Tag Archives: Italy

Vice News reports: A militant neo-Nazi group raided by Italian anti-terror police this week was ready to carry out violent attacks and had numerous transnational connections, including a member who claimed to have met with Donald Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, according to media reports citing police. Italian police said they had arrested five members of a white supremacist terror …

Agence France-Presse reports: Italian doctors and nurses suspended over their refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19 can now return to work, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Monday. Italy was the first European country to be hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, and has since registered nearly 180,000 deaths. Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy railed against many …

The Associated Press reports: Several thousand black-clad fascist sympathizers chanted and sang in praise of Benito Mussolini as they marched to the slain Italian dictator’s crypt Sunday, 100 years after Mussolini entered Rome and completed a bloodless coup that gave rise to two decades of fascist rule. The crowd of some 2,000 to 4,000 marchers, many sporting fascist symbols and …

The Associated Press reports: Giorgia Meloni, whose political party with neo-fascist roots secured the most votes in Italy’s national election last month, was sworn in Saturday as the country’s first far-right premier since the end of World War II. She is also the first woman to serve as premier. Her Brothers of Italy party, which she co-founded in 2012, will …

Posted today to Franklin Graham’s Facebook page: Pray for incoming Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. I like her boldness. She has some important things to say in this video about the attack on our identity, which really boils down to our freedom. Communist thinking has very cleverly invaded our culture—and we need to be on guard. She said, “And so …

Reuters reports: The LGBT community has “very real fears” after a conservative bloc dominated by the far-right won Italy’s general election, a leading gay rights campaigner told Reuters. The nationalist Brothers of Italy group, led by Giorgia Meloni, emerged as the largest party in the ballot and will lead the most right-wing government in Rome since World War Two. Meloni, …

Media Matters has the transcript: American families are facing the very same onslaught from the very same poisonous ideologies. The difference is that in this country it’s rarely acknowledged, except on the fringes. Meloni is not on the fringes. She’s the new Prime Minister of Italy — she will be — and she’s saying it out loud. Contrast that to …

Mediaite reports: The hard right in the United States celebrated on Monday as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni appeared to win Sunday’s election with some 26 percent of the vote, which would make her both Italy’s first female prime minister and the first leader of a far-right Mussolini-admiring party to come to power in the country since World War II. While many …

The Associated Press reports: A party with neo-fascist roots, the Brothers of Italy, won the most votes in Italy’s national elections, looking set to deliver the country’s first far-right-led government since World War II and make its leader, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first woman premier, near-final results showed Monday. Italy’s lurch to the far right immediately shifted Europe’s geopolitics, placing a …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis has dismissed rumors he plans to resign anytime soon and that he hopes to visit Moscow and Kyiv after traveling to Canada later this month. Francis also told Reuters in an interview published Monday that the idea “never entered my mind” to announce a planned retirement at the end of the summer, though he …

Politico Europe reports: A yacht worth $700 million with alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin has been impounded as part of the European Union’s ongoing sanctions against Russia, according to a statement from Italy’s Economy Ministry. The boat — the Scheherazade, located in the Italian town of Marina di Carrara, north of Pisa — had “significant economic and business …

The Daily Beast reports: Italian police have added another stunning villa to their collection of sequestered Russian properties after seizing the so-called Rocky Ram belonging to former Formula One driver Nikita Dmitrievich Mazepin and his father, chemical baron Dimitry Mazepin, on Monday. The property, valued at around $115 million, sits on a cliff overlooking Sardinia’s rocky Paradise Beach coast and …

Politico Europe reports: Italy is to expel 30 Russian diplomats, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio announced on Tuesday during a visit to Berlin. He said the move was “for national security reasons.” Also Tuesday, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod tweeted: “Denmark will expel 15 Russian intelligence officers working at the Russian embassy in Copenhagen. They pose a threat to our …

Reuters reports: Italian police have seized a superyacht owned by Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko, the prime minister’s office said on Saturday, a few days after the businessman was placed on an EU sanctions list following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The 143-metre (470-foot) Sailing Yacht A, which has a price tag of 530 million euros ($578 million), has been sequestered …

The New York Times reports: American officials are examining the ownership of a $700 million superyacht currently in a dry dock at an Italian seacoast town, and believe it could be associated with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, according to multiple people briefed on the information. United States intelligence agencies have made no final conclusions about the ownership of …

The Guardian reports: Italian police have seized villas and yachts worth at least €140m (£126m) from four high-profile Russians who were placed on an EU sanctions list after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sources said on Saturday. A police source said a villa owned by the billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov on Sardinia, and a villa on Lake Como owned by the …

Italian wire service ANSA reports: The anti-vax parents of a boy who has to get blood transfusions during a delicate heart operation have refused to allow him to received blood from COVID-vaccinated donors, the Gazzetta di Modena reported Monday. A judge’s ruling is expected later Monday on the boy, who is at Bologna’s Sant’Orsola Hospital. Meanwhile an appeal to set …

Perugia Today reports: Franco Trinca, the 69-year-old biologist who had expressed his no-vax and home therapies against COVID, died in the hospital in Città di Castello. The Perugian biologist and nutritionist had been hospitalized for COVID with bilateral pneumonia. Trinca refused intubation. Trinca had been the protagonist of heated TV clashes with Selvaggia Lucarelli, speaking in favor of alternative therapies. …

The Daily Beast reports: An Italian priest who shunned COVID-19 vaccines over the false belief that they contain “aborted embryos” has died at the age of 51 after battling coronavirus for several weeks. Don Paolo Romeo had resisted pleas to get vaccinated from friends and colleagues who tried to talk sense into him, according to the L’Unione Sarda newspaper. Romeo, …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis canceled his New Year’s Eve tradition of visiting the life-sized Nativity scene set up in St. Peter’s Square to discourage large crowds from forming. Meanwhile, major Italian cities scrapped their traditional Dec. 31 open-air concerts as Italy battles a record-setting surge in coronavirus cases. The Vatican has largely followed Italy’s lead in imposing restrictions …