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Stocks accelerated their losses Friday, on track to logging their worst session this year, after stalled debt negotiations in Greece, some disappointing economic news and reports that S&P downgraded a handful of Italian banks. In the latest round of disappointment from the euro zone, ratings agency S&P downgraded 34 of 37 Italian banks, including banking giant UniCredit, citing worries over the banking industry and economic risks in the country. The move comes after the ratings agency's downgrade of Italy's sovereign rating in January to BBB+, along with downgrades of nine other euro zone countries. All three major averages are on...

It has been 40 years since the "The Godfather" drew fans into the iconic saga of the Corleone family, reinventing the mob-movie genre and embedding the phrase "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse" in the American idiom. But the blockbuster film and its two sequels, with more than $1 billion in revenues, are about far more than crime and punishment to Tom Santopietro, the author of "The Godfather Effect." Mr. Santopietro, a theater manager who has written books on Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and Barbra Streisand, saw "The Godfather: Part II" (1974) as a college sophomore, and it...

Apparently not content by merely insulting Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by suggesting that the Palestinians be given territory as it was before 1967, President Obama and hapless Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have given Israel several private warnings telling them not to take military action against Iran and the 'Madman of Tehran' Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At a time where Obama should be giving unconditional support to our allies in the Middle East, he again chooses to rebuke them and snub his nose at them.

Charlie:: “You coulda been another Billy Conn, and that skunk we got you for a manager, he brought you along too fast.” Terry: “It wasn’t him, Charley, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, `Kid, this ain’t your night. We’re going for the price on Wilson.’….I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palooka-ville! You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda...

Washington, DC, December 1, 2011 -- Only 21 percent of surveyed medical students could identify five true and two false indications of when and when not to wash their hands in the clinical setting, according to a study published in the December issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of APIC - the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. Three researchers from the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hospital Epidemiology at Hannover Medical School in Hannover, Germany collected surveys from 85 medical students in their third year of study during a lecture class that...

In one of the best Marx Brothers scenes is from A Night at the Opera, where Groucho and Chico are ripping up a contract and they finally come to the SANITY CLAUSE, in which Chico proclaims there is no SANITY CLAUSE. In tomorrow’s Financial Times, there is a story about France pushing for a Christmas gift from the ECB. The gift that the French are hoping for is a backstop for the European banks that are under severe stress because of the huge amount of EURO sovereign bonds on the banks’ balance sheets. In order for the ECB to act,...

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Mario Monti formed a government of bankers, diplomats and business executives Wednesday, saying the absence of politicians in his Cabinet will spare political parties the "embarrassment" of taking the tough decisions needed to steer the country from financial disaster. The 68-year-old former European Union competition commissioner and his Cabinet were sworn in at a solemn ceremony at the presidential palace that formally ended Silvio Berlusconi's 3 1/2-year-old government and the media mogul's 17-year-long political dominance. Monti faces his first major hurdle Thursday when he presents his legislative agenda to parliament and subjects his government to...

Angela Merkel has appealed to German politicians to approve Europe's rescue efforts ahead of a crucial vote that could torpedo the Brussels summit. The German Chancellor, who on Tuesday must secure the Bundestag's approval before European bail-out plans can proceed, briefed politicians on plans to increase the firepower of the European Finance Stability Facility (EFSF) from €440bn (£383bn) to more than €1 trillion. She assured them that Germany would not have to stump up more cash because financial engineering would be used to boost the bail-out fund. Even so, European leaders face a tense wait before the Brussels summit resumes...

In a very bizarre turn of events, it seems that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is all riled up over Clint Eastwood's latest movie, J. Edgar. Which, of course, stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the FBI's founding director, J. Edgar Hoover. So when the bureau's not chasing down Scarlett Johansson's nude pics, it's all up in Clint's business! What's up with the FBI going all Hollywood these days? Color us not surprised it has everything to do with Eastwood's portrayal of The Hoov. And remember we first criticized Clint for failing to make the character "gay-enough." Now it seems the FBI...

LONDON (AP) -- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is appealing for other donors to join Britain in a multi-million dollar campaign to wipe out guinea worm, a crippling and painful parasitic disease that now exists only in four African countries. At a press briefing in London on Wednesday, British officials are expected to pledge 20 million pounds (US$31 million) over four years to the cause - but only if other donors also open their wallets. The global campaign to eradicate guinea worm started in 1980, when there were about 3.5 million cases of the disease, also known as dracunculiasis, every...

Here's a trillion dollar deficit question: Where did Iran's Favorite Congress Critter, Ron Paul, get his army of followers ? It's an important question to ask. Bloggers can't criticize Paul without having a cross burned on their blog by the RuPaulista SS. (Erick Erickson's RedState has had to ban anyone who wasn't a member for more than six months for mentioning Paul in a post.) Conservative radio show hosts can't utter a peep about Mahmoud AmendinePaul without having his lines jammed up for the rest of the show.

Not every anti-Israel step the Obama administration takes is reflected by policy. For every "start negotiations with the 1949 Armistice lines" there is disinformation, a falsification of history spewed out by the administration. The latest example of this falsification of history was presented tonight by new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. On his way to meetings with Israeli and Egyptian officials, Panetta warned that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the Middle East, and said Israeli leaders must restart negotiations with the Palestinians and work to restore relations with Egypt and Turkey. In a blunt assessment made as he was traveling...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” In saying this, Gates was repeating a dictum laid down by Douglas MacArthur after the Korean War, who urged the United States to avoid land wars in Asia. Given that the United States has fought four major land wars in Asia since World War II — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — none of which had...

A cannibal has admitted to killing a man and then making sausages and meatballs from his corpse. He was so proud of his culinary achievements, including rib dishes, that he posted short video clips on the Internet, according to police who removed the offensive footage. The 21-year-old - who worked as a chef - confessed to police in the Russian city of Murmansk saying that he had a strong desire to eat human flesh. He had used a gay dating website to lure his victim, aged 32, to his flat where he brutally knifed him to death before cutting off...

Rick Perry kicks off his campaign tomorrow, but is he electable? In an interview last fall, the Texas governor advocated dismantling Medicare and Social Security. For months, Republicans have complained about their choices in the 2012 presidential race. Mitt Romney seems unprincipled, they’ve said. Michele Bachmann is too flimsy. Tim Pawlenty looks fine on paper, but in person, not so much. And Newt Gingrich is just plain erratic. But now disaffected conservatives think they’ve found their man. His name? Rick Perry. This weekend, while most of the field focuses on the Ames, Iowa straw poll, the three-plus-term Texas governor will...

Efforts appear to be under way to offer Muammar Gaddafi a way of escape from Libya, with Italy saying it was trying to organise an African haven for him, and the US signalling it would not try to stop the dictator from fleeing. The move came amid mounting diplomatic and military pressure on Gaddafi as Britain tries to assemble a global consensus demanding he surrender power while intensifying air strikes against his forces. An international conference in London – including the UN, Arab states, the African Union, and more than 40 foreign ministers – will focus on co-ordinating assistance in...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A single laptop can reveal much, and so it is with the digital treasure chest that Colombian commandos found in the jungle quarters of slain rebel leader Raul Reyes. Files in the computer seized in Saturday's raid into Ecuador that claimed the lives of Reyes and 23 of his comrades offer an intimate portrait of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's desire to undermine Colombia's U.S.-allied government. If authentic, the documents show that sympathies Chavez first aired publicly in January grew out of a relationship that dates back more than a decade. But Chavez is not one of...

Indian police detained two people after an angry mob of fired workers burned to death a senior executive of a steel factory, an official said Friday. After learning they were laid off, about a dozen workers attacked a vehicle carrying Radhey Shyam Roy as he was leaving the factory in eastern Orissa state on Thursday, dousing the Jeep with gasoline and setting it on fire, said police Superintendent Ajay Kumar Sarangi. Two other people in the vehicle were allowed to flee but Roy, 59, was trapped inside and later died of severe burns, Sarangi said. Police were questioning two workers...

More than 100,000 Italian women and their supporters turned out across the country to protest against Premier Silvio Berlusconi, saying his dalliances with young women humiliate the sex as a whole and degrade female dignity. Backers of the 74-year-old Berlusconi, who is under investigation for allegedly paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl, dismissed the protests as strictly political

A couple of weeks ago we reported that the Italian inventor Andrea Rossi has announced that he has a commercial ready cold fusion reactor that is safe and reliable, capable of producing 10 kW of heat; and is in process of going into production, with a 1 MW plant being built ganging 125 of these units together. Rossi has allowed outside scientists to perform tests on the module and report on their findings. Papers on these tests have begun to emerge. In a paper that came out Monday morning (Italy time), Prof. Giuseppe Levi of the University of Bologna describes...

A Portuguese historian believes he has solved the age-old mystery surrounding the nationality of Christopher Columbus. According to Manuel Rosa, a lecturer at Duke University, North Carolina, the explorer was in fact the son of Polish King Władysław III. It has always been thought that King Władysław III fell in battle against the forces of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Varna in 1444. According to Mr Rosa, however, the king managed to survive the battle unscathed and fled to the Portuguese island of Madeira where he lived out the rest of his life as a hermit and married...

The controversy surrounding the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case is disconcerting. The allegations that the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is not enforcing civil rights laws in a race-neutral manner is disturbing on several levels - as a European, an Italian, a woman and a judge. The accusations made by two Justice Department attorneys who worked in the Civil Rights Division ...

Italy is set to become the next European country to ban the burka after a government report ruled in favour of the proposed legislation. MPs from the anti-immigration Northern League party, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling right wing coalition, have presented the proposal in a bill.

MANVILLE, N.J. - A New Jersey woman whose license plates read "bioch" said the state is taking the plates back because someone filed a complaint. Kim Romano, 49, of Manville said the plates, bearing the slang term for "bitch," have been on her dark blue Chrysler convertible for four years without incident, but the state Motor Vehicle Commission sent her a notice saying a complaint had been filed and the plates were being recalled, The (Newark) Star-Ledger reported Wednesday. "The commission, in processing your request, erred and assigned a combination which is considered objectionable," Dodie Burrell, a supervisor in the...

Italian police reportedly unearthed hidden dossiers on 'enemies' during a raid on Church of Scientology offices in Turin. The files, apparently discovered behind locked doors in a basement office, allegedly contained personal information on judges, police officers and journalists identified as hostile to the Church.

ROSSANO, Italy, April 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Italian government has announced that it will launch an investigation of a hospital where a premature baby born alive following an attempted abortion was left to die for hours, before receiving medical attention thanks to the intervention of a priest."If the reports are correct we are talking about a grave case of therapeutic abandonment of a very premature newborn, probably also with some form of disability: an act against the sense of human pity but also against all ethics of medical practice," said Eugenia Roccella, the Italian Subsecretary of Health. "The...

Massimo Osanna, head of archaeology at Basilica University, said that the team working at Torre Satriano near Potenza in what was once Magna Graecia had unearthed a sloping roof with red and black decorations, with "masculine" and "feminine" components inscribed with detailed directions on how they slotted together. Professor Christopher Smith, director of the British School at Rome, said that the discovery was "the clearest example yet found of mason's marks of the time. It looks as if someone was instructing others how to mass-produce components and put them together in this way"" he told The Times. Professor Osanna suggested...

San Francisco restaurant celebrates its anniversary by turning back the prices You may get tired of hearing you grandfather tell you how cheap things were in the 1950s but Tuesday is your chance to walk in his shoes without getting annoyed. Villa Romana in San Francisco's Sunset district will celebrate its 55th anniversary Tuesday by turning back its menu to 1955 prices. The authentic Napolo restaurant was opened when a 16-year-old Antonio Accardo got off the boat from Italy and somehow convinced the Bank of America to give him a loan to open the restaurant. Try doing that in today's...

George Clooney was quick to stifle recent rumours that he had split up with Italian girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis. And if these pictures of the couple getting intimate in Hawaii are anything to go by, breaking up could not be further from their minds. Clooney, 48, took time out from filming his new movie The Descendants with a stroll along the harbour with his Sardinian girlfriend.

The Global Traveller: Treat the world the way you want to be treated, dress funky, funky but chic and show off all the hottest style trends, and all will be well, as Italian model and actress Mariacarla Boscono is here for this Paola Kudacki editorial in i-D Spring 2010.

Mauritania government has increased security for tourists in the country following the abductions last week of two Italian tourists near the border with Mali. Sergio Cicala and his wife Philomene Kabouree were kidnapped in an area of Mauritania where armed groups with links to Al-Qaeda are known to operate, diplomats said. There are suspicions the couple may have been smuggled into neighbouring Mali. "After these new kidnappings, it has been decided to adopt all necessary measures to ensure the personal security of foreigners in our country," the government said, quoted on Monday by pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi. It was the...

Berlusconi 'Suffers Blow To Face' Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly been struck in the face after leaving a meeting in Milan. He was reportedly left bleeding from the mouth. It was not clear whether the injury was caused by a punch or an object thrown by a protester.

With an international conference of philosophers, scientists, and artists, all aimed at putting God back at the center of a culture that denies him. And meanwhile, Benedict XVI teaches that God reveals himself not to the learned, but to the "little ones" ROME, December 7, 2009 – Halfway through the season of Advent, an international event is being held in Rome that has at its center that God "who has come, who is coming, and who is to come." The event is organized by the Italian bishops' conference, more precisely by the committee for the cultural project headed by Cardinal...

NO HOLDS BARRED: Congressman Hopeful Bobby Labriola Shows Pelosi "Love, Italian Style"

NEW YORK – Now that's Italian! A Staten Island restaurant is relying on a group of Italian-born grandmothers for its menus. The women take turns cooking at 35-seat Enoteca Maria, using recipes from the different parts of Italy they come from.

ROME — An Italian cruise ship fended off a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia, with its security forces exchanging fire with the bandits, the commander said Saturday. Cmdr. Ciro Pinto told Italian state radio that six men in a small white boat approached the Msc Melody and opened fire Saturday night, but retreated after security forces aboard the cruise ship returned fire. Domenico Pellegrino, head of the ship-owner Msc Cruises, told ANSA news agency that all 1,500 passengers and crew aboard the Melody were safe, and credited Pinto for his "cool-headed" handling of the incident. The attack occurred...

From Il Corriere della Sera: Call for directive to prevent episodes like Duomo demonstration in Milan from happening again ROME – Places of worship, supermarkets and shopping malls will join public institutions, political party headquarters and diplomatic premises as being off-limits for demonstrators. Organisers will also have to pay a deposit as a guarantee against damage.NEW RULES – Interior minister Roberto Maroni has proposed new rules for public demonstrations, revealing that he is working on a directive to be sent to prefects and chiefs of police. A week ago, the minister explained to a hearing of the Senate’s constitutional affairs...

Palestinian civilians have accused Hamas of forcing them to stay in homes from which gunmen shot at Israeli soldiers during the recent hostilities in Gaza, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Thursday. More than 1,250 Palestinians were reportedly killed during Israel's offensive against Hamas in the coastal territory. Israel has been harshly criticized for the large number of civilians among the Palestinian dead, of whom they numbered more than half according Gaza officials. But the Italian paper also quoted a doctor at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital as disputing the number of Palestinians said to have been killed in the...

Sanger's plans for genetic cleansing for the sake of "racial health" were racist as well. She was horrified by the fertility of the immigrant "Slavs, Latins [i.e., Italians], and Hebrews," ...As for the black population in the United States, Sanger "did not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population..."

(IsraelNN.com) Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday of "lunacy" and warned against taking his words too lightly. "I think we must pay the utmost attention to the lunacy of someone who says, perhaps for internal reasons, that Israel must be wiped off the map," Berlusconi said in a speech to a Jewish organization in Paris. Iran began a broad military exercise of its air defenses on Monday, according to Iranian news reports. The aim of the exercises was reportedly to improve the readiness of Iran's anti-aircraft capabilities in the event of a possible aerial attack....

(IsraelNN.com) In a letter appearing in the weekend edition of the respected Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed that the government of Italy agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks in Italy. Cossiga wrote that the government of the late Prime Minister Aldo Moro reached a "secret non-belligerence pact between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance organizations, including terrorist groups," in the 1970s. According to the former president, it was Moro himself who designed the terms of the agreement with the foreign Arab terrorists....

Day in and day out, I get served slop in a bowl for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I guess it’s not so much slop as it is dry hard pellets that taste like cardboard and lamb. So imagine my surprise when my old man pulled his chair up to the computer and surfed over to blissful biscuits to order me my very own Heaven Scent Pizza. I drooled uncontrollably as my father read me the ingredients…whole wheat flour, carrots, celery, parmesan cheese, garlic, basil, etc. No additives whatsoever. Sure it didn’t have any lard, but this pie tastes and smells...

ROME - For presidents and premiers at summits, delicacies washed down by fine wines are all part of the agenda. But the puff pastries with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimp, and rolls of thinly sliced veal served up Tuesday at a U.N. conference on fighting hunger were a contrast to bleak accounts of starving people around the world. The menu was in French but the fare was strictly Italian, served in a dining room at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The repast was accompanied by a chilled white wine from Orvieto in the...

BOISE, Idaho - Eight Western states on Thursday rejected a company's plan to ship tons of radioactive waste from Italy for disposal in Utah, saying importing foreign loads would violate the group's rules. EnergySolutions Inc. is applying for a federal license to import 20,000 tons of waste from four Italian nuclear reactors, with a portion of it to be buried at its private disposal site in Clive, Utah. But members of the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management said their rules would need to be changed to allow roughly five or six rail cars of waste a year...

Italian builders uncover 2,000-year-old tombs ARCHAEOLOGISTS were yesterday celebrating the discovery of 27 2,000-year-old tombs in Italy's "Valley of the Dead". The tombs, some dating back to the 7th century BC, were found by chance while builders carried out work. The whole area was sealed off yesterday and put under police guard to prevent anyone from trying to steal artefacts inside the burial chambers. Grave robbers, or tombaroli as they are known in Italy, make a lucrative living from selling such objects to museums or private collectors. Archaeologists say there is also a "good chance" that there may well be...

The mayor of the small Italian town of Cervino, north of Naples, has been found burnt alive in his car, in a Mafia-style killing.Police quoted by Italian media say Mayor Giovanni Piscitelli, 52, was shot and wounded and his feet bound with wire. Then his car was set alight. Reports said Mr Piscitelli had recently acted against some municipal staff and the dispute had been featured on TV. Police have not yet named any suspects in the case. Mr Piscitelli's charred body was found next to his car - apparently after he had managed to open a door to...

This business owner expresses his feelings very clearly on the signs over his Pa. restaurant. I happen to agree with most of them. He spanks the politicians and supports our troops at the same time! I've never been to the place. I just like the signs!

ROME (Reuters) - A 1.5-kg white truffle found in the Italian countryside will be sold at a charity auction in Macau where it is expected to fetch 150,000 euros (108,000 pounds). Truffle hunter Cristiano Savini displayed his precious find at a five-star hotel in Rome on Tuesday before it was flown to the Chinese enclave for Saturday's auction. Savini's dog, Rocco, sniffed out the truffle, one of the biggest unearthed in the past 50 years, by an oak tree near Pisa last weekend, in an area of Tuscany where Cristiano and his father scout for truffles every year. Ten years...

This Little Britain, about the various ways in which we Brits have a history of being the exception. In areas such as law, government, economics, agriculture and science, we've often been a uniquely British exception to a general European rule. Ditto, in such things as men's fashion, Victorian sewers, drunken yobbishness, and - not least - in the whole area of language and literature. Take spellings. George Bernard Shaw famously commented that English spelling would allow you to write the word 'fish' as 'ghoti' - ... Throw in other pronunciation changes and an appetite for foreign borrowings, and it's no...

Manager reports his death.