NEW YORK-When thousands of people marched in Casablanca this summer to condemn the sexual abuse of children, they had no idea the Maghreb kingdom would be the theatre for an international scandal.
A number of suspected foreign offenders have recently been jailed in Morocco. In May 2013, a Casablanca court sentenced a 60-year-old French man to 12 years in jail on paedophilia charges. And last June, a 59-year-old British man was arrested in Tetouan over accusations of raping a six-year-old girl.
ROME - In Italy they call him the wizard of “the look” and the stylist also capable of making a star appear insignificant.
NEW YORK-We all know that truth is the first casualty- Syria's case is no exception to this rule -And this time we have the same players and same scenario. On one side the United States and some European nations who want to wage war against a Third World country that terrorizes its population; and on the other side, of course, Russia and China with their unwavering military support for this "second-rate" country which is potentially rich and geo-strategically situated!
ROME—FAO chief José Graziano da Silva has cut some 16 jobs from the UN agency’s IT division in what staff claim is “random, rather personal” culling of employees, FAO sources say.
ROME--UK Ambassador Christopher Prentice has given Antonio Millozzi an Honorary MBE from the Queen for his work at Monte San Martino Trust. The Trust was founded in 1989 by British veterans of the Italian Liberation Campaign in World War II as a permanent tribute to the courage and generosity of the Italian people who aided thousands of escaping Allied prisoners of war after the Italian Armistice in September 1943.
MANACOR, Mallorca-After the French Open and Wimbledon, I stay on in Europe and follow the US hard court tournaments on TV -- challenging as in many countries tennis is broadcast only on cable. The Spanish island of Mallorca, home to Rafael Nadal, seemed my best bet to catch the US Open. But when I arrived at my rental apartment, I discovered the TV didn’t carry Sky Sports. Several neighborhood bars did have Sky, but they stayed tuned to soccer around the clock.
ROME -- Can Piazza Armerina help save Pompeii? Both are Unesco World Heritage Sites, but in simple archaeological terms the ‘Villa of Mosaics’ (as it is known locally) is more important than the Vesuvian city. The villa is surely the greatest house of the 4th-century world; Pompeii was an important city but never a great one. Of course, archaeological importance pales beside the relative importance of these places today as global and national assets. Six million visitors each year suffer Pompeii; 400,000 trek annually to central Sicily to the villa.
VATICAN CITY– Pope Francis named Veneto archbishop Pietro Parolin Vatican Secretary of State Saturday to replace much criticised Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See said.
Bertone, who will be 79 in December, asked to remain in office till Oct. 15 when he will hand over to the 58 year old Vatican diplomat, currently nuncio in Venezuela.
VENICE—The 55th Venice Biennale's theme of the Encyclopedic Palace, a building containing all the world's knowledge, finds expression in the Luciano Benetton Collection, Imago Mundi, revealed this week for the first time.
"We want to put people together without causing a clash," Luciano Benetton told the Italian Insider when discussing the ultimate aim of the project. Consisting of over 1000 paintings from five countries, Imago Mundi was commissioned and collected by Signor Benetton on his travels around the world.
