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Istat, Italy’s national statistics office, will include estimated dealings from drugs, arms trafficking and prostitution in its GDP figures from now on. […] This move should increase Italy’s economy by at least 1.3 percent in the first year, helping it to comply with EU rules on indebtedness, which limit member countries to spending no more than 3 percent of their GDP. […] Eurostat, the EU’s stats body, says if all illegal activity is included in GDP figures, European economies would have a growth rate closer to 2.4 percent. The agency says the UK’s GDP figure could be three or four...

because there were no qurans or books about Islam on the shelves In Busalla, a small town of 5,700 inhabitants, in the province of Genes, in Liguria, a 24-year-old Senegalese Muslim man went to the town’s public library looking for the Quran and books about Islamic culture but found none. So he went mad and started beating up the two staff members, a 43-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man. Then he ransacked the library, knocking over shelves and throwing down all the books, while shouting “ALLAHU AKHBAR!” (Senegalese Muslims are among the hordes of North African boat people who keep...

Luna was actually born and raised in Holland, of Italian parentage-  More at Reaganite Republican...

(Reuters) Rome - Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi repeated accusations on Wednesday that he was forced out of office at the height of the euro zone crisis in 2011 as the result of a "plot" by European Union officials. Berlusconi's comments followed the publication in Italy of extracts from a new book by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner which suggested that EU officials had approached the U.S. government with a project to force Berlusconi to resign. "They wanted us to refuse to back IMF loans to Italy as long as he refused to go," Geithner's book "Stress Test:...

A justice of the peace in Messina, Italy has fined three girls an amount of approximately $3,500 each for wearing what is considered common beach wear in Italy, based upon the supposed offense to the sensitivities it created for some Saudi Arabian tourists who were also at the private resort of Taormina. It has become common place for Muslims to make demands upon others to adhere to their standards, so it should not come as too great of a surprise that they filed their complaint. What is surprising is that the Italian court concurred and fined their citizens for engaging...

In an unprecedented speech outlining his vision for Europe, Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi called for courageous leaders to work towards a United States of Europe. “For my children’s future I dream, think and work for the United States of Europe,” Renzi said, speaking at the State of the Union in Florence, launching an appeal to convince European leaders to show “not in the cold language of technocracy, that a stronger and more cohesive Europe is the only solution to the solve the problems of our time.” […] The only effective response, according to the prime minister, is to offer...

The appellate court in Florence on Tuesday issued a 337-page explanation for its January guilty verdicts against the American and her former boyfriend Rafaelle Sollecito. American beauty Amanda Knox slit her roommate’s throat with a knife in a fit of rage over being accused of stealing money, the Italian court that convicted her explained Tuesday. The former exchange student from Seattle delivered the fatal slash as cohorts restrained victim Meredith Kercher during a 2007 drug-fueled get together, the judicial panel in Florence asserted in a 337-page document. In their lengthy dissertation explaining the “motivation” behind their guilty verdict, the judges...

An Italian man was crushed to death on Thursday by a giant crucifix dedicated to the late Pope John Paul II, just days before the Polish pontiff will be made a saint in a ceremony at the Vatican. In a bizarre coincidence, the 21-year-old man was reported to have been living in a street named after Pope John XXIII – who will also be canonised in the ceremony on Sunday, in an event that is unprecedented in the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church. The man, named as Marco Gusmini, was posing for a photograph with a group of...

A man has been crushed to death after a giant crucifix dedicated to Pope John Paul II collapsed, just days before a historic Papal canonisation in Rome. The 30-metre-high (98ft) wooden and concrete cross fell during a ceremony in the Italian Alpine village of Cevo, near Brescia. Another man was taken to hospital. The structure was dedicated to John Paul II on his visit to the region in 1998. In a strange co-incidence, the 21-year-old man named as Marco Gusmini by local media, was reported to live in a street named after Pope John XXIII – who will also be...

<p>Just two days before the canonization of Pope John Paul II, a giant crucifix erected in his honor collapsed in Italy, crushing a young man and killing him, according to ANSA.</p> <p>A piece of the 30-meter (98-foot) high wooden crucifix fell down during an event near the village of Cevo, in northern Italy, instantly killing the 21-year-old man. The Jesus Christ figure attached to the cross is six meters high and weighs 600 kg, according to AFP.</p>

Many believe the world is run by a secret organization like the Illuminati, and the people we think are in power are nothing but stooges. It sounds implausible, but is it really a crazy idea? Yes. Yes, it is. And yet there have been secret organizations that created the world as we know it. 10The Carbonari After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the European powers had to decide what to do with the territory that he’d ruled as part of the First French Empire. The borders of Europe were redrawn at the Congress of Vienna, mainly decided by Great Britain, Russia,...

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just completed a series of landmark reports that chronicle an update to the current state of consensus science on climate change. Its conclusion: On our current path, climate change could pose an irreversible, existential risk to civilization as we know it, but we can still fix it if we decide to work together. But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars. That finding was highlighted in last week's premiere of Showtime's climate change docu-drama...

Global military spending dropped by nearly two percent in 2013, led by the United States which dropped it’s spending by 7.8 percent. By contrast, the military industrial complexes in Russia and China are bustling; seeing a 4.8 and 7.4 percent increase, respectively. "For the first time since 2003, Russia spent a larger percentage of it’s Gross Domestic Product on military expenses than the United States… " The U.S. dropped spending from roughly $690 Billion in 2012, to $640 Billion in 2013, shrinking to 3.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. The reduction is noted in real terms, which means the...

There is new real state to be seen in the Pompeii, Italy, archaeological site, with three restored houses open to the public. In time for Easter tourists, three additional houses in the ancient city of Pompeii, Italy, buried in a volcano eruption in 79 A.D., were opened Thursday. Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini inaugurated the three restored houses, or domus, in a ceremony at the celebrated archeological site. The houses were formerly occupied by the families of Marcus Lucretius Fronto, Romulus and Remus and Trittolemo, the office of Pompeii’s archeological superintendent said. Superintendent Massimo Osanna described them as “aristocratic houses.”...

Though officials at the World Health Organization are feverishly working to stop the spread of the Ebola virus in what is now seven African nations, their efforts may be for naught. In Guinea, a hot spot for the deadly contagion, government health officials have said that the outbreak is nearly under control. Yet, Reuters reports that the government “planned to stop publicly releasing the death toll to avoid causing unnecessary panic.” But panic may be in order. Despite the best efforts of emergency health workers it appears that virus may have crossed out of Africa into Europe.

Austrian Soldier, Eastern Europe, 1915 German troops in Berlin, 1914 Ambulances in Palestine, 1918 French trenches, 1916 Senegalese troops, France, 1917 Dead Italian soldiers, Italy, 1915

Easter often is associated with the candy aisle, and its tempting display of rainbow-hued jelly beans, foil-wrapped chocolate eggs and bright-yellow marshmallow Peeps. For an 85-year-old cheese company in Verona, the 40-day Lenten season is punctuated not by sweets but by an unusual cheese product that for two days each week leading up to Easter puts its small staff into curd-making overdrive. And no, it's not the ricotta on which the family has built its name over three generations. It's called basket cheese, and it's been an Easter tradition at Lamagna Cheese Co. for as long as anyone can remember...

ROME, April 16, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A court in the Tuscan city of Grosseto has ordered the city council to accept the “marriage” of two men, the first time such a union has been given juridical recognition in Italy. Giancarlo Cerrelli, vice president of the Catholic Lawyer’s Guild, says the ruling is a “creative judgment that takes no account of the Civil Code and the jurisprudence of the European Union.” Two homosexual men, Giuseppe Chigiotti and Stefano Bucci, contracted a legal “marriage” ceremony in New York in December last year, then returned to Italy and filed a suit against the...

Astronomers may have solved the puzzle of what it was that brought so much devastation to a remote region of Siberia almost a century ago. The asteroid was probably a pile of space rubble - like Mathilde In the early morning of 30 June, 1908, witnesses told of a gigantic explosion and blinding flash. Thousands of square kilometres of trees were burned and flattened. Scientists have always suspected that an incoming comet or asteroid lay behind the event - but no impact crater was ever discovered and no expedition to the area has ever found any large fragments of an ...

Australian pizza is now officially the best in the world. Well, sort of. Judges at last weekend's Campionato Mondiale Della Pizza (Pizza World Championship) held in Parma, Italy, awarded the world's top margherita pizza title to Australian chef Johnny Di Francesco, owner of the 400 Gradi restaurant in Brunswick, a Melbourne suburb. Di Francesco, 36, beat more than 600 competitors from 35 countries to take home the Specialita Traditionale Garantita pizza prize in the annual competition. The win and subsequent publicity has made the small restaurant he owns in his hometown an overnight sensation. "It's been an amazing reaction," Di...