Italian News 14th June

Wayne Rooney and George Bush made separate visits to Italy. Rooney got married; Bush’s visit will be remembered for making it impossible to get a mobile ‘phone signal in central Rome.

Confusion continues in Venice where militant pigeon lovers rowed into St Mark’s square from the lagoon and scattered bird seed in defiance of a city ordinance aimed at reducing the damage caused by the birds. The protesters also draped the Bridge of Sighs with a banner saying ''Venice Without Pigeons Is Like (Mayor Massimo) Cacciari Without His Beard''. Health officials are reported to be urgently checking Mr Cacciari’s facial growth.

A new tax on windfall profits by oil companies will be called the ‘Robin Hood Tax’ after the outlaw who made the poor pay more for their petrol.

Tuscany has 564 homemade ice cream shops, an increase of 26% over 2007. 134 of these are in Florence.

A series of designer jail cells went on show in Turin for an exhibition of prison architecture. Eleven architects' studios from countries including the United States, China, Iran, Libya, Japan and Italy are showing off their designs.

Doctors at the private Santa Rita clinic in Milan are suspected of conning patients into unnecessary operations, killing at least five. A further 20 suspicious deaths are being investigated.

Catholics pray to Santa Rita in ‘impossible cases’

A TV show which secretly took swabs off 50 MPs’ foreheads and tested them for recent drug use has been found guilty of ''deceitful and fraudulent'' behaviour by The Cassation Court. The tests showed that one in three had taken cannabis and cocaine in the preceding 36 hours.

The anticipated prosciutto crisis has been averted after Italian pig farmers scaled down a nationwide strike.

Italy has made the world's top ten for spending on primary schools, the Save The Children organisation has reported. The tables were led by Luxembourg and Switzerland.

62% of Italians between the ages of 14 and 29 read three or more books a year (excluding school textbooks) compared to 43% of young people in Spain, 48% in France and 61% in Germany, according to a new survey. Only Britain pipped Italy to the post, with 65%. The number of young Italians who read a newspaper at least once or twice a week has risen in the last four years, from 60% in 2003 to 78% in 2007.

Germans are apparently not keen on Euro notes from the PIGS countries (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, more politely known as the Olive Belt). The numbers on German notes begin with an X, French with a U whereas Italy’s begin with an S.

Interestingly, if you add up all the numbers on your note, and then add together the digits of that number, an Italian note always comes to 7 whereas a German note comes to 2.

If you’re interested in the numbers on bank notes, try to get out more.

The new Speaker of the House, Gianfranco Fini will take action on the ‘pianists’ – MPs who put up both hands to vote, covering the absence of a colleague. His preferred solution is an electronic one, requiring both hands to make a single vote, making the proceedings even more like a game show.

After Silvio Berlusconi’s successful attempt to block Finland hosting the EU food standards agency, on the grounds that the Finns didn’t even know what prosciutto was, but ate marinated reindeer meat, a Finnish restaurant chain has produced a reindeer meat pizza, calling it ‘The Berlusconi’.

A new trick for money laundering has been discovered in Savona, where fraudsters pay for a mass for fictional dead relatives with counterfeit 100 euro notes, receiving the change in good money.

Naples will raise a task force of helpers to clear up the streets, which will be called ‘angels of rubbish’. The city is at present sending 700 tons a day to Hamburg by train at a cost of 250 euros a ton. I thought the northbound trains had got dirtier.

The first parish church in Rome to celebrate Mass entirely in Latin for nearly half a century has been inaugurated with a service attended by over 500 worshippers.

The inaugural Mass, at the church of SS Trinita dei Pellegrini near the Campo de’ Fiori was presided over by Fr Joseph Kramer, an Australian priest.

A deer resembling a Unicorn has been discovered in a Tuscan wildlife park. Small and bone-headed, they are wondering who to call it after

Now we must be vigilant

Following Ireland’s rejection of the Constitutional Treaty the unelected Eurocrats will try to carry on with its implementation. They will try to make the Irish vote again, they will offer bribes, they will pretend it doesn’t matter. Time and again we must remind them that they must bow to democracy.

Gordon Brown has apparently told Sarkozy that Britain will proceed with ratification. If this is true it is disgraceful. But ratification of what? If the Irish are to receive concessions why can’t we receive some too? Surely a change to the Irish deal is a change to the Treaty?

These people need watching. We must be vigilant

Principle and 42 days (2)

Most observers are surprised at David Davis’ decision to fight a by-election on the 42 days issue and some are condemning. ‘David Davis's behaviour is a pure piece of political theatre’ (Actor David Blunkett); ‘David Davis sounded slightly unhinged.’ (David Hill, former Labour Communications chief) ‘This forced by-election is a farce’ (Hazel Blears)

I opposed David Davis as leader of the Conservative Party (not that my opinion, having resigned from it in 1990, counts for anything) partly because his verbal delivery was so poor that people would not connect with him. I turned on the radio shortly after the beginning of his speech, to the staccato, disjointed mumbling and said ‘that sounds like David Davis, but no, it can’t be him resigning...’

Davis mentioned other attacks on our freedoms: ‘42 days, ID cards, more CCTV cameras and the DNA database. This cannot go on. It must be stopped and for that reason I feel it incumbent on me to make a stand.’

Poor communicator he may be but this looks to me not like a piece of theatre but the principled stand of a decent man. For me to vote for Cameron in the next election I would need to be satisifed that he had thrown Conservative resources behind Davis’ re-election. Anything less would be a disgrace.

I salute Mr Davis. His stand contrasts with that of Labour MPs who disagreed with six week detention of citizens without even a charge against them but nevertheless voted for it, just to save their jobs. At a time when we are desperately short of politicians with any principle at all, this is very, very welcome

Unshakeable Principle and 42 days

I posted a while back that we can do nothing for Zimbabwe, having lost any moral authority we had by invding Iraq. Now we have approved that citizens can be imprisoned without charge – without even knowing what they are suspected of – for six weeks. To find out the impression this will give internationally, listen to Hizb ut-Tahrir, which campaigns for the reintroduction of the Muslim Caliphate:

‘The House of Commons has approved a series of draconian measures, some of which would be condemned outright by Britain were regimes like Zimbabwe or Burma to implement them. .....these measures further push Britain's security system into a kind of 'Liberal Inquisition'.

Taji Mustafa, Media Representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, said "Gordon Brown has not used evidence or principle to garner support for this bill, but the fear of a humiliating party political defeat. It is but the latest example of the games politicians play with security matters.
Principles that are claimed as fundamental and unshakeable, such as innocence until proven guilty, habeas corpus, and 'free speech' have been cast aside in the name of security - proving that, for liberal democracies, these are not really 'principles' at all.

In the name of security the world has seen western governments legitimise 42 days internment, rendition, torture and the gulag at Guantanomo Bay. By contrast, the Khilafah (Caliphate)... has fixed principles within its legal framework which do not change because of external provocation or political expediency. Hence the Shariah absolutely forbids torture, spying on citizens, retrospective punishments and internment without trial.'

We came to regret internment in Northern Ireland, and in my view we will come to regret this.

MixedFeelings

News that the European Commission is to censure Britain for its excessive budget deficit provoked mixed feelings. My first reaction was ‘what the hell business is it of theirs? We don’t even belong to the Eurozone!’. My second was that perhaps it is better that someone says something since parliamentary scrutiny appears non-existent.

The Treasury’s response that its policies remain prudent, is, I’m afraid, La-La land. It has overspent, overborrowed and overtaxed leaving us unprepared for an economic downturn. Whatever you call that, it is not ‘prudent’.

Zimbabwe

It wasn’t long ago that Archbishop Tutu was urging us to remember the good things that Robert Mugabe had done. Now the old fraud has caught which way the wind is blowing and wants.... wait for it... us to ban the cricket tour.

What really needs to happen in Zimbabwe is that he and his old mate Mbeki stop being apologists for Mugabe’s regime and actually do something for the growing humanitarian crisis. The reason they don’t is that intervention would direct the world’s conscience towards other African states where the ruling elite has impoverished the country for its own profit.

The Irish vote

It is generally recognised as a diplomatic faux pas to intervene in the political affairs of another country, particularly in the run-up to an election. But this has not stopped Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France, who has reminded the Irish that they have received a large amount of European money and should vote in the correct way on the Constitutional Treaty.

The Irish have of course received a large amount of money from Europe, but I’m not sure anyone told them there would be strings attached, and that these strings would involve the abnegation of their democracy. My hope is that this foolish intervention from the erstwhile soixant-huitard will teach the undecided, reportedly 30% just two days from the referendum, exactly what is at stake here, and that they will vote accordingly.

Italian News 7th June

2nd June was Republic Day in Italy. A survey shows that 29% of Italians celebrate it without knowing what the celebration is for.

Several Italian MPs, including Alessandra Mussolini (picture), unhappy at the House seating plan, have demanded that their chairs be made more comfortable

Twelve businessmen have been arrested in Foggia after the discovery of an illegal rubbish tip measuring half a million cubic metres, thought to be the biggest in Europe. They are also charged with diverting a river in order to conceal it. The tip is the equivalent of a football pitch with rubbish piled 100 metres high.

Seven out of ten Italian girls are unhappy with their bodies, the Association of Food Science Specialists (ANSISA) has said (without mentioning how many men were satisfied with them). Over a million young Italian women suffered from ''serious'' illnesses related to food such as anorexia and bulimia.

Despite the continued popularity of ice cream parlours, Italians now consume more ice cream at home, averaging four kilogrammes a year of the pre-packaged product. This has increased from 250 grammes a head in the 1950s, when commercially packaged ice cream was first launched in the country.

Over 200 prisoners have been transferred from Rome's central Regina Coeli (‘Queen of the Heavens’) prison to make room for any protestors arrested during the visit here by United States President George W.Bush.

Christmas Crib making is a popular and competitive pastime in Italy and several artists will produce commemorative cribs for the European Football Championships. Gennaro ('Genny') Di Virgilio of Naples will depict soccer stars Alessandro Del Piero and Antonio Cassano as Siamese twins, joined at the waist.

A poll found that 85% of Italians were in favour of the repeal of the 1958 ‘Merlin’ law which closed brothels in Italy. 47% were in favour as a means to clean up the streets, while 38% were in favour because it was a way to protect prostitutes from exploitation and violence. Only 4% viewed the reopening of brothels as ''an immoral act''.

One out of two Italians, including many who voted for the centre-left opposition, have a favourable opinion of what the government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi has done since taking office last month, according to a new poll.

Leaders of 183 countries, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, have gathered in Rome for a conference at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, which is based in the city. At the scheduled end no agreements had been reached..

The Italian National Nuclear Physics Institute has found a way to increase the performance of particle accelerators. The Institute is headed by the delightfully named Pantaleo Raimondi and his particle accelerator is called Daphne.

Police in Catania have arrested a 16-year-old boy after he was caught robbing the same pharmacy for the fifth time in three weeks.

An Italian school teacher who became qualified to teach in 1974 waited eight years until 1982 to get on to the permanent teaching list but has had to spend 25 years as a substitute teacher, plugging gaps. She has finally been offered a permanent post, two months before her retirement.

Motorcycling ace Valentino Rossi has had his bike and clothing coloured blue and white to show his support for the Italian soccer team.

The ID Card for Shoes has been launched in Lucca. Through the Ecodatabase site, a portal dedicated to shoes, it will be possible to have information on the manufacturing process of your footwear. The measure is to counteract fakes.

Over 3,000 companies in Tuscany are involved in the shoe making trade.

Italians are the world's biggest consumers of bottled water, drinking an average of 246 litres a person, more than the United Arab Emirates or Mexico.

In Venice, 18 million visitors will be handed a kit consisting of an empty plastic bottle and a map showing the location of 122 fountains across the city, with a chemical analysis of the water. It is a measure supported by the Church: In February the Venice patriarchate called on the faithful to give up mineral water for Lent.

Almost two out of three Italians believe that the teachings of the Catholic Church are still valid today, as against 54% last year. It is a sign of the increasing popularity of Benedict XVI

Cesena cathedral will have to be purified after worshippers at a 7am service discovered a couple of goth rock fans having sex in a confession box.

Vanna Marchi her daughter Stefania Nobile amassed a 30million euro fortune between 1996 and 2001 by selling ''magic numbers'' on TV to over 250,000 Italians. She also sold 'magical rites' to remove ''negative vibes and the evil eye''. The pair were rearrested pending an appeal hearing on the grounds they were prone to flight, presumably well within their capabilities

In flower in Umbria

Pomegranate

Olive

Vine

Zimbabwe

Is there anything that can be done for Zimbabwe? It now seems that Mugabe’s influence in the military was deeper than had been supposed. Soldiers are effectively carrying out ethnic cleansing in order to win the election: bullying, intimidation, murder and a nod to democracy. British and American diplomats have been arrested at gunpoint. Aid work has been stopped.

There was talk some time ago of the United Nations doing something. But two out of the five permanent members of the security council don’t believe in democracy. China was recently found to be trying to supply Mugabe with armaments.

An invasion by the West? Here we can see the real damage of our invasion of Iraq. It would no longer be politically possible for America and Britain to invade a country without UN approval, however worthy the cause. And that approval will not come. The Zimbabweans are condemned to poverty and starvation.

The turning point?

The Fed announces it is more worried about inflation than recession and doesn’t want the dollar to fall any further; oil and other commodities will no longer therefore be a hedge against a falling dollar; India and Malaysia announce an end to fuel subsidies. July oil slips under $123.

I am just wondering if we might one day look back on this week as the turning point, or the first indications of a turn, for the USA. I still think Europe has a way to go.

The First Way

I am an avid Guardian reader: I like it when it is insightful and right (Andrew Rawnsley, Marcel Berlins) and I like it when it is barking and wrong (Polly Toynbee et al.). The bits I don’t like are when it is unthinking, and there’s a cracking example in Sunday’s Observer.

Will Hutton has been on some Pope’s committee, and he is anxious that you should know it: 'What I told the Pope about how to shape the new capitalism’ is the title, and in case our conviction might waver on what a life changing event this has been for His Holiness we are reminded ‘Rather, it was [Benedict’s] opportunity to .... listen to what we had to say on the great issues he confronts.’ And ‘I was invited to the Vatican ..... to give my thoughts on what is happening in contemporary capitalism’.

But these thoughts are, unfortunately for the Holy See, just the empty headed tosh he has been spewing out for years. Once you have got over the arrogance you are plunged into a whole new world of murky thinking. Hutton is the author of Tony Blair’s short-lived ‘third way’: we hate capitalism but like business. Business must be allowed to make profits, but, hey, not too much. ‘[Catholics] want decent wages; more autonomy and dignity at work; they want the rich to accept obligations to promote the common good; firms to recognise that there is only any morality to profit making if it is as a consequence of delivering a declared economic purpose - to manufacture a great car, build a safe plane or whatever.’

But this is the nub. People do go into business to make money. Hutton quotes Unilever, Boeing and Sony as having some higher moral purpose. My guess is the Lever brothers, and Messrs Boeing and Ibaru of Sony started out wanting to feed their families. That is quite healthy. Of course their mission statements are written in Huttonish Doublespeak about promoting social welfare but that is just the zeitgeist. All three companies have gone to extraordinary lengths to beat the competition and keep their costs down: that is why they are successful.

The Pope will easily understand that it would be very nice if someone started a bank in order to feed the poor, but equally that the bank would fail. The point Hutton misses is this: that although he lumps them together in his addle-pated Blairite way there is a huge difference between overtaxing and regulating companies in some spurious attempt at morality and, in his words ‘the rich to accept obligations to promote the common good’. The first is a recipe for poverty. The second involves companies trading freely and the people who have profited from them giving their wealth freely. The Pope will not need Mr Hutton’s help to understand that: it is called charity. He probably calls it ‘the first way’.

Lost Tribe

I can't help thinking about the lost tribe 'discovered' in South America.

That's it for them, now, isn't it? They can look forward to a future of counselling, welfare, cheap trainers and game shows on TV.

They shot at the helicopter, you know.

Italian News 31st May

After 10 years of work, engineers have stabilised the Leaning Tower of Pisa for the first time in 800 years. It will never be straight because 12th century builders, realising it was tilting, compensated in the construction and it is slightly curved.

La Scala has commissioned Giorgio Battistelli to produce an opera version of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" for the 2011 season.

International research has shown that Italians, both men and women, are the most desired partners for a holiday romance.

58% of Italian women in their fifties, and 38% of those in their sixties, confess to having had an affair, whilst only 11% of twenty year olds say they have.

‘La Ciemonna’ or interplanetary critical mass, is the name given to a mass cycling demonstration in Rome, to promote the healthy effects of cycling.

Museion, the Bolzano museum, has been criticised for displaying a one metre high sculpture of a frog nailed to a cross with a foaming mug of beer in one hand. In 2006 Museion officials were prosecuted over an installation that involved a lavatory flushing to the musical accompaniment of Italy's national anthem.

May 26th was National Bread Day and to celebrate, a Rome bakery has invented the Tottino, a half kilo loaf named after the captain of the national football team.

Based on data from 2006, a report shows that Italy had 3,092 bank robberies compared to 582 in Germany, 438 in Spain and 271 in France. For every 100 bank branches, 9.67 were robbed in Italy compared to 1.37 in Germany, 1.14 in Spain and 0.97 in France. One cause is that Italians still tend to use cash.

Women now account for about half of all wine sales in Italy. Out of 13 million female wine lovers, younger women tend to drink less and pay more attention to quality, whilst the older ones drink more cheap plonk.

Researchers at the Scientific Institute for Food Production have developed a process which eliminates the hard, thorny leaves from artichokes and prepares the artichoke for cooking, but also extends its refrigerator life to up to ten days.

Reservoirs in South East Italy are an estimated two-thirds below capacity and the remaining water is at risk of evaporating due to the current heat wave. The situation is the opposite in the north where, as opposed to recent years, the levels of water in the major lakes are all above average.

The retirement age at Milan's La Scala opera house is 52, compared to 42 in most other countries.

A switchboard operator at Taranto jail has faked blindness for 24 years in order to keep his job. He comes to work on a motorbike.

The Italian Farmers Association has warned that Italy may soon be in the grip of a national prosciutto shortage after Italian pig farmers confirmed they will be going on strike this weekend.

The Court of Cassation has ruled that a wife is not entitled to assets jointly held in the marriage as she disgraced the marital bed by taking a lover. Unfortunately the case has taken 33 years to get to the Court and the Husband is now 75 and the wife 69.

Giancarlo Gentilini, Deputy Mayor of Treviso, is trying to ban foreign breeds of dog from the city. Gentilini once took out all the park benches in Treviso in case immigrants slept on them.

The annual Matanza, the lure of migrating tuna fish into harbours for slaughter, has begun in Carloforte, Sardinia. The largest tuna speared weighed 400 kilos.

150 villagers of Campobasso have issued a petition to police for the release of a 48 year old man accused of wife beating, claiming he is the victim of a plot. The man is also accused of beating his daughter when she tried to intervene.

Mayor of Milan Letizia Moratti is being criticised for stopping a light show at Leonardo’s masterpiece The Last Supper. The show, by British film-maker Peter Greenaway, will project montages, including images of Christ's genitalia, on to the painting, accompanied by actors' voices, in an attempt to link "8,000 years of art and 112 years of cinema".

Left Wing Nazis

From The Times’ Richard Owen, 26th May:
‘Balaclava-clad gangs, some wearing bandanas emblazoned with swastikas, smashed shop windows with iron bars and baseball bats and beat up shopkeepers in a hitherto bohemian neighbourhood of Rome.

Members of the gangs shouted “Get out, bastard foreigners” as they attacked Bengali shopkeepers in the explosion of xenophobic violence.

Gianni Alemanno, the capital’s new right-wing Mayor, condemned the attacks, which took place in the eastern suburb of Pigneto, an area with a reputation for tolerance, on Saturday night.’

Now, the organiser of this outrage has been arrested and has admitted his part. He has a tattoo of Che Guevara on his arm and is proud of his left wing credentials. The Pigneto raid, described in most of Europe’s lefty press as ‘Nazi-style’ was organised by the Left, in association with the Camorra, who felt the immigrants were muscling in on their patch.

I am not trying to excuse the extreme right, who are just as vile as the extreme left, but trying to explain that this isn’t as straightforward as people think, and the chance of pinning the Nazi label on it all has been accepted with a little too much alacrity.

The BBC

News that the BBC Internet operation is 48% over budget will not, unfortunately, surprise many people.

It is laxness on the part of the politicians, however, that I blame. Programme makers and news editors should only have an eye to a quality product. Politicians and management should have an eye to not overspending.

What we have is the opposite. The TV schedules are filled with rubbish (OK, not quite as bad as Italy but low quality pap for the most part) because they want to compete with the independents (Why?). And those with the purse strings loosen them in the name of quality.

I would reduce it to one TV channel, The World Service (which I would expand because it is Britain’s window on the world) Radios 3 and 4 and nothing else. The news department would be by far the biggest and feed into the individual units to avoid duplication (we are sending more BBC people to the Olympics than athletes) and have a limited but high quality website..

Every pound spent by the BBC crowds out investment by talented independents. It’s like Old Labour’s nationalised industries and its sell-by date is long past.

Daniel Hannan

The Telegraph feature writer, blogger and Euro MP, who is generally speaking on the side of the angels, goes so far over the top on his blog that it has to be challenged. He reports that the estimable Richard North has given up on his campaign for a referendum on the EU Constitution, saying ‘we end on a note of abject failure’.

Daniel recalls previous times when the game seemed to be up, such as 1992 ‘I campaigned frenetically....I remember feeling utterly alone..’

What you should have done, Daniel, is what I and thousands of others did (you were far from alone) and resign from the Conservative Party. I too had hopes of a career in Tory politics but this was a point of principle, too important to be ignored. Not for Daniel, though. Hannan, as we know, became a Conservative Euro MP, accepting a decent salary for ditching everything he purports to believe in, accepting the Conservative line whatever it may be. This is why the cause has failed: the Conservatives don’t need to be eurosceptic when they have soi-disant eurosceptics who are ready to toe the line.

He goes on ‘This blog, for one, plans to stay in business. Now who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?’

You are not keeping the bridge, Daniel. You surrendered long ago. But some of us remain.

A new PM?

Amidst all the stories of Labour figures plotting to get rid of Gordon Brown, several commentators have said that they cannot (or should not) replace one unelected Prime Minister with another, without calling an election.

Of course there is one person, qualified to be prime minister and never rejected by the electorate, who could be called on. It would be the ultimate humiliation for Mr. Brown.

Fireflies

The first fireflies are out here in Umbria, and can be seen at dusk, zooming round the garden flashing like tiny airborne belisha beacons. The firefly is in fact a type of beetle. 90% of the energy it uses to produce the light actually goes into light, making it 9 times as efficient as an electric light bulb.

The Italian for firefly, lucciola, is also the slang for a prostitute. Peter Hobday, the former Radio 4 presenter, lives in the charmingly named Val delle lucciole, which he refers to as Tarts Valley.

The Italian for ‘to get hold of the wrong end of the stick’ is ‘to mistake a firefly for a lantern’

Italian News 24th May

The think tank Eurispes has published estimated accounts for the ‘ndrangheta, the Calabrian organised crime syndicate, showing annual income of 44 billion euros, equivalent to around 3% of Italy’s GDP, or the entire GDP of Estonia and Slovenia combined. It is made up of drugs (27bn), industrial corruption (5.7bn), usury (5bn), arms trafficking (2.9bn) and prostitution (2.9bn). No figure given for taxes paid.

Other organised crime syndicates include the Mafia (Sicily), Camorra (Campania) and Sacra Corona Unita (Puglia).

In the last ten years the Italian home mortgage market has increased fivefold but is still low at less than 20% of GDP compared to a European average of 50%. Italians have the highest rate of home ownership but traditionally they have owned their houses outright.

On average a person’s income doubles on becoming an MP in Italy. Italian MPs incomes have risen 6 times faster than the Italian average.

Italy has no university in the world top 100 and Southern Italy doesn’t have one in the top 300.

An estimated 3% of Italians are believed to have hepatitis C, some 1.8 million people, the highest percentage in Europe. In some African countries, like Egypt, 20% of the population has the disease. 14,000 people in Italy died from hepatitis C in 2003 compared to 447 who died from AIDS.

The Ponte dell'Accademia, one of just four bridges across Venice's Grand Canal, will be made into a permanent structure. The current bridge, made of wood and iron and opened in 1933, was only ever intended as a temporary measure.

A Milanese pensioner was stabbed in the face after a fight broke out in a shopping centre restaurant over who got the last slice of cake.

Police in Pescara have discovered that the owner of a local factory has falsely sold 400,000 jars of preserves to the United States, under the Fiordifrutta label (which belongs to another company). He had also illegally attached labels to the jars certifying that the jam was kosher.

Tuscany is marking the 80th anniversary of the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover by opening up the Villa Mirenda at Scandicci where D.H. Lawrence wrote the novel. There will be a series of lectures and films. The book was not published in England until 1960.

An association of Padre Pio devotees has said it will press charges against the Capuchin friars of San Giovanni Rotondo for desecration, in that they allegedly opened up the tomb to take an early peek.

Italians will not in general buy agricultural produce from other countries, the exception being apples. According to the Farmers’ Union, there are 1,800 varieties of apples in Europe, but around 80% of Italian demand for the fruit was fulfilled by just four types: Red Delicious and Golden Delicious from America, Granny Smith from Australia and Gala from New Zealand. Producers of English Russets should take note.

Italy banned nuclear power after a referendum following the Chernobyl disaster, but following energy shortages in recent years, industry Minister Claudio Scajola has confirmed that Italy will begin construction on new generation plants in the current legislature

Special 'anti-Mafia' pasta will be on sale from Sunday. The plan is to sell 100,000 packets of spaghetti produced by a youth cooperative using wheat grown on lands seized from the Mafia around the Sicilian town of Corleone.

Exports of Tuscan red wine to The United Kingdom were up 20% in value and 18% in quantity for 2007 with respect the previous year.

‘Open Cellars’ marks its 16th year with some 800 vineyards opening their cellars to the public. Well over a million people are expected to be drawn to the countryside to see where and how wine is made and discover what it tastes like at its source. There are currently around five million practising wine tourists, also known as 'wine-nauts', in Italy.

Much of Italy's 3,700 kilometres of beach been conceded to private businesses who charge people for entrance as well as other facilities. In Liguria, only 19 km out of 135 km of beaches are free of charge. However the 10 metres next to the sea on any beach is, by law, public property, so if you don’t cross the private part but swim in you can use the most exclusive private beach free of charge.

Tiscali founder Renato Soru has bought the Communist newspaper l’Unità. Founded by Antonio Gramsci in 1924 it was the official mouthpiece of the Italian Communist Party until 1991. Former editors include Walter Veltroni, now leader of the Democratic Party. Soru said the paper was ''an asset to culture and democracy''.

Following restrictive legislation, about 600,000 Italians have given up smoking in the last year. However, the number getting through more than one packet a day has risen to 36%, an increase of 4% on 2007. Some 26% of all Italian men and 18% of women smoke - a total of 11.2 million people. Most smokers have their first cigarette at the age of 17.

Most Italian trains are given names, but hitherto there has been no name for the commuter trains. After a poll of primary school children it has been decided to call them ‘dingoes’. The other winning names included, for Italy's new generation of high-speed trains, Cheetah and Gazelle. Existing names include Tortoise (obviously) and Crocodile.

According to a survey conducted by Il Giornale, almost seven out of 10 Italians said they wanted immigrants to be fingerprinted and DNA tested.

With a new government, plans to build the world's longest suspension bridge to link Sicily and the Italian mainland are back on track and the bridge may open as early as 2016, they say. A Sicilian spokesman in dark glasses said the slightly costly structure would be ''an asset to culture and democracy''.