The Italian Almanac
June 20006
Italian News / Europe - June 30 The 26-year-old has invited bids on internet site ebay starting at 1.25 million Euro. She said she was rich herself, liked her car and was looking for a man who could foot the bill for such a luxury.
Italian Fashion - June 30 The designer presented his collection on the last day of the five-day preview showings. Seated in the front row was his friend George Clooney, in town from his villa on nearby Lake Como.
Italian News - June 29 Rome's new film festival announced it would honour Scottish screen legend Sean Connery during its inaugural edition in October. A DVD on his life and career will be presented.
Italian News - June 29 For the second time this year, the romantic island of Capri has totally shut down to protest cuts in ferry service. A blockade by islanders stopped the arrival of ferries packed with tourists.
Italian News - June 28 In the northern Italian town of Treviso a young mother was turned away from her son's christening because her skirt was too short. The priest told Chiara Limido to put a more suitable dress.
Italian News - June 28 A fascinating new exhibition in Siena proves that the walking stick is much more than a physical support for the aged and infirm. The show is on at Santa Maria della Scala museum complex.
Italian News - June 27 A little village perched on a mountainside in the Italian Alps could help researchers identify a gene which protects people from diabetes and high blood pressure.
Italian News - June 27 Famed American architect Peter Eisenman is to add two metro stations on the slopes of Vesuvius to the string of high-profile constructions he has designed around the world.
Italian News - June 25 A media watchdog group protested the conviction of an Italian blogger for defamation, warning that such a verdict could lead to censorship of blogs in Italy.
Italian News - June 24 During their first year of life, young bottlenose dolphins sleep exclusively while swimming and, like all young mammals, have irregular sleep patterns, distributed both through the day and at night.
Italian News - June 24 Italian scientists have found a huge underwater volcano 40km (25 miles) off the southern coast of Sicily. The base of the volcano covers an area larger than Rome.
Italian News - June 23 Asked to name the best age to leave home, a sample of adult Italians from 19,000 families produced answers which averaged out at 25.2 for men and 25.8 for women.
Italian News - June 23 Italy will host the first global databank on desertification, Environment Minister announced on Thursday, speaking at a press conference after signing an accord with the UNCCD.
Italian News - June 22 Italy is preparing to toast its ancient Celtic heritage at the 2006 edition of a festival that has rapidly become one of Europe's most important events of its kind.
Italian News - June 22 A University of Udine team has just started an ambitious three-year project that aims to use space science to develop new therapies to "improve the life quality of the elderly population".
Italian News - June 20 Patricia Richards of Las Vegas will represent the United States in the 41st annual Bacardi Martini Grand Prix, a prestigious bartending competition sanctioned by the International Bartenders Guild.
Italian News - June 20 Italy's birdlife population is plummeting at an alarming rate due to the effects of modern farm practices, experts warned on Monday. The number of birds nesting in rural areas has fallen 10%.
Italian News - June 18 The theme is familiar to many independent movies - explicit chat about love and sex - but the tool used to shoot an Italian feature-length documentary is new: a standard cellphone camera.
Italian News - June 18 Italy unveiled a new archaeological site that some experts say houses the oldest paintings of Western civilization: frescoes which archaeologists said were 2,700 years old.
Italian News - June 17 Graffiti charting the hopes, dreams and fears of prisoners waiting to be tortured or killed by the Inquisition is being uncovered on the walls of former jail cells in the city of Palermo.
Italian Food - June 17 Italian tomato products are repelling invaders with new labels proving that the 'pomodori' came from the Bel Paese. "With the new labels, national products will no longer be anonymous".
Italian News - June 16 A letter by Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein and the wife of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, has turned up at an antiques fair in Tuscany. The letter refers to the author's loneliness.
Italian News - June 16 Roman streetlife in the 1950s and portraits of artists, actors and intellectuals are combined in a new exhibit of work by one of the 20th-century's most important photographers.
Italian News - June 16 The Spider or convertible has an important place in Alfa Romeo tradition because it has always embodied the 'free emotive' expression of the car. And the new model reiterates the same theme.
Italian News - June 15 French actress Catherine Deneuve has been tapped to chair the jury at this year's Venice film festival. Deneuve won international recognition in Bunuel's 1967 masterpiece Belle de Jour.
Italian News - June 15 An exhibition spotlights the use of coral in the ancient world with a spectacular array of rare finds. The main attraction is a series of pieces dating back to the fourth century BC.
Italian News - June 14 Italian women suffer World Cup fever like their men but it's the wrong kind. Rather than raising the roof in joy they hit the roof in anger and a third of them regards the World Cup as "a nightmare".
Italian News - June 14 They will be able to withstand direct impact from a burning “bomb”, a lump of volcanic rock half a meter wide andweighing 150 kg that, falling at 250 km an hour, hits the ground like a speeding Ferrari.
Italian News - June 13 Microsoft founder Bill Gates was eliminated from the World Bridge Championships in Verona after just two days of play on Monday, despite being paired with a former tournament winner.
Italian News / Art - June 13 A new show at Venice's Fenice opera house will be an eye-opener for Miles Davis fans who did not know that the jazz legend was also an accomplished painter.
Italian News - June 13 A brain-dead woman kept alive artificially for more than two months gave birth to a premature baby girl. A few hours after the birth, the machinery artificially keeping the woman alive was shut off.
Italian News - June 12 The total comes to just under twelve million euros: 11,966,348 to be precise. That’s how much it cost to complete “the major ground preparation work over the whole area” at Villa Certosa in Sardinia.
Italian News - June 12 Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci goes on trial, charged with defaming Islam in a 2004 book. Fallaci lives in New York and is not expected to attend the hearing in Bergamo, northern Italy.
Italian News / Movies - June 12 Crew and production team members from Order of the Phoenix have been visiting a series of small ancient towns in the Savona area, with a view to shooting part of the movie in Italy.
Italian News - June 10 After living in Britain and enduring endless jokes from relatives about soggy pasta and overcooked vegetables, Renata Beltrami and Silvia Mazzola have just published a book to set the record straight.
Italian News - June 10 Monsignor Emmanuel Milingo, the Catholic archbishop who shocked the Vatican by defecting to a sect and marrying a Korean acupuncturist, is to perform at an Italian soul music festival next month.
Italian News - June 10 Pompeii has recreated the delights its pleasure loving inhabitants enjoyed as one of Rome's prime resorts. Until the end of July visitors will tour the entertainments the city offered.
Italian News / Europe - June 9 The Vatican expressed alarm on Thursday over reports that thousands of women may be forced to go to work as prostitutes during the soccer World Cup which starts today.
Italian News - June 9 The traditional Italian passion for espressos and cappuccino is being eroded as a fashion for British style tea-drinking creeps across the nation. The average Italian has a cup of tea four times a week.
Italian News - June 8 Diego Maradona had some time on his hands near Naples on Tuesday until Italy's tax police took two Rolex watches from the Argentine soccer legend to chip away at his $30 million euro bill in unpaid income taxes.
Italian News - June 8 The New York Philharmonic will tour six Italian cities, returning to Rome, Florence and Milan after more than 20 years. The tour will feature 11 dates and run through June 20.
Italian News - June 7 Twenty pairs of the cuddly critters - called marmots over here - have been reintroduced into the National Park of the Belluno Dolomites, where naturalists hope they will multiply over the coming years.
Italian News - June 7 Under intense pressure to straighten Italy's public accounts, new Premier Romano Prodi told on Monday his ministers to slash their spending by at least 10% by the end of the year.
Italian News / Television - June 4 To every young woman who's crossed her fingers and said, "Someday my prince will come," someday could be about to arrive. The makers of The Bachelor search for candidates to date an Italian prince.
Italian News / Europe - June 4 Fleets of unmanned "drone" aircraft fitted with powerful cameras are to be used to patrol Europe's borders in a dramatic move to combat terrorism and illegal immigration.
Italian News - June 3 Italy celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of its Republic on Friday with a full-scale military parade in central Rome attended by the head of state and politicians of all stripes.
Italian News / Movies - June 3 Gabriele Muccino has spent the last 10 months in the United States filming The Pursuit of Happyness, a rags-to-riches drama featuring America's box-office magnet Smith and also his seven-year-old son Jaden.
Italian News - June 3 The Ferrara Palio, which has been held since 1729, may become a thing of the past. The event has claimed the title of "most beautiful palio in the world," but it has also been one of the most dangerous.
Italian News - June 2 A married couple in northern Italy were arrested this week for using a Second World War bomb as a garden ornament. The businessman and his wife transformed the Air Force bomb into a fountain.
Italian Science - June 2 A new electronic nose being developed by an Italian French and Spanish team may be able to sniff out disease, drugs, bombs and a range of other modern ills.
Italian News - June 1 Harley-Davidson riders and fans from all over Italy and neighboring France and Switzerland will roar into Aosta this weekend for the fourth annual Italian National Rally.
Italian News - June 1 Alessandra Mussolini, the grand-daughter of Italy's wartime fascist leader, has called for children to be able to take their mother's surname if they wish.
Italian News - June 1 Robots from all over the world have come to Italy for the world's first robot golf challenge. It is the first time Italy has hosted the annual World Robot Championships.