“Italy” on The Daily Caller

Editor’s note: Correspondent Stephen Robert Morse is live-tweeting the proceedings of Amanda Knox’s appeals trial from Perugia, Italy, exclusively for The Daily Caller.  (more)

Notes from the first day of closing arguments in Amanda Knox’s appeals trial (more)

ROME (AP) — Kobe Bryant has been offered a $6.7 million, one-season contract to play for the Italian team Virtus Bologna, appealing to his childhood memories of growing up in the country. (more)

Editor’s note: Stephen Robert Morse is in Perugia, Italy, covering Amanda Knox’s murder appeal hearing exclusively for The Daily Caller. For his latest observations, see his live-tweet feed. (more)

Standard and Poor dropped Italy’s ratings one notch to A/A-1, citing political concerns, weakening growth and a fragile economy. (more)

PERUGIA, Italy  –  Newly revealed evidence, never before seen by Italian courts, supports American student Amanda Knox’s chances of being exonerated and released from jail when the appeal of her December 2009 murder conviction concludes later this month. (more)

CERNOBBIO, Italy (AP) — Italy’s government, waffling for weeks on an emergency austerity plan, received a stern warning Saturday from the European central bank chief to promptly implement the deficit-fighting measures and to stay on target. (more)

In a sign of his frustration at the investigations into his alleged crimes and misdemeanours, Silvio Berlusconi vowed in July to leave Italy, which he described as a “shitty country” that “sickened” him. (more)

ROME (AP) — Italian police arrested a businessman Thursday on charges of allegedly extorting money from Premier Silvio Berlusconi to ensure the man’s cooperation in a probe over recruiting prostitutes to attend wild parties at Berlusconi’s home. (more)

Financial markets are in a severe sell-off. The extended U.S. soft patch is a big part of it, though corporate profits, one of the most dependable leading indicators of an economy’s health, are holding up fine. The debt-limit fiasco undermined any hope that Washington’s current system of diffuse responsibility would provide spending restraint or structural reforms. Of more immediate concern, Europe’s debt crisis is getting worse. (more)

ROME (AP) — An Italian parliamentary commission on Tuesday approved a draft law banning women from wearing veils that cover their faces in public. (more)

The genius of politics often consists in disguising obvious facts. When it comes to Greece, a few facts should be clear. (more)

Mr Berlusconi, 74, who has been charged with having underage sex with a prostitute, accused the centre left of being smelly as tensions rose ahead of local elections this weekend. (more)

Businesses have reported requests from one in five people to have time off work and many are also keeping children away from school and heading to the beach or country for the day. (more)

Italians will on Wednesday flee Rome over fears a giant earthquake is coming following a seismologist’s 1915 prediction that “the big one” will strike on May 11, 2011. (more)

MILAN (AP) — The Moroccan teen at the center of the underage prostitution scandal enveloping Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi insists any damage she has suffered has been at the hands of the media — not the Italian premier. (more)

Amidst the revolutionary turmoil of the Middle East, the shadowy online hacker group known as “Anonymous” has spread its influence. Government websites in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, and Iran – as well as Zimbabwe and Italy — have been attacked and at times shutdown by the hacker group which claims it fights in its own way for freedom. (more)

The parents of Amanda Knox, the US student convicted of murdering her British classmate Meredith Kercher, are to face libel charges over their claim that Italian police abused their daughter. (more)

Pagani, which has made cars in a village outside Modena, Italy, for a decade, will announce today that it is entering the U.S. market with a model called the Huayra. (more)

MILAN (AP) — His penchant for beautiful young women has cost him his wife, and now may cost Silvio Berlusconi what he cherishes most: power. (more)