ROME — A Word in Edgeways by long-time Rome-based Australian writer Desmond O’Grady provides a rich and varied range of interviews, literary criticism and profiles that O’Grady has produced over his many years as a foreign correspondent in Italy.
Philip Willan
ROME — Italy is often criticised as a nepotistic gerontocracy, but a 25-year-old showgirl from Argentina is challenging that cliché and becoming in the process the face of Silvio Berlusconi’s image-conscious Italy.
Belen Rodriguez arrived here five years ago as a lingerie model with little more to recommend her than a pretty face, sensuous curves and a quick wit.
She made her television debut in 2007 on a little known local TV station in northern Italy, Tele Boario.
15 Jun 2010
Giorgia Giglioni
ROME – Hundreds of millions of euros invested in Montenegro by Italy are syphoned into accounts controlled by Montenegrin leader Milo Djukanovic and his family, Italian opposition leaders say.
12 Jun 2010
Philip Willan
ROME — While France and Belgium debate the merits of a ban on the burka, the Northern League mayor of the Italian town of Novara has forged ahead with a by-law forbidding the wearing of clothes that conceal a person’s identity and levying a €500 (£430) fine on the first person found violating it.
18 May 2010
angus campbell
CASTELLAMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – I have to thank Bonelli’s Eagle for my spending the night inside the Zingaro Nature Reserve near Trapani, on the western tip of Sicily. Though not a rabid bird watcher, I am infatuated by birds of prey and the discovery that the Bonelli breeds there regularly got me onto the phone and into the car to the Reserve’s offices at Castellamare del Golfo in a flash (I live close by).
1 May 2010
Philip Willan
ROME — Anger over corruption and nepotism in the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiev contributed to the violent unrest that broke out in the central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan earlier this month. A key figure in money-laundering allegations involving Italian telecom companies Fastweb and Telecom Italia is a well-connected U.S.
13 Apr 2010
Paul Scaglia
The recent earthquake that struck Italy is a vivid example of the deadly consequences corruption in a government can have on a population. With a long history of earthquakes in her past, the Italian state failed to protect its citizens by enforcing anti-earthquake regulations that were passed by the government following the 1980 Naples earthquake that killed over 2,500 people.
9 Apr 2010
Insider reporters
Erich Kusch, a distinguished Rome-based foreign correspondent and broadcaster who in 1961 became the first German to reach the South Pole, has died after a long illness at age 79. He was six times president of Italy’s Foreign Press Association and a key figure in post-war German-Italian relations.
26 Feb 2010
John Phillips
SANT'AMBROGIO DI VALPOLICELLA - Outraged Italian wine producers led by the poet Dante Alighieri’s direct descendant are up in arms against plans to build a massive waste re-cycling plant with a 310 ft high chimney in the heart of the idyllic Valpolicella vineyards near Verona , where the grapes for hallowed Amarone wine are nurtured.
7 Aug 2009