Free Republic

Over the centuries, they’ve been scorned, persecuted and marginalized. But it was an example of modern-day disdain towards redheads that prompted an Italian photographer’s mission to safeguard their diversity, The Local has learned. Let’s face it, redheads get a tough time, especially in the early years of their life. I should know, because I am one. But more on that later. Marina Rosso, a 29-year-old fine art photographer and researcher from Udine, is not a redhead as the English translation of her surname might suggest. But after hearing in 2011 that flame-haired men were being rejected from the world’s largest...

Exciting news for New York history buffs, ghosts, and the very, very old: The Italian police have announced that they finally solved the murder of Joe Petrosino. But first, a brief explainer for everyone else: Petrosino was an NYPD detective who specialized in fighting organized crime. In March 1909, he was sent to Sicily to investigate the Sicilian Mafia's ties to its counterparts in the United States. Though a newspaper leaked the details of his trip, Petrosino decided to go anyway, which is how he ended up getting shot to death as he waited for an informant in Palermo. Though...

Sicilian amateur scientists have launched a model cannolo, a cream-stuffed pastry roll symbolic of the Italian island, into the stratosphere, capturing bizarre images of the dessert flying far above the earth. The 'Sicilian Space Program', which cost a rough total of 350 euros, had symbolic importance as well as being a scientific feat, the three natives of the island town of Enna behind it told Reuters. "Sicily has always been a place of negative connotations, mafia and unemployment. We wanted to lift up Sicily in our own way," said filmmaker Fabio Leone, 34, who recorded the project with Antonella Barbera,...

Mount Etna has erupted and is dropping volcanic ash on nearby towns in Sicily.

An eruption by Europe's most active volcano has sent a tower of sparks and fire into the sky around it. The plume of ash rising from Mount Etna can be seen across much of eastern Sicily. Its eruptions are not infrequent, but the last major one occurred in 1992. The nearest airport and airspace were forced to close temporarily but none of the villages on the slopes of the mountain have been forced to evacuate so far.

A Roman villa dating back to the III Century AD has been found near Catania in Sicily... The villa, which is thought to cover about 2,500 square metres, may be the same one discovered by a famous Italian archaeologist, Paolo Orsi, at the beginning of the last century. Orsi found traces of a mosaic floor but no excavation followed his preliminary dig and the site is believed to have been covered up again by subsequent earth movements and vegetation.

The toughest guy in Sicily is a gay man. Nine months ago Rosario Crocetta was elected as Sicily's governor on an anti-Mafia platform, and his fearless campaign against the degenerate mobsters has so impressed an otherwise conservative electorate that his sexuality has become an irrelevancy as reported by Anthony Faiola for The Washington Post: "'Having Crocetta in Sicily is like having an openly gay man elected governor in Alabama,' said Ivan Scalfarotto, a member of the national parliament and a Milan-based gay rights advocate. 'But the most telling point is that his sexuality became a small detail for voters. This...

Seventy years ago this week, U.S. and British Commonwealth troops began Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. Foreshadowing D-Day 1944, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower served as overall Allied commander. Like D-Day, Allied airborne soldiers led the Husky assault by parachuting (on the night of July 9, 1943) into olive groves and rock-strewn fields along the island's southeastern shores. On July 10, seven divisions -- three U.S., three British and the 1st Canadian Infantry Division -- launched an amphibious attack on a 100-mile long front. Despite several successful Axis air attacks on ships and a brazen Italian tank attack on U.S. positions...

This is the second part of Lampedusa, Italy. The island of Lampedusa, the southernmost appendix of Italy in the Mediterranean, has the bad luck of being geographically too close for comfort to the Muslim world. Its history is testament to this. In 813 AD, despite a 10-year truce signed in 805 by the Emir Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab with Byzantine Sicily's governor Constantine, the Arabs, who had not kept another previous truce established in 728 and many others since, proceeded to break this one too and, after attacking Sardinia and Corsica, sacked and devastated minor Italian islands including Lampedusa. The...

More than 30 ancient anchors have been discovered near the small Sicilian island of Pantelleria. Leonardo Abelli of the University of Sassari says that the anchors were abandoned by the Carthaginians during the First Punic War more than 2,000 years ago. The Romans had captured the strategically located island with a fleet of more than 300 ships. “The Carthaginian ships that were stationing near Patelleria had no other choice than hiding near the northern coast and trying to escape. To do so, they cut the anchors free and left them in the sea. They also abandoned part of their cargo...

During the "Arab Spring", the tiny island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Sicily, due to its unfortunate vicinity to North Africa saw the arrival of over 60,000 migrants mostly from Tunisia and Libya in a period of a few months in the early 2011. We know that the use of words like "invasion" or "flooding" is considered racist by the liberal media, but how else is it possible to describe this situation? Lampedusa has a total population of just over 6,000 people only when you also include the inhabitants of the nearby island of Linosa, with which it forms...

ROME — A bishop in Sicily has issued an unprecedented decree that says convicted mobsters will be denied a church funeral. The measure was announced June 22 by Bishop Antonino Raspanti, during a meeting with Italy’s justice minister, Anna Maria Cancellieri. Churches in the Diocese of Acireale will refuse to celebrate funerals for mobsters who have been convicted with a final sentence in Italy’s three-tier court system, and who have shown no sign of repentance before death, according to the decree. Raspanti recognized that his act has a “high symbolic value,” saying he aims to “increase attention to this issue...

Italy has announced the United States was transferring 200 marines and two planes to its base at Sigonella in Sicily to deploy in Libya in case US diplomats come under attack as they did last year. Speaking in parliament after leftist MPs complained they had not been told about the deployment, Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said the transfer was "in accordance with bilateral agreements" between Italy and the United States. "This is a reinforcement for the security of US personnel in Libya or for possible evacuations," she told parliament, adding that 75 marines would arrive first followed by 125 more...

Two senior members of the Canadian mafia have been murdered in Sicily and their bodies incinerated, victims of what police suspect is a vicious turf war in Canada which has spilled over into the Cosa Nostra's Italian heartland. After an anonymous tip-off, the bodies of Juan Ramon Paz Fernandez and Fernando Pimentel were discovered near a rubbish dump in the countryside outside Palermo on Thursday. Police described the double killing as an "old-fashioned" gangland hit. Spanish-born Fernandez, 57, a notoriously tough enforcer for Montreal's Rizzuto clan, was expelled from Canada last year for the third time after serving a 10-year...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany. Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial piece of evidence in ancestry analysis. This analysis reveals...

Former Pacific Fleet chief: We need full disclosure on Benghazi — now POSTED AT 9:31 AM ON OCTOBER 30, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY Retired Admiral James A. Lyons likely pulled few punches as commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet during his career … and he hasn’t started pulling punches now, either. In a blistering column at The Washington Times, the former commander blasts the lack of action from the US when the administration learned our consulate in Benghazi had come under attack, writing that “courage was lacking” that might have saved at least some of the four American...

Italy: The Manzo family of SicilyFood expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11 Germany: The Melander family of BargteheideFood expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07 United States: The Revis family of North Carolina (I really hope most Americanfamilies eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and less junk food than this family.)Food expenditure for one week $341.98 Mexico: The Casales family of CuernavacaFood expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09 Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-JeziornaFood expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27 Egypt: The Ahmed family of CairoFood expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian...

Italian premier Mario Monti is mulling emergency action to take direct control of Sicily’s regional government before the island spirals into a full-blown financial crisis, fearing contagion to the rest of Italy. A woman begging in the street in Sicily. Regional councillor Andrea Vecchio has warned the island has run out of money Mr Monti held an “urgent” meeting with the country’s president Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday to grapple with the constitutional issue after it emerged that the region faces a deficit of up to €7bn (£5.49bn) this year and is in danger of default without sweeping cuts. Sicily’s regional...

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said on Tuesday he expected the governor of Sicily to resign following a growing financial crisis that has pushed the autonomous region close to default. Monti said in a statement there were "grave concerns" that the island could default and he said he had written to the governor Raffaele Lombardo seeking confirmation that he would resign by the end of the month.