SPOTLIGHT: EUROPE’S FATE, FROM ROME TO LONDON Italy’s 5-Star Movement won the mayoral races in Rome and Turin, where Virginia Raggi and Chiara Appendino will become the two major cities’ first female mayors. For Italian pundits, their victories, particularly Raggi’s landslide triumph in the Eternal City, is a major blow to center-left Prime Minister Matteo […]
Tag: italy
ROME —Virginia Raggi, a 37-year-old insurgent newcomer, has scored a resounding victory over the candidate from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s ruling party to become the first woman mayor of Italian capital Rome. Raggi, a member of the upstart anti-establishment 5-Star Movement founded by Italian comedian Beppe Grillo, defeated Democratic Party candidate Roberto Giachetti in the […]
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Inside A Church — Video Quote Of The Day
In the small Sicilian town Of Mineo is a sprawling facility where asylum seekers, many of whom have survived perilous journeys, live in limbo and face exploitation.
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Making Space For Islam In Catholic Italy
Competing Muslim groups are vying for official recognition from the Italian state — and a share of the country’s “8 per 1,000” taxpayer pie.
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Unity In Rugby — A Video Quote
TURIN — Refugees have come to Italy from all across war-torn Iraq and Syria, from the monasteries of Mosul to the Assyrian villages of the Khabur valley and the Christian churches of the Nineveh plains. Among the millions now languishing in refugee camps are people from all walks of life, including government bureaucrats, university professors, […]
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Baby Loves Books — Video Quote Of The Day
An upstart from Savoy has challenged the royal authority of Marcello I, prince of the unofficially unrecognized so-called Principality of Seborga.
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Cool Like The Romans
When in Rome, on a particularly hot day, do as the Romans do: Leave town, head for the nearby Villa d’Este and walk behind the water of the Fontana dell’Ovato.
Italian Valentina Simeone’s eyes were opened by her six months at Tehran University, yet another breakthrough in relations between Iran and the West.
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Napoleonic Trinkets
Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile on the Italian island of Elba, about 50 kilometers east of the French emperor’s native Corsica, was still commemorated when I went there 47 years ago, although with slightly unflattering knick-knacks in souvenir shops.
Among the many potential applications are the defense of digital copyright for photographers, and the end of the hassle of online passwords.
At the futuristic Enosis wine lab, the Genesis robot brings wine into the 21st century.
In L’Aquila, the new houses were supposed to withstand earthquakes, but “they didn’t even withstand the rain.” The grim reality from this central Italian city is laid out by La Stampa on Wednesday, the 7-year anniversary of the earthquake that killed more than 300 people and left nearly 40,000 without homes. The news now is […]
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Long Before The Quake
Exactly seven years ago, a powerful earthquake killed hundreds and devastated parts of L’Aquila, in central Italy. And though the facade of the Santa Maria di Collemaggio remained intact, I feel lucky to have visited the basilica before the disaster: The cupola and several arches collapsed inside.
In a never-before-published interview shortly before his suicide, the Jewish-Italian author opens up about his adolescent angst and traumas beyond Auschwitz.
POLICE RAIDS NAB BRUSSELS, PARIS SUSPECTS Brussels police launched a series of raids overnight after Tuesday’s deadly terror attacks, detaining at least six people — three of them in a vehicle right outside the prosecutor’s office, Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported. Two people were taken into custody in Brussels’ Jette neighborhood, and another was detained in […]
NEW YORK — Umberto Eco died last month in his Milan apartment, among his 30,000 books. He wrote many of them himself, and these books were translated into more than 30 different languages. He had them all. Even when translated into foreign languages, Eco owned them, because he worked hard with every single translator. He […]
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On Horseback — Video Quote Of The Day
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The Baroque Capital
The stunning facade of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Lecce, in southern Italy, is a good example of the exuberant architectural style that has earned the city its nickname of “capital of Baroque.”
When the owners of the tiny, unspoiled island of Budelli went bankrupt and a would-be New Zealand buyer’s bid failed, middle school students stepped in, starting an ambitious global fundraising campaign that has gone viral.
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Washing Feet — Video Quote Of The Day
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Ennio Morricone, The Other Italian
When the legendary 87-year-old film composer finally won his first Oscar, he chose to speak in his native language. It was a subtly powerful message back home in Italy.
The village of Sutera was facing demographic doom as young people have been leaving for generations. Then locals started to wonder about those migrants coming to Italy.
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Report: The Discos Of Europe Are Dying
Italian daily La Repubblica charts the decline of European discoteques and nightclubs.
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February 26
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Simply Fashion — Video Quote Of The Day
ROME — Italian soldiers and antiquity experts alike will help lead a new dedicated UN peacekeeping force designed to protect and restore the world’s cultural monuments exposed to war and other conflicts. Italian daily Corriere della Sera reports that the taskforce, the first of its kind, will be composed of 30 Italian paramilitary troops and […]
A visit on the eve of the 500th anniversary of the neighborhood where Jews were forced to live, giving the world the culture, confinement and indignity of the ghetto.
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February 14
FLORENCE — “My first child died inside me while I was trying to give birth …” Hamdi Abdurahman Ahmed is 30 years old and has a marked Florentine accent as she begins to speak. In 2007, she left Somaliland and arrived in this Tuscan city where she currently works as a cultural mediator. In Italy […]