Italy allocates over €500 million to secure Campi Flegrei
The government said it will allocate over 500 million euros to securing buildings in the Campi Flegrei area, west of Naples, Italian media reported on Thursday, after the area was hit by a flurry of around 150 tremors, including a 4.4-magnitude quake, on Monday and a 3.6 quake on Wednesday.
Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci said the government would “allocate resources in the so-called red zone”, which includes some 1,250 buildings deemed to be “at high seismic risk”.
The government was also considering offering financial aid to residents “planning on relocating” elsewhere, Musumeci said.
Some 500,000 people are estimated to live in the Campi Flegrei red zone, according to Italy’s Civil Protection Department.
Meloni’s party slips in polls but keeps lead ahead of EU vote
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party slipped down in the latest EU election poll from Italy’s research institute Ipsos but remained well ahead of its rivals, AFP reported on Wednesday.
With two weeks to go until the June 8th-9th EU parliament election in Italy, Brothers of Italy stood at 26.5 percent of voting intentions – two points below what the party was credited with in April.
Italy's main opposition party, the centre-left Democratic Party, was at 22.5 percent, up by one point, while the Five Star Movement was in third place, down by half a point to 15.4 percent.
Forza Italia, the centre-right party founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi, was credited with 9.2 percent of voting intentions, up by 0.6 percent over one month, whereas Matteo Salvini's populist League garnered 8.6 percent of voting intentions, up by more than a point.
Polls are prohibited in Italy in the two weeks preceding an election, meaning this was Ipsos' final one before the vote.
Ilaria Salis under house arrest after 15 months in Budapest jail
An Italian teacher currently on trial for allegedly attacking a group of neo-Nazis was placed under house arrest on Thursday morning following 15 months in Budapest's maximum security penitentiary Gyorskocsi Utca, news agency Ansa reported.
Ilaria Salis, aged 39, from Monza, has been front-page news in Italy since she appeared in court handcuffed and with her feet shackled in early January, with her detention conditions drawing outrage from figures on both sides of the Italian political spectrum.
Salis was arrested in Budapest in February 2023 following a counter-demonstration against a neo-Nazi rally, but was only granted house arrest last Friday after the Budapest Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision to deny home detention on flight risk grounds.
Salis was set to appear in court on Friday to attend the third hearing of her trial.
Italian businessman arrested in Colombia over ‘phantom’ Berlusconi will
An Italian businessman was arrested in Colombia on Thursday after posing as an heir of the late Silvio Berlusconi and claiming to be the beneficiary of some of his assets, SkyTG24 reported.
Marco Di Nunzio, originally from Turin, was placed under investigation by Milan prosecutors last October after publishing a will in which he claimed Berlusconi had bequeathed him 26 million euros, a yacht, villas in Antigua and 2 percent of financial behemoth Fininvest.
Prosecutors Marcello Viola and Roberta Amadeo closed the investigation on Thursday and were reported as being ready to submit a request for trial on charges of forgery of a will and attempted extortion against Berlusconi’s children.
Berlusconi died at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in June 2023 due to complications from a severe form of leukaemia. His will was unsealed and made public in early July.
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