“Italy” on The Daily Caller

A 58-year-old man has set himself on fire outside of a tax office in Bologna, Italy, Ansa.it reports. (more)

BERLIN (AP) — Germany has backed down from its resistance to boosting Europe’s financial firewalls, after Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was open to temporarily boosting the eurozone’s bailout funds to €700 billion ($930 billion). But the move still falls short of what may be needed to protect Italy and Spain from collapse. (more)

Three former porn stars are running for mayor in the south of Italy, The Independent reports. (more)

In Italy, little can trump a home field soccer goal by Milan. (more)

NEW YORK (AP) — Amanda Knox has a book deal. (more)

ROME (AP) — Rome dropped its bid for the 2020 Olympics on Tuesday after Premier Mario Monti said the Italian government would not provide financial backing for an estimated $12.5-billion project at a time of economic crisis. (more)

ROME (AP) — In the chaotic evacuation of the Costa Concordia, passengers and crew abandoned almost everything on board the cruise ship: jewels, cash, champagne, antiques, 19th-century Bohemian crystal glassware and thousands of art objects, including 300-year-old woodblock prints by a Japanese master. (more)

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Philanthropist and former financier George Soros is urging European authorities to take more decisive action to protect the economies of Italy and Spain from financial strain. (more)

MegaUpload, a popular file-sharing target of a recent Justice Department online piracy investigation, received the majority of its web traffic from regions outside of the United States, the Daily Caller has learned through publicly available web measurement tools. (more)

The company operating a cruise ship that sank off Italy last week is facing a class-action lawsuit in the US. (more)

PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy (AP) — Survivors from a luxury cruise ship that ran aground and tipped over, leaving at least three dead and 69 people still unaccounted for, described Saturday a chaotic evacuation, as plates and glasses crashed and they crawled along upended hallways trying to reach safety. (more)

Italy saw investors more willing to part with their cash Wednesday as it raised euro10.7 billion ($14 billion) in a pair of auctions, a sign that market jitters may be easing as the country presses ahead with its austerity measures. (more)

The dollar climbed against most major peers, extending this week’s gains, as investors sought the safest assets on concern economies in the euro area will worsen as leaders struggle to halt the region’s debt crisis. (more)

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has resigned, ending a 17-year political era and setting in motion a transition aimed at bringing the country back from the brink of economic crisis. (more)

Italy is being touted as the country that is too big to save. And with the ECB legally prevented from being a lender of last resort, an Italian debt restructuring is inevitable, according to Nouriel Roubini. (more)

Silvio Berlusconi is Italy’s longet serving post-war prime minister. He’s been sworn in four times, and has been a big-name Italian player for more than 17 years — in politics and in the bedroom. (more)

Faced with a proposed Italian law that would levy fines against bloggers singled out by aggrieved subjects without due process, the Italian page of Wikipedia shut down its site in protest. (more)

PERUGIA, Italy — It was silent in the courtroom for a long time after Amanda Knox, the now-exonerated American woman, was led into an Italian courtroom for the last time. A presiding judge spoke. We heard not a word from the jury. And then she was declared “innocenta.” (more)

Competing for headline prominence with the stories about the killing of the American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki have been stories about another American citizen, this one far more enamoring to the news media and the American public: Ms. Amanda Knox. For several days running, news channels have been focusing on Knox; and if a viewer failed to inquire more deeply into these accounts, he or she might be forgiven for concluding that this American-born student in Italy was being considered by the Vatican for beatification. (more)

Editor’s note: Stephen Robert Morse is live-tweeting from inside the courtroom where the Amanda Knox appeal is being heard — exclusively for The Daily Caller. (more)