ROME: At least 36 people died after a coach plunged more than 15 meters (49 feet) off a viaduct in southern Italy on Sunday, a spokesman for the fire service said.

Eleven people were pulled out alive from the stricken coach and taken to hospital, some with serious injuries, the spokesman said.

Rescue operations are ongoing, he said.

The coach was carrying about 48 people back to Naples after visiting Telese Terme in the southern region of Campania, Italian daily La Repubblica reported.

“The situation is dramatic,” the spokesman for the fire service said, adding that several other vehicles were also involved in the accident.

ROME: Giulio Andreotti personified the nation he helped shape, the good and the bad.

One of Italy’s most important postwar figures, he helped draft the country’s constitution after World War II, served seven times as premier and spent 60 years in Parliament.

But the Christian Democrat who was friends with popes and cardinals was also a controversial figure who survived corruption scandals and allegations of aiding the Mafia: Andreotti was accused of exchanging a “kiss of honor” with the mob’s longtime No. 1 boss and was indicted in what was called “the trial of the century” in Palermo.

He was eventually cleared, but his legacy was forever marred.

Still clinging to his last official title, senator-for-life, Andreotti died Monday at age 94 after an extended period of poor health that included a hospitalization for a heart ailment.

Andreotti grew more stooped with age, and infirmity kept him from what few official duties remained, such as opening the inaugural session of the new Senate in March, a privilege reserved for the eldest-serving member that fell this time to the next-in-line.

Andreotti, a key player in the now-defunct Christian Democratic Party that dominated politics for nearly half a century, helped bring prosperity to what was once one of Europe’s poorest countries. When a corruption scandal flushed out the old political guard in the 1990s, marking the end of the first Italian Republic, he survived.

But he lost political clout after he became a senator-for-life in 1991, an appointment that freed him from electoral cycles but also deprived him of capital in the backroom deal-making that helped create his reputation as a Machiavellian politician. And so, Italy entered the so-called second republic, characterized by stalemates and infighting, and dominated by other parties and other men, such asSilvio Berlusconi.

Arguably among Italy’s most important statesmen, having also served eight times as defense minister and five times as foreign minister, Andreotti will be buried with a small private Mass, not a state funeral befitting of his contributions to the nation. The choice was made by his family, according to Italian media, and is perhaps a reflection of his mixed legacy.

The condolences that flowed in also underscored Italy’s uncertain judgment on a figure who dominated discourse for decades.

ROME: Center-left leader Enrico Letta forged a new Italian government Saturday in a coalition with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives, an unusual alliance of bitter rivals that broke a two-month political stalemate from inconclusive elections in the recession-mired country.

The daunting achievement was pulled off by Letta, who will be sworn in as premier along with the new Cabinet at the presidential Quirinal Palace on Sunday.

Letta, 46, is a moderate with a reputation as a political bridge-builder. He is also the nephew Berlusconi’s longtime adviser, Gianni Letta, a relationship seen as smoothing over often nasty interaction between the two main coalition partners.

Serving as deputy premier and interior minister will be Berlusconi’s top political aide, Angelino Alfano. He is a former justice minister who was the architect of legislation that critics say was tailor-made to help media mogul Berlusconi in his many judicial woes.

The creation of the coalition capped the latest political comeback for Berlusconi, a former three-time premier who was forced to resign in 2011 as Italy slid deeper in to the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis.

On Monday, Letta is expected to lay out his strategy to Parliament, before required confidence votes from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

“We negotiated for the formation of the government without throwing up any stop signs,” Berlusconi told one of his TV networks. “That’s how we contributed to forming a government in short time” after Letta was tapped Wednesday.

Berlusconi, a fervent anti-Communist, views Italy’s left as a personal nemesis, and Letta’s Democratic Party has some of its roots in what was the West’s largest Communist Party.

Fellow EU countries and investors are watching closely, as the decisions that Italy makes over the next several months promise to have a profound impact on whether Europe can decisively put out the flames of its financial crisis. Greece’s troubles in recent years were enough to spark a series of market panics. With an economy almost 10 times the size of Greece’s, Italy is simply too big a country for Europe, and the world, to see fail.

Leading the electoral pack is Pier Luigi Bersani, a former communist who has shown a pragmatic streak in supporting tough economic reforms spearheaded by incumbent Mario Monti. On Bersani’s heels is Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul seeking an unlikely political comeback after being forced from the premiership by Italy’s debt crisis. Monti, while widely credited with saving Italy from financial ruin, is trailing badly as he pays the price for the suffering caused by austerity measures.

Then there’s the wild card: comic-turned-politician Beppe Grillo, whose protest movement against the entrenched political class has been drawing tens of thousands to rallies in piazzas across Italy. If his self-styled political “tsunami” sweeps into Parliament with a big chunk of seats, Italy could be in store for a prolonged period of political confusion that would spook the markets.

While a man of the left, Bersani has shown himself to have a surprising amount in common with the center-right Monti — and the two have hinted at the possibility of teaming up in a coalition. Bersani was Monti’s most loyal backer in Parliament during the respected economist’s tenure at the head of a technocratic government. And in ministerial posts in previous center-left governments, Bersani fought hard to free up such areas of the economy as energy, insurance and banking services.

But it’s uncertain that Monti will be able muster the votes needed to give Bersani’s Democratic Party a stable majority in both houses of Parliament.

“Forming a government with a stable parliamentary alliance may prove tricky after elections,” said Eoin Ryan, an analyst with IHS Global Insight. “A surge in support for anti-austerity parties is raising chances of an indecisive election result and post-vote political instability.”

Another factor is turnout. Usually some 80 percent of the 50 million eligible voters go to the polls but experts are predicting many will stay away in anger, hurting mainstream parties.

When Berlusconi stepped down in November 2011, newspapers were writing his political obituary. At 76, blamed for mismanaging the economy and disgraced by criminal allegations of sex with an underage prostitute, the billionaire media baron appeared finished as a political force.

But Berlusconi has proven time and again — over 20 years at the center of Italian politics — that he should never be counted out.

The campaign strategy that has allowed him to become a contender in these elections is a simple one: please the masses by throwing around cash.

Berlusconi has promised to give back an unpopular property tax imposed by Monti as part of austerity measures. Even his purchase of start striker Mario Balotelli for his AC Milan soccer team was widely seen as a ploy to buy votes. Berlusconi has also appealed to Italy’s right-wing by praising Italy’s former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini during a ceremony commemorating Holocaust victims.

The most recent polls show Bersani in the lead with 33 percent of the vote, against 28 percent for Berlusconi’s coalition with the populist Northern League. Grillo’s 5 Star movement was in a surprise third place, with 17 percent support, while Monti’s centrist coalition was notching 13 percent. The COESIS poll of 6,212 respondents had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.2 percent.

Pollster Renato Mannheimer said among his biggest clients heading into the elections were foreign banks seeking to gauge whether to hold or sell Italian bonds.

“They are worried mostly about the return of Berlusconi,” Mannheimer said.

Uncertainty over the outcome of the vote has pushed the Milan stock exchange down in the days running up to the vote and bumped up borrowing costs, as investors express concern that Italy may back down from a reform course to pull the country out of recession.

Mannheimer said many undecided voters — who comprise around one-third of the total electorate — identify with the center-right, and that may help Berlusconi. He said that the undecided vote may also tilt heavily toward Grillo’s protest movement.

The professorial Monti looked uncomfortable at first as a candidate but has recently warmed to the role. Like the others, he has not shied away from name calling, warning that Berlusconi is a “charlatan” and saying his return would be “horrific.”

Bond analyst Nicholas Spiro said the election “will deliver the most important verdict on the eurozone’s three-year-old austerity focused policies.”

But he is betting on a period of political instability after the vote.

“An upset victory by Mr. Berlusconi may be markets’ nightmare scenario,” he said, “but the prospects for a stable and harmonious Bersani-Monti coalition government — still the mostly likely outcome in our view — are bleak.”

Italy had argued that the shootings should be dealt with by an Italian court and said the killings took place in international waters, which India disputes.
The trial is expected to further strain ties between Italy and India that have been frayed by the yearlong fight over the marines’ fate. Top Italian officials have visited the marines, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, at a guesthouse in the southern state of Kerala to lend their support and the Indian government allowed them to go home for two weeks to celebrate Christmas with their families.
The marines were part of a military security team aboard a cargo ship when they opened fire on a fishing boat last February they said they mistook for a pirate craft and killed two Indian fishermen.
The court ruled Friday that the trial should take place in India in a special court to be set up by the central government in consultation with the chief justice, according to the Press Trust of India. The order removed the case from the jurisdiction of the southern state of Kerala, near where the shooting took place.
The Italian government said in a statement it found the decision encouraging because it recognized that the state court in Kerala did not have jurisdiction. It said in a statement that the ruling “encourages further efforts” by the Italian government to bring the two marines home.
“The Supreme Court confirmed that Kerala has no jurisdiction in this case, which is basically what we maintained from the very first day,” Italian Consul-General Giampaolo Cutillo told The Associated Press.
Piracy has emerged as a major threat to merchant ships in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, with Somalia-based pirates hijacking ships and crew for ransom.
Several countries, including India, allow ship owners to deploy armed security guards on ships.