ROME– As the West determines how to punish Syria for using chemical weapons, Syria’s Ambassador to Italy is still on Italian soil despite U.S. protests, diplomatic sources say.
Desmond O'Grady
SORRENTO -- Naples has long been a leading tourist destination not only for the city itself but for the choice places nearby such as Capri, the Amalfi coast, Ravello, Paestum and Pompeii. But Naples’ garbage disposal crisis and the widespread petty crime have dissuaded all but the hardiest from visiting it. ‘See Naples and die,’ a tribute to its beauty, has taken on sinister connotations.
27 Aug 2013
JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME–FAO Chief José Graziano da Silva is “forcing staff to starve” through job cuts contravening the hunger-fighting agency's mission, it is claimed.
25 Aug 2013
John Phillips
ROME --The strength of Amara Lakhous’s second novel, Divorce Islamic Style, is his deep insight into the underworld of Muslim immigrants and their interaction with the dark side of Italy.
22 Aug 2013
JAMES WALDRON
ROME -- The only award I ever won during my whole scholastic career was for ‘Best Turn-Out’- I have a feeling it was a weekly thing and I only won it once, but rather pathetically I still cherish the memory. I was reminded of it again the other day while watching Roman office workers in their lunch-hour (or three). I was thinking that if there was an equivalent award for businessmen, Italians would be permanent, unchallenged, worldwide winners.
22 Aug 2013
JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME – FAO management is reneging on pledges to redeploy staff whose positions are being abolished, telling them are no funds available to keep them in the troubled UN agency, sources say. In another development a new Orwellian circular has cautioned that staff talking to the media about policies at the Rome-based famine fighting agency face being sacked.
21 Aug 2013
Desmond O'Grady
FLORENCE -- Janet Ross was a major factor in drawing people’s attention to the Tuscan countryside rather than concentrating on Florence.
She spent 60 years, until her death in 1927, living near Florence but probably her greatest influence was through her books on rural life and on Tuscan cooking –even though she owned up to “never having even boiled an egg.”
17 Aug 2013
JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME– UN Food and Agriculture Organisation staff face swingeing job cuts by year end as Director General José Graziano da Silva slashes dlrs 37 million from the famine-fighting agency’s budget, FAO sources say.
14 Aug 2013
ABDELKADER CHEREF
NEW YORK-Algeria, a major oil-gas exporter with a young population of 37 million, is led by a 76-year-old who says he fought France --Abdelaziz Bouteflika represents a generation legitimising hegemony over the country on the basis of its valour in the 1962 independence war.
10 Aug 2013