Italian officials said rough seas have increased movements of the crippled Costa Concordia and are thwarting the start of fuel removal a month after the cruise ship capsized off a Tuscan island.

Italian police were searching today for a fugitive gunman who shot and killed four people – including a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and a pensioner – in a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Milan.

Italian rescuers today frantically hunted for survivors of an earthquake which killed at least 23 people, including 20 children crushed when their school collapsed.

Pilgrims began flocking to Rome today for the canonisation of Padre Pio, the enormously popular mystical Italian monk whose hands bled for years.