Giorgio Napolitano, the first former communist to rise to Italy’s presidency and the first person to be elected twice to the post, has died aged 98. A statement issued on Friday night by the presidential palace confirmed Italian news reports of the death of Napolitano, who had been in a Rome hospital for weeks. The current president, Sergio Mattarella, hailed his predecessor as head of state, saying that Napolitano’s life “mirrored a large part of [Italy’s] history in the second half of the 20th century, with its dramas, its complexity, its goals, its hopes”. As a prominent member of what...