Italy

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Italy /ˈɪtəli/ (help·info) (Italian: Italia), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within the Italian Peninsula, and Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.

The land known as Italy today has been the cradle of many European cultures and peoples, such as the Etruscans and the Romans, and later was the birthplace of the University, the Renaissance that began in Tuscany and spread all over Europe, Vitruvian Man, modern science and astronomy, heliocentrism and opera. Italy's capital, Rome, was for centuries the center of Western civilization. Italy possessed a colonial empire from the second half of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

Today, Italy is a democratic republic and a developed country with the eighth-highest quality of life index rating in the world. It is a founding member of what is now the European Union, having signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and it is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is a member of the G8, having the world's seventh-largest nominal GDP, and is also a member state of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Council of Europe, the Western European Union, and the Central European Initiative. Italy is a Schengen state. It has the world's seventh-largest defence budget and shares NATO's nuclear weapons. On 1 January 2007, Italy began a two-year term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

For more information about Italy, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.


News tagged with italy

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A visitor walks past the Google logo at a trade fair

US engineer defends Google in defamation trial

Technology / Business

created Sep 29, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 2

An American engineer sought to clear Google of defamation charges at a trial over the broadcast in Italy of video showing the bullying of a teenager with Down's Syndrome, a lawyer for the Internet search provider ...


A power plant pictured in northern Spain in March 2007

Italy launches first clean hydrogen power plant

Technology / Energy

created Aug 14, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (11) | comments 2

Italian power company Enel said Friday that it had started up a ground-breaking hydrogen-powered electricity plant producing no greenhouse gases.


RU-486 abortion drug to be allowed in Italy

Medicine & Health / Medications

created Jul 31, 2009 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 1

(AP) -- Italy has approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, drawing fierce protests by the Vatican.


An aerial view of Torre del Greco, one of the villages inside the "red zone" near Mount Vesuvius volcano

Vesuvius, the world's most closely watched volcano

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 22, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Nearly 2,000 years after wiping out Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius is among the most closely monitored volcanoes in the world, its every shudder recorded.


Quake-destroyed buildings

10,000 aftershocks follow Italy quake

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 13, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Scientists have detected 10,000 aftershocks since last week's earthquake in Italy of which around 1,000 could be felt, a top expert said on Monday, warning that the tremors will probably get stronger.


Digging up evidence of 400-year-old global trade and wealth

Digging up evidence of 400-year-old global trade and wealth

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Apr 09, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0

French and Chinese blue glass, Dutch layered glass, Baltic amber: roughly 70,000 beads manufactured all over the world have been excavated at one of the Spanish empire's remotest outposts, the Santa Catalina ...


Mountain spine is a quake hotspot

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 06, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Scientists said a killer earthquake that struck central Italy on Monday occurred in a notorious trouble spot and warned further powerful shocks in the coming months could not be ruled out.