Italy’s top story on Tuesday:

There were angry reactions on the left after Italy’s main opposition leader Elly Schlein announced plans to run in upcoming EU parliamentary elections in June despite having no plans to take up the post if elected.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who succeeded Silvio Berlusconi as the leader of his right-wing Forza Italia party, also announced his candidacy, while it was also expected that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni would do the same for her Brothers of Italy party.

Schlein, head of Italy’s Democratic Party (PD), said she would continue to lead her party from Rome regardless of the result, but hoped that having her name on the ballot will attract votes for her party.

Former Italian prime minister and leader of the populist Five Star Movement Giuseppe Conte on Sunday slammed the tactic as violating “basic rules”, while PD founding president and former prime minister Romano Prodi said party leaders standing in EU elections was an “injury to democracy”.

13 arrested for violence at juvenile detention centre

Italian police on Monday arrested 13 prison guards and suspended eight others on charges of violence against inmates at a youth detention facility, AFP reported.

The alleged violence took place at the Cesare Beccaria juvenile prison on the outskirts of Milan from 2022, according to a statement released to the press by police.

The charges include “complicity in the crime of torture” and “complicity in the crime of causing injury to minors”, both aggravated by abuse of power, as well as attempted sexual assault.

Police used CCTV footage as well as wiretaps and testimony from former inmates to compile their dossier, according to the statement.

Rising heat is harming Italians’ health, study shows

People in Italy are among those at increasing risk of health problems caused by heat stress in Europe, according to a new study from two leading climate change institutes.

A report released by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Monday revealed that southern Europe experienced a record number of “extreme heat stress” days in 2023.

Parts of Italy, along with Spain, France, Greece and Turkey, last summer saw more than ten such days, on which atmospheric temperatures feel like 46C (115F) and citizens are at risk of suffering from heat stroke, according to AFP’s summary of the report.

Last August Milan recorded its hottest daily average temperature since it first started taking measurements in 1763. The southern Italian region of Sicily has been under a state of emergency for drought since February of this year.