4.05pm: John Hooper, our correspondent in Rome, has been deconstructing Monti’s visit to Paris which is part of a round of meetings across the continent that will take him to Berlin next Wednesday and then to London, we’re told, on January 18 for talks with David Cameron. He has this insight into Monti’s grand tour.
Journalism
Italian rail company lambasted for ‘racist’ web commercial
Trenitalia replaces video which promoted its new four-tier system by showing a black family in lowest-class carriage.
Lipari murder suspect taken into custody
Labourer Roberto Cannistra arrested on suspicion of killing Eufemia Biviano in first murder on Italian island since 1950s.
Eurozone crisis: Spain announces tax rises after missing deficit target
3.29pm: The office of Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, has officially responded to claims that German chancellor Angela Merkel told Napolitano in October that Silvio Berlusconi should be eased out of office.
They confirmed that the telephone call had taken place, on October 20, but denied the Wall Street Journal’s claim that Merkel asked for Silvio Berlusconi’s head.
Our Rome correspondent John Hooper explains.
Italy’s budget: Saving Italy
The new prime minister pleases markets but spooks the people.
Did Monti give them a raw deal?
Well, the markets liked it. Today, after Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Monti, outlined a three-year package of fiscal adjustments worth €30 billion ($40 billion), the Milan bourse took wing.
Mountains still to climb
A brief period of calm for Mario Monti, but storms loom.
The full Monti
Mario Monti holds out for a technocratic government until 2013.
The end of Berlusconi: Hallelujah
Not since Silvio Berlusconi’s erstwhile political sponsor, Bettino Craxi, fled to Tunisia to avoid being jailed for corruption, has an Italian prime minister left office in such humiliated fashion.