Italy on The Huffington Post

Amanda Knox upset, tired as she spends first day in prison

2009-12-05T12:16:20Z

PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — Amanda Knox sought comfort from visiting family members Saturday on her first day in prison since being convicted of murdering her British roommate.

Read more: Perugia-Italy, Italy, Home News

Victim's brother: we're pleased with conviction of Knox but no cause for celebration

2009-12-05T10:16:33Z

PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — The murder conviction of American student Amanda Knox brings a measure of justice for her slain roommate Meredith Kercher but is no cause for celebration, Kercher's family said Saturday.

Read more: Perugia-Italy, Italy, Home News

US citizen sentenced in Italy trial

2009-12-05T02:01:27Z

American given 26 years for murder in case that has fascinated international media.

Read more: Italy, Home News

American student Amanda Knox convicted in Italy murder trial; gets 26-year sentence

2009-12-04T23:16:36Z

PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — American college student Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison early Saturday after a year-long trial that gripped Italy and drew intense media attention.

Read more: Perugia-Italy, Italy, Home News

American student convicted in Italian murder case

2009-12-04T19:31:42Z

PERUGIA, Italy - A jury in Italy convicted American college student Amanda Knox of murdering her British roommate and sentenced her to 26 years in prison shortly after midnight Saturday.

Her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted and sentenced to 25 years.

As soon as the judge read the verdict

Read more: Perugia-Italy, Italy, Home News

Italian Jury: U.S. Student Amanda Knox Guilty On All Charges

2009-12-04T18:31:35Z

PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — A jury has convicted American college student Amanda Knox of murdering her British roommate and sentenced her to 26 years in prison while her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

Read more: Perugia-Italy, Italy, Home News

Amanda Knox Verdict Expected Friday Night

2009-12-04T11:39:59Z

PERUGIA, Italy — American college student Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison early Saturday after a year-long trial that gripped Italy and drew intense media attention.

Her co-defendant, former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, was convicted and sentenced to 25 years. The two also were found guilty of sexual assault in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old student from England.

Amanda Knox: I'm Not An "Assassin"

2009-12-03T14:15:42Z

PERUGIA, Italy — American student Amanda Knox tried one last time Thursday to convince the Italian court trying her for murder that she is not a killer, urging jurors not to brand her with "the mask of an assassin."

Knox spoke at the end of a trial that has exposed some of the most intimate details of her life, with prosecutors depicting her as a promiscuous and manipulative she-devil who brutally murdered her British roommate in Perugia, Meredith Kercher.

Amanda Knox May Face Further Legal Battles Even If Found Innocent

2009-12-02T14:39:22Z

ROME, Italy -- The two-year-long murder trial of American exchange student Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito has transformed the once-sleepy Umbrian university town of Perugia.

Clear Knox of all charges, court urged

2009-12-02T09:00:24Z

Lawyers for a US student accused of killing her British room-mate in Italy
were today wrapping up their closing arguments, urging a court to clear her
of all charges.

Read more: Italy, Home News

Rome's Intercontinental Hotel...Luxury and History at the Spanish Steps

2009-12-01T17:31:02Z

Marta Mondelli: Buying Gifts In A Globalized World: The Value Of Distance

2009-12-01T16:29:51Z

The holiday season is upon us and I find myself in the uncomfortable position of being an Italian in NYC: my American friends expect me to add some European flavor to their presents and my Italian friends (whom I will meet during Christmas vacation) would love something from the big apple.

But it's harder and harder to find gifts in a global world where Tiffany's opened stores throughout Italy and, on the other hand, local stores in NYC and online shopping centers across the world provide you with everything Italian: food, fashion, home decor, etc... I used to suggest my Italian-speaking American friends to pick up books and CDs at the Rizzoli store on 57th Street, but now there is an Italian online bookstore that ships globally. Is there anything I can give my friends on both sides of the pond?

This is a veritable global oppression: it forces upon your doorsteps products from all over the world without the bother to personally travel and pick them up, hence stripping them of the precious value of something that costs not only money but effort to get. I have an answer (and it is a banal one): go local. Do you want safe and environmentally friendly food? Buy at the local farmers' market. Do you want to buy gifts that were hard for the global market to ship around? Get something small, sometimes inexpensive but that carries the special value of distance: something that wasn't shipped by a carrier, but brought in a suitcase. So I picked up a couple of bars of I♥NY chocolate and some NYFD toy trucks for the kids I know, small design jewelry distributed locally in Brooklyn and Manhattan boutiques for my girlfriends and some hand-knitted scarves and hats for my male friends from the Union Square winter market. I will pack them in my suitcase and personally deliver them and for my Italian friends it will feel as if a piece of everyday NYC life reached them.

And from Italy? Same thing. I don't want to get a couple of packs of dried porcini or some other easy-to-find food (they actually sell them at the Chelsea market: even if at a much higher price, they are nonetheless available). So I will stop by local boutiques and pick up hand-made preserves from convents on the hills near my hometown, some local artists' products or clothing by Made in Italy small brands - too small to branch out. Sometimes, if I'm traveling around to visit my friends I stop at local markets and get (depending on where I am) lavender soap from Marseille or hand-embroidered items from Salento (they are much less expensive than you think, especially if you get them in small villages and second hand). I know, it is harder shopping this way than sitting in front of a computer and checking out with a credit card. But after all, we now live in a world where it's very easy to bump into an overpriced global coffee chain and very difficult to find a local, out of the way business.

I'm not telling you to boycott the big brands (well, actually I am), I'm just saying that the effort that takes going to a local store, picking up the hard-to-find-abroad gift, wrapping it, finding the space in your luggage, having it in there for the entire trip, passing custom, transporting it around till it is time to finally offer it, that is all worth it. It is the special value of distance and to me it's priceless.

Italian Police Crash Lamborghini Supercar

2009-12-01T10:10:07Z

Italian police have crashed their most valuable patrol car, a 165,000-euro (£150,000) Lamborghini.

Italian Police Arrest 74 Mafia Suspects

2009-12-01T09:44:50Z

ROME — Italian police have broken up a major mafia clan, arresting 74 people and seizing businesses, land, race horses and a London-based online betting company, officials said Tuesday.

Local politicians and businessmen in the southern Italian city of Bari were among those implicated as part of a three-year operation, called "Domino," for collaborating with the Parisi clan, police said.

Guantanamo prisoners transferred

2009-12-01T02:15:57Z

Two Tunisian men to be tried in Italy, while others released to France and Hungary.

Read more: Hungary, France, Italy, Home News

Italian Police Crash Lamborghini Gallardo Patrol Car

2009-11-30T14:02:34Z

Just over a year ago, we brought you the story of Lamborghini's gift of a Gallardo LP560-4 to the Italian State Police, equipped in full police regalia, for patrol duty on the highways and byways of central and southern Italy. Today, we bring you news of its

Read more: Italy, Home News

Full Show: November 26, 2009

2009-11-26T17:15:03Z

Please view the original post to see the video.
Watch the full show from Thursday, November 26: a global look at food includes rising prices in Egypt; aging Japanese population puts family rice farms in jeopardy; buffalo mozzarella cheese in Italy; and a new vintage wine emerges in Lebanon.
http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/11/th_091126_fullshow.jpg
http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/11/th_091126_fullshow.jpg

Read more: Egypt, Italy, Lebanon, Home News

"Paralyzed" Carmelo Di Stefano, Escaped Mafia Boss, Found By Police

2009-11-24T12:14:14Z

ROME — A convicted Mafia boss who got out of jail by faking paralysis and anorexia has been arrested at a restaurant after more than two months on the run, police in Sicily said Tuesday.

Officers arrested Carmelo Di Stefano on Monday as he dined at a seaside village near the Sicilian city of Catania, which he had reached at the wheel of a sports car.

Italian stallions: The sex lives of Mussolini and Berlusconi

2009-11-23T19:15:29Z

Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's two most charismatic leaders of the past century, have more in common than we thought.

Read more: Italy, Home News

Patrizia D'Addario, Italian Escort, Says She Was "Threatened And Attacked After Meeting Silvio Berlusconi"

2009-11-23T11:00:48Z

ROME — The prostitute at the center of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's sex scandal claims in a new book that she slept with him on the understanding he would help her set up a countryside inn but she got "nothing" in return.

Patrizia D'Addario, whose memoir went on sale Tuesday in Italy, writes she feels betrayed and has been frightened by strange threats, including the ransacking of her home, since she revealed this year that she had taped-recorded her purported bedroom encounter with Berlusconi.

US Seeks Up To 7,000 More NATO Troops For Afghan War

2009-11-21T23:44:06Z

U.S. and European estimates of the new troops they may get from NATO allies vary from 3,000 to 7,000. Those would complement the additional U.S. forces Mr. Obama is considering; those options range from 10,000 to 40,000, but U.S. officials have said a combination of combat troops and training forces totaling 35,000 has gained the most momentum.

Kercher murder accused could face life sentences

2009-11-21T05:00:21Z

Prosecutors are expected to request life in prison for an American student and
her former boyfriend accused of killing a young British woman in Italy.

Read more: Italy, Home News

Arrests in Italy over Mumbai attack

2009-11-21T04:15:54Z

Two Pakistanis accused of providing logistical help to perpetrators of last year's rampage.

Read more: Mumbai-India, India, Italy, Home News

Marta Mondelli: Pick-Up Lines In Rome: Sexual Harassment Or Poetry?

2009-11-20T13:31:09Z

"God bless the milk your mother fed you at birth" was what a young man told me while passing by on a street in Rome. It was a beautiful summer day and that sentence was a joyful verse of poetry. I wasn't at all offended by it: it felt more like a serenade rather than a perverse intrusion.

In the United States (and now that I think about it, in all the non-Mediterranean countries of Europe I've visited), men don't really look at women in the street. People in general don't look at each other. I've been living in NYC for seven years now and when I go back to Italy, I'm surprised at the way men and women distinctly check each other out. It is a quick but thorough look and after a few days I get back into the old habit and I do the same. I don't know what it is, but a great Spaniard writer, Javier Marias, in his book All Souls wrote about the different quality of eyes and looks, according to different latitudes. It must be that: latitude.

Don't be offended by Italian looks (sometimes people look at you so insistently that you might even have the feeling that something is wrong, like you are walking outside in your slippers). Of course, be rightfully offended if men cross the line, if poetry becomes insult and a look or a word of comment feels like sexual harassment (in Italy you can, unfortunately, hear much worse than poetry). Since I was a little girl, I thought those comments came from men who needed to be taught how to behave, and since I can remember I've always openly scolded them, hoping other women would do the same. Please join this small group in an era in which we need champions in the quest to reset the social equilibrium with the Italian Man (just look at the Prime Minister we have).

Also, touching is a big thing where I come from: first of all, we kiss on both cheeks when we meet and when we depart (many times in the US, I catch myself half-way through the second kiss, while the other person has already finished), and men hug each other when meeting. The most shocking of cultural shocks for me was going to Los Angeles and realizing that tables for two are not quite squared, but rather rectangular, almost as if they don't want even knees to touch under the table. Among strangers, in general, bumping into somebody in a public place is not an enormous deal (my Italian friends who visit the States are always very impressed by the politeness of Americans, who apologize profusely when touching by mistake).

The interaction between strangers through eyes and hands is quite a sensitive subject: you can't really see when the line is crossed. I'm not here to draw that line: I'm just noting the differences. Of one thing I'm grateful: in New York City I can go about dressed the way I want and nobody notices it, maybe because nobody looks at anybody. Still, it's a very refreshing feeling. Maybe because we look at each other so much, in Italy people tend to watch their appearance much more (do I have the right accessories for my outfit?). It is so much pressure, but is it worth a daytime serenade?

Galileo's Lost Tooth, Fingers Found By Italian Collector

2009-11-20T12:43:24Z

ROME — Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday.

Three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth were removed from the astronomer's body by admirers in 1737, 95 years after his death, as his corpse was being moved from a storage place to a monumental tomb – opposite that of Michelangelo, in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence.