Europe, Italy | featured news

Stocks had their worst drop in more than three months as the prospect of political paralysis in Italy raised the specter of Europe's debt crisis flaring up again. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 216.40 points, or 1.6 percent, to 13,784.17, its biggest drop since Nov. 7. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 27.75 points, or 1.8 percent, to 1,487.85, dropping below 1,500 for the first time in three weeks. The Nasdaq composite dropped 45.57 points, or 1.4 percent, to 3,116.25.

A protest party draws support from voters who are fed up with politics, but its success could make governing Italy even harder than it already is.

Admir Suljic is thought to be an associate of Tan Seet Eng, a Singaporean who has been implicated in suspected match-fixing cases dating back more than a decade... Officials from Europol and other European law enforcement bodies said Feb. 4 that they had identified 680 matches worldwide that appeared to have been fixed over the past few years, including at the very height of the sport, in World Cup qualifiers and the Champions League.

Popular pressure is mounting in the U.S. and Italy to keep California Cardinal Roger Mahony away from the conclave to elect the next pope because of his role shielding sexually abusive priests, a movement targeting one of the most prominent of a handful of compromised cardinals scheduled to vote next month....

Nestle SA has withdrawn beef pasta meals from sale in Italy and Spain after tests found horse DNA. Horse meat has found its way into ready-to-eat meals sold across Europe in a meat mislabeling scandal that has shaken the food industry.

A former Orange County attorney has been arrested on suspicion of killing his ex-wife for financial gain in 2006 by strangling her and throwing her overboard while on a cruise along the Italian coast, authorities said.

Inside a 13th-century monastery in a sleepy village north of Rome, Father Salvatore Palumbo was allegedly serving more than one higher authority. Italian prosecutors say a Ferrari-driving lawyer who defrauded insurance companies used the priest as a front man, with Father Palumbo stashing the illicit cash inside the secretive Institute for Works of Religion.

Giuseppe Orsi of the the Italian state-controlled defense group Finmeccanica was arrested in an investigation centered on the sale of helicopters to the Indian government.

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi triggered outrage from Italy's political left on Sunday with comments defending fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini at a ceremony commemorating victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

Sitting on the edge of a town outside Naples, the Euromilk dairy-produce distribution firm looks like any other small business engaged in a very ordinary trade. But the compound, with its warehouse and offices, lies in the heartland of the formidable Neapolitan crime network, the Camorra.