Italy’s civil aviation authority has suspended the licence of a helicopter pilot who flew low over Rome to drop flower petals during the over-the-top funeral of a purported local crime boss that has outraged city residents.

A cargo ship carrying 49 people evacuated from a Greek ferry which caught fire in the Adriatic Sea have arrived in the Italian port of Bari, the first big group to reach land.

Tens of thousands of union workers marched through more than 50 Italian cities to protest government economic reforms that they say erode their rights.

Striking Italian union workers have marched through more than 50 towns and cities to protest against government economic reforms they say erode their rights.

Emergency crews were working to reach remote parts of flood-ravaged Sardinia today after a torrential rainstorm killed at least 16 people, collapsed bridges and swept cars away.

Italian prosecutors placed the captain of the Jolly Nero cargo ship under investigation today for alleged manslaughter after his vessel slammed into the dock at Genoa’s busy port and toppled the control tower into the harbour, killing at least seven people.

Emergency crews inspected schools, churches, and other buildings for damage as aftershocks rattled northern Italy a day after a magnitude-6.0 earthquake killed seven people and toppled centuries-old buildings.

At least four people have been killed in a 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck northern Italy near Bologna, according to reports.

Crew members stranded on a tanker ship that ran aground in stormy seas off Sicily are being rescued by helicopter today.

The Costa Allegra’s captain said passengers had put on life vests and were ready to abandon ship as his crew fought a fire in the engine room that left the vessel adrift and powerless.

The captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner’s boss said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers.

Coast guard divers searching the submerged part of the stricken cruise ship Costa Concordia today found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, authorities said.

A speeding car has ploughed into a group of cyclists in southern Italy and killed at least seven of them, police said today.

AN 18-MONTH-OLD British baby fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Sardinia, Italian media reported yesterday.

ELUANA ENGLARO, the comatose accident victim at the centre of a right-to-die drama gripping Italy, died yesterday as lawmakers debated a bill to force doctors to restore her life support.

A FOURTH suspect wanted by Italian detectives investigating the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher was named yesterday.

A police officer accidentally shot and killed an Italian football fan today, during a clash between Lazio and Juventus supporters.

An Italian police officer accidentally shot dead a football fan today while trying to break up a clash with supporters of another club at a motorway rest stop, a police chief said.

A former Italian army sharp-shooter opened fire from his balcony with a pistol and a carbine in a Rome suburb, killing a passer-by and wounding eight others, authorities said.

The execution-style killings of six Italians in Germany marks an unprecedented escalation of the operations of southern Italy’s ’ndrangheta crime syndicate, exporting a vendetta abroad for the first time, Italian officials said today.

Three gunmen hijacked a regional bus in northern Italy today and set it on fire after freeing the passengers, officials said.

Hollywood royalty Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were married tonight in a torch-lit Italian castle.

The reputed boss of the Italian Mafia Bernardo Provenzano maintained his prison silence today as forensic experts searched his hideout and police arrested three men accused of aiding Italy’s No.1 fugitive.

Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi stormed off the set of a state TV show today, branding the journalist interviewing him as a leftist, two days before a planned debate between the conservative leader and election challenger Romano Prodi.

Italy’s foreign minister said today that an Italian hostage in Afghanistan is all right, and that contact had been initiated by her kidnappers.

The Italian journalist who was wounded by US gunfire in Baghdad today said she had not ruled out the possibility that troops shot at her car deliberately.

American troops fired on a car rushing Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to freedom after a month in captivity, killing an Italian intelligence officer who helped negotiate her release and wounding the reporter in another friendly-fire tragedy at a US checkpoint in Baghdad.