February 1: Marquis Emanuele Notarbartolo di san Giovanni (ex mayor of Palermo and ex governor of the Bank of Sicily) is assassinated by two well dressed assailants on the train from Sciara to Palermo. These are later identified as mafiosi Guiseppa Fontana and Matteo Filipello (Villabate cosca) on the instruction of Don Raffaele Palizzolo, member of parliament and a director of the Bank of Sicily, in revenge for exposing the NGI share swindle using the bank's money. (See November, 1899).

October 25: Attempted execution of former superboss and capo of the Malaspina cosca, Francesca Siino, fails. Under Sangiorgi's manipulation, Siino becomes a pentito.
November 11: In Milan, Court of Assizes – the trial for complicity in the murder of Notarbartolo (See 1893) begins, of two train staff only, the ticket inspector and the guardsvan brakeman.
November 16: Notarbartolo' son Leopoldo takes the stand in the above trial as a civil complainant, publicly exposes mafioso Fontana (of the Villabate cosca), and M.P. Palizzolo as instigator, and discredits Fontana's Tunisian alibi. (See 1905).
Prime Minister Luigi Pelloux arranges a quick Chamber of Deputies vote to remove Palizzolo's immunity, even suspending telegraphic communications between Sicily and the mainland.
(See July, 1902).

'During the course of performing my duties I have never noticed the mafia.'

May: After months of continuous hair-splitting procrastination by this same public prosecutor, the most significant mafiosi are released and only eighty-nine of the hundreds are charged with belonging to a criminal association. Siino denies the evidence that he supplied to Sangiorgi. All mafia victims deny mafia guilt, except two widows and the mother of a murdered girl.
June: Only thirty-two mafosi are convicted of forming a criminal association. Most of these are released immediately. 

January: Joseph (Giuseppe) Petrosino is appointed head of the New York Police Department's Italian Branch. (See 1909).
Recently acquitted assassin, Guiseppa Fontana, joins the cosca of American Cosa Nostra superboss, or padrino, Piddu Morello in New York. (See 1893).

February: Lt. Joseph Petrosino becomes head of the new secret service arm of the New York Police Department.
March 12: In Palermo, Sicily – Lt. Petrosino is assassinated. (Probably by Don Vito Cascio-Ferro, at the request of Morello in New York).

'mafia affiliated with the Catholics'.

Night January 1: Mussolini's troops, at Mori's request, surround and attack Gangi, Sicily.
In the following days they arrest 130 fugitives and some 300 accomplices, beginning a devastating crackdown on the mafia resulting in the break up of most of their cosche. Within three years 11,000 people are arrested, 5 000 in the province of Palermo.

August: In East Harlem, New York – Piddu Morello is shot dead in his office. (See 1905).
In Boston, America – a mafia general assembly deposes Joe 'the Boss' Masseria (who had previously admitted non-Sicilian Al Capone to the mafia), appoints an interim leader, and Cola Gentile to lead a deputation to Salvatore Marazano to stop the internal conflict.

April 15: Scarpato's restaurant, Coney Island, New York – Charles 'Lucky' Luciano (Salvatore Luciana) master-minds the after-lunch team assassination his own capo Joe 'the Boss' Masseria. Luciano (with the support of Al 'Scarface' Capone in Chicago) seeks peace terms with capo Salvatore Marazano thus opening the way for Marazano to become capo dei capi of the American Cosa Nostra.
September 10: Marazano is assassinated in his Park Avenue office by Luciano's men.
Luciano establishes a governing Commission for the American mafia, comprised of the heads of the five New York cosche plus one outsider. (See June 1936).

In Portella della Ginestra, Palermo – Mafioso Salvatore Guiliano and associates machine-gun a socialist rally of peasant families. Cardinal Archbishop Ernesto Ruffini writes to the Pope concerning the massacre that –

In the USA – The leadership of the American Cosa Nostra introduce a ban on drug-dealing, but this is routinely transgressed.
In Cuba – American Cosa Nostra use of the island as a drug-smuggling base is imperilled by Fidel Castro's growing revolution.
October: In Rome – Joe Bananas, capo of the Brooklyn cosca (on his way 'on-holiday' to franchise the US mafia's heroin-trafficking operations to their Sicilian counterparts), is given a VIP welcome by the Italian Foreign Trade Minister. Bananas remarks –

'Wouldn't my friends in the FBI have been astonished at this princely welcome'.

In Palermo – Bananas initiates the creation of a Sicilian Commission on the lines of the New York mafia Commission to better manage business rivalries. He is accompanied by his advisor Camillio (Carmine) Galante, his deputy Frank Garofalo, and other leading members of his Brooklyn-based cosca, and the Buffalo-based Magaddino cosca (including Lucky Luciano, in exile in Naples). He chairs their meeting at the Hotel des Palmes with a cross-section of Sicilian mafia leadership. The outcome is that the most Sicilian of the American mafia cosche reforge a link with the most American of the Sicilian cosche.
Each province of Sicily is to have its own Commission. The large number of cosche in the Palermo Commission necessitates a mandamento level, enhancing an existing practice. However, the capo of a cosca may not be a Commission representative, to prevent a concentration of power and balance the authority of local cosca bosses. Critically, the mafia Commission of each province will rule concerning the murders of 'men of honour'.

In New York – The FBI's lack of understanding of Cosa Nostra is reflected in the imbalance of 400 agents investigating American Communism with only four working on organized crime. (See 1963).
December 8: In Worcester, Massachusetts, USA – About 150 Mafia assemble at a downtown hotel and hold an all-night meeting to set policy and solve disputes.

January: In Palermo – Salvatore La Barbera is eliminated by 'Little Bird' Greco's cosca.
February 12: In Palermo – A huge car-bomb destroys 'Little Bird' Greco's house in Ciaculli.
April 19 10.25 am: In Palermo – A Greco assassination squad attacks a La Barbera fishmongers, killing two and wounding two. A few days later, the capo of Cinisi, a Greco ally, is killed by a car-bomb.
May 25: In Milan – Angelo La Barbera is publicly shot dead by the Greco cosca in viale Regina Giovanni.
June 30:  In Ciaculli, Palermo – The first mafia war ends accidentally when an abandoned TNT-loaded car with a flat tire explodes, killing seven officers (four carabinieri, two military engineers and a policeman). (Tommaso Buscetta is the probable culprit). The reaction brings a crack down on mafia activities across the region that brings their activity to temporary halt.
In Cinisi, Sicily – Mafia capo, Cesare Manzella (uncle of Giuseppe 'Peppino' Impastato, see 1966), is assassinated by a car bomb.
Summer: In Palermo – The mafia Commission meets and decides to dissolve itself defensively. Its members travel abroad.
September 10: Bernado 'Tractor' Provenzano takes part in an attack on Michele 'Our Father' Navarra's mafia faction. (See 2006).

Palm Sunday, in Palermo – Cardinal Ruffini issues a pastoral epistle entitled 'The True Face of Sicily' in which he accuses the media of exaggerating the mafia in a conspiracy against Sicily. (See 1947).
In Corleone, Sicily – Luciano Leggio, capo of the Corleone cosca, is arrested. (See 1958).

The sixty-four mafia combatants, including Luciano Leggio (see 1964), arrested in the 1962-63 war are all acquitted, with assistance from certain police officers and intimidated witnesses.
The mafia's Commission is reconstituted, provisionally consisting of Gaetano 'Tano' Badalamenti, Stefano Bontate (capo of the largest cosca, and most important hinge between the mafia and the Masonic secret societies), and Luciano Leggio; thus abandoning the old rule that prohibited heads of cosche from holding the position (see October 1957 and 1974).
December 10: In viale Lazio, Palermo – Michele 'the Cobra' Cavataio is executed by a team (including Calogero Bagarella, Bernardo 'the Tractor' Provenzano, and Guiseppe Di Cristina) representing the whole of Cosa Nostra for his part in starting the mafia war of 1962-63.

Badalamenti, Bontate and Leggio, become a triumvirate mafia Commission.
Investigative reporter Mauro De Mauro, of L'Ora newspaper, is murdered on instruction of the mafia Commission.
In America – The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law (RICO) is passed.

c.11 pm March 29: In Palermo – Capodecina Leonardo Vitale, of the Altarello di Baida cosca, with deep remorse, confesses unreservedly and voluntarily to the police concerning his own crimes and the structure and organization of the mafia, including its Commission.
When state psychiatrists find him 'mentally semi-infirm' but fit to stand trial, he writes –

See 1977.

Seventeen-year-old Eugene Paul Getty III is kidnapped by Luciano Leggio's cosca which extorts $2.5 million after his ear and lock of hair is sent to a newspaper.
Prime Minister Giulio Andeotti attempts to help Vatican banker Michele Sindona avoid criminal (money-laundering) charges in Italy and the United States. (See 1986).

(the mafia governing body for the whole of Sicily) is set up by Pippo Calderone of Catania. (See 1977).
Totò 'Shorty' Riina (a Corleonese) kidnaps and kills the father-in-law of mafioso Nino Salvo.

The Italian government's Antimafia Commission completes its work in 40 thick volumes.
Salvatore Toto 'Shorty' Riina initiates Giovanni 'lo scannacristiani' Brusca. (See May, 1992).

In Palermo – The trial of twenty-eight mafiosi arising from Leonardo Vitale's confession are tried, but only himself and his uncle are convicted. (See 1973).
September: In Cinisi – Giuseppe 'Peppino' Impastato's father (a mafioso) is killed 'accidentally' by a passing car. (See 1978).
The Corleonesi (Leggio) use the Commission to expel Don Tano Badalamenti (resident in the US) from Cosa Nostra on a charge of unauthorized self-enrichment. He is replaced as chair by Michele 'the Pope' Greco (son of Piddu 'the lieutenant').
The Corleonesi kill Pippo Calderone and his cosca is given to their ally Nitto 'the Hunter' Santapaola.

April: Guiseppe Di Cristina (capo of the Riesi cosca in central-southern Sicily) gives information and warns the Palermo carabinieri of an impending Corleonesi mafia war of Luciano Leggio's (from his prison cell, see December 1987) cosche against Don Tano Badalamenti aligned cosche, to which he belongs.
In Passo di Rigano, Palermo – Guiseppe Di Cristina is shot dead in the territory of Salvatore 'Totuccio' Inzerillo without his permission (a blatant sfregio).
The carabinieri report on Di Cristina reads –

No judicial action is taken.
In Cinisi – Socialist activist, Giuseppe 'Peppino' Impastato's radio station broadcasts mockery of the mafia and Peppino helps set up a photographic exhibition demonstrating the road-building damage to western Sicily by mafia corruption.
Night, May 8-9: Giuseppe 'Peppino' Impastato is tortured, wrapped in explosives, and blown to pieces on the railway track by the mafia, to make it appear as a Leftist sabotage gone-wrong. (See 1966, April 2002). Police are notoriously negligent in their investigation (according to Italian parliamentary inquiry published 6 December, 2000).

January: Democrazia Cristiana party president of the Sicilian region, Piersanti Mattarella is assassinated, with the prior knowledge of Prime Minister Giuolio Andreotti.
In Palermo – Tommaso Buscetta is released from prison and receives a $500,000 farewell gift from drug-lords Bontate (see April '81) and Inzerillo (see May '81).

January: Tommaso Buscetta flies to join his wife in South America, intending never to return.
April 23: Stefano Bontate is machine-gunned to death in his car on his birthday (by mafiosi including Pino 'the Shoe' Greco).
May: Salvatore Inzerillo is machine-gunned to death in his car (by mafiosi including Pino 'the Shoe' Greco, see 1985).
In the following months 200 mafiosi of the Bontate-Inzerillo faction are killed by the Corleonesi.
The cosche and mandamenti of the murdered are handed to Corleonese allies.

John Gambino arrives from New York to investigate and is instructed to kill all Sicilian mafiosi of the losers who flee to America. Shortly after, Inzerillo's brother is executed in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, USA.
Relatives, friends or business associates who may offer shelter to the defeated are to be executed. Accordingly, thirty-five of Salvatore Contorno's relatives are killed after he escapes an ambush in Brancaccio, Sicily.
April: Active member of the Antimafia Commission and Sicilian MP, Pio La Torre is shot dead in a busy Palermo street.
Summer: In London – Roberto Calvi (member of Masonic lodge P2), Italian banker, Vatican-connected money-launderer for the Mafia, is hanged by the Corleone cosca under Blackfriars Bridge. British police regard it as suicide. (See April 2002).
The corleonesi have now established their control of Cosa Nostra be a rolling programme of executions.
Judge Falcone dares to subject Nino Salvo and Ignazio Salvo (both of the Salemi cosca, Trapani province), corrupt Sicilian tax-collectors with large subsidies from the European Union and Italian government for their agribusiness concerns, to an audit. (See 1992).
Legislation is passed in Italy allowing the confiscation of assets illegally gained. (See December 1995).

September 29: Magistrate Caponnetto announces that Tommaso Buscetta, so-called 'boss of two worlds', is co-operating with justice. 366 arrest warrants are later issued as a result.
December 2: Leonardo Vitale is assassinated. (See 1973).
December 23: The mafia assist Italian right-wing terrorists to plant a bomb on the Milan–Naples train, killing sixteen, with the promise that their possible new government would revise mafia trial verdicts.

Pino 'the Shoe' Greco, under-boss of the Ciaculli cosca, is shot dead by 'Shorty' Riina for independant thinking.
July: Flying squad officer, Beppe Montana, in charge of the hunt for mafia fugitives, is publicly shot dead with dum-dum bullets.
Flying squad officer, Ninni Cassarà, is shot to death in front of his wife before their home with more than 200 bullets by a group of between 12 to 15 mafiosi.
At Cassarà's funeral the Italian Minister of the Interior and President of the Republic are insulted and spat at by the deceased's colleagues.

March: 160 are arrested arising from evidence of pentito Antonino Calderone.
September: In Palermo – Appeal Court judge Antonio Saetta and son are shot dead.

February: Judge Giovanni Falcone becomes Director of Penal Affairs in the Italian Ministry of Justice.
August: Court of Cassation prosecutor Antonio Scopelliti is murdered by Calabrian mafia (the 'Ndrangheta) on behalf of Cosa Nostra. (See 2004, side-bar).
September: In Palermo – Libero Grassi, a business man leading a public campaign against extortion rackets, is shot dead.
Legislation is passed in Italy to combat money-laundering.
In southern and eastern Sicily – Bernardo 'Tractor' Provenzano leads a campaign against independent mafia gangs, killing 300 within three years in the province of Agrigento alone. (See 2004).

January 31: The Court of Cassation overturns the Appeal Court verdict against the mafia maxi-trial, confirming the existence of Cosa Nostra as a single unified organization, and that the members of its Commission are all jointly responsible for murders carried out by the organization.
March 12: In Mondello, near Palermo – Salvo Lima (European Member of Parliament for 12 years, mafia associate and prime supporter of Prime Minister Giulio Andriotti) is shot dead near his home, for having failed on promises to reverse the maxi-trial verdict.

July 19: Judge Falcone's successor in Palermo, Paolo Borsellino, is assassinated with five members of his escort. Salvatore "Totò" Riina, the brutal and undisputed leader of Cosa Nostra, later confessed he was aware of the exact day and time Borsellino was to pay a visit to his mother because he had been listening to their phone calls.
In Rome – Judge Giovanni Falcone sets up two national bodies:
1. the 'Directione Investigativa Antimafia' (DIA), uniting all law enforcement agencies in fighting mafia-style organizations; and
2. the Direzione Nazionale Antimafia (DNA), a national anti-mafia prosecutor's office co-ordinating district anti-mafia prosecutors' offices across the country.

January: Salvatore Totò 'Shorty' Riina (the Beast) is captured in a villa in Uditore with help from imprisoned mafioso Balduccio Di Maggio. The next day Toto Riina's godfather, Leggio, dies of a heart attack in prison.
Leadership of Cosa Nostra passes to Leoluca Bagarella (Riina's brother-in-law and long term associate). (See June 1995). Bernardo 'Tractor' Provenzano plans a bombing campaign on the Italian mainland. (See 2004).
May 14: Attempted assassination of TV presenter Maurizio Constanzo in a bomb blast.
May 27: In Florence – Car bomb explodes in via dei Georgofili, killing five and wounding 40 passers-by.
July 27: In Milan – A bomb explodes in via Palestro, killing five.
July 27: In Rome – Bombs explode at the churches of San Giovanni in Laterano and San Gorgio, with no casualties.

September 15: In Palermo – Father Pino Puglisi is shot dead at his front door.
October 31: A large bomb planted in via dei Gladiatori, near the Rome Olympic Stadium, timed to explode at the end of the Lazio versus Udinese football match, fails to detonate.
December: One third of all members of the Italian parliament are under investigation for corruption.

June: Leoluca Bagarella is captured, and Bernardo 'Tractor' Provenzano takes his place as mafia boss-of-bosses.
Provenzano changes Cosa Nostra strategy to low profile, to avoid media attention, and internally to a policy of 'mangia e fai mangiare' (eat and let eat) with greater concentration on protection rackets. He also resumes payment of 'salaries' to imprisoned mafiosi, suspends killing of pentiti to encourage retraction of their evidence, raises the standard of initiates, and compartmentalizes communication to increase security.
September: In Palermo – Giulio Andreotti, seven times Prime Minister of Italy, stands trial for working systematically and deliberately for Cosa Nostra. (See October 1999).
December: Totò 'Shorty' Riina's assets confiscated by the authorities now amount to about £125 million.

January: Fourteen-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo is strangled and his body dissolved in acid on instruction of family friend Giovanni 'lo scannacristiani' Brusca.
9 pm, May 20: Giovanni 'lo scannacristiani' Brusca is captured near Agrigento.

The European Union 'Agenda 2000' envisages spending 7,586 billion euros over six years in Sicily – a chosen target of Cosa Nostra.
The bugging of a mafioso phone recorded the following comment –

Silvio Berlusconi becomes Italian Prime Minister, with his party holding all of the 61 parliamentary seats of Sicily. (See June 2002).
August: Italian Minister of the Infrastructure, Pietro Lunardi, remarks that Italy has to –

March: Capo Pietro Aglieri writes from prison to the antimafia prosecutors asking for negotiations in which to propose that mafiosi receive less harsh penalties in return for recognizing both the existence of Cosa Nostra and the authority of the Italian state.
April: Don Tano Badalamenti is given a life sentence for ordering the murder of Giuseppe 'Peppino' Impastato. (See May, 1978).
April: Italian authorities conclude that banker Roberto Calvi was executed in London by the mafia. (See Summer, 1982).
April 16: Antonino Giuffrè (acting head of the Caccamo mandamento) is captured. (See June).
June: Antonino Giuffrè turns pentito. Giuffrè claims that top level discussions were held in 1993 with Marcello Dell'Utri prior to Silvio Berlusconi's launch of his 'Forza Italia' political party.*
July: Italian police claim to have arrested the whole of the mafia Commission for Agrigento province (15 men: including one medical doctor, a nobleman, and a member of the provincial council).
July: Italy's national regulatory authority for public works publishes evidence that the safeguards against corruption are systematically subverted in Sicily.
In Palermo – The chief prosecutor estimates that in Sicily 96% of government contracts are rigged in advance.
October: The head of Italy's secret service reports that there is a 'a concrete risk' that Cosa Nostra's disappointment with a lack of political co-operation could lead to a new season of murders. (See December).
November: In Italy – Life Senator (and seven times prime minister of Italy) Giulio Andreotti is sentenced to twenty-four years in prison for ordering the murder of a journalist. (See 1979).  He appeals against his conviction to the Court of Cassation (see October 2003).
December: In Rome – The annualy renewed decree of 41 bis, rigorously preventing mafiosi from operating from inside prison, is converted into a permanent decree.

In Rome – Prime Minister Berlusconi passes a law giving immunity from prosecution while in office to the five most senior persons in Italy's institutions, including the Prime Minister. (See January 2004).
June: Prime Minister Berlusconi's trial on corruption charges is suspended. (Prime Minister Berlusconi is accused of paying massive bribes to judges for a favourable decision in a privatization dispute). (See side-bar).
In Rome – The Italian Minister of Justice Roberto Castelli intends to –

January: Italy's highest court reject the legislation granting Prime Minister Berlusconi immunity from prosecution on corruption charges. (See 2003).
Bernardo Provenzano (aka: 'the accountant' or 'zu Binnu' – 'Uncle Bernie') remains at large, probably in Western Sicily. (See September 1963, 1993, June 1995, 2003, 2006).
The value of eco-mafia activities (waste disposal, etc.) increases by 30% to €24bn (£16bn, $29.5bn).
        Of Italy's four main mafia crime groups –

March: Carmen "Buddy" Cicalese of New York's Genovese crime family (named after Vito Genovese, who was boss from 1957–1969) sets up a secret company in the Cook Islands named 'RAC Corporation' with the help of Portcullis TrustNet, an offshore services provider headquartered in Singapore, and then shuffles more than US$1 million around the world through accounts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Australia’s ANZ Bank. (Wanted in the US on illegal gambling and money-laundering charges, Cicalese adopts Costa Rican citizenship by naturalization in 2012, and lives in Barreal de Heredia).

Mikhail Rabo (a senior member of the Jewish community) is Tambov-Malyshev’s deputy chief as well as its Berlin representative. (He is arrested 19 June 2008 in Germany’s capital under a European arrest warrant issued against him following a large-scale raid on 20 Russian mobsters in Spain commissioned by the Spanish police.

April 14: In Cape Town, South Africa – Vito 'Roberto' Palazzolo (aka 'Robert von Palace Kolbatschenko'), whose wife apparently goes under the surname 'Christian', loses his application to the Western Cape High Court in seeking assurance of non-extradition to Italy under his conviction there of "Mafia-type" association (5 July 2006 under section 416bis of the Italian Criminal Code, and sentenced to nine years) as being unnecessary as this offence has no equivalent or counterpart in South African criminal law, and so the court rules –

February: In Italy – Vito Roberto Palazzolo (aka Robert von Palace Kolbatschenko, of Fransch Hoek, South Africa) is extradited from Thailand and incarcerated under the harsh Article 41-bis prison regime, usually reserved for dangerous criminals.

20: In Rome – The lavish funeral of the Casamonica clan 'leader' Vittorio Casamonica (65) draws criticism. Banners feature: "You conquered Rome, now you’ll conquer paradise," affixed to the entrance of the San Giovanni Bosco church. "King of Rome" read another, featuring Casamonica’s image, the Colosseum and St Peter’s Basilica. Several commentators noted the irony that a reported mob boss is allowed an elaborate funeral at the church while the Archdiocese of Rome refused to allow a funeral at the same church in 2006 for Piergiorgio Welby, then the symbol of Italy’s right-to-die movement. Welby, who had muscular dystrophy and was unable to eat, speak or breathe on his own, got his wish to die in December 2006 when a doctor disconnected his respirator.

16: Family of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia believe that three men awaiting trial for the crime were acting on orders from inside Malta, and have expressed concern that elements within the government may be protecting whoever commissioned the killing. In his first full interview since his wife’s death in a car bombing six months ago, Peter Caruana Galizia claimed political interests were blocking the police investigation and said he feared the mastermind might never be brought to justice. The Maltese government says police are leaving no stone unturned. The justice minister is offering a €1m (£870,000) reward for information leading to anyone who may have ordered the car bombing on 16 October 2017. The Maltese reporter was murdered by a bomb placed under the driver’s seat of her car. Caruana Galizia had plenty of enemies and critics. She had challenged many who hold power and influence in Malta: mobsters, business people, public officials, lawyers, the governing Labour party, even the current leader of the Nationalist party, with which she had been closely aligned. The journalist’s widower was speaking from the family home in the village of Bidnija, where he is under 24-hour police protection. The 62-year-old lives alone because the family have been advised by security experts that it is too dangerous for his three sons to stay on the island where they grew up.

Caruana Galizia’s family have dismissed the government’s offer of a €1m reward
for information about the mastermind as a publicity stunt.

Malta’s government has been told to take urgent action to implement EU anti-money laundering rules, as MEPs rang the alarm about the dangers for journalists investigating financial crime following the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Pietro Grasso, Italy's senate speaker and a former anti-mafia magistrate, stressed Friday that the battle is not over.

14: Italian police search the homes and businesses of known allies of mobster Matteo Messina Denaro, looking for hidden bunkers where the fugitive godfather may be hiding. Two hundred officers executed search warrants in farmhouses and warehouses belonging to some 30 suspected gangsters in and around Castelvetrano, the Mafia boss’ hometown in Sicily. The suspects have either been named in wiretaps or singled out by mafia turncoats. Investigators were looking in particular for hiding places in "grottoes, caverns or even bunkers inside buildings" where the man nicknamed "Diabolik" may be concealed, Denaro – once a trigger man who reportedly boasted he could "fill a cemetery" with his victims – has been on the run since 1993 and is believed to come and go regularly from the Italian island. The 55-year old is considered the most powerful figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.

He is wanted for a string of crimes including dozens of murders.

MEPs back a resolution calling for better protection of journalists and whistleblowers across the EU. The text, approved by 573 of the parliament’s 751 members, was drawn up largely as a response to the murder of Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak, who had been investigating extortion of EU agricultural funds by the Italian mafia, allegedly supported by local politicians.

Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kušnírová, were murdered in their home, prompting Slovakia’s biggest street protests since the fall of communism and the resignation of the prime minister.

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