Italian News Snippets: 07.01.07

Italian news snippets for your Sunday:

• Apparently, Italians are having lots of sex – it’s just not very good.
• Donatello’s bronze masterpiece statue of David is going to undergo its very first restoration, but it will not be removed from its home in Florence’s Bargello – visitors to the museum will get to watch the restoration take place. That sounds very cool.
• There are yet more articles (here and here) about the heat wave in southeast Europe, and this time the heat has a death toll.
• And now for how that heat wave is affecting Italy – southern Italy is seeing temperatures in excess of 40 Celsius (that’s more than 100F), Sicily is dealing with power outages and fires as a results of overheated cables, and the grape harvest will be moved up by about a month in some regions. And this, may I remind you, is all before July. Mamma mia.
• You don’t need to get too far into Italy to see great art – a Picasso painting from 1907 will be hanging on a wall in Milan’s Malpensa Airport this summer.
• The garbage collection folks in Naples say they hope to have the trash cleared from the streets by Friday.
• Russian airline Aeroflot will not be buying Italy’s flag carrier after all, meaning Alitatlia is back on the auction block. Will anyone be willing to do everything the Italian government asks?
• Italian politics are nothing if not confusing (sometimes to Italians as well as outsiders), but campaigning is something we’re all familiar with – and Rome’s Mayor is campaigning to succeed Prodi, with the primary set for mid-October.
• A portion of the Riccione beach has been closed off and made for women only – that way Muslim women vacationing there can actually enjoy the famous beaches.
• George Clooney has joined a protest over putting in more parking lots around the town of Laglio on Lago di Como, where he lives.
• One might think Italy has enough pasta, but one would be wrong. There’s an Australian company that’s won an award for selling rice pasta and gluten free pasta to Italy – because even Italians with wheat allergies have to eat!
• Italy has declared dance an official sport. I’m not sure I even have a comment about that.
• I mentioned last week that a German woman had begun running a gondola in Venice for one hotel; well, now she and an Italian woman have been able to join Venice’s first official course in gondoliering. Progress? Perhaps.
• Just can’t get enough of George Clooney? (I know I can’t.) Well, now he’s designed some limited-edition leather duds to be part of the Belstaff label.
• I admitted it wasn’t on my list, but apparently the Colosseum isn’t on many lists for the new seven wonders of the world.
• Villagers in Supino, south of Rome, claim that the Madonna has appeared in the windows of a house there.
• Will the great Parmigiano Reggiano cheese be a thing of the past? If Germany is allowed to use the word “Pamesan” on their version, Italian cheesemakers say it will.
• A beach outside Rome which was once a dog beach has recently become a nature park for dogs and their owners alike. This gives new meaning to the phrase, “It’s a dog’s life.”