An Italian man has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for intentionally infecting more than 30 women with HIV. Police believe 33-year-old accountant Valentino Tullato infected 32 of the at least 53 women he dated after discovering he was HIV-positive in 2006 and continuing to have unprotected sex.

An Italian librarian has won the right to use family sick leave to care for her ailing dog. The ruling means the woman does not have to use annual leave days to stay by the side of the English setter she considers to be part of her family. Italian animal advocacy group LAV says it helped persuade public La Sapienza University to let her use two days' family sick leave to care for 12-year-old Cucciola.

An oil painting by Adolf Hitler hanging in an Italian museum has been attacked by a man wielding a screwdriver. The untitled work was damaged by a 40-year-old man who was outraged that the painting by the Nazi leader was hanging in a public space, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reports. It had been loaned by a private collector to the Museum of Salo, on the shores of Lake Garda, for an exhibition called the "Museum of Madness" earlier this year.

Photographer Kilian Schönberger climbed the Alps late at night to capture one of the mountain range’s strangest segments, alien-like columns found in South Tyrol, an autonomous province in Northern Italy. His series Otherworld showcases the so-called “earth pyramids” in a hazy dawn light, strange creations that appear like stalagmites freed from their underground caves. The structures are created by erosion, rising from clay soil left behind by glaciers from the last Ice Age. Each features a large boulder resting on top which protects the soil below.

The charred remains of 2,500-year-old honeycombs, as well as other beekeeping artifacts, have been discovered in an Etruscan workshop in northern Italy.

A family of three have died after falling into a volcanic crater in Pozzuoli, Italy. An 11-year-old boy is believed to have fallen into a hole at the Solfatara Crater, with his 42-year-old mother and 45-year-old father also falling in after attempting to save him. It was not immediately clear if the family were overcome by gases or molten lava. The couple's second son, aged seven-years-old, managed to get to safety.

The Rome Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Service are working out the details of Rome murder suspect Robert Coffin’s extradition back to Oneida County. In the meantime, officials with Mohawk Valley Crime Stoppers tell us that reward money will be paid out, possibly to more than one person – if they come forward to claim it. Officials say that many people who called in tips for this case said they didn’t want the reward money, they just wanted justice for victim Thomas Shepherd’s family.

A Congolese asylum-hopeful with permission to stay in Italy for humanitarian reasons was nabbed aboard a train by police early Sunday as the last of a gang of four young males suspected of raping a Polish tourist on a beach, beating her companion unconscious and raping a Peruvian woman barely an hour later in the same Italian resort town of Rimini, authorities said.

Ancient lead pollution in a Roman harbor shows the city’s fortunes grew with its pipes.

Residue in terracotta jars suggests drink was being made and consumed on the island in the fourth millennium BC

‘There are trees where to lay your eggs or where to find a safe cover; trees on which to look for food or, simply, to scratch your back and thus leave behind a trace of your passage’ – Bruno D’Amicis and Umberto Esposito

Italian mountain rescue crews said they have recovered the remains of two or three hikers on a glacier on Mont Blanc's southern face likely dating from the 1980s or 1990s. Alpine rescue commander Delfino Viglione said Friday the bodies were discovered this week by a hiker who was searching the area for artifacts from decades-old plane crashes, including one in the 1960s that killed more than 100 people.

Police using water cannon and batons have clashed with refugees who had occupied a square in Rome in defiance of an order to leave a building where they had been squatting. Television images from the dawn operation showed people screaming and trying to hit police, who were dressed in riot gear, with sticks.

Venice's right-wing mayor has ordered cops to shoot ANYONE who shouts 'Allahu Akbar' - rather than risk a terror attack. The phrase in Arabic for 'God is greatest' has been shouted in multiple terrorist incidents across the continent. The Times reports that Italian mayor Luigi Brugnaro claimed that his city Venice was safer than Barcelona - where 14 people died being run down by a van last week.

The patron saint of physicians is going home.

Today the phrase 'all roads leads to Rome' means that there's more than one way to reach the same goal. But in Ancient Rome, all roads really did lead to the eternal city, which was at the centre of a vast road network.

"In the future, you’ll be able to choose between drinking a glass of milk and wearing one."

Italy’s prime minister convened top cabinet ministers on Thursday to discuss a plan to send Italian warships into Libyan territorial waters to combat smugglers who have sent thousands of migrants to Italian shores. The step came a day after Italy struck a long-elusive deal with Libyan authorities to give it a freer hand along the African coast, and it reflected Italy’s rising frustration with what it sees as having to deal with Europe’s migrant crisis on its own.

Dozens of members of a gang, whose tentacles stretched deep inside Rome's City Hall, have been convicted of corruption after a 20-month trial in a high-security jail. At the heart of the case dubbed "Mafia Capital" was one-eyed, right-wing extremist Massimo Carminati, who was given 20 years in jail. A total of 46 people were put on trial and most were convicted of corruption. However, the judge acquitted all 46 on the key charge of mafia association.

The Italian media claims that arsonists set light to parts of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, Italy. Roberto Saviano, a journalist, and expert on the mafia, said during a Facebook rant that the fires were started by “criminal organisations”. The best selling writer said that the crime families started the blaze to burn waste in illegal landfill sites or to prevent construction work in Campanian national park.