Founder of Black Audio Film Collective says he would have laughed if someone had said he’d someday be in the UK pavilion

Britain’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the world’s largest and most prominent art event, begins with video of delicate Holbein drawings from the Tudor court being washed over by the eddies of a stream and ends with the death of a British-Nigerian man, David Oluwale, who drowned in a Yorkshire river after being beaten by local police in 1969.

Along the way, in filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah’s exhibition, comes a sumptuously told visual and auditory story of migration and colonialism, held together by the image of flowing water. It culminates in images of the arrival in Britain of the Windrush generation – those who migrated from the Caribbean to the UK in the years after the second world war, often to work in British public services.

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Owner of Al Condominio in Verona says response to the initiative during meals has been very positive

An Italian restaurant is offering a free bottle of wine to customers who relinquish their mobile phones during meals.

Angelo Lella, the owner of Al Condominio, a restaurant that opened in the northern city of Verona in March, said the aim was to revive the conviviality of an eatery in which diners chat to each other as opposed to constantly glancing at their phones.

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Netflix hit series based on Patricia Highsmith novel brings prospect of surge in visitors to Atrani area of Amalfi coast

When Andrew Scott’s eponymous character in the hit new Netflix series Ripley travels from Naples to the village of Atrani, the rickety bus has the road almost to itself; a solitary Vespa passes going the other way. When he tracks down Dickie Greenleaf at the beach, the rich American and his girlfriend are the only people sunbathing on the pristine sands.

Visitors to the Amalfi coast today will note the contrast. Unlike in 1961, the road between Positano and Salerno is now known as much for its traffic jams as for the views. Atrani may be less busy than its neighbour Amalfi, but in summer its beach is taken over by rows of umbrellas and sunbeds. A small area, perhaps a fifth of the space, is public spiaggia libera .

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‘Black room’ with frescoes inspired by Trojan war described as one of most striking discoveries ever made at site in southern Italy

A banquet room replete with well preserved frescoes depicting characters inspired by the Trojan war has been unearthed among the ruins of Pompeii in what has been described as one of the most striking discoveries ever made at the archaeological site in southern Italy.

The 15-metre-long, six-metre-wide room was found in a former private residence in Via di Nola, which was ancient Pompeii’s longest road, during excavations in the Regio IX area of the site.

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Italian coastguard rescues 22 survivors trying to cross Mediterranean and searches for missing

Nine people, including a baby, have died after their boat capsized while trying to cross the Mediterranean in stormy weather and another 15 people are feared missing, Italy’s coastguard has said.

The Italian coastguard said on Thursday it had received a cooperation request from Maltese search and rescue after the boat capsized about 30 miles (50km) south-east off the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday.

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American appealed for conviction to be dropped after wrongly accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Meredith Kercher

An Italian court has opened a new trial against Amanda Knox over a slander conviction she received for wrongly accusing a bar owner of murdering the British student Meredith Kercher.

Knox, who, along with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, spent four years in prison after being convicted over Kercher’s murder in 2007, asked for the slander conviction to be dropped on the basis of a ruling by the European court of human rights in 2019 that found that her defence rights had been violated during police questioning in 2007. Italy’s top court ordered a retrial of the slander conviction in October.

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A search is continuing for the missing after parts of the structure collapsed and led to flooding at Enel’s power station near Bologna

An explosion at a hydroelectric plant in northern Italy has killed at least three workers and injured five others, a regional fire chief said. At least four other people are missing.

The blast on Tuesday was at power company Enel’s decades-old Bergi plant, south of Bologna, and happened during maintenance work, according to authorities. Regional fire chief Francesco Notaro told local media that part of the nine-story underground structure collapsed, started a fire, causing flooding at depths of up to 60 meters (200 feet).

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Viewers association has called for Amica Chips to suspend the campaign over a lack of respect towards practising Catholics

An Italian TV advert that depicts nuns eating crisps instead of altar bread while receiving holy communion has been accused of blasphemy by an outraged association of Catholic TV viewers.

The 30-second advert for Amica Chips – one of Italy’s top crisps brands – takes place in a monastery and opens with nuns preparing to receive holy communion. Their mother superior realises that the tabernacle is empty of hosts, and so fills it with crisps.

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At the end of September 2023, Jim Fenwick found himself in Palermo, Sicily, when wildfires started to break out. The London-based photographer noticed the low cloud cover was reflecting the glow of the fires, which turned the sky red. With an hour to spare before he needed to start work on a different project, he stepped away to capture what was happening. “Sicily experiences the highest number of fires in Italy,” says Fenwick. “The primary cause stems from human activities, both unintentional and deliberate. Even if you’re living thousands of miles away from wildfires, we should all be paying attention.”

• Jim Fenwick is a finalist in the landscape category in the professional competition of the Sony world photography awards 2024 at Somerset House , London WC2, 19 April-6 May

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