Free Republic

A gang threw excrement at the office of a gay organization in Rome, while shouting death threats against people inside, Italian media reported on Friday. \Di Gay Project (DGP) in southern Rome was attacked on Wednesday night, with the crime being reported to police on Friday, Corriere della Sera said. A mob threw excrement and other items, such as wooden boxes and vegetables, at the organization’s office, as people were rehearsing a theatre performance inside. Members of the gang, estimated to be aged between 15 and 40, also shouted threats such as “We’ll set you alight” and “you deserve to...

It’s a scene straight out of fiction. Refugees from North Africa, packed like sardines in small boats are streaming in droves across the Med to Italy. “According to Italian interior ministry figures given to the Guardian, 59,880 migrants and refugees have landed on the country’s coast this year – almost as many as in the whole of 2011, which holds the record. The situation is unprecedented. Sicily, which has received more than 53,000 of the new arrivals, is bearing the brunt and struggling to cope. And summer – historically the peak time for boat landings – has only just begun.”...

Pope Francis has declared a sort of holy war on the Mafia. And it's not unreasonable to believe that the Mafia may fight back. On Saturday, the pope traveled to Calabria, the heartland of one of Italy's biggest organized crime enterprises, the 'Ndrangheta, and, in front of a crowd of more than 100,000, blasted the 'Ndrangheta as example of "the adoration of evil and contempt of the common good." Then he dropped the hammer: Those who in their lives follow this path of evil, as mafiosi do, are not in communion with God. They are excommunicated. [Pope Francis] This is...

Estonian researchers believe they may have finally discovered the whereabouts of “Dracula’s” grave, which is in Italy and not the Romanian Transylvanian Alps as first thought. The inspiration behind Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic novel “Dracula” is thought to be Vlad III, the 15th century Prince of Wallachia in Eastern Europe. Known posthumously as Vlad the Impaler, the ruler was known for his brand of cruelty across Europe, which included impaling his enemies. Vlad’s ultimate enemy were the Ottomans. Depictions of his endless cruelty made history books, securing his reputation as one of the biggest villains in Turkey’s collective consciousness, as...

The Italian unit of the frozen food company, Findus, has produced what is thought to be the first TV commercial in Italy that touches on the subject of homosexuality. Thousands join Rome's Gay Pride march (08 Jun 14) Ten months after the chairman of the Italian pasta giant, Barilla, said during an interview that the company would never feature gay people in its adverts, Findus Italia has produced a commercial in which a man is seen “coming out” to his mother over a meal. The advert below features Luca, who hosts a dinner party for his mum at the home...

“Num nums!” Perhaps surprisingly, Antonio Cassano has never played a single minute of World Cup football, with his inclusion in Italy’s 2014 squad being the Parma striker’s first ever call-up to an Azzurri World Cup squad. Now aged 31, Cassano has admitted that he thought his chance to appear at a World Cup had passed, but thanks to a serious show of dedication he was able to persuade coach Cesare Prandelli that he was worth taking to Brazil – largely due to him scoring 12 goals and dropping 10kg over the course of the 2013/14 season. As a reward for...

Europe's most active volcano, Mount Etna, erupts sending columns of lava and ash high into the air. The spectacular visual display was accompanied by loud explosions. Airport authorities at Catania in Sicily closed the airport to avoid the hazardous ash clouds caused by the eruption

Responding to overwhelming vote from 5 Star Movement members to join UKIP in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group in the European Parliament, UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: “I am extremely pleased with this result. I look forward to working with 5 Star Movement very much to provide a genuine voice of opposition in the European Parliament. This gives a great confidence boost to those other delegation members who are coming to sign up to our common Group next week. This feeds into a process of solidifying what should be a big group. We will be the peoples’ voice....

An Italian man who had a sex change to become a woman is challenging the Italian state's refusal to allow him to stay married to his wife. Alessandro Bernaroli, a bank employee now known as Alessandra, insists that he and his wife of nine years are still very much in love and want to remain married, despite the fact that he switched gender. His wife, also called Alessandra, says she too wants to stay married despite now finding herself living with a woman. The couple got married in 2005 after a long courtship but Alessandro says that he hid the...

Rome this week is celebrating the 70th anniversary since the city was liberated from the Nazis, on June 4th 1944, a moment described by Mayor Ignazio Marino as one of "uncontrollable joy" in the Italian capital. Allied troops marched into Rome 70 years ago today, and were greeted by crowds of cheering citizens as Nazi forces retreated north. The long-awaited liberation came more than four months after the Allies landed on the banks of Anzio, south-west of Rome, where they battled against Nazi troops at a cost of thousands of lives. Speaking at a ceremony to mark the “fundamental date...

Just when you thought that Italy’s crazy government couldn’t get any more insane, it hit on a gimmick for improving the international perception of its economy. Just include the black market in its GDP. Never mind that the black market isn’t taxable, difficult to estimate and not exactly a good thing. Italy is changing how it calculates its gross domestic product, a measurement of the overall economy, to include black market activity — everything from prostitution to illegal drug sales to smuggling and arms trafficking. Economists predict illegal sales will add 1.3 percentage points to GDP this year.Hey, it’s one...

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...