Italy's top story on Tuesday:
Italy is in the throes of a 'drought emergency', having experienced 81 extended periods of drought since May 2020, Italian environmental association Legambiente warned on Monday.
The Italian regions worst affected by drought in recent years were Lombardy, with 15 periods, Piedmont (14) and Sicily (9), followed by Sardinia (6), Emilia-Romagna (6), and Trentino-Alto-Adige (6), according to data published by Legambiente in the lead-up to World Environment Day on Wednesday.
"Prolonged drought in recent years has repeatedly brought agricultural production to its knees and caused a worrying drop in lake levels," said Legambiente President Stefano Ciafani.
"This is why it is essential to take preventive action rather than acting after extreme weather events have hit the peninsula."
Italy's League walks back calls for president's resignation
Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and hard-right League party leader Matteo Salvini downplayed his party's calls for Italian President Sergio Mattarella to resign on Monday, after the latter gave a Republic Day speech in which he spoke of consecrating "the sovereignty of the EU".
Salvini was forced to clarify his position after League senator Claudio Borghi tweeted that Mattarella should resign "if he really thinks that sovereignty belongs to the EU instead of Italy". Salvini initially appeared to back Borghi's stance, saying "this is the day of the Republic, not of European sovereignty," according to financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.
È il #2Giugno, è la Festa della Repubblica Italiana.
— Claudio Borghi A. (@borghi_claudio) June 2, 2024
Oggi si consacra la Sovranità della nostra Nazione.
Se il Presidente pensa davvero che la Sovranità sia dell'Unione Europea invece dell'Italia, per coerenza dovrebbe dimettersi, perché la sua funzione non avrebbe più senso. pic.twitter.com/fJ9vYnkPvu
Speaking on political talkshow Agorà on Monday morning, however, the minister retracted his statement, saying his party had "no quarrel with the president", and blamed Italian newspapers for having "misrepresented" Mattarella's words.
Foreign Minister and Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani condemned Borghi and Salvini's remarks, saying "Every anti-European choice is harmful for Italy... I express my solidarity with [Mattarella] for the attacks he has received"; while opposition leader Elly Schlein described the comments as "very serious".
Italy's Meloni to visit Albania to discuss migrants
Italian PM Giorgia Meloni was due to travel to Albania this week for a visit focused on migration, just days before the European Parliament elections, Albanian media said on Monday, as reported by news agency AFP.
Under a controversial deal between Rome and Tirana, Albania has agreed to take in asylum seekers taken from the seas off Italy, register them at a centre on the Adriatic Sea and then house them at another centre inland while their claims are processed.
Meloni's hard-right government had hoped to have the project up and running before the European elections on June 6th-9th to bolster her claim to be tough on illegal migration, however the project has been beset by delays.
Authorities in the Albanian port city of Shenjin said at the weekend that the migrant holding centre there had been completed, AFP reported. The asylum claims processing centre in Gjader is still unfinished with no expected completion date announced.
Alcohol tests not required to prove drunkenness: Supreme Court
Police testimony constitutes adequate proof of a driver's state of intoxication without the need for a breathalyser test, Italy's highest court said in a sentence handed down on Monday.
Rejecting the appeal of a motorist from Brescia, the Corte di Cassazione ruled that police testimony is sufficient for a judge to decide whether someone has been driving under the influence of alcohol in violation of the Highway Code, Skytg24 reported.
Officers can assess whether someone has been driving over Italy's legal limit of blood-alcohol level of 1.5 grams per liter by sight, smell, or the driver's inability to answer questions, the court said.
In this case, the defendant's "comatose and altered state" to which police testified was enough to determine that he had been driving well over the limit, the judge concluded.
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