Kabbalah and numerology bunk, author says at Rome Maths Fest

Rome, March 13 - Italian author Umberto Eco kicked off Rome's annual Maths Festival on Thursday by rubbishing the existence of 'mystic numbers'.

Addressing an audience that included Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, Eco pooh-poohed the idea of numbers having hidden meaning, as thought by followers of kabbalah like Madonna as well as believers in numerology and the paranormal. ''Every time we want to attribute a significance to numbers that goes beyond what they are, it's a perverted use of mathematics,'' said the author of bestselling medieval monk whodunit The Name of the Rose.

Four anchors for 'Show That Has Nothing To Hide'

Rome, March 13 - Canada's longest-running Web show Naked News arrived in Italy on Thursday as one of the programme's four young Italian women read out a news item before removing an item of clothing.

The self-styled Show That Has Nothing To Hide, invented in 2000 in Toronto and popular in dozens of countries, offers female 'newsreaders' who disrobe after every report until they're in the buff.

The Italian version hit the Web at 17:00 local time as 25-year-old Michela Fiore began her stint of reading and stripping.

Italian city-dwellers are set to join legions of eco-conscious cyclists in other urban hubs with a boom in its bike-sharing schemes.

Rome, March 4 - Several of Italy's main cities will this year implement community bicycle programs, in which municipal authorities provide bikes to the public to cut down on pollution and traffic jams.

Rome, Milan, Turin and Genoa have all unveiled bike-sharing schemes that will start operating in the next few months.

The capital is starting off cautiously, with a pilot project in the city centre offering around 250 bikes. Genoa, which is much smaller, will shortly have six hubs dotted around the historic centre, supplied with 60 electric bikes to help cyclists cope with the hills. Milan and Turin are setting their sights higher. By the start of May, Milan will boast 5,000 bicycles linked to 250 hubs. Turin has plans for 1,160 bikes at 100 hubs by the end of the year.

Shoppers in the Sicilian capital of Palermo will soon get the chance to thumb their noses at the Mafia by taking their custom to a supermarket with solid racketeering-free credentials.

Palermo, March 4 - The store, which opens this weekend, will only stock goods by businesses that have publicly refused to pay the Mafia protection money, or 'pizzo'.

The supermarket is the work of Addiopizzo (Farewell Pizzo), an organization that has been fighting racketeering and extortion for four years.

It started with a secret campaign plastering Palermo with anti-racketeering stickers. When Addiopizzo eventually went public, numerous businesses joined up.

The organization then began publishing a list of those businesses that pledged to stand up to racketeers - an immediate hit with the public, delighted at the chance of keeping their hard-earned cash out of Mob pockets.

Garbage, disease and road blocks are reminiscent of cholera emergency. Regional authority approved “declaration of urgency” and law for waste disposal facilities

The stinking depths of Campania’s rubbish dumps continue to produce surprises, as well as toxic waste. One such revelation is the elderly regional law that backdates the rubbish crisis to 1973, fully thirty-five years ago.

Can you guess what prompted the law? Cholera and protests at Pianura. This is proof – if proof were needed – that Italy has a shorter memory than the celebrated Collegno amnesiac. It’s easy enough to explain how long thirty-five years is.

For example, it only took Genghis Khan twenty-one to unify the Mongol tribes, conquer Asia, penetrate the Balkans and found the largest empire in history. It only took Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who died at thirty-five, twenty-seven years to write twenty-two operas, twelve sacred works, seventeen symphonies and numberless other concertos, sonatas and duets. Pius IX needed just thirty-two years to establish the longest pontificate after St Peter’s. In that far-off 1973, Julius Evola and Aldo Palazzeschi were still alive, Beppe Savoldi was the top goalscorer ahead of Paolino Pulici, Peppini Di Capri won the Sanremo song festival and cholera struck Naples.

Dozens of priceless documents revealing the secrets of the Roman Inquisition go on public show for the first time ever this week in an exhibition in the Italian capital.

Rome, February 20 -The archive that once belonged to the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was unlocked a decade ago, shedding light on little-known areas and causing experts to revise long-held ideas.

''Visitors to this exhibition will discover a very different vision of the Holy Office than that commonly understood,'' said Marco Pizzo, who co-curated the show with Alejandro Cifres, the archive's director. ''Its task was not just to repress and censure.

The Fiat 500 Launch Stops Italy

The Fiat 500 Launch Stops Italy!

Turin, 27 June. Next week (4-5 July 2007) towns and cities across Italy will come to a standstill to celebrate the launch of the new Fiat 500, exactly 50 years after the launch of the original icon, and the Italian car maker is organising a launch on a truly epic scale.

When the original car was launched, a cavalcade of 150 cars paraded through Fiat's home town of Turin. For the new Fiat 500, not only will there be a massive event in Turin, but another 30 cities across Italy will close their city centres and historic squares to every car - except for Fiat 500s, old and new.

Venice opens course in gondoliering

Two women seek entry into male- dominated world

Venice, June 26 - Two women keen to break into one of Italy's last male bastions sought admission on Tuesday to Venice's first official course in the art of gondoliering.

One of the female candidates who joined the 127 male ones was German-born Alexandra Hai, who has fought a 10-year battle for the right to steer a gondola around the lagoon city's canals.

The other was Alessandra Taddei, a local woman who belongs to a Venetian rowing club.

Neither woman wanted to share with reporters their impressions after the first day of the week-long trials, which will decide who gets the 40 places on the gondoliering course.

Holy Grail is in Rome, Italian says

Archeologist says it's in Basilica of St Lawrence

Rome, June 19 - The Holy Grail, the elusive cup at the heart of countless legends, is hidden in catacombs under a sixth-century church in Rome, according to an Italian archaeologist.

Alfredo M.Barbagallo believes the legendary article is in a chapel-like room underneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of the seven churches which Christian pilgrims used to visit when they came to Rome.

Late Fiat patriarch's daughter sues estate advisers

The only surviving child of the late Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli is suing her father's most trusted advisers in a dispute over the management of his vast estate, lawyers said on Thursday.

Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen has filed suit against Franzo Grande Stevens, Gianluigi Gabetti and Siegfrid Maron, managers of Agnelli's inheritance, in order to obtain a fuller accounting of his estate, lawyers for Margherita Agnelli said.

The suit, which comes more than four years after Gianni Agnelli's death, was filed with a Turin court on Wednesday.

Stevens - the family's chief legal advisor - and Gabetti have official roles in the Agnelli family's trust, Giovanni Agnelli & C., which holds a 30% stake in Fiat through two quoted holding companies, IFI and IFIL.