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Pope Francis delivered a fire-and-brimstone message to the Mafia on Friday: "Repent." "Blood-stained money, blood-stained power — you can't bring it with you to your next life," the pontiff said during a prayer vigil in Rome for victims of mob violence.

Amanda Knox is in America and she's not going back to Italy. However, Rafael Solecitto -- every bit as innocent -- is an Italian citizen, and they're determined to jail Amanda Knox, but they can't, so they'll jail the guy no one cares about, Rafael. The Italian judicial system has a quirk unlike ours. When a trial court pronounces you culpable, you're not actually convicted of the crime -- not yet. The actual conviction only occurs when a court, sitting in review, confirms the conviction. I believe I read that Italy considers this trial finding of culpability less seriously than...

Mafia killings don’t typically shock Italians—as disturbing as the occasional hit may be, the tragedy usually affects only friends and families of the victims. But a cold-blooded point-blank killing this month in southern Italy has a nation grieving—for a 3-year-old child. Nicola “Coco” Campolongo was shot in the head along with his grandfather, Giuseppe Iannicelli, and his grandfather’s 27-year-old companion—victims of an apparent mob hit over money. […] The killing even caught the attention of Pope Francis, who called Coco’s death “unprecedented.” He asked worshipers at his Sunday address to say a prayer for Coco and called on the boy’s...

Five men have been taken into custody as suspects in the 1978 Lufthansa heist at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, an FBI spokeswoman says, according to Reuters. More than $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels were netted in the heist, which took place on Dec. 11, 1978 and was made famous in the 1990 film “Goodfellas.”

Police bust a crime gang led by womanColombo: Sri Lankan Police has busted an organised crime gang led by a woman, whose alleged practises will put to shame seasoned godfathers of the underworld. According to a report in ‘Sunday Times’, she has beaten out limbs of men, has been involved in territorial wars with drug peddlers, pimps and managed sex workers including men in Colombo. The gang was spread across the city and worked out of night clubs and casinos. In a sting operation, the protagonist along with her aides was arrest from a place in Marine Drive, Kollupitiya last...

In the best possible light, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie built a top staff of lying thugs who threatened lives and safety to serve his political ends. If not, Christie is a lying thug himself. Emails and text messages among his close aides made public Wednesday documented that in September they gleefully engineered George Washington Bridge lane closures to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for failing to endorse their boss’ reelection. Local officials say the gridlock they caused delayed ambulances in responding to four calls, including one involving an unconscious 91-year-old woman who later died.

Bill Dal Cerro of the Italic Institute of America [Free for All, Dec. 28] took Dana Milbank to task for allegedly stereotyping Italians in his Dec. 22 Sunday Opinion column, “Godfathers of the Capitol.” But Milbank never used the word “Italian.” He did write “mafia” twice, and he used the phrase “going to the mattresses” once. He also used the term “mob boss.” In my opinion, it takes more effort than it is worth to be offended, no matter what one’s origins, by any of these words. It seems to me that even in “today’s enlightened era,” to use Dal...

MONTREAL — For the third time in just over four years, the main Italian Catholic church in Montreal hosted a funeral for Canada's reputed first family of Mafia power. A cortege of 11 limousines followed a hearse carrying the body of Vito Rizzuto, the multilingual don who ran an international crime syndicate that frustrated Canadian law enforcement for decades. The 67-year-old Sicilian-born Montrealer died of complications from lung cancer a week earlier. About 100 people attended Monday's funeral, mainly close relatives of the don. None of them spoke to reporters. It was a far cry from the big crowds that...

WASHINGTON — Remember the new spirit of cooperation in Washington? That’s so last week. The era of good feeling is over, its duration measured in days, or perhaps hours. Last Wednesday, 36 Senate Republicans — 80 percent of the caucus — voted against the budget compromise drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee. Already, Republicans, including Ryan, are making noises about another showdown early next year over the federal government’s debt limit. You might say they’ve returned to their default position. By Thursday morning, Senate leaders were back to petty bickering. Harry Reid, the...

MONTREAL — Time took care of crime boss Vito Rizzuto before his enemies could get to him. The 67-year-old died Monday morning of a lung ailment, ending his 35-year reign atop Canada's criminal underworld and throwing the Mafia into disarray. A source at Montreal's north-end Sacre-Coeur hospital confirms Rizzuto died Monday at 4 a.m. An ambulance transported Rizzuto to the hospital's emergency room on Saturday evening, with family members in tow. A source says he was confused and had a fever. Nicknamed "Montreal's Teflon don," Rizzuto ran a powerful organized crime syndicate for decades but was never convicted in Canada...

Rudy Giuliani has claimed that the mafia in Italy put an $800,000 contract on his head while he was mayor of New York City. Giuliani, who was praised for his leadership during the 9/11 terrorist attacksy, revealed to Oprah Winfrey on her OWN cable-channel show "Oprah: Where Are They Now" that as a former prosecutor he was a target for criminals who he'd put behind bars, especially mobsters. "I don't think anybody prosecuted more mafia members than I did," said Giuliani, who was U.S. Attorney before becoming the mayor from 1994-2001. "Certainly, no one sent them to prison for the...

The anti-corruption stance of Pope Francis has riled Italy’s powerful mafia groups, according to a prosecutor who specializes in mob cases. State prosecutor Nicola Gratteri – who works in the southern Italian region of Calabria, where the ‘Ndrangheta mafia is active – told the Italian daily Fatto Quotidiano that Francis’ statements on transparency and dismantling economic power in the Vatican are making mobsters “nervous and agitated.” “I cannot say if the organization is in a position to do something like this, but they are dangerous and it is worth reflecting on,” Gratteri said. “If the godfathers can find a way...

The five most popular JFK assassination conspiracy theories, as outlined by Adriane Quinlan, has generated questions and thoughtful responses from readers: WhoDat Garrison is the closest yet... Nobody will ever know exactly what happened to JFK, but know these facts: With the number, angles and accuracy of the bullets, Oswald 100% did not act alone. Secret service assigned to JFKs car all pulled back seconds before he was shot. George HW Bush has repeatedly denied being in Dallas Tx on the day of the shooting after multiple sources have evidence proving otherwise.Velociraptor I believe there was a conspiracy but that...

"A State with No Republicans!" Very interesting...Note this. A US State with zero Republicans in office - The State of Illinois. Think about this. Some interesting data on the 'state' of Illinois ... There are more people on welfare in Illinois than there are people working. Chicago pays the highest wages to teachers than anywhere else in the U.S. averaging $110,000/year. Their pensions average 80-90% of their income. Wow, are Illinois and Chicago great or what? Be sure to read till the end. I've never heard it explained better. Perhaps the U.S. should pull out of Chicago ? Body count:...

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...

Forty-nine years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy former mob buster Robert Blakey contends the most likely explanation from the available evidence is that the Mafia was responsible as reported by Tovin Lapan for the Las Vegas Sun: "I think the mob set Oswald up as a patsy. It's not that I think (Oswald) didn't shoot (Kennedy), but that I think he was set up so (investigators) would focus on the Cuban connections (and not the mob). Did the mob do it? I don't know for sure, but it explains more of the evidence than anything else." Blakey,...

And so it begins – the plentiful coverage of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy. The date itself is weeks away and there will be countless commemorative programs, specials and copious punditry on TV. JFK: The Smoking Gun (Sunday, Discovery, 8 p.m.) is one of the most controversial of the bunch. Made for the tiny U.S. cable channel Reelz, it’s a two-hour docudrama based on the book of the same name by former Australian police detective Colin McLaren. He claims to have spent years on “the forensic cold-case investigation of JFK’s assassination” and says...

I realize that delving into the world of assassination research and a belief in a conspiracy will lead some to brand me as an extremist or a nut, but the facts I have uncovered are so compelling that I must make the case that Lyndon Baines Johnson had John Fitzgerald Kennedy murdered in Dallas to become president himself and to avert the precipitous political and legal fall that was about to beset him. Snip When Lodge was in his eighties, he served vigorously as the chairman of Ronald Reagan’s campaign for President in Connecticut, a post I had recruited him...

Dan Rather excluded from CBS' anniversary coverage of Kennedy assassination Published: November 5, 2013 1:57 PM By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The 50th-anniversary coverage of the Kennedy assassination on CBS News won't include the recollections of its longtime anchor Dan Rather, further proof of the lingering bitterness following Rather's messy exit and subsequent lawsuit against the network. Rather helped organize CBS' plans for President John F. Kennedy's visit to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and as a young reporter was a key component of assassination coverage. Now 82, with his own show on AXS-TV, he's one of the few reporters on...