A newlywed couple who survived the Costa Concordia shipwreck will give thanks for their narrow escape with a special kiddush at Stanmore Synagogue tomorrow.

Ian and Janice Donoff had just finished the first Friday-night dinner of their honeymoon and were looking forward to Shabbat overlooking the Mediterranean when they heard a crunching noise and the lights on board went out.

During the Spanish Inquisition, Sicily's Jews faced the choice of expulsion or conversion.

At the age of 25, in 1944, Josef Scheungraber was a Nazi commander operating in Italy. It was on his orders that the military police massacred 14 people in a quiet Tuscany village. His victims were ordered into a barn and the barn was then blown up.

An Italian blogger has attempted to start a boycott of 162 Jewish professors.

Blogger Dagoberto Husayn Bellucci, who runs Islam-Italia, an information portal for Italian Muslims, posted a list of names online with the comment: "We invite readers to make a good use of this."

Life may be a beach for Hollywood stars Steven Spielberg and Gwyneth Paltrow, but that doesn't mean everyone in the sand is happy with them.

According to showbiz magazine Us Weekly, Mr Spielberg was fined more than £150 after he steered his speedboat too near to the Sardinia shore and interrupted a group of sunbathing visitors.

The Holocaust survivor whose experience inspired the Academy Award winning film Life is Beautiful has died at the age of 91.

Rubino Romeo Salmoni's memoir of his time in Auschwitz, "In the End, I Beat Hitler," was adapted for the 1997 film, which followed a father and son in the concentration camp.

It could be a picture from a Nazi textbook, but this hook-nosed caricature of Israeli President Shimon Peres, with hands clasped around a Magen David and a pocketful of bleeding babies, was part of an Italian "cultural festival" last month.

The sinister funfair game, in which Turin students paid one euro to throw shoes at the gurning puppet, is one of a recent catalogue of incidents causing a c

Italy is to follow in the footsteps of the United Kingdom, France and Spain and upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation in Rome to a full diplomatic mission.

The announcement by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano comes just days after Silvio Berlusconi pledged that Italy would not accept a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians.