Just days after the quality of Italian mozzarella was called into question with the country's biggest producer accused of adulterating his cheese, northern Italy's prosciutto is under the spotlight.

Floods, storm damage and hailstones the size of golf balls have landed RSA, the insurer behind More Than, with a £50m bill.

Pope Benedict XVI has celebrated an open-air Mass for a million followers, capping three days of activities in Milan, Italy, aimed at showing support for the family.

Tonight's Euro 2012 warm-up game between Italy and Luxembourg in Parma has been called off after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit the northern region of Emilia Romagna this morning.

Felipe Massa has abandoned plans to return home to Brazil in a bid to improve results and potentially save his Ferrari career.

The popular Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla died of an apparent heart attack yesterday in Switzerland during a European concert tour. He was 68.

Nilla Pizzi, who died on 12 March aged 91, was an Italian singer whose voice was deemed too sensual for radio during the rule of Benito Mussolini. During the years before the Second World War, Pizzi was kept away from radio work because her voice was deemed to be too modern, exotic and sensual.

How I Lost the War is award-winning screenwriter Filippo Bologna's first novel. Set in Tuscany, the book is Bologna's antidote to the sun-drenched terracotta loveliness of the area so familiar to British expats and readers of Under a Tuscan Sun. This Tuscany is not rural and unspoilt. Indeed, his story is about the spoiling of it.

Parma president Tommaso Ghirardi has not given up hope of signing Chelsea striker Fabio Borini.

Celtic have ruled out selling Shunsuke Nakamura after the Italian side Bologna were linked with a move for the Japanese playmaker.