PRESSTV. Thousands of Italians have taken to the streets in a show of solidarity with migrants and in a move to defy government policies in the midst of the G-8 meeting.  People in the capital Rome walked out on Saturday toward the secured assembly venue of the group of eight richest countries in order to show their objection to the government's latest anti-immigrants initiatives.
The demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans and toted banners denouncing both the G-8 ministerial summit on security, immigration and terrorism and recent Italian government's bid to incarcerate and heavily fine illegal immigrants and their aides. (Read the Article)

SHELBY COUNTY REPORTER.  Cindy Cecchini believes the Italian culture holds many more gifts than heaping bowls of pasta and she wants to share those gifts with others.Cecchini and friends recently created the Italian–American Culture Society of Alabama. "We don't want the Italian culture to die," said organizer Cindy Cecchini. "I think this is a wonderful way to reach out to people. Italians are really good at that. Italians are very loving people. (... )I know that the community of Birmingham is growing more and more through people moving here from other countries," Cecchini said. "Italy is very much represented here. I just wanted to see what kind of response I would get". (Read the Article by Samantha Hurst)

GUARDIAN. Italian banks will offer up to 1.4 billion euros ($1.96 billion) in low-interest loans to the tourism sector as a result of an agreement with the government, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Sunday. Berlusconi urged Italian lenders to provide credit to return the Italian economy to growth but to do so prudently. "Banks will place 1.4 billion euros at the use of tourism entrepreneurs who wish to use it, at attractive interest rates, to improve tourist infrastructure," Berlusconi told a news conference, adding full details would be announced on Wednesday. (Read the Article)

AFP. Russian rider Denis Menchov won the Tour of Italy here on Sunday despite suffering a dramatic fall in the last kilometre of the final stage, a 14.4km time-trial round. The Rabobank cyclist, who is the third Russian to win the race, added the title to his two Tour of Spain victories in 2005 and 2007. "I didn't have time to think, it all happened so quickly," Menchov said of his tumble. "In my earpiece I heard 'no risks, no risks'. (Read the Article)

FINANCIAL TIMES. Fascism is not a likely future for Italy. That is worth saying, because it is being forecast. Many assume that the financial crisis plus Silvio Berlusconi equals a return to fascism. It did, after all, start there. But that is an unlikely outcome now. Italy in the early 1920s, when Benito Mussolini rose to power, was reeling from a brutally Pyrrhic victory over the Austrians in 1918, the degradation of the political class and a rising threat from leftwing totalitarianism. Mr Berlusconi is clearly no Mussolini: he has squads of starlets, not of Blackshirts. Over the 15 years of his political career – always as prime minister, or as leader of the opposition – he has had a largely untrammelled opportunity to shift the national mood rightwards. This he has done not by crude propaganda but by a steady concentration on glitz, glitter and girls and a hyperbolic style of media-geared rhetoric that sees all opposition as communist and himself as a victim. (Read the Article)