Nemesis of Italy’s anti-immigrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, Mayor Domenico Lucano of Riace was placed under house arrest for his pro-refugee policies.
Author: Giacomo
London-born Italian journalist and translator. Currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley in the Class of 2017, with a double major in Political Science and Political Economy and a contributor at Worldcrunch. I've lived in six different countries on four continents and have a strong interest in current events, geopolitics, and economics. Previously worked for The Jakarta Globe, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and The Daily Californian.
One study says it will take at least 100 years to bridge the global gender gap. And 217 years to close the pay gap. But we can do something now.
Located in one of southern Italy’s poorest regions, once thriving Crotone has the worst youth unemployment rate for women in the entire country: 90%.
CASTELMEZZANO — Basilicata is facing a bona fide demographic crisis. The small region, located between the boot and heel of southern Italy, is home to roughly 570,000 people. But due to a low birthrate and high rates of unemployment and emigration, it loses approximately 3,000 inhabitants every year. By 2065, according to a report by […]
In northwestern Laos, Chinese businesses dominate the Ton Pheung district, a special economic zone that has become a hub for all kinds of trafficking.
In the southern city of El Hamma, young Tunisians attempt to emigrate all the time for a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. One recent tragedy left dozens dead.
A marginalized Muslim community wants to convert an old slaughterhouse into a multi-purpose housing and events space. But don’t call it a mosque.
Authorities seized 701 kilograms of cocaine on a ship in the port of Oran. The record haul points to a growing network linking South America to Europe via Algeria.
Migrants have begun to live in an informal camp 70 miles from Belgrade, hoping to start a new life westward in Europe.
Rhetoric coming from anti-establishment Five Star Movement and League evoke the words of historic tyrants like King Louis XIV, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.
The economic collapse has created opportunities for Colombian gangs to exploit Venezuelan women and transport them abroad.
The populist Five-Star Movement and the right-wing League won over half the vote in the struggling mid-sized city of Foggia by promising more jobs and less immigration.
An estimated 15,000 undocumented Moroccans work in construction sites, bakeries, and in skilled trades across neighboring Algeria.
The political novice set to become Italy’s next prime minister has called himself the ‘defense lawyer’ of the people. While Conte’s words mirror the aspirations of today’s anti-establishment parties, they also have deeper roots in Western history.
VENICE — Venice and its 80,000 regular inhabitants are drowning in tourists. Some 30 million flock to its famous canals every year, stressing the infrastructure. Fed up, the lagoon city’s businessman-turned-mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, has a simple but controversial plan to stem the tide: turnstiles. City authorities recently set up turnstiles on four bridges that connect […]
A sociologist is helping underpaid, over-worked agricultural laborers organize in the city of Latina, southeast of Rome.
A programmer in Turin decided to enter into a digitally-enhanced universe of his own creation — for an entire month — and lived to tell to the tale.
In northern Italy, the city of Pavia has higher-than-average cancer rates and widespread cases of illegal garbage burning. Are these two facts just a coincidence?
Algerian authorities have been accused of harsh treatment of asylum seekers.
Slated to open in 2020, Israel’s National Blood Services Center is a high-tech insurance policy to ward against existential threats such as chemical attacks.
Electing a first-ever prime minister could resolve the current Italian post-election impasse, and send a message abroad.
Like the the UK and U.S. election surprises before, Italy’s recent populist triumphs marked a revolt by voters outside the major urban centers.
Indigenous groups say the Nicaraguan government should do more to protect the massive but quickly disappearing Bosawás Biosphere Reserve.
ROSARNO — A shantytown of tents and shacks stretches out across an abandoned industrial district halfway between the towns of Rosarno and San Ferdinando, deep in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Some 2,500 farm workers from at least 16 different countries live in deplorable conditions surrounded by waste, with no access to running water […]
ALGIERS — Medical residents at the University of Algiers have been on strike since mid-November, taking to the streets surrounding the medical campus in the western suburb of Ben Aknoun. The Algerian students are demanding changes to a system that forces them to work in far-flung corners of the country after they gain their medical […]
Inside an elite unit of the Carabinieri military police using old and new tactics to track down fugitive leaders of the powerful ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate.
Voters in the northern town of Spirano helped put a hardline conservative in the senate. Only the man in question —Toni Chike Iwobi — is an immigrant from Nigeria.
TAMANRASSET — The rugged Hoggar mountains, stretching over an expanse of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, are home to a large ethnic Tuareg population that has long been marginalized at the hands of the country’s Arab majority. Algiers-based daily El Watan reports on a current dispute among Tuareg chiefs about how to challenge government […]
Open battles between major drug outfits are behind a series of recent killings at the National Autonomous University Of Mexico.
In Sunday’s stunning national elections, the former leftist stronghold near Naples joined the outsider revolt against the political establishment. What comes next, however, is still not clear.
From both the left and right, populist leaders in Italy are again at the forefront of the movement around the world.
An estimated 40,000 Venezuelans have taken up residence in Boa Vista, the capital of Brazil’s Roraima state. Many are roughing it in the city’s 53 public squares. And their numbers are rising.
Slovakian authorities are investigating ties between politicians and the Calabria-based Ndràngheta crime syndicate following the killing, last week, of an investigative reporter. Mobsters have been siphoning EU development funds.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric has become increasingly commonplace as political forces jockey for position ahead of this Sunday’s national elections.
As head of the northernmost parish in the world, Leif Helgesen has a clear (and often chilly) view of global warming.
Five Russian-linked Twitter accounts are clearly favoring anti-establishment Italian parties Five-Star Movement and Northern League ahead of March 4 national elections.
Researchers at the University Of Macerata used volunteers and online bots to help translated the 19th century children’s classic.
-OpEd- TURIN — Fifty years ago, in January 1968, the reformist leader Alexander Dubcek rose to power in Czechoslovakia. His ascent began a brief era known as the Prague Spring, which ended when peaceful protests against the presence of Soviet troops in the country were violently put down by Russian tanks as the West passively […]
Already a victim of organized crime and drug trafficking, Naples is now also facing wanton violence from disillusioned youth.
QUITO — Stashes of cocaine kept in boats and dinghies in the remote Galápagos Islands. Dozens of operatives transporting narcotics on rivers across the border into Colombia. Over the past three years, powerful Mexican drug cartels have systematically moved supplies and operations into Ecuador. According to Quito-based daily El Comercio, at least four Mexican cartels […]