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Italy will host a meeting of culture ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised countries in Florence in March, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini announced on Wednesday. Billing the talks as a first for the G7 grouping, Franceschini said the March 30th-31st meeting would focus on the protection of cultural heritage, combatting trafficking of artistic and historic items and using culture as an instrument for dialogue. It will be part of the preparations for a summit of the leaders of G7 countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States - in Sicily at the end of May. The Local...

Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri seen at Turin's Porta Nuova train station on Thursday. Photo: Italian policeItalian police have released an image of the Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri at Turin's Porta Nuova train station on Thursday night. The 24-year-old Tunisian was seen on surveillance camera walking through the station at 22.14, a couple of hours before he was also spotted at Milan's Central Station. He was shot dead in a gunfight with police during a routine identity check outside the train station in the Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni in the early hours of Friday moing. Amri was the focus of a four-day Europe-wide manhunt before being killed. He is suspected of ploughing a truck into the crowd at the Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others, on December 19th. Fabrizia di Lorenzo, a 32-year-old from the Abruzzo region, was among the victims. She was buried in her hometown on Monday. Amri is believed to have made his way to Italy fr The Local...

Four people are missing after a two-storey building exploded in Acilia, an area in southwest Rome, on Wednesday afteoon. A man and a 68-year-old woman were pulled alive from the rubble of the collapsed building. Both are seriously injured and were transported by air ambulance to hospitals in the capital. Four people, including a mother and her daughter, are still missing, Il Messaggero reported. A 68-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman have also not yet been found, Ansa reported. The explosion is believed to have been caused by a gas leak in an apartment on the top floor. The blast shook windows of nearby buildings. "We had just finished eating and we heard a huge explosion," Rosalba Neri, who lives in the building opposite, told the newspaper. "We thought a plane had crashed. Then we looked and saw the scene: the building was no longer there and all around were smashed windows, broken glass and damaged cars."  A probe is underway and Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi is on her way to the The Local...

A priest in Bari province has stirred controversy after inviting churchgoers to a mass dedicated to Rocco Sollecito, a mafia boss shot dead in Canada in May. Father Michele Delle Foglie pinned the mass notices to walls around the town of Grumo Appula, where Sollecito was bo, inviting people to attend the memorial mass on Tuesday evening. Sollecito, thought to have been a high-ranking member of Montreal's Rizzuto crime family, was gunned down while driving his car in May, a "mob hit" which Canadian police said was part of an "ongoing dismantling of the older generation" of the mafia clan. The notice read: "Father Michele Foglie, spiritually united with family living in Canada and his son, Franco, who is visiting our town, invites the faithful of our community to celebrate a mass in memory of their relative." A funeral for the 67-year-old was held in Montreal, and attended by 200 people, but his son, Franco, asked for a  mass to be held in his hometown. "The mass does not honour, but r The Local...

Fabrizia Di Lorenzo was among the 12 victims in the Berlin attack. Photo: John MacDougall/AFPPresident Sergio Mattarella and Interior Minister Marco Minniti attended the funeral of Fabrizia Di Lorenzo, the 32-year-old killed in last week's terrorist attack at a Christmas market in Berlin. The funeral was held in her hometown of Sulmona, in the central Abruzzo region, on Monday. Di Lorenzo, who had been living in Berlin for several years and worked for a German transport company, was among the 12 people killed after a truck ploughed into the busy market on December 19th. Her mobile phone was found at the scene and death confirmed after DNA tests. "The pain at her death is great," Mattarella said. "Once again, one of our young compatriots has been the victim of the senseless, execrable violence of terrorism. I express the solidarity and closeness of the whole country to Fabrizia's parents and brother." The terrorist attacks in Paris in November last year also claimed the life of Valeria The Local...

The alleged Berlin terror attack suspect was seen outside Milan central station hours before being killed in police shootout. Photo: Italian policeItalian police have released an image of the Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri at Milan's central train station hours before he was killed in a shootout. The 24-year-old Tunisian, suspected of killing 12 people at a busy Christmas market in Berlin on December 19th, was caught by a surveillance camera arriving at the station at 12.58am on Friday, two hours before he was shot dead in a gunfight with police during a routine identity check outside the train station in the Sesto San Giovanni suburb. He is believed to have made his way to Milan from Berlin via the French city of Lyon and northe Italian city of Turin. CCTV footage confirmed that "a man corresponding to the killer" was on a platform at Lyon-Part-Dieu station on the afteoon of December 22nd, a source close to the investigation told AFP. The source said investigators are still tryin The Local...