Culture Lifestyle

(ANSA) - Milan, November 13 - Over 90 police officers raided a premises occupied by leftist activists in Milan on Friday to arrest five anarchists accused of robbery.

The suspects allegedly beat up staff at a student copy shop last fall where they photocopied fliers without paying for them.

Police said the large number of officers involved were intended to keep order and head off resistance at the squat, a well-known hub for political fringe groups.

Only one of the suspects arrested was taken to jail, Valerio Ferrandi, while the rest were placed under house arrest.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has called for a ''24-hour hunger strike against hunger'' ahead of next week's World Food Summit on Food Security in Rome.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said ''we are suggesting that everyone in the world who wants to show solidarity with the one billion hungry people on this planet go on hunger strike this weekend''.

''I personally will begin a day-long fast on Saturday morning,'' Diouf vowed.

(ANSA) - Venice, November 12 - Venice residents are to stage a mock funeral for the city Saturday to highlight the drastic shrinking of its native population.

Three gondolas will escort a red coffin along famed canals in a symbolic lament for the once-flourishing city's decline.

In the 1950s there were some 300,000 native Venetians but the latest surveys say the population has shrunk to 60,000.

People aren't scared the city is sinking but have been fleeing to cheaper and more liveable local towns, experts say.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - An Italian housewives union filed an official complaint with Treasury Minister Giulio Tremonti on Thursday for not doing more to help disadvantaged families pay their mortgages.

Federcasalinghe pointed to recent Bank of Italy figures indicated that 320,000 families were spending more than a third of their income on mortgage payments against a national average of 17%.

The union's president, Federica Rossi Gasparrini, accused the economy minister of stalling financial assistance approved by parliament to help new homeowners.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 11 - Over 1,000 gypsies and North African immigrants were forced out of their encampments on Wednesday during police operations in Rome and Salerno.

Some 200 officers from various law enforcement agencies dismantled a camp occupied by around 800 immigrants in Eboli a town in the southern Campania region.

Citing risks to health and hygiene, police said they were also checking the primarily North African occupants for documents.

(ANSA) - Bologna, November 11 - Italy lost its eldest citizen on Wednesday with the death of a 113-year-old woman from Bologna.

Born October 4, 1896, Ida Frabboni was the second oldest woman in Europe, the 13th oldest person in the world, and the fourth longest living Italian on record.

According to local media reports, Frabboni was well known among geriatric studies researchers who interviewed her and took DNA samples in an attempt to discover the secret of her longevity.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 10 - Over 520 people have been arrested and 2,950 reported since a new anti-stalking law was adopted in April, police said Tuesday.

The law upgraded stalking from a misdemeanour to a crime punishable by up to four years in prison and provided a hotline and support system for victims.

Applauding the legislation, police spokesperson Chiara Giacomantonio said it gave thousands of victims ''the means to combat the daily threats and persecution that make their lives impossible''.

(ANSA) - Brussels, November 9 - The jackpot for Italy's popular Superenalotto game is once again the world biggest after someone won the Euro Millions pot at the end of last week.

Up for grabs in Tuesday's draw will be a clean 85.1 million euros, which is still far from the European record the SuperEnalotto pot set last August when it paid out a whopping 147.8 million euros.

The world's second-biggest pot is currently the one offered by the US PowerBall game, almost 64 million euros, followed by the American Mega Millions pot of 51.3 million euros.

(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'.