A year after losing the Giro d'Italia's points classification by a single point – and with it his chances of a Grand Slam of victories in the category in all three Grand Tours – Mark Cavendish bounced back with a vengeance.

In Italy, particularly in the southern city of Naples, it might make sense swapping the greeting “buon anno” – happy new year – for “lucky new year” or “safe new year”, as the ritual, idiotic use of DIY fireworks brings an avalanche of serious burns, mutilations and general chaos.

A bomb has exploded in an insurgent attack on a US-led coalition base in eastern Afghanistan, say Afghan officials.

Italy's most notorious Mafia fugitive was captured by police yesterday after 16 years on the run.

Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis today revealed he has offered Manchester United one million euros to play his team in a friendly.

Widespread dumping of toxic waste by Mafia clans in the southern region of Campania is causing a dramatic increase in birth defects and cancer, according to a group of US and Italian scientists.

The island of Capri, exquisitely beautiful but a bit on the prim side, was never going to rival Ibiza, Mykonos or Ayia Napa, in the hard-partying stakes.

A blockbuster exhibition of artefacts salvaged from the volcanic eruption that decimated the Roman city of Pompeii 2,000 years ago opens in New York today.

Around lunchtime on 24 August AD79, the inhabitants of Pompeii on the Bay of Naples saw an astonishing sight: a column of smoke bursting into the sky from Vesuvius, the huge volcanic mountain that looms over the bay. According to an eyewitness, Pliny the Younger, writing 20 years after the event, the cloud reached nine miles in height (it resembled a fir tree, he said) and dropped burning ash upon the town.

The agent of Napoli’s Slovakia midfielder Marek Hamsik has admitted that there is a chance that his client could be tempted away from the San Paolo in the near future.

Two brutal killers were jailed for life today and ordered to serve at least 33 years for the "savage" murder of an innocent chef and his flatmate.