Italy Hosts Its First Divorce Fair

Italy is holding its first divorce fair, offering services such as life coaching and beauty advice to a booming number of separating couples in the Catholic country.

The organizers said the fair, which was held in Milan on May 8-9, aimed to help divorcing people start a new, happier life.

“Smiling is key to this fair, which also offers serious, practical advice for often dramatic situations,” Franco Zanetti, who created the event, told Reuters.

The services include divorce planning, anti-stalking help, and “new look” tips, the organizers said.

Echoing similar initiatives in the United States and elsewhere in Europe, visitors will also be able to subscribe to divorce gift lists at department stores in Milan.

Today’s Top Eurotastic Song By Domenico Modugno

Nel blu dipinto di blu (In the Blue Painted Blue), popularly known as Volare (Italian for: to fly), is Domenico Modugno’s signature song and Italy’s entry in the 1958 Eurovision Song Contest.

At the end of the voting, Volare had received 13 points, placing 3rd in a field of 10.

Modugno’s recording became the first Grammy winner for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1958. It is the only foreign-language recording to achieve this honor. It spent six weeks atop the Hot 100 in August and September 1958 and was Billboard’s number-one single for the year. It is one of only three one-hit wonders to become single of the year in the history of the Hot 100 (followed by Stranger on the Shore by Acker Bilk in 1962 and Bad Day by Daniel Powter in 2006).

Domenico Modugno (9 January 1928 – 6 August 1994) was a twice Grammy Award-winning Italian singer, songwriter, actor, and later in life, a member of the Italian Parliament.

21 years after Volare’s release Chrysler brought the song back – remember this:

 

Today’s Top Eurotastic Song By Toto Cutugno

Insieme: 1992 (English translation: Together: 1992) was the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1990, in Zagreb, Croatia (then SFR Yugoslavia), performed in Italian by Toto Cutugno for Italy, that country’s second and final (to date) victory in the Contest.

Cutugno sang about bringing the disparate nations of Europe together. The 1992 of the title refers to the year in which the European Union was scheduled to begin operation, thus bringing the hope of the lyric to fruition. Cutugno sang the song with a backing group of five singers from Slovenia, the group Pepel in Kri, who represented Yugoslavia in 1975.

At the close of voting,  the song had received 149 points, placing 1st in a field of 22.

Politicians Drop Their Pants In Budget Protest

Around 50 left-wing municipal officials dropped their trousers at Rome’s city hall to call for the speedy passage of the Italian capital’s 2010 budget.

“Alemanno has reduced us to our underwear,” read one protester’s poster, referring to the city’s right-wing mayor Gianni Alemanno.

“Parks and gardens abandoned,” “Homeless people, empty homes,” others read.

Sandro Medici, the mayor of Cinecitta, the home of the city’s legendary movie studios, said Alemanno was dragging his feet over passing the budget “for electoral reasons, because it contains unpopular taxes.”

“Without a budget, we only have funds for current expenses,” he told AFP. “In my district, two schools that are supposed to open in September won’t be able to operate.”

Eleven of Rome’s 19 districts are headed by left-wing mayors.

Alemanno, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom party and formerly of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, wrested city hall from the left-wing Walter Veltroni in 2008.

Italy is set to hold elections in 13 of the country’s 20 regions, including Rome’s Lazio region, at the end of the month.

Man Opts For Jail Over New Year’s With Relatives

A Sicilian man stole sweets and a packet of chewing gum so he could get arrested and spend New Year’s Eve in a jail cell rather than be with his wife and relatives, Italian media reported.

The 35-year old Sicilian first showed up at a police station asking to be arrested because he preferred spending the night in prison rather than with his family, but was rebuffed because he had not committed a crime, the Agi news agency said.

The man immediately went to a tobacco shop next door, where he threatened the owner with a box cutter as he grabbed a few sweets and a packet of gum. He then waited until police arrived to arrest him for robbery, the news agency said.

2010′s Top Travel Destinations

Here are some top destination lists for travel as 2009 ends and 2010 begins.

Lonely Planet’s U.S. staff’s top picks for 2010: U.S., Canada, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, Cuba, Italy, Philippines, Brazil, Costa Rica.

Conciegre.com’s 2010 “It List”: Marrakesh, Kyrgyzstan, Vancouver, Burma, Venice, Antarctica, Cuba, Sri Lanka, Colombia, South Africa.

Yahoo Travel’s most popular cities of 2009, based on consumer interest and activity: Las Vegas, Miami, Cancun, San Diego, Cabo San Lucas, New York City, San Francisco, Orlando, Honolulu, Paris.

Frommer’s top (dozen) destinations of 2010: Santiago de Cuba, Cuba; Florida Panhandle Beaches; Hawaii (the Big Island); Salta Province, Argentina; Mexico City, Mexico; Melbourne, Australia; Hanoi, Vietnam; Kerala, India; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Tunisia; Copenhagen, Denmark; Isles of Scilly, England. Frommer’s reader favorite destination for 2010, based on a contest: Paris.

Black Nativity Scene Angers ‘White Christmas’ Party

 A nativity scene featuring a dark-skinned Jesus, Mary and Joseph that has gone on display in a Verona, Italy courthouse has created heated debate in a city with strong links to the anti-immigration Northern League party.

The nativity’s appearance coincides with the League’s controversial operation “White Christmas,” a two-month sweep ending on Christmas Day to ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan.

The Christmas scene — featuring a dark-skinned baby Jesus dressed in a red shirt and lying in a manger — was the idea of Mario Giulio Schinaia, the chief Public Prosecutor in Verona.

“History teaches us that baby Jesus and his parents were very probably dark-skinned,” Schinaia told Reuters. “This nativity belongs to a universal Christmas tradition that brings together the whole of Christianity in celebration.”

The nativity has caused heated reactions in the rich northern town, where resentment toward foreigners has spread as the number of immigrants, particularly from north Africa and eastern Europe, continues to rise.

“It is a useless act of provocation, just like the suggestion not to have a nativity scene at all, in order not to offend Muslims,” Northern League farm minister Luca Zaia told one paper, referring to proposals in recent years that town halls and stores should no longer sponsor Christmas scenes.

“Magistrates have other problems to deal with: I hope they spend as much time thinking about lawsuits and trials,” he said.

The Northern League, an ally of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with key cabinet posts including the interior ministry, has used its growing political clout to secure tough new laws including making illegal immigration a crime.

League proposals have ranged from separate buses and trains for immigrants to banning new mosques and forbidding the serving of Chinese food and kebabs in towns under its control.

Schinaia defended his black nativity scene, saying it was not intended to be polemical but to encourage debate.

“There shouldn’t be a white or black Christmas, only a merry Christmas for everyone, of every skin color, ethnic background and nationality.”

Gaddafi Tries To Convert Italian Women To Islam

 Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, spent several hours in the company of 200 Italian women recruited by an agency and tried to convert them to Islam, Italian media reported.

“Seeking 500 attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 foot, 7 inches) tall, well-dressed but not in mini-skirts or low cut dresses,” read the ad by the Hostessweb agency and quoted in Italy’s Corriere dell Sera newspaper in its story.

Some 200 women showed up at a Rome villa, having been told they would receive 60 euros ($90) and “some Libyan gifts.” Among them was an undercover reporter for Italian news agency ANSA, who took photos and described the evening’s proceedings.

Most had expected to attend a party, according to ANSA, but instead were invited to wait in a large hall until the arrival of Gaddafi, who gave them a lesson on Libya and the role of women in Islam.

After around two hours the lesson, including questions and answers through an interpreter, concluded with an exhortation by Gaddafi to “convert to Islam” and with each woman given a copy of the Koran and a book of sayings by Gaddafi.

“It was anything but the VIP party we were expecting, they didn’t even give us a glass of water,” one woman told ANSA.

Others said they were offended by what they considered anti-Christian aspects of his lesson, including a claim that Jesus was not crucified but that “someone who looked like him” was put to death in his place.

The Libyan ambassador told ANSA that Gaddafi was planning other similar evenings during his three-day stay for the summit.

Italian Police Seize Mafia Boss’ Pet Crocodile

Here’s another of the Mafia’s trademark offers-you-can’t-refuse: pay or be eaten by a crocodile.

Italy’s anti-Mafia police unit said it has seized a crocodile used by an alleged Naples mob boss to intimidate local businessmen from whom he demanded protection money.

Officers searching for weapons in the man’s home outside the southern Italian city last week found the crocodile living on his terrace, said police official Sergio Di Mauro.

The crocodile, weighing 40 kilograms (88 pounds) and 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) long, was fed a diet of live rabbits and mice, Di Mauro said.

He said the suspect, an alleged boss in the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate, used to invite extortion victims to his home and threaten to set the animal on them if they didn’t pay or grant him favors.

The man was not arrested but placed under investigation for illegal possession of an animal, Di Mauro said. Investigators are also working on extortion charges against him.

Di Mauro said the animal is believed to be a caiman, a species that lives in Central and South America, and it is not yet clear how it got to Italy. The crocodile was placed in the care of Italy’s forestry service.

Italian Crowne Plaza Offers The Vacation Deal Of The Century

You had to be quick, but what a deal.

A four-star hotel near Venice mistakenly offered the ultimate low-cost vacation — a romantic weekend in the Italian lagoon city for 1 euro cent.

Not surprisingly, the Crowne Plaza in Quarto D’Altino, 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) from Venice, received bookings for the equivalent of 1,400 room nights on the night the rate was posted on its Web site, the hotel chain acknowledged. And it seems those bookings may be valid.

The hotel first thought the offer was posted by a hacker, sales manager Fulvio Danesin said Friday.  But it turned out to be human error at the Atlanta, Georgia, offices of Intercontinental Hotels Group, the hotel’s mother company, he said.

The offer was supposed to be for a two-night stay at half price. A night at the 151-room hotel normally costs between euro90 ($128) and euro150 ($214).

The 1-cent rate was up only one night, but that was long enough for travelers to book dates running from October through 2010, Danesin said. The hotel stands to lose euro 90,000 ($129,000), he said.

Monica Smith, media relations manager for the hotel group in the U.S. , said that some 228 guests made reservations for the equivalent of 1,400 room nights while the error was on the Web site and that the reservations would be honored.

“Although a pricing error, IHG is committed to honoring the 1-cent rate for guests who have a valid confirmation,” Smith said. She added that rooms booked at the low rate “are nontransferable.’