YouTube now TV station in Italy
YouTube and similar websites will be considered TV stations in Italy, and will be subject to the obligation to publish corrections within 48 hours upon request and not to broadcast content inappropriate for children in certain time slots. The main change is that YouTube and similar sites will be legally responsible of all published content as long as they have any form (even if automated) of editorial control.
La Repubblica via Slashdot
Sua Tremendità
In the early 1960s, Giorgio Carbone, then head of the local flower-growers co-operative in Seborga in northern Italy, began promoting the idea that the town retained its historic independence as a principality.
Carbone was elected Prince of Seborga on 23 April 1995, when, in an informal referendum, Seborgans voted 304 in favour, 4 against, for the Principality's constitution, and in favour of independence from Italy.
Carbone reigned until his death on 25 November 2009. Prince Giorgio carried the honorific title Sua Tremendità ("Your Tremendousness"). He was succeeded, after a brief interregnum, by Prince Marcello I (Marcello Menegatto).
In June 2006, a controversy arose when a woman calling herself "Princess Yasmine von Hohenstaufen Anjou Plantagenet", who claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne of Seborga, offered to return the principality to Italy.
Her claim was contested by the then-prince, Giorgio I, who asserted that there were no credible sources supporting her, and said: "Pah! No one has ever even seen her as far as I know. I call her the internet princess."
Seborga has a local currency, the luigino, which is legal tender inside the city along with the euro. The luigino's value is pegged at USD 6.00. Seborga has issued stamps and a novelty Tourist Passport.
Defying the Mafia
Fed up with extortion and violent crime, ordinary citizens in Italy are rising up against organized crime. A new citizens group called Addiopizzo has organized resistance to the protection rackets. According to a University of Palermo study, around 80% of businesses in Palermo still pay for protection. The racket in Sicily alone brings the Mafia at least a billion euros annually. Attacks on resisters continue. In Partinico, a town near Palermo, Pino Maniaci runs a small TV station, Telejato. He has declared war on the local Mafia. "We are a little fire that we hope will become a big fire," Mr Maniaci said. The government has, however, weakened the anti-Mafia campaign. "We have Berlusconi. That is our problem," Maniaci said. "We cannot destroy the Mafia because of its connection with politics."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/In-Sicily-Defying-the-Mafia.html
Mafia Thanks God for New Boss
Despite vocal condemnations by church authorities, Italy's organized crime still has close ties to Catholic rites and traditions. This, said sociologist Alessandra Dino, who has written a book on the links between the church and the mafia, is no surprise: the connection stretches back to the very origins of organized crime. The church, says social activist Vincenzo Linarello, who has funded co-op businesses that the mafia has targeted for their refusal to pay protection money, has been silent on the mobsters' exhibited religiosity for too long.
Berlusconi buys Napoleon's bed
Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly bought a bed once owned by Corsican emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Local newspaper Il Giornale reported that the bed, replete with canopy and bronze eagles, was for Berlusconi's new house, Villa Gernetto, in Lesmo, near Milan. Antique dealer Annamaria Quattrini was, however, shocked when asked to enlarge the bed to modern specifications. In 2006, Berlusconi was quoted as saying: "Only Napoleon did more than me, but at least I am taller than him." http://www.ilgiornale.it/interni/il_giallo_e_palazzo_chigi_smenti_lacquisto_letto_napoleone/25-02-2010/articolo-id=424755
Bocca Mafiosa
http://iomenestrello.splinder.com/post/21011393/Il+vizietto+del+premier%2C+l%...
Slave Labor for the Mafia
Xenophobes in homogenous European countries often complain that immigrants will erase their most precious cultural norms. The race riots in southern Italy last weekend may be one indicator that change is inevitable, as African immigrants who do not live by the country's infamous omertà code of silence violently protested against the powerful Mafia clans that control their lives, says Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah, an anti-Mafia book that earned him both critical praise and a 24-hour police guard. Saviano says the rioters are among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants caught up in a brutal cheap-labor system the Mafia runs for legitimate businesses from Milan to Naples. Many have political asylum or are otherwise legally in Italy, but legal or not, the migrants are managed by a Mafia-run employment system, the caporalato, that operates like a 21st century chain gang. Saviano says that those who object to low wages or poor working conditions are simply eliminated. If they complain, they get killed.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953619,00.html
Tags
- LOL (169)
- USA (111)
- WTF (82)
- Internet (56)
- Iran (54)
- IranElection (45)
- Capitalism (38)
- Cool (35)
- Human Rights (35)
- Israel (35)
- View all 1911 tags »
