Free Republic

Despite costing €9 million, the campaign has been slammed by art critics and government officials.For many, Botticelli’s Venus embodies the Renaissance ideal of beauty, but have you ever wondered what that might look like today? Italy’s ministry of tourism has launched a campaign that reimagines the iconic figure as an influencer—and it has been swiftly ridiculed on social media. “Hi there, everybody. My name is Venus,” the ad’s digitally altered protagonist announced on her Instagram. “But that’s something you probably already know. I’m 30, ok maybe just a wee bit more than that… And I am a virtual influencer. What...

Secret Service records appear to provide verification of documents regarding conflicts of interest regarding former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and other member of the Biden family. That's according to leading Senate Republicans investigating the matter. The senators, Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), are also questioning representations made to them by the Secret Service regarding its protective detail to Hunter. In a new letter to Secret Service Director James Murray, Johnson and Grassley outline how records they previously obtained from the Secret Service line up with, and seem to provide verification of, newly-public emails about Hunter...

As the death toll mounts in Ukraine - where at least three children have died since Vladimir Putin ordered the country invaded - a tone-deaf Russian TV host is fuming about how the conflict has cost him access to his Italian luxury villas. Proponent pro-Putin television personality Vladimir Soloviev publicly lamented Friday losing access to his multimillion-dollar vacation homes due to Italian-imposed sanctions spurred by Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. 'Is this the Iron Curtain?' Soloviev opined on the set of his late-night program. 'I was told that Europe is a citadel of rights, that everything is permitted, that’s what...

Italian police have discovered the mummified remains of a 70-year-old woman sitting at a table more than two years after she died, prompting calls for better care for older people in the country. Marinella Beretta, who had no living relatives, was found in her house in Prestino near Lake Como in northern Italy. Police stumbled upon her remains when they made a house call during high winds in Lombardy, which risked uprooting neglected trees in her garden. She had not been seen by neighbours for at least two and a half years, according to Italian media reports. Her neighbours, who...

Fill title: A beautiful day! The Obamas join U2's Bono and The Edge for lunch at a stunning chateau in the medieval French city of Èze - before jetting off to Italy to stay with George Clooney at his Lake Como villa Barack, 57, and Michelle, 55, were joined by their daughters Malia, 20, and Sasha, 18, on their lunch date with Bono, 59, and The Edge, 57, on Friday The group walked though Èze as they made their way to the two-Michelin-starred restaurant La Chèvre d'Or Bono's wife Ali Hewson, 58, appeared to be with them, as well as...

This is the mind-bending moment a daredevil rides his motorbike across the third largest lake in Italy. Luca Colombo, a biker from Milan, set a world record for the longest distance ever travelled by motorbike on fresh water on July 31, 2017. To achieve the remarkable stunt, Luca rode from all the way from the town of Gravedona to Colico on the other side of the famous Lake Como - a distance of around 5km. Armed only with an inflatable bracelet, capable of expanding like a life-jacket, the Italian rode at breakneck pace at the water and hydroplaned his way...

A massive makeshift refugee camp has been established in Lake Como, the popular and secluded celebrity hideaway in Italy where Hollywood A-lister George Clooney keeps a home. Flimsy dwellings, clothes and trash are scattered around the Northern Italian town’s railway station, where dozens of new families and refugees have flocked. The migrant camp is, oddly enough, just steps away from the front door of immigration activists’ George and Amal Clooney’s multi-million dollar lakeside mansion in Lake Como, according to the Daily Mail.

Amid the public defecators, the American haters, the exhibitionist masturbators, the serial sexual predators, the outspoken anti-Semites, the socialists and the misguided do-gooders of Occupy Wall Street are the Hollywood hypocrites. You have Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, Princeton professor Cornell West, Russell Simmons, Rosanne Barr, and the list goes on. They have all joined the “occupiers” in support of fighting greed. But by any definition, they epitomize it. Not that there is necessarily a problem with greed. Greed, if defined as acting in one’s self interest in the pursuit of material goods, can be enormously important and beneficial. It makes...

George Clooney headlined a fund-raiser Monday that took in more than a half-million dollars for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Organizers said they took in at least $625,000 from U.S. donors for Obama’s campaign, including many who flew in to Geneva, Switzerland, from around the world for the one-night event.

George Clooney has signed on for another special guest appearance as the Barack Obama re-election campaign takes its summer fundraising tour across the Atlantic in pursuit of Euro-cash. The Obama campaign posted an invitation on its website Friday revealing that the presidential pal-in-chief will appear at a pair of Americans Abroad for Obama events Aug. 27 in Geneva, Switzerland. Clooney, who usually spends summers at his villa on Italy’s Lake Como, made a similar appearance across the Swiss border on behalf of then-candidate Obama during the run-up to the 2008 general election. Charles Adams, co-president of the campaign’s European outreach...

'Muslim women don't have a problem with the fact that their husbands have a few other wives," declared the Iranian ayatollah with great conviction. Sitting across the conference table from him, in the magnificent 17th-century Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como in Italy, I disagreed. My conversations over the years with Muslim women colleagues had given me a quite different picture. "I would suggest that you don't really know how women feel since you're a man. I'm a woman, and I can tell you that women do not want to be one of several wives." While ordinarily this kind of challenge...