Disgraced former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could attempt to run for office again, reported The Telegraph on Sunday, after the media tycoon was quoted to have said that he was ready to once again “take charge” of the Italian government.
Italian companies will be required to appoint more women in their boardroom by 2015, reported the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, after the government passed a new “pink quota” that aims to address one of the lowest gender representation ratios across Europe.
Presently, just 6 percent of all corporate board members in Italy are women, though the government has targeted for this figure to rise to one-third starting from 2015.
Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti has called for a two to three-year hiatus for the entire football league in the country following a spate of match-fixing incidents, which have resulted in over 50 men arrested in the last year.
Over the last few years, the Italian football league, known as Serie A, have been rocked by a match fixing scandal that has seen players, coaches and even officials questioned by the police.
A proposal to impose an additional tax on Italian pet-owners had to be scrapped by the government just hours after it was revealed to the public last Friday, after public outcry prompted parliamentarians to ditch a controversial tax plan that would have raised revenues for debt-strapped cities and towns.
The Italian government will cut 4.2 billion euros ($5.6 billion) from the budgets of numerous ministries and public services over the next six months, said Prime Minister Mario Monti, in the hopes of avoiding a sales tax hike that would have harmed consumer confidence even further.
Monti was speaking to journalists after a five-hour-long Cabinet meeting late on Monday, where the government sought to discuss ways on how to eliminate wasteful spending, implement better purchasing policies, and sell unused government properties.
A contemporary art museum in Naples, Italy, has begun to burn its collection of art pieces in a public protest against harsh government budget cuts, which have left many of the nation’s cultural institutions on the verge of closing down.
”Our 1000 artworks are headed for destruction anyway because of the indifference of the government,” said the museum’s director Antonio Manfredi, who wrote a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel last year in an attempt to move his entire collection to her nation.
Visitors to the Colosseum in Rome on Thursday witnessed a live “battle” erupt before their eyes, after dozens of Roman centurion impersonators began fighting with Italian police officers inside the ancient monument – after a protest against a government ban on their work.
Italians were left shocked on Thursday after two men – in separate incidents – publicly set themselves on fire as part of a suicide attempt, following months of pressure from government officials over unpaid taxes.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has a tough job cleaning up after the disgraced Silvio Berlusconi. From tough pension reforms to cracking down on tax evaders, Monti is now insisting that his ministers cut back on entertainment expenses and return gifts that cost more than 150 euros.
Organised crime syndicates in Italy, i.e. the mafia, are now the “number one bank” in the country, claimed a report by anti-crime group SOS Impresa on Tuesday.
