Authorities in Great Britain forcibly sedated a pregnant woman from Italy, performed a court-ordered C-section delivery on her, and now plan to put the child up for adoption against her will.

In a plot stolen straight out of "Hannibal", Italian police are saying that Calabrian mobsters recently murdered a mafia don by beating the man with a spade and then throwing him into a sty, where he was eaten alive by pigs.

Argentina has always been the most European of South American countries: It has a vibrant literary culture, adores anything Italian, and dislikes anything that isn't a large piece of meat. And for a very long time, it even harbored a fair amount of Nazis. But no more, says Argentina.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi—he of the wild sex parties and Barack Obama fetish—has been sentenced to seven years in prison for paying for sex with an underage prostitute at one of his infamous "Bunga Bunga" shindigs.

Italy finally has a prime minister! Enrico Letta, appointed today by president Giorgio Napolitano, will form a new government and bring it to parliament for a vote early next week.

The highest court in Italy has ordered Amanda Knox to stand trial again for the killing of her former roommate, British exchange student Meredith Kercher, overturning Knox's 2011 acquittal. Knox will likely not return to Italy for the retrial, as her presence is not required, and after the four years she spent in Italian jail during the first trial and its appeal she's probably just as happy to never go back (though think of those wasted language skills!). In 2007, Knox, at the time an exchange student, and Raffaelle Sollecito, her then-boyfriend, were arrested after Kercher was found dead, partially undressed and with her throat slit, in their shared apartment in Perguia. An apparent confession (later thrown out), Knox's bizarre post-arrest behavior, and prosecutors' accusations that Kercher had been killed as part of a satanic sex game became tabloid fixations during the two-year trial, which ended in 2009 with convictions for Knox and Sollecito. After an appeal, the convictions were overturned in 2011—an Ivorian named Rudy Guede had been separately tried and convicted—and Knox returned to Seattle, her hometown. If she and Sollecito are re-convicted of Kercher's murder, Italian law will require her to serve out her life sentence, though it remains to be seen whether or not the U.S. would approve an extradition request. In a statement, Knox called the high court's ruling "painful" and "unfair." [NYT | NBC | CNN]

Yesterday, former Italian Prime Minister and the world's foremost thrower of "Bunga Bunga" parties Silvio Berlusconi, age 76, "unveiled" (to use the odd and yet somehow entirely appropriate phrasing of MSNBC) his girlfriend, Francesca Pascale, "a 27-year-old political councilor in his People of Freedom Party." He also announced their engagement — or did he? Let's ask Google Translate.

Italy, the country that earlier this year declared it a fineable offense to tell a man he has no balls, convicted seven seismologists of manslaughter on Monday, for failing to adequately assess the risk of a 2009 Earthquake that ended up killing 309 people.

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel are one step closer to divorce, as the couple has just confirmed to People they are now married.

Today was a tough one for Olympians. First, American Judo person Nick Delpopolo accidentally ate some pot brownies and got the boot. Then news breaks that a U.S. rower had a boner during his recent medal ceremony. Now comes word that Italy's national hero and walking champion Alex Schwazer was banned from the Olympics today after he failed a drug test. The illegal substance was not disclosed.

Men the world over are infamous for having balls—although testes, being considerably smaller than breasts and also much less adept at producing breast milk, are often overshadowed by bazoongas in lists of favorite sexual organs.

How often have you been on a long drive and wished that you had a hot shot of espresso to wake you up? Aside from the fact that spilling scalding coffee is a safety hazard, an extra appliance is a distraction, and drinking espresso will make you have to pee way more frequently, the concept of an in-car espresso maker sounds pretty good.

Look, is it news that George Clooney and Stacy Keibler got food poisoning in Italy? Is it absolutely essential that you know a high-profile Hollywood couple ate an improperly prepared meal and had it coming out of both ends?

Yet another earthquake hit the Emilia Romagna region of Italy on Tuesday morning, killing at least ten people around Modena and burying several others in rubble. Last Sunday, a 6.0 magnitude quake killed seven and destroyed 300,000 wheels of cheese; several historic buildings in Cavezzo and other towns have since collapsed.

OK, it's not quite The Da Vinci Code or even The Godfather: Part III, but a scandal rocking the Vatican is aways better than no scandal rocking the Vatican.

Usually burning art at a protest is a call for censorship, but Antonio Manfredi has a far nobler cause — the director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum is burning pieces of his museum's collection to protest Italy's drastic budget cuts to the arts.

A hotel proprietor in Northern Italy accidentally became mayor of a small town earlier this week, without even intending to run for election.

A group of forensic anthropologists have completed a meticulous analysis of a set of real human anatomy displays from 19C Italy. Using CT scans and other chemical analysis, the group determined that, some 200 years ago, anatomist Giovan Battista Rini "petrified" the corpses with a mercury and other heavy metals. He injected some tinctures and used others as baths. The eyes are fake. Basically, Rini was modern medicine's first "Body Worlds" guy.

It's Valentine's Day and you're either hating yourself for being single, thinking of ways to please your mate, or waiting to pounce on half-drunk needy people at the bar tonight for an easy lay. Well, how about an Italian same-sex wedding video to bring the romance back.

Italy's corrupt cartoon satyr of a former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is still rattling around, being Berlusconish: "I'm not a Playboy, I'm a Play-uomo [Playman] … The only thing I have not been accused of in all these over-hyped descriptions of my relations with women, with the opposite sex, the only thing they have never accused me of is being gay. I have nothing against homosexuals, let it be clear. Quite the contrary. I always thought the more gay people around, the less competition." [Atlantic, image via Getty]