ROME - At university I drank gin and tonic, discerning only the drinkable from the undrinkable. Red wine was my next “passion,” I would spend summer evenings in my garden with my friends with imperial purple lips when we started feeling too old to be glued down by alco-pop to the dance floor at the Student Union. The ShowRum festival awoke a new passion in me.

TUNIS - A boat carrying 70 migrants collided with a Tunisian ship off the North African coast Monday, throwing the human cargo into the sea, maritime sources said.  As many as 30 people have drowned from the migrant ship, according to La Stampa. The boat is believed to have left the Tunisian port of Sfax on its way to Sicily.

 ROME -- Kevin Murray is an Australian painter who has lived and worked in Rome for most of his life. He is showing thirty of his landscapes at Studio Minerva Rome for two weeks from October 21st. His theme is Landscapes of Mood. You could argue that all landscapes evoke a mood of some sort or other but some of Murray's, depicting a sundown, a dusk, a twilight a spring morning or a summer afternoon along the Via Appia Antica, evoke moods in a particular way.

ROME - A trial against an accused stalker was dismissed after the defendant offered to pay the victim 1,500 euros, judicial sources said. The victim refused the money in favour of criminal proceedings. Despite this, it was judged at Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation closed the case due a new law stating that “restorative conduct” had been enacted.