Culture Lifestyle

(ANSA) - Rome, March 18 - Francesco for boys and Giulia for girls were the two most popular names chosen for newborns in Italy in 2008, according to a report out Thursday from national statistics bureau Istat.

After Francesco, the top ten most popular boys names were, respectively, Alessandro, Andrea, Matteo, Lorenzo, Gabriele, Mattia, Riccardo, Davide and Luca.

The other top ten girls names were Sofia, Martina, Sara, Giorgia, Aurora, Alessia, Francesca and Alice.

(ANSA) - Bologna, March 18 - Some 25 suspected associates of the notorious Casalesi Camorra crime family from near Naples were arrested Thursday for various criminal activities in and around Modena, police said.

Assets worth some six million euros were seized in the sweep, which also hit Mantua, Naples and Caserta, near the clan's fief of Casal di Principe.

The Casalesi were exposed in Roberto Saviano's bestselling book Gomorra (Gomorrah), later turned into an award-winning film.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 18 - Police on Thursday arrested six people in the southern Calabria region linked to the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate.

Seven other people were placed under investigation in the probe targeting the Ursino crime family, a rising power in the Calabrian mafia.

Police said the suspects were involved in protection rackets, drug trafficking and the 2005 slaying of a rival boss.

The investigation has also shed light on a network of businesses laundering money for the group.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 18 - Seven drug runners from various countries have been arrested at Rome's main airport this week as police seized some 35kg of pure cocaine hidden in shampoo, lingerie, shoes and ethnic shawls, police said Thursday.

The shampoo was used by a Turkish courier from Caracas in Venezuela while an attractive Romanian woman hid the drugs in her underwear, police at Rome's Fiumicino Airport said.

The cocaine was intended for sale in Rome and central Italy and had a street value of more than six million euros, police said.

(ANSA) - Florence, March 17 - A Cosa Nostra strongman serving a life sentence for his role in the 1992 assassination of anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino has been implicated by a high-profile informant in a terrorist-style bombing spree in the 1990s, Florence prosecutors said Wednesday.

Francesco Tagliavia, 56, is under investigation for three bomb attacks in Rome, Milan and Florence in 1993-94 which killed ten people and injured 95 others, prosecutors said.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 16 - Italians are eating less because of the recession and taking more antidepressants, according to a new study released Tuesday.

Fewer than 6% of Italians eat the five servings of fruits and vegetables prescribed by the Mediterranean Diet, which has been hard hit by rising prices and unemployment, Osservasalute said.

According to the group, more than one in three Italians are overweight, a factor also tied to sedentary lifestyles and a lack of exercise.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 16 - Calling someone gay is not an insult, Italy's top court ruled Tuesday in a sentence hailed by gay activists.

The Cassation Court, Italy's highest court of appeal, confirmed a 400-euro fine against a police officer in the Adriatic port city of Ancona who was found guilty of using the word in a "denigratory" way in a letter to a rival for a command position.

Dante S., the court found, broke the law in attempting to paint Luciano T. in an unfavourable light simply because he was gay.

(ANSA) - Roma, March 16 - People are least satisfied with public healthcare in regions in the south that spend a greater part of their budgets on it than in the rest of the country, a new study revealed Tuesday.

The report by Italian healthcare watchdog Osservasalute showed that southern regions spend the equivalent of 9.73% of their gross domestic products on healthcare compared to 6.61% in the center and 5.56% in the north.

(ANSA) - Roma, March 16 - A mafia hitman's zeal for social networking proved his undoing, Italian police said Tuesday after using his Facebook account to track him down.

Pasquale Manfredi, a high-ranking member of the Nicosia-Manfredi clan of 'Ndrangheta, was nabbed in his Calabrian hideout while chatting on the social media website.

Calling himself 'Scarface', from the 1983 gangster film starring Al Pacino, Manfredi was an assiduous user and updated his profile regularly, said police.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 16 - A self-styled New Age 'guru' was arrested here on Tuesday on charges of sexually abusing girls between the ages of 10 and 12 as well as their mothers, police said.

Danilo Speranza, 62, has also been charged with swindling money from the 1,000 members of the so-called King Maya sect of which he was the undisputed leader.

According to investigators, Speranza sought to have his sect accredited with Muslim associations first in Naples and later in Rome.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 15 - Italians were reminded to slow down and relax on Monday with a host of events marking World Slow Day, the third annual edition of an event celebrating life's simple pleasures.

"Let's take this one day to stop and think about all the things we miss out on while we're rushing through our lives," said Bruno Contigiani, the President of the Art of Living Slowly Association.

A veteran of life in the fast lane as a one-time high-powered executive, Contigiani, 62, has since become an ambassador for the slow life movement around the world.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 15 - Separations and divorces have divided the homes of over 1.5 million children over the past ten years, the Italian Association of Family Lawyers (AMI) said Monday.

In 2009 alone, over 100,252 were involved in family related litigation while nearly 150,000 are at the center of ongoing custody disputes, the group said.

AMI estimated that just over half of divorces award parents with joint custody while the rest award full custody to one parent or the other, usually the mother.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 15 - Italians were reminded to slow down and relax on Monday with a host of events marking World Slow Day, the third annual edition of an event celebrating life's simple pleasures.

"Let's take this one day to stop and think about all the things we miss out on while we're rushing through our lives," said Bruno Contigiani, the President of the Art of Living Slowly Association.

(ANSA) - Rome, March 12 - It is not OK to criticise women on the grounds of gender alone, Italy's highest court said Friday.

The Cassation Court, Italy's highest court of appeal, upheld a 2009 appeals ruling stemming from a newspaper article saying a southern jail run by a woman needed a man's hand.

The supreme court found a journalist and a trade unionist guilty of "gratuitous" comments "without factual reference to the way the jail was managed".

The article, headlined Jail Needs Man In Charge, appeared in a Caserta paper in 2002.

(ANSA) - Turin, March 12 - Police on Friday busted an international puppy trafficking ring which had a reported annual turnover of some 330,000 euros.

Investigators said 27 people resident in the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy and Emilia Romagna faced a number of charges including illegally importing animals, animal cruelty and mistreatment, illegal sales, counterfeiting and fraud.

The Turin-based organization was said to have acquired the puppies in Hungary which were then taken to kennels they kept in the three Italian regions.