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| 1998, Feb. 3 |
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| Italian relations with the United States suffered a blow when a low-flying U.S. military aircraft severed a gondola cable at a ski resort in Northern Italy. Twenty people were killed. | 1 |
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| May 3 |
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| After substantial economic rearrangement by Prime Minister Prodi in order to qualify, Italy joined the EU's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). | 2 |
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| July 7 |
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| Former premier Silvio Berlusconi was convicted of bribing government tax inspectors to protect his business interests. On July 13 Berlusconi was also found guilty on an unrelated charge of appropriating illegal donations money worth nearly $12 million. | 3 |
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| Aug. 19 |
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| Italy's largest insurance company, Assicurazioni Generali SpA, tentatively agreed to pay $100 million to the victims and surviving families of the Nazi Holocaust. These claimants had previously been denied access to policies that had been purchased from Generali before and during World War II. | 4 |
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| Oct. 16 |
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| Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government fell after losing a vote of confidence by one vote in the Chamber of Deputies. Stemming from a dispute with the hard-line Marxist Reconstructed Communist Party, this vote ended the second-longest tenure of any Italian administration since World War II. Prodi was replaced later that month by Massimo D'Alema, head of the Democratic Party of the Left. | 5 |
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