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The database, called Tuscan, is provided to every Canadian border guard and immigration officer, and empowers them to detain, interrogate, arrest and deny entry to anyone found on it. Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the Guardian through Canada’s access to information system reveal the fullest picture yet of a database that, although employed in Canada, is maintained exclusively by the US. It contains the personal information of as many as 680,000 people believed by US authorities to be linked with terrorism, and functions effectively as a second no-fly list that is cloaked in secrecy. *** Tuscan – which...

Tuscany's Excalibur is the real thing, say scientists Rory Carroll in Rome Sunday September 16, 2001 The Observer The sword of St Galgano, said to have been plunged into a rock by a medieval Tuscan knight, has been authenticated, bolstering Italy's version of the Excalibur legend. Galgano Guidotti, a noble from Chiusdano, near Siena, allegedly split the stone with his sword in 1180 after renouncing war to become a hermit. For centuries the sword was assumed to be a fake. but research revealed last week has dated its metal to the twelfth century. Only the hilt, wooden grip and ...

ROME, April 16, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A court in the Tuscan city of Grosseto has ordered the city council to accept the “marriage” of two men, the first time such a union has been given juridical recognition in Italy. Giancarlo Cerrelli, vice president of the Catholic Lawyer’s Guild, says the ruling is a “creative judgment that takes no account of the Civil Code and the jurisprudence of the European Union.” Two homosexual men, Giuseppe Chigiotti and Stefano Bucci, contracted a legal “marriage” ceremony in New York in December last year, then returned to Italy and filed a suit against the...

The current population of Tuscany is not descended from the Etruscans, the people that lived in the region during the Bronze Age, a new Italian study has shown. Researchers at the universities of Florence, Ferrara, Pisa, Venice and Parma discovered the genealogical discontinuity by testing samples of mitochondrial DNA from remains of Etruscans and people who lived in the Middle Ages (between the 10th and 15th centuries) as well as from people living in the region today. While there was a clear genetic link between Medieval Tuscans and the current population, the relationship between modern Tuscans and their Bronze Age...

Tuscan church reveals answer to mystery of Medici deaths John Hooper in Rome Thursday December 28, 2006 The Guardian (UK) Picking through centuries-old rubbish, masonry and discarded body parts beneath an abandoned Tuscan church, an Italian historian believes she has solved one of history's great crime mysteries. For more than four centuries, researchers have puzzled over the fact that Francesco I Medici, the son of the first Grand Duke, Cosimo, died within hours of his wife in October 1587. Legend had it they were poisoned by his brother and successor, a cardinal. Modern historians have tended to settle for the...

Gelli probed in Calvi murder Ex-head of shady lodge thought to have ordered Mafia hit (ANSA) - Rome, July 19 - Former right-wing subversive Licio Gelli is under investigation in the murder of 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi . Gelli, 86, is suspected of commissioning the murder . Also joining four suspects facing trial is former smuggler Silvano Vittor, police said on Tuesday . Gelli's lawyer said his client was "amazed" at press leaks of a questioning session earlier this month . The lawyer denied Gelli's alleged statement that police should "look to Poland" for those who ordered the banker's murder...

Tuscan 'Excalibur' Mystery to be Unearthed By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News The Sword in The Stone March 1, 2004 — Archaeological digging might soon unveil the mystery surrounding a sword buried in a Gothic abbey in Tuscany, Italian researchers announced. Known as the "sword in the stone," the Tuscan "Excalibur" is said to have been plunged into a rock in 1180 by Galgano Guidotti, a medieval knight who renounced war and worldly goods to become a hermit. Built in Galgano's memory, the evocative Gothic abbey at Montesiepi, near the city of Siena, still preserves the sword in a little chapel....