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TOPIC: italy

food / travel

Butter Beware, Olive Oil Is Conquering French Kitchens

Spanish, Italian, Greek, Provençal: in the land of butter and cream, olive oil is all the rage! Buoyed by the wave of the Mediterranean diet, demand has soared in recent years. But production is threatened by drought in Spain, the world's leading producer.

PARIS — It's more than just a fat. Nor even a seasoning or condiment. For its growing number of aficionados, olive oil is an object of desire, if not of worship.

"It's all anyone around me ever talks about," laughs Emmanuelle Dechelette, a former public relations professional turned olive oil sommelier. "My friends, my husband's friends, everyone consults me or asks me if I can find them this or that particular cuvée. Sometimes I feel like a 'drug dealer.'"

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After completing a diploma course in New York, in 2016 Emmanuelle created an international competition, Olio Nuovo Days , which has gradually established itself as one of the benchmarks. Producers flock from all over the world to take part, from France, Spain, Sicily, Greece, Tunisia and Lebanon, as well as Japan, Chile, Brazil and South Africa.

"Right now, without my oil La Couvée, produced in Slovenia and 2023 champion for the Northern Hemisphere, I feel like I couldn't live," says the sommelier, who likes to savor this juice simply, on a toasted baguette, a fine tomato or with fresh goat's cheese. For her, if a dish isn't flavored with olive oil, it's missing something. The elegant Dechellette consumes it without moderation: "When you say olive oil, you mean olive, not oil. It's a fruit, so it's not fatty!”

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Italian Coffee, Full Circle: Starbucks Marks Five Years In Italy

It has been five years since Starbucks first opened in Milan, where the company's CEO first got the idea that the world wanted quality coffee. Today they set their sights not on retreat but expansion. The path ahead in this mecca for "caffé" for the Seattle-based coffee shop is a rosy one.

MILAN — It's been five years since Starbucks' debut in Italy, and there is still a line to enter the Reserve Roastery. Inside the former Post Office building in Milan, the brand is celebrating an important anniversary, which tastes like 100% Arabica coffee, and a bet won: they have managed to sell coffee to Italians. Not just any coffee, but a flat white.

This is perhaps the greatest achievement in the company's partnership with the Percassi Group, which is responsible for developing a network that will reach 37 or 38 stores by the end of the year (the next eagerly awaited stop: Naples).

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In the meantime, to celebrate, a rich schedule of events has kicked off (until Oct. 1st). On the program are tastings, workshops, blues concerts and events during Milan Fashion Week. It's all organized to give an idea of the connection achieved between Italy and the American brand.

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What's Climate Migration? A Straight Line From Libyan Floods To Lampedusa Chaos

Libya's catastrophic flood last week coincided with massive arrivals of migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa. What look at first like two distinct stories are part of the same mounting crisis that the world is simply not prepared to face: climate migration.

Updated September 18, 2023 at 1:45 p.m.

-Analysis-

They are difficult numbers for the brain to comprehend: 4,000 dead, 10,000 more missing. This is the current estimate of the toll — with most victims having drowned and washed away almost immediately — after two dams burst last week during a massive storm in eastern Libya.

As the search continues for victims in and around the city of Derna, across the Mediterranean Sea, a different number tells another troubling story: in the span of just two days, 7,000 migrants have arrived on the island of Lampedusa.

Midway between Sicily and the North African coast, the tiny Italian island has long been a destination for those hailing from all points south and east to arrive on European soil. Still, the staggering number of arrivals this week of people ready to risk their lives on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean should again set off alarms that reach far beyond the island.

Yet these two numbers — one of the thousands of dead, the other of thousands of survivors — are in some way really one story.

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Not Your Grandma's Nonna: How Older Women In Italy Are Reclaiming Their Age

Women in Italy are living longer than ever. But severe economic and social inequality and loneliness mean that they urgently need a new model for community living – one that replaces the "one person, one house, one caregiver" narrative we have grown accustomed to.

ROMENina Ercolani is the oldest person in Italy. She is 112 years old. According to newspaper interviews, she enjoys eating sweets and yogurt. Mrs. Nina is not alone: over the past three years, there has been an exponential growth in the number of centenarians in Italy. With over 20,000 people who've surpassed the age of 100, Italy is in fact the country with the highest number of centenarians in Europe.

Life expectancy at the national level is already high. Experts say it can be even higher for those who cultivate their own gardens, live away from major sources of pollution, and preferably in small towns near the sea. Years of sunsets and tomatoes with a view of the sea – it used to be a romantic fantasy but is now becoming increasingly plausible.

Centenarians occupy the forefront of a transformation taking place in a country where living a long life means being among the oldest of the old. Italy is the second oldest country in the world, and it ranks first in the number of people over eighty. In simple terms, this means that Italy is home to many elderly people and few young ones: those over 65 make up almost one in four, while children (under 14) account for just over one in 10. The elderly population will continue to grow in the coming years, as the baby boomer generation, born between 1961 and 1976, is the country's largest age group.

But there is one important data set to consider when discussing our demographics: in general, women make up a slight majority of the population, but from the age of sixty onwards, the gap progressively widens. Every single Italian over 110 years old is a woman.

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Italy
Mariateresa Fichele

Polish Paranoia In Naples

Our Naples-based psychiatrist tries to relieve a patient of his anxiety over a very specific delusion of persecution.

"Dottoré, I'm being followed by the Polish! They don't understand that when I'm out, I'm dizzy with my medication, they'll end up running me over!"

"The Polish? Francé, where have you ever seen Polish people in Naples — and on top of that, why would they be following you?"

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Future
Maurizio Ripepe

Stromboli, The Volcano Helping To Predict When Others May Erupt

Stromboli, located in Sicily's Aeolian Islands, is one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, attracting tourists for its pristine black sand beaches. Yet due to its characteristics, including its uniquely consistent and predictable eruptions, it has also become an international reference point in the study of explosive dynamics.

Explosive volcanic eruptions can be so violent and sudden that they catch most monitoring networks by surprise. These phenomena pose not only a scientific challenge but a serious danger, especially for those volcanoes located in inhabited areas or visited by hordes of tourists.

Take the sudden eruptions of Mount Ontake in Japan in 2014 and White Island in New Zealand in 2019. Despite being constantly monitored, these volcanic eruptions resulted in more than 80 deaths among unsuspecting hikers.

One of the most famous explosive volcanoes in the world is Stromboli, located in the Aeolian Islands, off of Sicily. Its gentle yet spectacular explosions, which launch lava and incandescent fragments to several hundred meters in height, have been occurring at a nearly constant rate every 10-20 minutes for thousands of years.

This ongoing, moderate explosive activity is unique and allows for close observation of an erupting volcano. This is how Stromboli has become an international reference point in the study of explosive dynamics. Many of the technological innovations and methodologies commonly used in volcano observatories today were developed and/or calibrated on Stromboli.

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Society
Luis Vinker

Maestro Messi: Soccer As A True Art Form

The Argentine Lionel Messi is the personification of soccer sublime . He has come to move fans in ways that art lovers are moved by a painting.

This article was updated on Sep. 8, 2023 at 4:35 p.m.

-Essay-

BUENOS AIRES — Lionel Messi, that giant of soccer, is entering the twilight of his career by joining an American team, Inter Miami. He has received all the praise and glory anyone could in the world of sports, not to mention an ocean of publicity, online and offline, and all the money you could hope to earn. A while back, Marius Serra, a journalist with Barcelona paper La Vanguardia, counted 564 press articles on Messi in Spanish alone.

One is reminded of the "perfect beauty" evoked in one of Shakespeare's plays, mentioned in the novelist Stendhal's (1829) travel diary, Promenades dans Rome. Indeed, beside Messi's status as an icon for soccer fans from Buenos Aires to Bangladesh, is there an artistic dimension to this personage? His followers speak of him in superlative terms that suggest inspiration bordering on dizziness. That is how Stendhal felt viewing works of art in Florence.

One of his biggest fans is the Englishman Roy Hudson, a former footballer now based in Fort Lauderdale close to Miami. Recently he compared the exhilaration of watching Messi live to watching a Shakespeare play with the writer himself or watching Rembrandt paint. Millions of people living in Florida could now watch the greatest soccer player of all time, he said. In 2016, when Messi was in Barcelona, he compared him to the magician Houdini.

He has been a subject for at least two contemporary artists, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. Hirst's triptych, Beautiful Messi Spin Painting for One in Eleven, sold for €448,000 for charity a decade ago. Though still young, he already boasts several biographies. One writer, Jordi Puntí, the author of Todo Messi, sees in him the concepts of lightness, speed, precision, visibility and multiplicity, which the Italian author Italo Calvino foresaw decades ago as shaping art and literature this century.

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Society
Giuseppe Legato

Can The Sicilian Mafia Keep Up With Cocaine Warlords Of Neighboring Calabria?

After the fall of the Sicilian Mafia boss of bosses Matteo Messina Denaro, it's time for Cosa Nostra to rebuild, and they'll be taking inspiration from their own past, but also must face the rising power of the 'ndrangheta in the neighboring region of Calabria

PALERMO — How is Cosa Nostra doing without its king?

Palermo prosecutor Maurizio Delucia takes a moment before offering his view on where the Sicilian Mafia may be heading. It's been a complicated period since even before — and especially after — the January arrest of the last top boss Matteo Messina Denaro, as the legendary Cosa Nostra clan has fallen behind the neighboring 'ndrangheta from the region of Calabria, in both wealth and power.

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In The News
Yannick Champion-Osselin, Valeria Berghinz and Marine Béguin.

Johannesburg Blaze Kills Dozens, North Korea’s Mock Nuclear Strike, Tomatina Extravaganza

👋 ሰላም ሃለው*!*

Welcome to Thursday, where at least 73 are killed in a Johannesburg building blaze, North Korea simulates a “tactical nuclear strike,” and Spain’s yearly tomato debauchery yields striking images. Meanwhile, Giulia Zonca for Italian daily La Stampa reports on the controversy caused after a Turin gym installed urinals shaped like a woman's open mouth.

[*Selam halewi - Tigrinya, Eritrea and Ethiopia]

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Society
Giulia Zonca

A Gym's Urinal Shaped Like A Woman's Mouth: Extreme Sexism Or Upside-Down Art?

In the Italian city of Turin, a gym has installed urinals that appear to be shaped like a woman's open mouth. From Duchamp to Warhol to Mick Jagger, everything we see is in the eyes of the beholder.

-Analysis-

TURIN — A photo posted online last week has sparked outrage and debate in Italy. The now infamous image from inside the men's bathrooms of the McFit gym in Turin shows urinals that are shaped like a woman's open mouth. While some are denouncing it as sexist, others are calling it art, or simply a joke — posing the broader question of why it's so important to discuss objectification?

The problem lies in the starting point, in the gaze that conditions all what we see, every perception we have of this country, every single prejudice.

Who said that large red lips, with a hint of teeth from a toothpaste commercial's perfect smile, are inherently feminine? Yes, there's lipstick, the heart-shaped line, but they are objects of fantasy, a creative design that doesn't belong to a specific gender: in this case, urinals that a chain of gyms has hung in its bathrooms in an attempt to use art for an easy laugh.

But our point of view changes, the game collapses, and since the game is always the same, it's time to dismantle it. And it's quite easy to do so. Indeed the inspiration originally comes from the famous design of Mick Jagger's lips and tongue. Yes, a man.

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This Happened

This Happened — August 24: Central Italy Earthquake

An earthquake of 6.2 magnitude hit Italy on this day in 2016.

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Green
Laura Anello

Silver Lining To Sicilian Heat: Baby Boom Of Endangered Sea Turtles

Italy has experienced a difficult summer of climate disasters, but the country is experiencing a boom in turtles' nests, with Sicily leading the way.

SAN VIOTO LO CAPO — In the summer of Italy's climate disasters, from floods in Milan to fires in the south, at least there is some good news: the boom of nests of the Caretta caretta turtle (or loggerhead sea turtle), one of Italy's emblematic endangered species.

Now, the turtle is experiencing a golden moment precisely because of the planet's warming, which has made Sicily a natural cradle for these baby reptiles. The animal had previously tested the Sicilian waters, but this year's temperatures have also allowed them to colonize previously challenging lands.

After Sicily's fires, it was a turtle nest on the beach of San Vito Lo Capo that became a symbol of rebirth for the northwestern Sicilian section of WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature).

"Our response, and that of all those who love life, to the criminals who indiscriminately start fires, burning nature, causing death and despair, is to protect life, nature, and all living beings, both plants and animals," said the volunteers as they safeguarded the turtle nest, watched over by the local lifeguard, beachgoers, and young people who will take turns until the hatching, expected at the end of August.

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