Some of Italy’s most well-heeled residents have come under the glare of successive governments who have declared wars on tax evasion, yet it remains a perennial problem for the debt-laden nation. On Wednesday, it was the turn of designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who were convicted of failing to declare 200 million euros ($268 million).

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared a tax amnesty in 2009, repatriating billions at a negligible penalty of 5 per cent. He too has been caught up in the crackdown: Last year the billionaire media mogul was convicted of tax fraud related to his media business, a charge he firmly denies.

His successor, Premier Mario Monti, dispatched tax police to resorts to ensure that receipts were being properly issued and income declared. While hiding income abroad may suit the jet-set, a more widely practiced and insidious form of evasion in Italy is the failure to issue receipts for anything from handy work to private medical visits to a cup of espresso.

By some estimates, as much as 20 per cent of Italy’s GDP is lost to tax evasion — a sum that if recouped would help Italy pay down its 2 trillion euro debt.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest names in the dragnet:

DOLCE&GABBANA

A Milan court on Wednesday convicted Dolce and Gabbana of tax evasion for failing to declare 200 million euros ($268 million) through a Luxembourg company to Italian authorities. They received a one year and eight months suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay a penalty of 500,000 euros (about $670,000) to tax authorities.

The court, however, acquitted them of misrepresenting income of 416 million euros (around $560 million) each, ruling that no crime had been committed.

The designers have denied the charges, and the defence has pledged to appeal the ruling.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI

Berlusconi was convicted last fall of tax fraud in the purchase of rights to broadcast U.S. movies on his private TV network. An appeals court in May upheld the conviction, four-year jail term and five year ban on public office.

Berlusconi has contested the convictions, and called the judicial reasoning for the appeal “surreal.”

The appellate court said there was “conclusive evidence, oral and documented, that Berlusconi directly managed … an enormous tax evasion through off-shore companies.”

Berlusconi’s defence is planning to appeal to the country’s highest court.

They lost a separate challenge at the constitutional court level Wednesday that could have caused the trial and appellate court sentences to collapse. That court rejected a defence argument that the trial court judge had improperly gone ahead with scheduled testimony on a day then-Premier Berlusconi had a Cabinet meeting in Rome. It noted he had previously indicated to the trial court his availability.

DIEGO MARADONA

Soccer star Diego Maradona sold a diamond earring to help pay off his 37 million euro tax bill to Italy. Valued at 5,500 euros, it netted 25,000 euros at a 2010 auction.

Maradona’s Italian debts stem from unpaid taxes during the time he played for Napoli from 1984-91.

The Equitalia tax collection agency said the auction take was a drop in the bucket — but sent a message that even celebrities had to pay taxes.

VALENTINO ROSSI

Seven-time motorcycling world champion Valentino Rossi was snagged by tax authorities who monitored his comings and goings to Italy. He had declared his tax home in London, but ran afoul of the tax man when his presence in Italy exceeded the foreign resident test.

Rossi, then Italy’s highest paid athlete, paid about 19 million euros in 2008 to settle the dispute with tax authorities, who accused him of not declaring earnings of 60 million euros from 2000-2004.

After reaching the settlement, Rossi said he had decided to live in Italy again.

“London is a very interesting city, but spending more time with my family and my friends has become of greater importance considering all my affairs around the world,” Rossi said.

LUCIANO PAVAROTTI

Luciano Pavarotti wore a pinstripe suit over black sneakers for his reckoning with the Italian tax man.

The tenor showed up in person at the Finance Ministry in 2000 to seal an agreement to pay nearly 25 billion lire (around $12 million) to the Italian state after unsuccessfully claiming that the tax haven of Monte Carlo, rather than Italy, was his official residence.

“I cannot live being thought not a good person,” Pavarotti told reporters at the time.

Pavarotti, who died in 2007, always denied wrongdoing, and insisted he paid taxes where ever he performed.

“It’s very difficult to explain the life of one who travels the world, and who every year visits 50 different cities,” he said at the time.

SOFIA LOREN

Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren spent 17 days in prison in 1982 for tax evasion.

An Italian court convicted Loren in 1980 of filing an incorrect tax return for 1970, understating her earnings by 5 million lire, then worth about $7,000. Loren at the time was residing abroad.

Loren decided later to return to Italy to serve the sentence, and was arrested upon landing at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport from Geneva. Fans and fellow inmates at the prison north of Naples cheered Loren as guards ushered into a small pink cell. The 47-year-old movie star wore a green silk dress and tinted glasses.

The U.S., France, Britain and Germany are among 11 countries meeting in Doha as part of the Friends of Syria group. Foreign ministers will be attending the discussions.

A “precise” list of demands from Syrian rebels was set out Friday during a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, with Free Syrian Army Gen. Salim Idris, who spelled out urgent needs ranging from equipment to sophisticated arms, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to be publicly named while discussing sensitive diplomatic issues.

The U.S. decided last week to send arms to the rebels, and Britain and France have stressed the need to level the playing field for the rebels against Syria’s military. A balance of power on the ground between rebels of the Free Syrian Army and forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad is considered crucial to holding planned peace negotiations in Geneva. No date for those talks has been set, but leaders at the Group of Eight meeting this week in Northern Ireland all agreed talks should start soon.

The French diplomat refused to provide details of what exactly was on the “broad list” — except to say it covers anti-aircraft weapons, and he refused to hint what France might be prepared to provide. However, he stressed that a “collective and complementary” approach by 11 nations is an optimal way of exploring the list and, ultimately, delivering.

“It’s a list that corresponds to needs of Free Army joint chiefs to respond to challenges posed by the growing … regime forces and their allies …,” he said. He was referring to the forces of Iran-backed Hezbollah which have joined Russian-backed Syrian government troops, fighters from Iraq, which the official placed at several hundred and climbing, and Iranians on the ground, too.

Assad’s troops dealt a major blow to rebels earlier this month, changing the balance of power by pushing rebels out of the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border, with Hezbollah’s help.

The U.N. says Syria’s more than two-year-old civil war has killed more than 93,000 people.

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But Cecile Kyenge says she’s not afraid and challenged Italians to respond to such intimidation themselves to prove that Italy isn’t racist.

Kyenge, a Congolese-born doctor who has lived in Italy since 1983, has been the target of racist diatribes ever since she was named integration minister in April. She has been called “Congolese monkey,” and a member of a “bonga bonga government.”

Last week, a local politician from the xenophobic Northern League party was expelled from the party after she suggested on Facebook: “Why doesn’t someone rape her (Kyenge), so she can understand what victims of atrocious crimes feel?” The official, Dolores Valandro, was implying that immigrants were responsible for violent crime in Italy.

Kyenge on Wednesday acknowledged “racist episodes,” but declined to brand the country as a whole racist. She has offered a muted response to the attacks against her, saying it’s more for Italy as a nation to respond.

“These actions are directed against all of us, not just me,” Kyenge told reporters. “Surely it hasn’t left me indifferent. But I think the response that the country gives is important.”

Unlike France, Germany or Britain, where second and third generations of immigrants have settled, albeit uneasily, Italy is a relative newcomer to the phenomenon, with the first waves of immigrants coming to Italy’s shores only in the 1980s. The country’s race problem was then largely seen at soccer stadiums, where even today black stars like Mario Balotelli are routinely subjected to racists taunts.

But Kyenge’s emergence onto the political stage has brought the issue to the fore, spurred on in part by her call for Italy to change its citizenship law to allow children born in Italy of legal immigrants to obtain citizenship more easily.

Currently, such children can only apply once they turn 18, and can be denied citizenship for a host of bureaucratic mistakes or omissions. Kyenge says changing the law is a key part of changing Italians’ very concept of citizenship, to take into account the country’s changing demographics.

Foreigners made up about 2 per cent of Italy’s population in 1990; currently the figure stands at 7.5 per cent.

“It’s a new citizenship that comes about by the meeting of different cultures,” she said.

Her call, however, has been met with stiff resistance by the anti-immigrant Northern League, which isn’t taking part in a parliamentary committee drafting the new citizenship law. Kyenge’s spokesman, Cosimo Torlo, said it’s unclear at what age citizenship could be obtained under the proposed legislation — at age 3, 5 or 10 — but that “Whatever it is, it will be better than the current law.”

The threats against Kyenge are real. She arrived at the Foreign Press Association with a phalanx of bodyguards, two of whom flanked the dais where Kyenge spoke, talking into their shirt cuffs and sending signals to two other colleagues at the back of the room.

Asked about the unusually high security detail, Kyenge noted that all ministers have bodyguards. “But it’s clear that for me, because of the threats I have received, there’s a greater attention on protection.”

This weekend, Kyenge will give the opening address to a multicultural festival in the northern region of Veneto, the political home base of the Northern League. Far-right groups are planning a protest. Isabella Zuliani, vice mayor of the town hosting the event, told newspaper Il Gazzettino that police have already been informed about a new round of Internet death threats directed at Kyenge, including one that exhorted simply: “Kill her.”

“Racist episodes exist, but you can’t say that a country is racist because there are certain episodes in the territory,” Kyenge said.

That said, Kyenge appeared more ready to acknowledge such “racist episodes” than in her first meeting with the media, soon after she was nominated. Then, she said Italy’s problem wasn’t so much racism as ignorance of “the other.”

After two months of taunts directed against her, Kyenge said, “Maybe what is missing in Italy is a culture of immigration: We have to try to know, understand the ‘other,’ and that diversity is a richness.

“As soon as we understand that, we can evaluate whether Italy is racist,” she added.

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They wrote a message, shoved the cork back into the bottle, and tossed it into the waves off Tampa.

The message read: “To whoever finds this bottle: may you be blessed as the two of us. May you find someone to love with as much compassion. May you find and keep someone who completes you. This is our message in a bottle.”

They included their first names and a post office box in their hometown of Attleboro.

Karl and Michele Kimmell, now the parents of two children and about to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, say they occasionally wondered if anyone had found the bottle.

“It was just a regular cork in the bottle so I figured the cork would start leaking eventually,” Karl, 36, told WLNE-TV.

Turns out someone had found it, on the opposite coast of Florida.

Michael Souvigny found the bottle in February while out hunting along the St. John’s River in Green Cove Springs, Fla.

“It was very much a surprise,” Michele, 35, told The Sun Chronicle newspaper.

He responded to the message, but his letter was returned because the post office box account was closed and Karl and Michele had moved to neighbouring Rehoboth.

At the urging of a friend, Souvigny turned to The Sun Chronicle, which published a story about the bottle.

Michele’s sister saw the story and recognized the handwriting on the letter, a copy of which was printed with the article.

She contacted the Kimmells, who plan on contacting Souvigny.

“It’s neat that someone actually ended up finding it,” Michele said.

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Information from: The (Attleboro, Mass.) Sun Chronicle, http://www.thesunchronicle.com

Obese adolescents suffered increased hearing loss across all frequencies.

Also, they were almost twice as likely to develop one-sided low-frequency hearing loss.

The scientists stressed that future research is needed on dangerous consequences of this early hearing loss on social development, academic performance, behavioural and cognitive function.

The talks will be held in Washington on July 17. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publically. The two Cold War enemies just concluded discussions in Washington about resuming direct mail service, which has been suspended since 1963.

No agreement was reached, but the fact that the two sides are at the table is significant.

A nascent effort at rapprochement between Washington and Havana has stalled since the arrest of a U.S. government subcontractor in 2009 after he was caught bringing communications equipment into Cuba illegally. Washington is demanding his release.

The prize organizers say the technology that allows for the stable transfer of genes into plant cells has improved yields, resistance to insects and disease, and tolerance of extreme climate variations.

Sharing the prize are Marc Van Montagu of Belgium; Mary-Dell Chilton, a researcher at biotechnology company Syngenta; and Robert Fraley, chief technology officer at Monsanto.

Van Montagu and Chilton independently developed the technology in the 1980s. Fraley genetically engineered the first herbicide-resistant soybeans, meaning farmers can spray their fields to kill weeds while leaving their soybean plants intact.

Average highs are normally in the 70s in Germany’s capital city in June, but they were in the 90s Tuesday as Obama spoke at the historic Brandenburg Gate nearly 50 years after President John F. Kennedy’s famous cold war speech there.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel introduced Obama from a stage with no cover for the bright hot sun. “We’ve chosen the best possible weather to welcome you most warmly, as it were,” she said.

“It’s so warm,” Obama replied, “and I feel so good, that I’m actually going to take off my jacket and anybody else who wants to, feel free to.”

The crowd of 4,500 broke into cheers, after waiting for hours under tight security that prohibited them from bringing in water bottles. The Red Cross said 104 people were treated at the site for dehydration and sunburn, although fortunately none were ill enough to require hospital treatment.

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, sitting behind Obama on the stage, took the president up on the invitation to dress down.

“We can be a little more informal among friends,” Obama said.

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The weather wasn’t all that felt familiar to the president.

As Obama and German President Joachim Gauck greeted children waving flags from their two countries at Bellevue Palace, German photographers repeatedly shouted for Obama to turn toward them so they could get a better picture.

“The press is the same everywhere,” Obama quipped.

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Obama told his audience at the Brandenburg Gate that his family’s absence at the speech was not a slight to Berlin, but to him.

“The last thing they want to do is to listen to another speech from me, so they’re out experiencing the beauty and the history of Berlin,” Obama said.

First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia visited monuments commemorating dark eras of the country’s past. They were joined by the president’s half sister Auma, who went to university in Germany and flew in to meet them from her home in Kenya.

The family walked through the Holocaust memorial, a vast undulating field of more than 2,700 grey concrete slabs designed by American architect Peter Eisenman. The monument to the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis was opened in 2005 next to the U.S. Embassy and the site of the bunker where Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

Merkel’s husband, chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, made a rare public appearance to show the Obamas one of the few remaining sections of the Berlin Wall, which East Germany’s communist rulers built in 1961 and divided the city until 1989. Sauer, like Merkel, grew up behind the wall in the communist east.

The first lady and her daughters placed yellow roses in the gaps between the concrete slabs of the wall’s main memorial.

The first family stayed at the Ritz Carlton on the glitzy Potsdamer Platz, which was largely a vacant lot throughout the Cold War with the wall running right through it, just a few feet from where the hotel now stands.

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Obama paid tribute in his Brandenburg Gate speech to the “airlift of hope” that kept West Berlin out of Soviet hands in the late 1940s — and to a 92-year-old veteran of the operation once known as the Candy Bomber.

Gail Halvorsen was among the crowd that braved the heat to hear the president’s speech. He got his nickname for air-dropping handkerchief-tethered chocolate and gum to the children of Berlin. “He and his comrades made it possible for the city to survive,” said Mayor Wowereit.

The airlift began on June 26, 1948, in an ambitious plan to feed and supply West Berlin after the Soviets blockaded the city, attempting to squeeze the U.S., Britain and France out of the enclave within Soviet-occupied eastern Germany. American and allied pilots flew 278,000 flights to Berlin over 15 months, bringing in food, coal, medicine and other supplies. The Soviets realized in 1949 that the blockade was futile and lifted their barricades.

Obama said the United States couldn’t be prouder of Air Force veteran Halvorsen. “I hope I look that good, by the way, when I’m 92,” the president said.

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Germany and the United States both could claim some credit for a spectacular warm-up act by violinist David Garrett before Obama’s speech.

Garrett, the son of a German father and an American mother, was born and raised in Aachen on German’s western border and studied at Julliard in New York under famed Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Garrett performed songs by Obama favourite Bruce Springsteen and German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

He also performed his version of “Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson, who infamously dangled his baby outside a hotel window just up the street.

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Associated Press writers Robert H. Reid and Frank Jordans contributed to this report.

The pair were found guilty Wednesday of failing to declare euros 1 billion ($1.3 billion) in income to authorities. The court sentenced them both to one year and eight months in jail.

Prosecutors argued that the pair had evaded taxes on income of 416 million euros each and 200 million euros through a Luxembourg-based company. The statute of limitations ran out on a charge of misrepresenting income.

The designers have denied the charges.

Two years ago, a judge threw out a tax evasion and fraud case against the pair, whose label Dolce&Gabbana is a Milan fashion mainstay. Italy’s high court later ruled the designers could be prosecuted for tax evasion, though not for fraud.