Italian News Snippets: 04.20.08

Some Italian news for your Sunday reading pleasure:

• Lots of articles about the election results, and what they mean for Italy – including this one wondering whether Berlusconi can deliver what Italians want, and this one suggesting that Italy might be moving toward a two-party system.
• It’s nice to know that the presumed next PM is still as classy as he ever was.
• Oh, and Silvio, let’s not forget to pick up where we left off the last time we left the Prime Minister position, shall we? By pissing off some other country? Let’s pick Spain this time, and let’s particularly single out Spanish women in politics. Yes, that should do it.
• Perhaps my favorite election-related story, however, is the one about the guy in Naples who actually ate his paper ballot in protest. The only problem is I can’t decide whether to find the story funny or terribly sad.
• Beppe Grillo, Italy’s leading opposition voice (who also happens to be a former stand-up comic), says the internet will be the key to changing politics and the media in Italy, and has plans for V2 Day (that’s “F-Off Day Part 2” to you and me) which will target the media. The first V-Day was all about politics.
• A new study has found that Italian couples are having less sex – a “decline in the male sex drive is seen as the principle cause.”
• What happens when you dig for a new subway station in Rome? You find an ancient Roman staircase, that’s what.
• Is the solution to a flagging economy in Italy more female workers?
• If seeing Leonardo’s “Last Supper” isn’t enough like a light show for you, check out this Peter Greenaway project while it’s running in Milan.
• Not only is the Mediterranean diet better for you, it’s better for the environment.
• Be careful how long you look at people on the trains in Italy. You could get fined for ogling.
• Mussolini once famously said, “It is not impossible to govern Italians; it is merely useless” – and that theme is being echoed in an article about the current Italian government and the “Berlusconi era.”
• The former coach of the Italian national soccer team, Marcello Lippi, thinks Italy stands a good chance of winning Euro 2008 after their 2006 World Cup title.
• Berlusconi now thinks he’s a marketing whiz with his new “I love Italy, I fly Alitalia” slogan.
• Berlusconi says he’s going to restart work on the bridge linking Sicily with mainland Italy.
• I saw “love locks” everywhere I went in Italy; here’s an article about them at the Trevi Fountain in Rome. See if you find any on your travels through Italy! Then take photos and send them to me!
• It took a court ruling to get a father and brother to stop harrassing a woman who wanted to live with her boyfriend. (She was 25 years old at the time.) Honestly, though, I’m not sure even the court ruling will change much of anything.
• If you ate “linguini with date mussels” in Italy before it was banned in 1998, it may get reintroduced to Italian menus soon.
• Italy Magazine is having a contest for all you home cooks out there – submit your favorite Spring pasta recipe by the 16th of May.
• The city of Bologna is set to open a new opera school – and what’s more, admission will be free.