Italian News Snippets: 13 February 2007

There’s more Italian news out there than you can shake a prosciutto at.

• Veronica Lario, Mrs. Silvio Berlusconi, feels “more at peace” after having publicly asking for an apology from her flirting husband.
• Berlusconi himself might not feel quite so peaceful after making a comment about gays in Italy.
• Italian women are the most sexually active in Europe. Did you need another reason to visit?
• The Italian cabinet says yes to a draft law granting rights to unmarried couples, despite the Pope’s grumblings.
• Marriage is on the decline in Italy, though, with more people forming families outside of marriage.
• Italian scientists are brimming with discoveries, including a gene to prevent weight gain, a molecule to fight gluten intolerance, and a vaccine for lymphomas.
• The sperm whale is back in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Sicily. Scientists thought they’d been “wiped out by drift nets.”
• The Italian fashion world might have won points for banning too-thin models from its Milan runways, but it’s erased all that goodwill by “failing to find space for a show of plus-size clothes in this month’s Milan fashion week.” Oops.
• As if the overall warming of the earth weren’t bad enough news, climate changes might render some of Italy’s top wines extinct.
• Donatella Versace has a word of advice for US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Lose the pants.
• Italians spent more during the last quarter of 2006, and are on track to continue that upward trend. That’s fantastic – my birthday’s coming up.
• A restaurant in Rome is getting neighborhood grandmothers to help out in the kitchen, which is perfect for anyone – like me – who doesn’t actually have their own Italian nonna.