Salvaging Beauty

AFP PHOTO / ALBERTO PIZZOLI

Firefighters recover a bell from a damaged church in the village of Rio, some 10 kms from the central Italian village of Amatrice, on August 28, 2016, four days after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the region, killing nearly 300 people. Shoddy, price-cutting renovations, in breach of local building regulations, could be partly to blame for the high death toll from this week's devastating earthquake in central Italy, according to a prosecutor investigating the disaster. As questions mount over the deaths of nearly 300 people, prosecutor Giuseppe Saieva indicated that property owners who commissioned suspected sub-standard work could be held responsible for contributing to the quake's deadly impact.