Italy News: 27 September 2009

Some news from Italy for your Sunday reading pleasure:

• As if an Italian mobster holding a gun wasn’t threatening enough, at least one mob boss in Italy was using a crocodile to get people to pay their protection money. Police in Caserta in southern Italy seized a crocodile the man was keeping on his terrace, which they discovered when they raided his house looking for weapons.
• Oh, and in another story about the seized crocodile, we learn that at least a couple of Italian thieves used “drug-laced saint cards” to put their victim to sleep momentarily while they robbed her of her jewelry.
• The post office in Italy says they’re thinking of introducing nepotism to cut costs. I know what you’re thinking, because I thought the same thing. “Wait, nepotism has to be introduced to Italy? What?”
• While shooting a movie set in Italy actually in Italy is good enough for the likes of Julia Roberts and Robert Pattinson, evidently Kevin Costner’s new film set in Italy is to be shot in Munich on a movie set.
• You may remember last week when my friend Sara posted the start of our prosciutto festival adventure on her blog – and now she’s posted part two, about how they dry the ham that turns into prosciutto di Parma. Seriously, I need to bring her with me on every field trip. I’ll never have to blog again.
• Want to download some audio guides for various attractions in Italy before you go? Cherrye has listed three that are free or cheap.
• Katie Parla’s photo of sfogliatella in Naples has just reminded my taste buds of when I ate my first sfogliatella back in June.
• Nicole at Zoomata tells us that there’s at least one upside to the economic downturn – art thieves and tomb raiders in Italy don’t have as much work.
• The bodies of the six Italian soldiers killed in a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan have been brought back to Rome, where the soldiers were given a state funeral last week.
• From Reuters, I see that Italy’s unemployment rate rose sharply in the second quarter of 2009, and also that the country improved its economic forecasts for this year and next. So, umm, I’m not an econ whiz, but doesn’t it seem like the latter can’t be such great news when the former is still true?
• Italy Magazine has published its last print version of the magazine – from now on, it’ll be online only. As a fan of the ItalyMag site, I’m glad to know that even though the print version is gone the web version will remain.
• Are you an opera fan with plans to be in Italy in early December? Then you’ll want to know that the opening of the opera season at Milan’s La Scala this year starts on December 9 with a performance by Placido Domingo.
• James at Wandering Italy has posted a rant about some Italian words that we routinely slaughter here in the U.S. – one of which is “biscotti.” I take it a step further than James, even, when I thoroughly confuse the barista by asking for “one biscotto” (that’s the singular form of the word, after all)…
• Could it be that George Clooney and Italian girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis are really planning to get married?
• It’s Fashion Week in Milan again – as if the city wasn’t fashionable all year long…