Worldcrunch
PALERMO — Italy was in shock again this week after a 2-year-old boy was killed in a revenge hit by the Sacra Corona Unita (SCU) organized crime syndicate on a Puglia motorway Monday night. The little boy, Domenico Petruzzelli, was one of three people, along with his mother and her partner — a convicted murderer […]
TREVISO — This kind of news is hard to swallow: the historic Beccherie restaurant in Treviso that created tiramisu decades ago, will close its doors March 30. Gone will be the original version of the legendary dessert that has become a worldwide symbol of Italian cuisine. That’s because the economic crisis has been tough on […]
MILAN — The economic crisis isn’t affecting just bipeds. Our furry four-legged friends have also been struggling, as many have been abandoned or neglected when their families no longer had the resources to care for them. Italy has launched its first food bank for animals to help with this problem, thanks to the volunteer group […]
Why can’t the Italian state take better care of one of the world’s most treasured archeological sites? A tour of ancient artifacts, contemporary degradation and out-of-order bathrooms.
Accusations of conflicts of interest surround the consortium whose role it is to determine what are the real Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses and what are the poor knock-off ‘parmesans.’
Even in the middle of April, when Venice is consumed with its annual carnival stravaganza, priests remained dignified and serious. Unless these two were actually Venetians in disguise, walking past the Doge’s Palace on their way to the festival?
(And why that’s a good thing)
A couple of hours after I took this picture, I shared a beer with an American G.I. stationed in Naples, not far from this narrow street in the old city center where laundry was drying in the summer heat. How do I remember that beer so clearly? The date was July 21, 1969 — and […]
Luigi De Magistris, a left-leaning former prosecutor, was the latest would-be savior for the troubled Italian city. But look around, things in Naples are worse than ever.
Venice … Dove la terra gira intorno al mare, as they say there — “where the earth revolves around the sea.” En route to Greece, we drove from France in our Peugeot 404, which we had to leave outside the Venetian lagoon before taking a vaporetto, the local waterbus. It’s cheaper than renting a gondola […]
In Feb. 2012, two Italian marines aboard the Enrica Lexie tanker opened fire on a fishing trawler, killing two Indian fishermen and sparking a major diplomatic standoff between India and Italy that has yet to subside. The lawyers for the marines say their clients mistook the fishermen for pirates and fired warning shots into the […]
“Wolves are not killed because they are grey, but because they eat sheep.” (Russian proverb) Who’s afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf? Well, as it turns out, more than just the shepherds whose flocks get devoured. In European culture, there is a deep-rooted negative image of the wolf, based on fear of attacks on humans […]
GÄVLE — Under the dark of a freezing arctic night, Jimi arrived at his destination. They welcomed him with a plate of Swedish meatballs, before showing him to a soft, white bed in a room that sleeps eight. “Welcome to Sweden,” says a man of African origins, shaking his hand. Jimi, 25, who is from […]
ROME — Lo Chiameranno Andrea (“We’ll Call Him Andrea“) is the name of a famous film by Vittorio De Sica, where two elementary school teachers who yearn for but are unable to have a child, compensate by giving him this hypothetical name. It was 1972 and the male name Andrea represented the essence of Italy, […]
A member of the Italian Parliament goes undercover to protest for the rights of undocumented immigrants after images emerged of mistreatment at the rescue center in Lampedusa.
What would Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of “The Prince” (published exactly 500 years ago), have thought about modern China? What would he have done with the Internet?
VILLANOVA MONDOVI — Aldo Bongiovanni, a 30-year-old beanpole, laughs timidly. Where others in a crisis-stricken Italy see no hope, he sees opportunity — in a mill in the countryside of the Cuneo province, in northwest Italy, near where he played as a child. “In Italy, complaining is in fashion,” he says. “I can’t stand it […]
PARIS — For the last few years, cheese has been at the center of a debate that is as gastronomic as it is economic and sociocultural. Facing increasingly strict regulations, many producers are concerned about the future of cheese made with ancestral methods, and the anxiety is particularly high in France and Italy, which each […]
Friday, December 12, 2014 HOUSE PASSES U.S. SPENDING BILLThe U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill to fund most government operations until September 2015, The New York Times reports. But the newspaper notes that the liberal base of the Democrat party formed an “unlikely alliance” with the Tea Party in opposition […]
A visit to the tiny village in the Dolomite Mountains where the notorious U.S. politician and former Ku Klux Klan grandmaster was residing under a false name. He was deported last week.
When Nelson Mandela’s death was announced Thursday night, in the rush to publish something about him several Italian newspapers made the unfortunate mistake of describing him as “the father of apartheid,” reports Il Post. Il Giornale, owned by the Berlusconi family, Il Messaggero and Il Mattino all featured stories with similar headlines. “South Africa, the […]
It’s been on the way out in certain sartorially laid-back countries. Now the eternally elegant Italians may be ready to kill the *cravatta* too.
On Sunday night a fire broke out in a garment factory in the Tuscan city of Prato, killing seven workers and injuring three in their makeshift on-site dormitories. The tragedy has prompted questions about the factory’s conditions and legality — as well as in other workshops operating in this manufacturing city north of Florence that […]
The legendary founder of the Slow Food movement lays out his vision for preserving the world’s biodiversity by returning to ancient forms of agriculture. The future of the planet is at stake.
-OpEd- ROME — We must remember that Wednesday’s vote to oust Silvio Berlusconi from the Senate does not mean his political demise. Still, his exclusion from Parliament, the sentence for tax fraud and the other alleged cases — involving underaged prostitution, extortion, the bribing of parliamentarians, and corruption of witnesses — put the former prime […]
A woman’s extraordinary courage, a teen couple’s illegal kiss, and more stories that made the police blotter around the world…
OLBIA — Twelve hours notice. Forty-four centimeters of rain in 90 minutes. Sixteen dead, including four children. And, now, a fax alert. The blame game has begun in Sardinia after the tragic Cyclone Cleopatra hit the island earlier this week. Antonio Sanò, head of the weather website ilmeteo.it, said that Monday’s storm had been forecast […]
The disaffected youth and religious radicals in the Muslim world are obsessed with Europe’s top football leagues. Testimony of an Italian reporter, who was held hostage earlier this year in Syria.
Look up in the sky. No wait, don’t!
SASSARI — The raw material costs absolutely nothing, and to fill up your tank there’s no need to look for a gas station. All you need to do is drink some water to stimulate your diuretic system and take a break at a rest stop. Yes, the solution to expensive petrol may be a car […]
TURIN — There are journeys even more awful than the perilous crossings in rickety boats made by would-be immigrants trying to reach European shores. In these trips instead – made to Pakistan, Iran, Egypt or certain Eastern European countries – people sell a part of themselves: a journey of transplants, to places where the human […]
In the wake of the immigrant tragedy off the coast of Lampedusa, a reporter sneaks into a detention center in southern Italy to witness living conditions and hear tales of refugees.
FLORENCE — “This taxi is a revolution of love: I’m rediscovering life thanks to death …” Caterina Bellandi’s words are nearly as colorful as her coat. For the past 12 years, this exuberant Florentine taxi driver has turned off the meter to give joy rides around Florence to child cancer patients, or simply accompany them […]
LAMPEDUSA — Yesterday, they buried those remaining of the 385 victims from the Oct. 3 shipwreck off Lampedusa. There were no flowers. No gravestones. None of the ceremony that so many had promised. That first day, as the death toll mounted, various political leaders, including Prime Minister Enrico Letta, had called for some kind of […]
The tragedy earlier this month off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, which left more than 300 dead, is a cruel reminder of the treacherous journey across the sea to Italy’s southern coastlines made by so many would-be immigrants. But Italy is typically just the entry point for immigrants, a springboard for other European […]
One native of Sierra Leone, who arrived in Italy via the now notorious island of Lampedusa, is trying to find peace in a Roman slum.
LAMPEDUSA — Two brothers, both with the same dream: escaping the violence and chaos of Eritrea. One has already spent nine years living that dream; the other still hasn’t been rescued from the sea that swallowed him last Thursday. Desperation and grief are in the eyes and voice of Adel, who emigrated to Sweden nine […]
LAMPEDUSA — “Follow me,” said Jesus, “and I will make you fishers of men.” A disturbing parallel is evoked from this famous passage of the Gospel of Matthew, as nets tossed into the sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa fill up with the bodies of men… of women and children. After the latest tragic […]
ROME — Berlusconi’s world has never been at such odds with Berlusconi himself. Nobody could rightly agree with the decision to pull out of the coalition that was providing stability for the Italian government as the country attempts to pull out of a deep recession. You could count on one hand the number of loyalists […]
Over the past decade, the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa has become one of the main points of European entry for illegal immigrants. Even though the 90-mile open sea journey from Tunisia has already killed thousands, a new wave of refugees from Syria are following the same route. LAMPEDUSA — Two Syrian mothers with young […]