Teacher linked to late mafia boss Messina Denaro handed 11-year prison sentence
Laura Bonafede, an elementary school teacher who lived with late Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro for years, was sentenced to 11 years and four months in prison for mafia-type association (associazione di stampo mafioso) on Tuesday, Ansa reported.
Bonafede, who is the daughter of local mafia boss Leonardo Bonafede, was arrested in April 2023 and initially charged with aiding and abetting – a charge later switched to mafia-type association.
According to prosecutors in Palermo, Bonafede lived with the Cosa Nostra boss for years, helping him communicate with fellow members of the crime group and keeping his whereabouts secret.
In a court hearing earlier this month, she denied the allegations, saying she had “never been part of any mafia group” and had “never lived with anyone because I lived with my mother until 2021”.
Messina Denaro died of colon cancer in late September 2023, less than six months after he was caught by police at a Palermo clinic where he was seeking medical treatment.
He is widely regarded as one of the most ruthless bosses in Cosa Nostra history.
He was convicted in absentia of involvement in the murder of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone in 1992 and in deadly bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993.
One of his six life sentences was also handed down for the kidnapping and murder of the 12-year-old son of a witness in the Falcone case.
Italy puts ITA-Lufthansa deal on hold over last-minute price dispute
A long-standing merger deal between Italy’s flag carrier ITA Airways and Lufthansa was put on hold by Italy’s finance ministry on Tuesday after the German airline advanced a request to revise the previously agreed acquisition price downwards, according to Il Corriere della Sera.
Under an agreement reached last year, the German airline was set to acquire a 41-percent stake in ITA via a 325-million-euro capital increase, with the option to purchase the rest from the Italian government at a later date, bringing the total investment up to 829 million.
Documentation sealing the agreement was meant to be submitted with the European Commission on Monday, but the Italian finance ministry refused to sign it, according to Italian media reports.
“Italy will not undersell its airline,” a source familiar with the matter told Il Corriere della Sera.
Other unnamed sources referred to Italy’s Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti as being “furious”.
Lufthansa told Italian news agency ANSA on Tuesday that it was "abiding by the 2023 agreement with the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance" and had signed the required documentation “by the agreed deadline”.
Number of Italians living abroad up by nearly 12 percent compared to 2020: report
The number of Italian nationals living abroad stood at 6.1 million in 2024, up by 11.8 percent compared to 2020, the latest Italians in the World report from the Migrantes Foundation said on Tuesday, according to Ansa.
The number of Italians residing abroad had nearly doubled since 2006, the report added.
Nearly half (2.8 million) of Italians abroad were originally from the south of the peninsula, with some 826,000 hailing from Sicily alone, Migrantes said.
Lombardy and Veneto were the second and third most common regions of origin, with 641,000 and 563,000 people respectively.
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