Sicily’s Stromboli volcano spews lava and ash in latest eruption

Sicily’s Stromboli volcano belched lava and ash into the sky on Thursday afternoon in the latest in a string of eruptions recorded over the past week, according to Italian media reports.

Stromboli emitted fresh flows of lava from its summit craters shortly after 2pm, with a column of thick ash rising from the volcano immediately after the eruption. 

Following the eruption, local authorities asked tourists to temporarily leave the island’s beaches and distributed face masks to protect from ash.

Italy’s Civil Protection Department issued a maximum eruption alert for Stromboli last Thursday after the volcano shot lava several hundred metres into the sea and generated a two-kilometre-high plume of smoke, according to Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).

Stromboli, located on an island of the same name off Sicily’s northern coast, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, and has been erupting almost continuously for the past 90 years. 

Italy to ban mobile phones in classrooms – again

The use of mobile phones will be banned in Italian classrooms from the next school year, Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said on Wednesday, according to a report from Il Corriere della Sera.

Under the ban, mobile phones will reportedly be prohibited in classes from elementary school (scuola elementare) up to middle school (scuola media).

“I’ve signed a memo banning the use of mobile phones from the next school year for any purpose, even educational, because I don’t believe that good teaching can be done with a cell phone,” Valditara said during an education conference in Rome.

Italy first introduced a ban on the use of phones in class in 2007. In late 2022, Valditara confirmed the existing ban, but said at the time that phones could still be used for educational and training purposes.

Environmental crimes rose by nearly 16 percent in 2023, report finds

Some 35,490 environmental crimes took place across Italy in 2023, up by 15.6 percent compared to 2022, the latest Ecomafia report from Italian environmental organisation Legambiente said on Thursday, according to Ansa.

The report said that four environmental crimes were committed every hour on average in 2023. 

Campania, Sicily, Puglia and Calabria were the worst-hit regions, with illegal construction work, illegal waste dumping and processing, and crimes against animals being the most frequent offences.

Environmental crimes generated a total estimated revenue of around 8.8 billion euros for criminal organisations in 2023, according to the report.

Sister of mafia boss Messina Denaro handed 14-year jail term

Rosalia Messina Denaro, the sister of deceased Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro, on Thursday was found guilty of aggravated mafia association and fencing of stolen goods, and given a 14-year prison sentence, Ansa reported.

According to a court in Palermo, Rosalia Messina Denaro helped her brother evade capture during his 30-year run from justice, managed the mafia family’s finances on his behalf, and sustained a network of written orders (known as ‘pizzini’) to and from other mafia affiliates. 

Matteo Messina Denaro was apprehended in mid-January of last year while leaving a hospital clinic in Palermo where he was being treated for cancer. He died in a hospital in L’Aquila, Abruzzo, in late September aged 62.

Matteo Messina Denaro was handed six separate life sentences over his lifetime, including for his role in the murder of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone in 1992.