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An Israeli hacker team published on Tuesday images and personal details of members of the Anonymous hacker collective who participated in the OpIsrael attack against Israeli sites earlier this week, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Israeli Elite Force gained access to the computers of 16 Anonymous members and was able to capture screenshots and photos of the anti-Israel hackers with their own webcams. The Israeli team published the information in a Dropbox document via their Facebook page, saying, “Anonymous, next time do not mess with us.” The file includes the names of the attackers, their countries of origin, and usernames and...

While the horror show involving Brendan Eich, Proposition 8, and Mozilla was reaching its ignominious crescendo, I was in Milan, Italy, speaking before an energized crowd of activists in the Lombardy region’s county hall. Unaware of the witch hunt carried out by McCarthy’s rainbow-brandishing gay great-grandsons in Silicon Valley, a middle-aged man came forward and cried out in Italian, “Is it just me, or is the gay lobby imposing a dictatorship on us with their so-called scientific experts?” The science to which he referred wasn’t JavaScript, but rather psychology and pediatrics.  He was referring to homosexual activists’ constant invocation of...

Tuscan 'Excalibur' Mystery to be Unearthed By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News The Sword in The Stone March 1, 2004 — Archaeological digging might soon unveil the mystery surrounding a sword buried in a Gothic abbey in Tuscany, Italian researchers announced. Known as the "sword in the stone," the Tuscan "Excalibur" is said to have been plunged into a rock in 1180 by Galgano Guidotti, a medieval knight who renounced war and worldly goods to become a hermit. Built in Galgano's memory, the evocative Gothic abbey at Montesiepi, near the city of Siena, still preserves the sword in a little chapel....

Tuscany's Excalibur is the real thing, say scientists Rory Carroll in Rome Sunday September 16, 2001 The Observer The sword of St Galgano, said to have been plunged into a rock by a medieval Tuscan knight, has been authenticated, bolstering Italy's version of the Excalibur legend. Galgano Guidotti, a noble from Chiusdano, near Siena, allegedly split the stone with his sword in 1180 after renouncing war to become a hermit. For centuries the sword was assumed to be a fake. but research revealed last week has dated its metal to the twelfth century. Only the hilt, wooden grip and ...

'Catastrophic' event at Campi Flegrei 39,000 years ago Volcanic eruption near Naples may have killed Neanderthals Some researchers are suggesting that Neanderthals were driven to extinction by a massive volcanic eruption near Naples. The suggestion is one of the topics under debate this week at a conference at London's British Museum examining what forces led to the destruction of the Neanderthals and what led to the triumph of the homo sapiens. One new theory holds that a gigantic eruption of the volcano in the Campi Flegrei area near Naples 39,000 years ago was catastrophic for the Neanderthals. That was the...

The Neanderthals were a hardy species that lived through multiple ice ages and would have been familiar with volcanoes and other natural calamities. But the eruptions 40,000 years ago were unlike anything Neanderthals had faced before, Cleghorn and company say. For one thing, all the volcanoes apparently erupted around the same time. And one of those blasts, the Campanian Ignimbrite, is thought to have been the most powerful eruption in Europe in the last 200,000 years... The researchers acknowledge that there are gaps in the volcanoes theory. For instance, the time line needs to be better defined -- did...

Researchers have securely dated a prehistoric human stone tool industry that is thought to have been used by early modern humans, or possibly late Neanderthals, around the time when early modern humans were beginning to emerge in Europe, arguably sometime between 40,000 to 50,000 years B.P... The Uluzzian, a prehistoric stone tool techno-tradition represented by lithic artifacts unearthed by archaeologists at cave locations primarily in Italy and Greece, has been a central contender as a possible "transitional" industry between the typical stone tool types (the Mousterian) used by late European Neanderthals and those (Aurignacian, Châtelperronian) of the earliest modern human...

VATICAN CITY, April 11, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Human life is “sacred and inviolable” and “every civil law is based on the recognition of the first and most fundamental right, the right to life,” Pope Francis told an Italian pro-life organization today. The pope thanked the Movimento per la Vita, one of Italy’s leading political pro-life groups, for their work, urging them to continue “with courage and love” for life “in all its phases.” “It is therefore necessary to reiterate the strongest opposition to any direct attack on life, especially innocent and defenseless, and her unborn child in the womb...

An Italian court on Wednesday recognized a gay couple as married for the first time in Italy, which does not have any form of official acknowledgement of same-sex unions. The court in Grosseto in Tuscany ordered the city council to list the couple, who had their wedding in New York in 2012, as married in a ruling that was immediately hailed by gay rights campaigners as historic. “This is an unprecedented case in our country,” Sergio Lo Giudice, a senator for the Democratic Party and a former head of the watchdog Arcigay, told reporters. …

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

London just witnessed the release of a newly restored version of Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta).Roberto Rossellini’s Italian Neo-Realist classic emerged from the smashed debris of what was left of the Eternal City as the German armies retreated and the Allies slowly crept towards it.Watching the movie today it lacks none of its emotional punch, not least because of the almost documentary feel of what is being viewed. The pacing and use of hand-held cameras, to say nothing of the city itself as character, all make for something that in many ways hardly seems dated. That said, filmed at...

Isabela Munoz of Oakley, Calif., left, talks with her sister, Jasmine, about an upcoming trip to Rome. Isabela donated her bone marrow to help Jasmine survive leukemia. Thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Jasmine will realize a dream when she and her family travel to Rome in April to see the Vatican and attend Pope Francis' general audience. (CNS photo/Jose Luis Aguirre, The Catholic Voice)OAKLAND, Calif. - Jasmine Munoz could have met Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, gone to a beach or taken a cruise, but the 12-year-old leukemia survivor would rather see the Vatican and meet Pope Francis. Thanks to...

My order is inevitable for it is simply The Father's will concisely done in full view and commitment of My Witness that is My spirit in you . . . Acts 17:28 28 For in him we live and move and are! As one of your own poets says it, ‘We are the sons of God.’ John 14:12 I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, if anyone steadfastly believes in Me, he will himself be able to do the things that I do; and he will do even greater things than these, because I go to the Father. Job...

Last week, Pope Francis warned Italy's Mafia leaders that if they continue their evil ways, they will go to hell. Hooray for the pope. More power to him for threatening evil people with hell. I had begun to despair that in my lifetime I would hear such talk from mainstream Christian or Jewish leaders. For the past two generations, God has rarely been depicted as judging and punishing. Instead all we have heard is the phrase, "God Is Love," which, when offered as the one description of God, is morally meaningless -- and even morally dangerous. If your aim...

Pope Francis (CNS) Pope Francis’s life is in danger from ‘ndrangheta, Italy’s most feared crime group, a leading anti-mafia judge has said.Nicola Gratteri, a magistrate in the southern city of Reggio Calabria, near ‘ndrangheta’s heartland, has said that Pope Francis’s crackdown on financial corruption in the Vatican, has angered bosses in the notorious crime squad.Gratteri said: “I don’t know if organised crime is in the position to do something, but it’s certainly thinking about it. It could be dangerous.”He said Francis was “on the right path” in attempting to clean out the stables at the Vatican.But Mr Gratteri, who has...

ROME (RNS) Pope Francis could be at risk from the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime organization, according to a leading anti-mob prosecutor who has himself been the target of threats from the mafia. Nicola Gratteri, 55, a state prosecutor in the southern Italian region of Calabria, where the ‘Ndrangheta is most active, said the pope’s effort to reform the church is making the ‘Ndrangheta “very nervous.” The organization is considered by experts in Italy to be the most dangerous, most unified and most difficult to penetrate mafia-type organization in the country. “I cannot say if the organization is in a position to...

...The pontiff exhorted Mafiosi to change their ways, issuing the call Sunday, a day after the beatification of an Italian priest in Palermo who was slain in 1993 by mobsters after he defiantly preached against the Mafia...

Two senior members of the Canadian mafia have been murdered in Sicily and their bodies incinerated, victims of what police suspect is a vicious turf war in Canada which has spilled over into the Cosa Nostra's Italian heartland. After an anonymous tip-off, the bodies of Juan Ramon Paz Fernandez and Fernando Pimentel were discovered near a rubbish dump in the countryside outside Palermo on Thursday. Police described the double killing as an "old-fashioned" gangland hit. Spanish-born Fernandez, 57, a notoriously tough enforcer for Montreal's Rizzuto clan, was expelled from Canada last year for the third time after serving a 10-year...

Willie Sutton, a notorious theif from the 1930's, was once asked why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money is," he replied. So where's the money today? Government subsidies for renewable energy - massive subsidies with little oversight. In Europe, this means easy pickings for organized crime. And the Sicilian mafia is cleaning up. Washington Post: The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and...

People around the world have embraced the local food movement as a way to support local economies, eat healthier and reduce their carbon footprint. Residents of Naples, Italy, however, are doing just the opposite. Napolitanos like Antonio Trotta read grocery store labels to avoid eating local fruit and vegetables, meat, even the region’s famed buffalo mozzarella produced in eastern Campania, outside Naples. The area north of Naples* was once an important agricultural center. But the local mafia, the Camorra, has been dumping waste from European factories and hospitals on the land for decades—an environmental problem compounded nightly when dozens of...