The Dalai Lama said Thursday he hoped to meet Pope Francis soon, reiterating he was an admirer of the first Latin American pontiff.

Ridley Scott and his crew were in front of the Vatican on Thursday filming the pilot episode of a thriller TV series. Produced by Showtime, 'Vatican' stars Bruno Ganz as a fictional present-day Pope Sixtus VI - the last pope to take the name Sixtus was Felice Peretti di Montalto, Sixtus V. The series follows the life of a New York archbishop, Cardinal Thomas Duff, played by Kyle Chandler

 Telecom Italia on Thursday said it would formally consider an offer to merge with a smaller rival in a deal that would make the Hong Kong industrial group Hutchison Whampoa its largest shareholder.

Markets rose across Europe on Wednesday, with Milan's FTSE-Mib index lifted by banking shares and Italy's largest carmaker Fiat.

Costa Cruises, the company whose Concordia cruise liner capsized in January last year with the loss of 32 lives, has made a deal with an Italian court that will limit its criminal liability for a fine of just €1 million.

Visitors to Italy's prestigious wine trade show Vinitaly were up 10% for 2013, organizers said at its close on Wednesday

 Nothing is where it should be. At Palazzo Chigi, the prime minister’s office in Rome, there’s no government resulting from the recent elections. Instead a group of ‘technicians’ – called in during an ‘emergency’ a year and a half ago – that, under the banner of Mario Monti, accounted in the February election for just 11% of the votes. 

 The north-eastern Italian village of Asolo is known as the "town of a hundred horizons" and its beauty has bewitched for centuries.Illustrious past residents include the explorer Freya Stark and the actor Eleonora Duse. Robert Browning loved it so much that he named his last volume of poetry – Asolando – after it.

 Just when Italians thought their politics could not get any stranger, on Tuesday they did. That was when members of the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo decided to “occupy” Parliament, a step that would seem unnecessary since voters had already sent them there to occupy 163 of its 945 seats.