A budget, a sanction, a landslide: the day as seen by the newsroom

We lead with Giorgetti’s hearing on the 2026 budget because it is the event that today sets in motion the most concrete political debate: figures on the table, requests from Forza Italia and Lega measured against an official document. It is a story that for now travels on a single source — we state this in the piece, as our editorial standards require — but the hearing is a verifiable fact, not a leak.

Among the analyses, the EU sanctions package against Moscow tells of a turning point in relations between Brussels and Washington, with over 1,600 individuals and entities involved: a measure of the scale of the provision, not a comparison with previous packages, which the dossier did not provide. Next comes Mps, with an extraordinary board meeting called after Intesa’s improved offer: a story of banking governance with a shareholder front that could exceed 31% of capital.

Two stories move on opposite registers, far from the day’s breaking news: the Siponto excavation, which reveals two churches built one atop the other over the centuries, and the precautionary suspension of Cristiano Ronaldo by the Portuguese federation — this too on a single source, stated in the piece.

In Health, we choose the WHO report on chronic diseases: nearly three out of four deaths worldwide, an institutional figure that captures a global health trajectory without need for dramatization. In Tech, two distinct threads — Google’s tool for recognizing AI-generated content and two studies in Nature on the nervous system — held together because both concern the relationship between research and verification tools. Entertainment closes with lifetime achievement awards for Julianne Moore and Javier Bardem at the Rome Film Fest.

On the Gorropeddu cave, in Sardinia, we are publishing because this is an ongoing rescue operation, not judicial news: the caver is reported alive and conscious according to the latest available information, and this may change in the coming hours.

We acknowledge a gap: the Foreign Affairs and Geopolitics section remains uncovered today. We had a piece in the works on the first anniversary of the Gaza truce, but it did not pass our source checks and was dropped without a replacement. We are not hiding this: it is a missing section, not an editorial choice.

This afternoon will update whatever sees real developments — starting with the Mps board meeting and the operations in Sardinia — without repeating what has already been written today.