Culture Lifestyle

(ANSA) - Rome, November 6 - Italians today have happy home lives, but not enough free time according to a new lifestyle survey published Friday by national statistics bureau Istat.

Over nine in ten of Italians polled said they had a ''good'' relationship with their families, while over a third said their relationships were "very good".

Domestic bliss was most common among the 25-44 age bracket, more than 35% of whom they led "very happy" home lives.

(ANSA) - Goia Tauro, November 6 - Customs police on Friday seized 142kg of cocaine found inside a container which had arrived from South America.

Police said this was the third major haul of the drug the had made in the past few months.

The Calabrian crime syndicate 'Ndrangheta is believed to control the European cocaine market and the interior ministry has calculated that this lone generates some 45 billion euros, or 3% of Italy's GDP, from this trade.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 5 - Parliament's bicameral anti-mafia commission on Tuesday questioned a mafia turncoat who claims he was involved in the sinking of three ships carrying toxic waste, saying he had given them new information.

Francesco Fonti, a former member of southern Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia, spent more than five hours fielding questions from commission members, President Gaetano Pecorella told reporters.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 5 - Nearly eight in ten Italians recycle at home, according to a survey released Thursday by the the IPSOS research group.

According to the study, 78% of Italians said they recycled paper, plastic and glass on a regular basis, while 68% said they had no trouble finding reycling bins close to home.

In addition to household recyclers, 64% of Italians said they also recycle on vacation and more than half said they sorted waste at work.

(ANSA) - Brussels, November 5 - Italy is among the top five consumers of cocaine in the European Union, according to a report out Thursday.

The European Drug Observatory said Italy vied with Britain, Spain, Denmark and Ireland in the top group.

It said young adults' cocaine consumption in this quintet rose by 3-5% in the last year whilst elsewhere in the EU it was steady or falling.

According to a July report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Italy has the third highest rate of cocaine consumption in Europe behind the UK and Spain.

(ANSA) - Locri, November 4 - The head of an 'Ndrangheta clan involved in a headline-grabbing 2007 gangland slaying in Germany died in prison Wednesday.

Calabrian godfather Antonio Pelle, 77, boss of the clan of the same name in the small village of San Luca, had been in jail since his arrest four months ago after nine years on the run.

Pelle apparently died of a heart attack in the high-security jail in this town in the southern Italian region, prison sources said.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 3 - Nearly one in three Romans has never been inside the Colosseum according to a study released Tuesday.

The survey by a Rome tourism institute polled 2,500 local residents, 29% of whom said they had never set foot inside Rome's most famous monument.

According to the study, only 33% of residents said they knew 'enough' about Roman history, with 25% saying they didn't know very much and 29% saying they knew 'nothing at all'.

(ANSA) - Milan, November 3 - Police in Milan on Tuesday arrested 17 people, some of them well-known entrepreneurs, while breaking up a protection racket run by Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia.

Police said the crime ring muscled business people in construction and real estate into paying protection money.

Some of the victims reportedly appealed to the crime ring for help cutting red tape and elbowing out competition.

(ANSA) - Trapani, November 3 - Two women were among ten suspected mafiosi arrested Tuesday in the western Sicilian town of Alcamo.

Police said they had broken up a long turf war between rival clans fighting for control of rackets in the city midway between Palermo and Trapani, a port on Sicily's north-west tip.

One of the women is accused of collecting protection money and the other of counting and keeping it.

The clans are linked to Trapani superboss Matteo Messina Denaro, police said.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 2 - Criminal lawyers, inmates groups and opposition politicians sounded the alarm over conditions in Italian jails on Monday, following two recent prison deaths and a probe into violence by staff.

A high-profile prisoner convicted of terrorism, Diana Blefari Melazzi, hung herself on Saturday evening, nine days after another inmate, Stefano Cucchi, died in a prison hospital with broken bones.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 2 - An Italian chapter of the American white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan (KKK) has launched a membership drive via internet, an Italian daily reported Monday.

According to the Rome daily La Repubblica, an Italian ''realm'' of the Michigan-based United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK has posted ads on extremist web pages and blogs seeking ''good, Christian people ready to win back what we've lost''.

(updates previous). (ANSA) - Milan, November 2 - Italian poet Alda Merini is to receive a state funeral in her native Milan, Mayor Letizia Moratti said Monday.

Wednesday's funeral in the Duomo would pay tribute to a writer whose importance was both local and national, the mayor said.

''Alda Merini charted a course through the history and culture of our city, providing important reflections for the rest of the country,'' Moratti said.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 2 - A new treatment center for Web addicts opened its doors on Monday at a hospital in Rome, administrators said.

According to psychiatrist Federico Tonioni, the new outpatient program helps people diagnosed with Internet Addiction Disorder to get their obsessive web surfing under control.

''Pathological use of the Internet can lead to symptoms very similar to what drug addicts experience on withdrawal,'' Tonioni said.

(ANSA) - Turin, November 2 - A man who shot his pit bull terrier after it attacked his wife has been reported by the Italian association for the protection of animals (ENPA).

''This is the umpteenth absurd episode in which the animal is the victim,'' said ENPA Turin chief Giovanni Pallotti.

The man, an undertaker, put the dog down after it bit his wife at their home near Turin in the latest of a string of aggressive incidents.

''What I'd like to know is whether the man ever turned to the veterinary services about the animal's behaviour,'' Pallotti said.

(ANSA) - Milan, November 2 - Italian poet Alda Merini is to get a state funeral in her native Milan, Mayor Letizia Moratti said Monday.

Wednesday's funeral in the Duomo would pay tribute to a writer whose importance was both local and national, the mayor said.

''Alda Merini charted a course through the history and culture of our city, providing important reflections for the rest of the country,'' Moratti said.

Merini, 78, died in Milan Sunday at the age of 78.