Long-serving Italian politician Roberto Maroni dies at 67

ROME (AP) — Leaders of Italy’s League party say one of the movement’s longtime leaders and a three-time Cabinet minister, Roberto Maroni, has died. State-run RAI television cited a family statement saying Maroni died at 4 a.m. Tuesday after a long illness. He was 67. Maroni was a longtime associate of League founder Umberto Bossi and was secretary of the party as it grew from a northern, secessionist movement into the national political force that today is a key coalition ally in the government of Premier Giorgia Meloni. He served as interior minister in Berlusconi’s 1994-1995 government, labor minister in his second government in 2001 and interior minister again in his third and final government in 2008-2011.