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Tag: Italy

  • Long-term future could be in Italy, says Smalling

    Long-term future could be in Italy, says Smalling

    Chris Smalling says he can see his long-term future in Italy if his season-long loan move from Manchester United to Roma is successful.

    Smalling has joined the Serie A club until June 2020 after falling out of favour at Old Trafford following the £80m arrival of Harry Maguire.

    The defender was officially presented as a Roma player at a press conference on Friday morning and suggested he could look to make the move permanent.

    “This is an opportunity that came to me that I was very interested in, and I was very eager to come,” he said.

    “It happened very quickly and now I focus on the next game, getting up to speed with training in terms of the manager’s methods and then hopefully have a very good season.

    “To be able to have the chance at a big club, and then if it prolongs and the club is happy then I can definitely see a longer-term future in Italy.”

  • U.S. citizens confess to killing Italian police officer

    U.S. citizens confess to killing Italian police officer

    Two 19-year-old U.S. citizens have confessed to a fatal knife attack on a Carabinieri police officer in Rome, police said on Monday.
    The alleged perpetrators were arrested after they were located in a hotel room, where police also found the knife believed to have been used in the attack behind a ceiling panel.
    They both confessed to the attack during an interrogation after being taken into police custody.
    “Police officer Mario Cerciello Rega, 35, was fatally stabbed eight times overnight into Friday in Rome’s central Prati district near the Vatican.
    Rega was among several officers involved in a plainclothes operation against two thieves who had stolen a backpack from an Italian man.
    “The thieves had offered to return the backpack to the victim in exchange for 100 euros and a gram of cocaine, after reporting the crime to police, the man arranged a meeting point with the thieves.
    “When the Carabinieri showed up instead, they were attacked with a knife. ”
    Police had previously said that the perpetrator of the stabbing was probably an African citizen, a description that unleashed caustic commentary from the ruling far-right League party.
    However, a police statement did not clarify which of the two teens carried out the attack.

  • Italian police arrest 19 Nigerian mafiosi in major crackdown

    Italian police said Thursday they have arrested 19 suspected members of a Nigerian mob, including the leaders of a clan, called MAPHITE, which forged alliances with other mafias and violently punished anyone who rebelled.
    In an operation dubbed “Burning Flame”, coordinated by police in Bologna and Turin, over 300 officers carried out arrests and searches in nine cities across northern Italy from Bergamo to Modena, Parma and Ravenna.
    A two-year probe — aided significantly by a man on the inside who fed details to investigators — “has allowed us to destroy much of what, within the Nigerian community, is known as the ‘MAPHITE’ cult,” police said in a statement.
    It said the acronym stood for Maximum Academic Performance Highly Intellectuals Train Executioner.
    “Among those arrested were those who held a leading role within the criminal organisation.
    “Those who decided on the new initiations, who ran the prostitution rings, who dominated by force the other criminal organisations, who ran the drug trade in the city squares,” it said.
    Fifty other suspects were under investigation, it added.
    Anti-immigrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini hailed the bust.
    “Maxi-operation against the Nigerian mafia, so much for those who denied its existence. Thanks to the police and investigators. We don’t need this kind of immigration. Ports closed, jails open!,” he tweeted.
    Police said the Nigerian mob used “urban guerrilla warfare which continued for days at a time” to maintain territorial control.
    The ‘cult’ was just one of a series of foreign organised crime groups which had adopted Italian mafia codes, police said.
    While they have much in common, they are independently structured and “in strong rivalry with each other”, it added.
    Maphite was founded back in the 1980s — along with other Nigerian gangs such as the Black Axe and the Vikings — before developing into a full-blown organised crime group in the 1990s, police said.
    It adopted the moniker Green Circuit Association to camouflage its international expansion and is now widespread in many countries around the world.
    Green Bible:
    The top mobsters are known in gang lingo as the Main Chief, Deputy Don, Checker (the treasurer) and Fire — who is in charge of giving orders, while an executive committee carries them out.
    Members have to follow strict rules of conduct laid out in the so-called “Green bible”, kept safe by the leader. The commandments of the Green Bible included the ‘Mario Monti’ norm on recycling money to countries of origin, police said.
    “New members are initiated following precise rituals, and treason is met with corporal or lethal punishment,” police said.
    The rituals included new members being first beaten then asked to swear allegiance while holding burning paper, using the words “if I reveal our secrets, this fire will burn me and all I own”, Italian media reported, citing investigators.
    Four subsets within the Maphite were identified: the ‘Vatican Family’, in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, the ‘Latin Family’ in the northwest, the ‘Rome Family Empire’ in central Italy, and the ‘Light House of Sicily Family’ in the islands, they said.
    Maphite maintains close ties to Nigeria, so that those who cross it fear retaliation not just in Italy but there too, police said.
    Paolo Borgna, deputy prosecutor in Turin, said the foreign mafias “are born and develop by giving protection to their countrymen and developing a kind of parallel, ruthless and criminal justice”.
    “It is a characteristic shared by all mafias: protection is offered, compensation is requested, protection is imposed and, finally, those who do not accept it are punished,” he told journalists at a press conference.
    He said Maphite had a common fund which the newly-affiliated paid into when they joined.
    “It’s not a refined mafia… but not one to be underestimated. It must be contained now,” he added.
    Italy’s far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini hailed the “maxi-operation”, saying “we don’t need this type of immigration. Ports closed, jails open.”

  • The call of Italy is strong, says Chelsea boss Sarri

    The call of Italy is strong, says Chelsea boss Sarri

    Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri says he misses Italy amid reports he could leave the club to join Juventus.

    Sarri’s future has been the subject of debate all season despite only moving to Stamford Bridge from Napoli last summer.

    The 60-year-old led Chelsea to third in the Premier League, the Carabao Cup final and won the Europa League in the final against Arsenal on 29 May.

    “For us Italians the call of home is strong,” Sarri told Vanity Fair.

    “I feel that something is missing. It has been a heavy year. I begin to feel the weight of distant friends and elderly parents I rarely see.

    “But at my age, I only make professional choices. I won’t be able to work for 20 years. It’s hard work, the bench.”

    Sarri says his relationship with the Napoli fans will not change even if he does move to a rival Italian club.

    “The Neapolitans know the love I feel for them. I chose to move abroad last year and not to go on an Italian team,” he said, having managed them from 2015 to 2018.

    “The relationship will not change. Loyalty is giving 110% when you are there. What does it mean to be faithful?”

    Sarri, who is due to hold talks with Chelsea about his future, said he thinks he “deserves” to stay at the club after their 4-1 Europa League final victory.

  • Italy denies report it will ban Huawei, ZTE from 5G plans

    The Italian Industry Ministry on Thursday denied a newspaper report that it planned to ban China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp from participating in the rollout of its 5G infrastructure.

    “We have no intention of adopting any such initiatives,’’ the ministry said in a statement.

    It added that national security was a priority and that it would re-evaluate the situation if any critical issue emerge.

    Huawei faces international scrutiny over its ties with the Chinese government and suspicion Beijing could use its technology for spying, something the company has denied.

    At the time of its establishment, Huawei focused on manufacturing phone switches, however, it has since expanded to building telecommunications networks.

    It also included providing operational and consulting services as well as equipment to enterprises inside and outside of China and manufacturing communications devices for the consumer market.

    Huawei had over 170,000 employees as of September 2017, around 76,000 of them engaged in research and development (R&D).

    It has 21 R&D institutes in countries including China, the U.S, Canada, the UK, Pakistan, Finland, France, Belgium, Germany, Colombia, Sweden, Ireland, India, Russia, Israel and Turkey.

    As of 2017, the company invested $13.8 billion in R&D, up from $5 billion in 2013.

     

  • Juventus Douglas Costa survives auto crash

    Juventus and Brazil winger Douglas Costa on Monday survived a terrible auto accident in Italy.

    The incident occurred on a motorway in northern Italy as Douglas Costa was returning to Turin.

    His Jeep was involved in a collision with a Fiat Punto, and the driver of that car was taken to hospital for minor injuries.

    However, no one has been able to recount how the accident started, as the crash is currently being investigated by the Novara Est traffic police.

    Juventus was not training on Monday as the players had two days off following Saturday’s 3-3 draw against Parma.

    Douglas Costa was substituted at half-time during that match with a muscle injury in his left thigh.

  • African migrants rejected by Italy were tortured, raped – UN

    African migrants rejected by Italy in a standoff with the European Union on August 15, said they had been held by smugglers for up to two years in Libya and many had been beaten, tortured and raped, the UN said on Tuesday.

    The 150 migrants, mainly Eritreans and Somalis, were rescued in the Mediterranean but waited 10 days while Italy’s anti-immigrant government refused to let them disembark, until Ireland, Albania and the Vatican agreed to accept them.

    A further 27 unaccompanied minors and 13 people needing urgent hospital treatment had earlier been allowed ashore in Italy, whose government had threatened to cut funds to the European Union unless other states took in the migrants.

    The UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said its staff had gathered testimony from the migrants.

    All were malnourished and exhausted and said they had been held against their will in Libya for up to two years, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a UN briefing in Geneva.

    “In Libya they complained that many had been beaten and tortured by smugglers and traffickers seeking ransom money from their families in their countries of origin,” he said.

    “Italian doctors who attended all the women … reported that many of them said they had been raped while in Libya.”

    He said IOM believed thousands of migrants were still being detained – held in safehouses or warehoused, but getting people to the shore had recently become more difficult because of violence in the west of the country.

    A drop in the value of the Libyan dinar had also made it more difficult for sub-Saharan Africans hoping to earn enough in Libya to fund their sea voyage to Europe, prompting the smugglers to look for other nationalities with more resources.

    Italian Interior Minister Salvini, who has led a popular crackdown against immigration since his government took office in June, has said he was under investigation by a Sicilian prosecutor for abuse of office, kidnapping and illegal arrest over the migrant standoff.

  • Claudio Marchisio leaves Serie A giant after 25 years

    Italy midfielder Claudio Marchisio has left Juventus, ending a 25-year association with the club.

    Both parties agreed to the termination of the 32-year-old’s contract, which was due to expire in 2020.

    “It will be a pleasure to keep following him, whichever shirt he will wear in the future,” said Juventus in a tribute to the player on their website.

    Marchisio played 389 times for the Bianconeri, winning seven league titles and four Coppas Italia.

    The Turin-born player, who suffered a serious knee injury in April 2016 which ruled him out for six months, made 20 appearances last season.

    In a tweet, accompanied with an image of him as a young player, Marchisio said: “I can’t stop looking at this photograph and the stripes on which I wrote my life as a man and a footballer.

    “I love this shirt to the point that, despite everything, I am convinced that the good of the team comes first. All the time.”

    Juventus added: “Twenty-five years have passed since Claudio put on the black and white shirt for the very first time. He was aged just seven with a mad desire to play for his hometown club and a head full of dreams.

    “His dream back then, as he has so often retold, was to wear the very same shirt in front of thousands of fans, fighting for the most coveted trophies that the beautiful game has to offer.”

    BBC

  • 35 feared killed as bridge collapses

    35 feared killed as bridge collapses

    A motorway bridge has collapsed in the northwest Italian city of Genoa and fire brigade sources said 35 people were believed killed as vehicles plummeted to the ground, British Broadcasting Corporation reported.

    Dramatic video footage captured the moment of the disaster when one of the huge supporting towers crashed down during torrential rain.

    Vehicles and debris fell 45m (148ft) on to rail tracks, buildings and a river.

    The official death toll was given as 22 on Tuesday evening by the Governor of Liguria region, Giovanni Toti, but he warned the number would “certainly rise significantly.”

    Fire brigade sources told Ansa that 35 people were dead and 12 missing.

    Searches for people trapped in the rubble are expected to go into the night.

    Fears that other parts of the bridge might fall had prompted the evacuation of buildings in the area, a rescuer told Italy’s Ansa news agency.

    Interior Minister Matteo Salvini promised that anyone found to be responsible for the bridge collapse would be held to account.

    “I have crossed that bridge hundreds of times,” he said. “Now, as an Italian citizen, I will do everything to get the names and surnames of the managers responsible, past and present, because it is unacceptable to die like that in Italy.”

    A representative of the motorway’s operator, Autostrade, told Reuters there had been “no reason to consider the bridge was dangerous”.

    “We saw lightning strike the bridge,” eyewitness Pietro M all’Asa, was quoted as saying by Ansa.

  • Italy bans advert on betting

    Italy bans advert on betting

    Italy has become the first country in Europe to ban advertising on betting, its government announced on Tuesday, amid criticism from football clubs which benefit from the ads.

    The country’s Deputy Premier, Luigi Di Maio, said at a news conference that “I think this is an industry that has become a bit too big, at the expense of people’s health and dignity: we are going to cut it down in size.”

    Di Maio, who serves as industry and welfare minister, said gambling was ruining families and weighing on the budget of the National Health Service.

    According to Italy’s National Research Council, 400,000 people had a gambling problem in 2017, in a fourfold increase from 10 years earlier.

    A cabinet meeting decided the clampdown on Monday, in spite of criticism from the betting industry and from football clubs, which often rely on sponsorship from betting firms.

    Claudio Fenucci, chief executive of Serie A team Bologna, was quoted by Il Messaggero daily as denouncing the government’s “crazy” move as depriving football clubs of 100 million Euros (116 million dollars).

    “The only result will be to humiliate Italian football fans, whose teams will have less money at their disposal,’’ Deborah Bergamini of the opposition Forza Italia party said.

    Forza Italia is the party of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, whose family owns the private TV network Mediaset, which risks losing revenue from banned advertising deals.

    Di Maio said his anti-establishment Five Star Movement had long promised the ban, and criticised “famous people,” such as retired star footballer Francesco Totti, who appear in betting ads.

    dpa/NAN