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Washington Post. Italian police arrested a top Sicilian mafia boss on Sunday who had been a fugitive for more than 15 years, dealing what a minister said was a major blow to the crime syndicate. (Read the article)
ANSA. 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. (Read the article)
ANSA. Pope Benedict XVI regularly surfs the Internet and makes frequent use of email, the Vatican's 'communications minister' said Thursday. Speaking as a four-day conference on web communications opened at the Vatican, Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli said the German pontiff was a big fan of technology. ''He sends personal emails and greatly appreciates all the new technologies,'' said Celli. (Read the article)
AFP. An album of Pope Benedict XVI speaking against a background of specially-composed classical and world music will be released on November 30, but the Vatican said it will get only 31,000 euros from the deal. (Read the article)
REUTERS. An Italian inventor has combined faith and ingenuity to come up with a way to keep church traditions alive for the faithful without the fear of contracting swine flu -- an electronic holy water dispenser. (Read the article)
ANSA. Photographer Gabriele Morrione's portraits of women at a new show in Rome are not just faces but voices who tell visitors what they think about him and themselves. ''I wanted to give the sitters an opportunity to become active rather than passive subjects," said Morrione who asked each to contribute a written piece to accompany her portrait. (Read the article)
ANSA. European Union leaders will pick their first standing president and new foreign policy chief in Brussels next week, the Swedish duty presidency said Wednesday. Italy's Massimo D'Alema, a centre-left former premier and foreign minister, is a frontrunner for the EU foreign affairs job. (Read the article)
Silive.com. "Staten Island," the film, is a darkly humorous love letter to director James DeMonaco's home town (he grew up in Prince's Bay) -- following a pack of mobsters and the would-be innocents they ensnare through the borough's strip malls, salumerias and large, empty swaths of land. And while filmmakers often draw on their roots in character-making (read Woody Allen and Eddie Murphy), some Staten Islanders, especially those of Italian American descent, are incensed over the depiction of the "forgotten borough" as it is dubbed in the film's promotional poster. (Read the article)
The Washington Post. PARIS. Federico Fellini, once viewed by some as a mere farceur, has become a classic. The Jeu de Paume is honoring the Italian film director with a vast exhibition, aptly named "La Grande Parade." (Read the article)
REUTERS. Some 84 percent of Italians oppose a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, according to a poll on Sunday.
The poll in the Corriere della Sera newspaper showed 84 percent of Italians want the crucifixes to stay, 14 percent said they should be taken down and two percent had no opinion. (Read the article)