Modena Attacker Ruled Sound of Mind as the Plain Confronts Its Own Case

The Local Italy's Monday roundup reports that experts have judged the man who drove a car into pedestrians in Modena to be of sound mind, a finding that clears one of the procedural hurdles before any trial can proceed. The same roundup carries, alongside it, the government's pledge to ban face coverings in schools and cap foreign pupils. For Emilia-Romagna the first item is the one that sits closest to home.

Modena is a city of roughly 185,000 on the Via Emilia, the Roman road that still orders the region's towns like beads on a string. It is known abroad chiefly for balsamic vinegar, for the Ferrari and Maserati plants that ring it, and for a cooperative and civic tradition in which the city takes visible pride. A vehicle attack on its streets therefore lands differently here than a distant headline would.