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Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi said political leaders discussing idea of closing world's financial markets while they 'rewrite the rules of international finance'... MORE Nothing follows. I can't get to the Bloomberg story its getting hammered. This is huge and series. Load your shotguns folks.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush on Tuesday discussed the global economic crisis with leaders of Britain, France, and Italy, underlining the need for cooperation, the White House said. The US president, who was also expected to reach out soon to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, emphasized that "it's critical that everybody gets on the same page," said spokeswoman Dana Perino. Bush's conversations with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi came ahead of the Group of Seven finance ministers meeting this week in Washington. "We want to make sure that...

Italian police bust Chinese imports in operation 'Toxic Shoes' Fri Sep 26, 5:59 PM ET Italian police said Friday they had confiscated some 1.7 million counterfeit shoes made with leather containing illegal toxins, most of them from China. Operation "Toxic Shoes" began in May and 21 Chinese and seven Italians are now being prosecuted for selling counterfeit products and threatening public health, a police spokesman told AFP. Shoes containing hexavalent chromium compounds which are illegal in Italy due to their high toxicity and potentially carcinogenic effect were seized in Tuscany, police said.

In the end, the global jihad, and the West's fickle response to radical Islam's assault on its civilization, is about hating Jews. This truth, never wholly hidden from view, was exposed in all its ugliness in recent months with startling disclosures by former Italian president and Senator-for-life Francesco Cossiga. In a letter to Italy's Corriere della Serra in August, Cossiga acknowledged that during the early 1970s, then Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed an agreement with Yassir Arafat's PLO and affiliated organizations that enabled the Palestinians to field terrorists, operate bases and store weapons in Italy in exchange for immunity...

A Mycenaean warrior who died in western Greece over 3,000 years ago was the proud owner of a rare gold-wired sword imported from the Italian peninsula, a senior archaeologist said on Thursday. "This is a very rare discovery, particularly because of the gold wire wrapped around the hilt," archaeologist Maria Gatsi told AFP. "To my knowledge, no such sword has ever been found in Greece," said Gatsi, head of the regional archaeological department of Aetoloakarnania prefecture. Tests in Austria have confirmed that the bronze used in the 12th century BCE, 94-centimetre (37-inch) sword came from the Italian peninsula, she said....

Pope Benedict XVI will kick off a week-long reading of the Bible on Italian television starting Sunday, with readers to include three former presidents and Oscar-winning actor Roberto Benigni. Some 2,000 people will take turns reading the Bible's 73 books, from the Old Testament's Genesis to the New Testament's Book of Revelations, at Rome's Holy Cross in Jerusalem basilica. The pope will record the first reading at the Vatican. Senator for life Giulio Andreotti, former presidents Francesco Cossiga, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi as well as several ministers in the centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi including his top...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2008 – Through a high-adventure recreation program the Army calls Warrior Adventure Quest, soldiers have a new way of transitioning from combat to a “new normal,” reducing the potential for high-risk behaviors that are counterproductive to unit training requirements. Soldiers from the 503rd Infantry in Vicenza, Italy, navigate through nearly 30 miles of mountain trails during a Warrior Adventure Quest activity that also included paintball and whitewater rafting. U.S. Army photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “In the past,” said John O’Sullivan, Outdoor Recreation Program Manager at the Army’s Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation...

From Times Online September 30, 2008 Italian war veterans denounce 'insulting' Spike Lee film Richard Owen, in Rome Italian partisan organisations are to stage protests tomorrow at the Italian premiere of Spike Lee's film Miracle at St. Anna, which they say is full of lies, and insults the memory of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War. The controversial film, already released in the United States, will be running in Italian cinemas from Friday. But it is being shown first at Viareggio on the Tuscan coast, close to the village of Sant' Anna di Stazzema in the Apennine hills...

175 Alleged Gulf Cartel Members and Associates Arrested in Massive International Law Enforcement Operation "Project Reckoning" Leads to the Seizure of $60 Million and More Than 40 Tons of Illegal Drugs From One of Mexico's Largest Drug Trafficking Cartels NEW YORK - Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey announced that 175 individuals were arrested on Sept. 16, 2008, on charges related to an international drug trafficking cartel in a coordinated enforcement action by hundreds of international, federal, state and local law enforcement officials throughout the United States and Italy. Including the operations announced today, a long-term investigation of one of Mexico's...

ROME (Reuters) - A group of foreigners, including five Italians, was kidnapped in Egypt. This was announced by the Foreign Ministry, without giving other details on the exact place where the abduction took place. "The foreign minister, Franco Frattini, in flight to the United States, follows closely with the crisis unit of the Ministry of kidnapping cases in Egypt by a group of foreigners, among whom there are five Italians," you law in a note. "The minister - continues the note - has provisions to enable the full cooperation between the countries concerned, and the foreign ministry at this...

Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced Saturday the introduction of "a national energy plan" paving the way for a controversial return to nuclear energy, ANSA news agency reported. "From now until next spring, the government will present a national energy plan," he said at the opening of an off-shore regasification unit in northeast Rovigo, adding that it will see "the launch of nuclear and renewable energy." A month after Berlusconi returned to power in April, the Italian government said it would begin building nuclear power stations to solve the country's dependence on foreign oil and gas supplies. The decision reversed...

The hidden ruins of an ancient lagoon city that was the ancestor of Venice have been unearthed by scientists using satellite imaging. The outlines are clearly visible about three feet below the earth in what is now open countryside... Paolo Mozzi, a researcher at the University of Padua geography department, said high-definition satellite photographs had revealed the ruins of an extensive town much closer to present day Venice at Altino -- known in Roman times as Altinum -- a little more than seven miles north of the city, close to Marco Polo airport... The newly identified ruins include streets, palaces,...

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Northern League, allies of centre-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, want to limit the growth of Islam in the centre of world Catholicism by blocking the construction of mosques through strict new regulations. Muslim immigrants using Italy as a route into Europe already get a foretaste of the mistrust with which many Europeans view their religion, with many projects for mosques and prayer halls already blocked by the opposition of local Italian residents. But if the anti-immigrant Northern League pushes its bill through parliament -- where Berlusconi's coalition has a strong majority -- Italy will soon have...

Four times Italian women's champion Lara Liotta, 29, was on a street in broad daylight in central Rome when the man, a Romanian immigrant of no fixed abode, approached her and asked her for a cigarette. When she told him she did not smoke he allegedly lunged for her and grabbed her around the neck. Miss Liotta, who works as prison officer, immediately put her black belt training to good use, delivering two swift jabs to the man's face which sent him crashing to the ground. The karate champion was fortunate she could rely on her skills to fight off...

Vice President Dick Cheney made his last scheduled trip to Italy Tuesday, issuing remarks that praised the relationship between the two nations, stating that "relations between Italy and the United States are as strong as they've ever been." In a joint appearance with Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Cheney stressed the unity between the two nations. The U.S. and Italy stand together on Iran, Cheney said, stating that he and the Italian Prime Minister "agreed that Iran must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon."

CAGLIARI, Sardinia — Pope Benedict XVI, who has said he is living out his own old age serenely, met in Sardinia with some of the Mediterranean island's "super old" faithful Sunday, including a 105-year-old woman who wished the pontiff a life as long as hers.Benedict was making a one-day pilgrimage to the port city of Cagliari to mark the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the Virgin Mary of Bonaria as the island's religious patron.While some 150,000 faithful braved muggy air outside the sanctuary's basilica, inside the church waiting to meet the 81-year-old pontiff were about 30 centenarians.Scientists and sociologists...

IT WAS A SPECTACULAR LATE-MAY AFTERNOON IN SOUTHERN ITALY,but the streets of Laviano — a gloriously situated hamlet ranged across a few folds in the mountains of the Campania region — were deserted. There were no day-trippers from Naples, no tourists to take in the views up the steep slopes, the olive trees on terraces, the ruins of the 11th-century fortress with wild poppies spotting its grassy flanks like flecks of blood. And there were no locals in sight either. The town has housing enough to support a population of 3,000, but fewer than 1,600 live here. SNIP The figure...

Rome, Sep 5, 2008 / 01:34 am (CNA).- An Italian priest has been ordered to pay more than eighty thousand dollars to a woman living near his church because she claims the bells were rung too loud and too long at “unsocial hours.”The judgment was handed down by a court in the town of Chiavari after retired university teacher Flora Leuzzi and others claimed the ringing of church bells created a form of noise pollution, the Guardian reports.Professor Leuzzi lives close to the Carmine church in Lavagna, which is near Genoa. She first voiced complaints about the bell ringing...

Italy agreed to pay Libya $5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country during the 20th century. The money will be invested by Italy over a 25-year period. For VOA, Sabina Castelfranco reports from Rome. The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday signed a "friendship pact" with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Under the pact, Italy agreed to compensate Libya for abuses it committed during its colonial rule of the North African country. Italy will invest $5 billion in Libya in a deal that effectively turns the page on colonial-era disputes that have long...

RIMINI, Italy, AUG. 28, 2008 (Zenit.org).- People in favor of euthanasia often support it "for others," without thinking about the end of their own lives, contends a cancer patient who changed her mind about life after she was diagnosed with her terminal disease. Silvie Menard, a French oncologist and consultant at the Center of Experimental Oncology of the National Institute of Tumors in Milan, Italy, spoke of her change of perspective in a conference at the Rimini meeting organized by Communion and Liberation. The annual meeting is under way through Saturday. She said she had arranged for a living will,...

An Italian museum has defied Pope Benedict by refusing to remove a statue of a crucified green frog clutching a beer mug and an egg. The Vatican had condemned the modern art sculpture as blasphemous. The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano voted it was a work of art, however. The board decreed it would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition. The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog about 1 metre 30 cm (4 feet) high nailed to brown cross and holding a beer mug in...

BOLZANO, Italy— Italian politician Franz Pahl revealed today that Pope Benedict XVI has criticized Martin Kippenberger's controversial sculpture of a crucified frog, ANSA reports. The pope wrote to Pahl in a letter on August 7, saying the artwork "has injured the religious feeling of many people who see in the cross the symbol of the love of God and of our salvation which deserves recognition and religious devotion." Benedict was vacationing in Bressanone, a town near Bolzano, and discussed the work with local bishop Wilhelm Egger. Kippenberger's sculpture has sparked controversy since its installation in the Museum of Modern and...

Italians were shocked yesterday by a ferocious assault on Franciscan monks by hooded thugs at a monastery in the foothills of the Alps which has left one of the monks fighting for his life. Father Sergio Baldini, 48, the guardian of the San Colombano Belmonte monastery near Turin, and three elderly monks from the Franciscan order of Friars Minor were having their evening meal when they were attacked by three hooded men who gagged and bound them before punching, kicking and beating them with clubs. Father Baldini suffered severe head injuries but also has "serious respiratory problems" because he choked...

Italy, the worlds leader in the fight against Islam attempts to take it up a notch and put a ban on Mosque construction. If this passes look for a call to end all Mosque construction to spread across Europe. As the Swedes have already looked to put an end to the Islamic calls to prayers being broadcast in their country.

ROME - An Italian priest, who had planned an online "pageant" for nuns, has suspended the project, saying he was misinterpreted and had no intention of putting sisters on a beauty catwalk. "My superiors were not happy. The local bishop was not happy, but they did not understand me either," Father Antonio Rungi told Reuters by telephone from his convent in southern Italy on Tuesday. "It was not at all my intention to put nuns on the catwalk," said Rungi, a priest of the Passionists religious order, speaking from his convent in the town of Mondragone. Miss Sister 2008Rungi's idea...

Italy’s Northern League, the populist, xenophobic, sometimes separatist movement that is a key component of Silvio Berlusconi’s governing coalition, has proposed new legislation which would effectively halt construction of new Islamic mosques. The bill, which the League’s chief of deputies Roberto Cota is expected to send to parliament next week, would require regional approval for the building of mosques. It would also require that a local referendum be held, that there be no minaret or loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer, and sermons must be in Italian, not Arabic. Chances of this being approved as it stands are slim, since...

- YES! To begin with, let's try and fully understand what Renaissance Florence actually has accomplished, apart from making tourists feel like this: "I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear...

div class="noticia_lead_imagen_container"> Castelgandolfo, Aug 22, 2008 / 01:57 pm (CNA).- Today Pope Benedict XVI thanked his brother Georg Ratzinger for having always been his companion, for being “a benchmark of confidence” and for helping him to accept his old age “with serenity, humility and courage.”The Holy Father spoke during a ceremony presenting his older brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger with the honorary citizenship of Castel Gandolfo, the Italian town south of Rome, where the Pope’s summer residence is located.Benedict XVI revealed that “since the beginning of my life, my brother has not only been a companion, but also a trustworthy guide...

NAPLES, Italy, Aug. 21, 2008 – Two Navy ships and a Coast Guard cutter are transporting humanitarian relief supplies to Georgia. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Weaver and Petty Officer 2nd Class Gary Smith prepare humanitarian aid supplies for loading aboard USS McFaul at Souda Bay, Crete, Aug. 20, 2008. Nearly 55 tons of supplies were loaded as part of the humanitarian assistance for the Georgia following the conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in the former Soviet republic. U.S. Navy Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Eddie Harrison   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. These deployments...

A former Italian president says his country had allowed Palestinian terror groups to roam free in exchange for not attacking Italian targets. Francesco Cossiga's admission confirmed claims of such a deal revealed last week in an interview in the Corriere della Sera newspaper with Bassam Abu Sharif, the former chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In a letter published Aug. 15 in Corriere della Sera, Cossiga described a "secret 'non-belligerence pact' between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance organizations, including terrorist groups" such as the PFLP. The deal, he said, had been devised by Prime Minister...

Silvio Berlusconi's government was engaged yesterday in a vigorous damage-limitation exercise after Pope Benedict appeared to lend his moral authority to speculation that Italy was in danger of returning to fascism under the tycoon's hardline rightwing leadership.In his usual Sunday address, the Catholic pontiff expressed concern at "recent examples of racism" and reminded Catholics that it was their duty to steer others in society away from "racism, intolerance and exclusion [of others]".On any other day his remarks might have been seen as no more than a restatement of Catholic doctrine. But they came in the midst of a furious dispute...

(IsraelNN.com) In a letter appearing in the weekend edition of the respected Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed that the government of Italy agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks in Italy. Cossiga wrote that the government of the late Prime Minister Aldo Moro reached a "secret non-belligerence pact between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance organizations, including terrorist groups," in the 1970s. According to the former president, it was Moro himself who designed the terms of the agreement with the foreign Arab terrorists....

<p>BRESSANONE, Italy - Serenaded by an oompah band and chiming church bells, Pope Benedict XVI ended a two-week vacation in the Italian Alps on Monday and returned to his summer residence in the hills outside Rome.</p> <p>The 81-year-old pontiff looked well rested as he said goodbye from the main window of the seminary in the northeastern town of Bressanone where he was staying.</p>

Italy: 5 arrested on suspicion of planning attacks ROME - Police broke up a suspected terror cell Saturday and arrested five North Africans, including the alleged leader who Italian officials said recruited Islamic extremists for attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Italian police has arrested four Tunisians and a Moroccan on suspicion of recruiting Islamic fighters for Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Police say the recruits were trained in Bosnia.

The Mosque bulldozing, Muslim deporting, and Mosque closing country Italy continues to lead the way in the fight versus Islam. August 6, 2008 Muslims "not welcome" at interfaith prayer centre in Genoa

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

More than 350 illegal immigrants landed in Italy on Saturday, a day after the Government extended a state of emergency in an effort to combat the problem, Italy's Ansa news agency said. Four boats carrying a total of 227 people were either picked up off the island of Lampedusa or reached land by themselves. Two Nigerian children on one of the boats died during the crossing, Ansa said. The bodies of the two children were thrown into the sea, their father told the crew of an Italian coast guard launch that rescued the group. He said his two-year-old son began...

<p>Zots alone moves the wheels of history! Have you ever asked yourselves in an hour of meditation which everyone finds during the day, how long we have been striving for zotness? Not only the years we've been at zot. But from the moment as a child when we realized that trolls could be zotted. It has been a lifetime struggle , a never-ending zot!, I say to you! , and you will understand that it is a privilege to zot! We are moderators!! Americans I ask you, once more zot and be worthy of this historical hour! The liberals will conjure up images of our freepers and they will insult our patriots as murderers. This is our duty to zot their sorry arses into the next time zone. I say, Americans of the world, unite! We must never acquiesce!, for it is together, together that we zotvail! We must never cede control of the capacitor bank for it is together that we prevail!</p>

Castelgandolfo, Jul 23, 2008 / 08:15 pm (CNA).- Having returned from his visit to Australia for World Youth Day, Pope Benedict XVI has moved to his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. After three days of rest, he will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki on Friday and travel to the northern Italian town of Bressanone the following day.In Bressanone, a German-speaking town near the Italian border with Germany, the Pope will stay with his brother Father Georg Ratzinger in a medieval seminary from July 28 to August 11. According to ANSA news agency, a grand piano has been...

"(CNN) -- Italian newspapers, an archbishop and civil liberties campaigners expressed shock and revulsion on Monday after photographs were published of sunbathers apparently enjoying a day at the beach just meters from where the bodies of two drowned Romany gypsy girls were laid out on the sand." "Two of them were pulled to safety but rescuers failed to reach the other two in time to save them. The Web site of the Archbishop of Naples said the girls were cousins named Violetta and Cristina, aged 12 and 13. Their bodies were eventually laid out on the sand under beach towels...

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed. The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of...

Thousands of polygamous marriages like Hadi's have sprung up throughout Italy as a byproduct of a fast-paced and voluminous immigration by Muslims to this Roman Catholic country. Despite the obvious culture clash, Italian authorities largely turn a blind eye, leaving women in a murky semi-clandestine world with few rights and no recourse when things go especially badly, as they did in Hadi's case.

There are now images up of the priestly and other ordinations of the Institute of Christ the King (ICRSS) that took place inside the beautiful Santi Michele e Gaetano church in Florence, Italy. The ordaining bishops were Bishop Basil Meeking, Emeritus of Christchurch, and Archbishop Raymond L. Burke.

Gay godfathers are scared of coming out in the Italian Mafia for fear of being ridiculed or murdered, an anti-Mob prosecutor said. Antonio Ingroia, who has helped bring several bosses to justice, said: "Being gay is still a taboo for Italian society in general, let alone the Mafia, which is an archaic organisation. "These bosses have to cover their homosexuality; they're afraid because they risk being ridiculed and killed." Mr Ingroia said that the American Mafia had "a more broad-minded attitude towards gays and so gay bosses can come out." Gay mafiosi 'too scared to come out of closet'

Rome, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- In a case that hearkens back to the international debate over the life and death of Terri Schiavo, a father in Italy has received permission from a court to take his daughter's life. Eluana Englaro has been in what doctors term a vegetative state for 16 years and has received food and water through a feeding tube. Beppino Englaro, Eluana's father, has been seeking the right to remove the feeding tube and starve and dehydrate Eluana to death in the same way as Schiavo. Schiavo's husband won that right after a years-long legal battle that made...

The President of the northern Italian city of Milan, Filippo Penati, has triggered widespread debate with a controversial proposal to fine Muslims who pray on the streets outside the city's mosque. According to authorities, the number of people praying on the sidewalk creates traffic and obstacles for pedestrians in the area surrounding the Viale Jenner mosque, a converted garage. "Article 190 of the law regarding the obstruction of streets should be applied immediately," said Penati. "I do not know or understand why the law has not been applied before," he said. "The municipality of Milan should apply the law and...

The White House was today forced to apologise to Italy after distributing a biography of Silvio Berlusconi to journalists which alleged that he only gained high office because of his "considerable influence” on the media. The press kit, which was handed out to reporters as they boarded Air Force One on the way to the G8 summit in Japan, also described the Italian Prime Minister as “one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice”. The White House was today investigating how the four-page biography was included in the pack after...

A controversial mosque in the Italian city of Milan is to be shut down, the country's right-wing government says. The Jenner mosque attracts about 4,000 Muslims each week, with Friday prayers often spilling out on to the street. Now, after years of complaints from local residents, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has said he will close the mosque by August. A leading Roman Catholic has accused Mr Maroni of behaving like a fascist. He has rejected that charge. Rendition The Jenner mosque is based in a converted garage. Since it opened as an Islamic cultural centre in 1988, it has...

A 15-year-old Pakistani girl who jumped from a balcony in northern Italy after refusing an arranged marriage says she wants to become an Italian citizen. "I no longer want to be Pakistani," said the girl, named only as 'Piccola' by Turin-based daily La Stampa. An investigation is being opened into Piccola's desperate attempt to escape the future her parents planned for her - marriage to a teenage Pakistani cousin. "They had agreed to marry me to my cousin, a 16-year-old who I don't love," she said. Piccola is currently in hospital with a broken leg after leaping from her family's...