bild, said that jihadists were planning to pose as refreshment sellers at beach resorts in the three countries, before detonating suicide vests and bombs planted beneath sun loungers.

The newspaper claimed the information came from Italian and German secret agents, with the alleged attacks planned at resorts in southe France, Spain’s Costa del Sol, and unnamed Italian beaches.

Bild also quoted Seck Pouye, the chief of police in Senegal, who said that the terrorists, from the Boko Haram Islamist group in Nigeria which allies itself with Isis, planned to radicalize regular travellers between Senegal and Europe to carry out the attacks.

But the report has been denied by the Italian intelligence services, with a source quoted by Ansa as saying it was "groundless" and that "there is no specific terror alert on Italian beaches".

A source at Italy’s anti-terrorism department also dismissed the report when contacted by The Local.

In a process that also involved the inteational police corporation, Interpol, the life of a Chinese girl, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Verona, Italy, was saved.

The girl had threatened to kill herself during an online group chat with friends, Italian police said in a statement.

One of the friends, a Chinese student in the UK, became conceed and so decided to send an email to police in Verona, telling them her friend was seriously depressed and had threatened to take her own life.

But the friend instead emailed police in Verona, New Jersey, by mistake. 

The force is led by police chief Michael Ste, who picked up the emailed shortly after 5pm last Thursday, 40 minutes after it had been sent.

Although the station frequently receives messages and calls from people trying to contact the authorities in Italy's Verona, Ste said he couldn't ignore the message.

“I wasn't going to let someone who was sick or ill go to the wayside,” he told Buzzfeed news. “I felt it was my responsibility."

Ste leaped into action, frantically trying to contact Verona police – but he couldn't find any contact details online.

He also tried the Italian Embassy in the US, but it was already closed for the evening.

Ste finally contacted Interpol, which got in touch with police in Verona and a squad was dispatched to the girl's apartment.

Police arrived less than two hours after Ste read the message, at about 1.10pm CET, and found the girl next to an empty bottle of antidepressants with her wrists partially cut.

She was immediately taken to hospital and is reportedly in a stable condition. "We saved a life half a world a way,” Ste said.

Verona police in Italy added:  "The rapid transfer of information inteationally and the prompt action of Verona police force saved the life of the young student."

Police in Verona declined to provide more details about the incident when contacted by The Local.

Over 10,000 refugees and migrants are currently residing in a makeshift refugee camp in the northe Greek town of Idomeni after Macedonia closed the border earlier this year.

Austria - who strongly advocated for the closure of the west Balkan migrant route - recently started to build a border checkpoint and a road barrier at the Brenner pass between Austria and Italy.

The country's defence minister Hans Peter Doskozil (SPÖ) also waed last week that Austria is prepared close the border point with Italy in extreme conditions.

The measures are part of a national effort from Austria to prepare for what authorities expect will be a repeat of last summer’s wave of refugees and migrants making their way to Europe seeking protection and a better life.

German politician and head of the European People’s Party Group Manfred Weber said yesterday that Brenner could become a “second Idomeni” if the area ended up being cordoned off by Austria’s border controls, causing a backlog of people on the Italian side of the border.

Speaking to joualists whilst inspecting the site, Weber called on Austria to only introduce the planned measures in “extraordinary circumstances” and for the two countries to sit down together to discuss the matter.

The visit was welcomed by Austrian politician Othmar Karas (ÖVP), who has criticised the waings from Doskozil about possibly closing the border.

“Whoever wants to close the Brenner has leaed nothing from history, neither Austrian nor European history,” said Karas, quoted in the ORF.

“Fences inside Europe are the symbols of a failed collaboration. If all countries implemented and applied the jointly agreed EU agreement, there [would be] no need for border fortifications inside the EU."

Austria's foreign minister Sebastian Kurz defended the measures, however, saying that there was much historical awareness in Austria "but also realism".

"No-one closes Brenner, if you introduce border controls. The free movement of people and goods continues - and yes, in an ideal case there are no border controls," he said, adding that it became necessary after Austria was "left alone" to deal with the crisis.

Italy sees spike in boat crossings

Just last Friday, Italy insisted it was not facing an “invasion” after a spike in migrant boat crossings from Libya exacerbated fears the country is on the verge of becoming the main entry point for people trying to reach Europe.

Nearly 6,000 mostly African migrants have landed at southe Italian ports since Tuesday but Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said the overall trend this year was broadly in line with the 2015 patte.

Yesterday hundreds of migrants died after their boat capsized in the sea between Libya and Italy. Survivors said they believed up to 500 people died, although the coastguard has not yet confirmed the figure

In a statement on the first anniversary of a disaster in which up to 800 migrants are feared to have perished, the navy said the salvage operation was behind schedule because of poor sea conditions in the area off Libya where the boat went down on the night of April 18th -19th, 2015.
   
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has vowed to give every one of the victims a decent burial.
   
Only 28 people survived the disaster, which occurred after the overcrowded trawler collided with a large cargo ship that had gone to help it.
   
The sinking is thought to have been the deadliest of the current migrant crisis and the worst to have occurred in the Mediterranean in decades.
   
The boat sank to a depth of 380 metres. Italian divers have recovered 169 bodies from around it and seen hundreds more trapped inside.
   
Once raised, the boat is to be towed to the port of Augusta in Sicily where attempts will be made to identify the victims from any documents not destroyed by the water and with the help of DNA experts.

The paintings were smuggled out of Prince Felix of Bourbon-Parma's plush villa in Camaiore, a city within Lucca province, and  subsequently taken to Dosburg castle in north-easte Bolzano, where the head of the SS in Italy, General Karl Wolff, had set up his headquarters.

Felix, the son of the deposed Duke of Parma, married Luxemburg's monarch, the Grand Dutchess Charlotte in 1919. 

During the war, Allied soldiers even raided the castle, filled with stolen art, in order to recapture some of the works - events which formed the basis for George Clooney's 2014 film 'Monuments Men'.

The prince's stolen paintings were never found, with the Italian state compensating him in 1945 for the value of the stolen pieces after he filed a post-war damages claim against the govement.

But in December 2014, the first of the three paintings - a portrait of the Madonna and child by Renaissance painter Gianni Battista Cima - was found by police in the Monza home of a Milan-based family.

The painting, found among the family's collection during a routine investigation into art documentation, was said to have been inherited from a deceased art-dealing relative, but it is not known how the painting come into the relative's possession. 

The stolen picture of the Madonna and child, by Gianni Battista Cima. Photo: Caribinieri

During subsequent investigations, two more stolen artworks came to light: a tempera on wood panel showing the Holy Trinity by early Renaissance painter Alessio Baldovinetti and a painting showing Jesus at the temple by Girolamo dai Libri.

The paintings were seized by police and have now been entrusted to the Brera Art Gallery in Milan, where they were presented to the press on Monday.