This was meant to look a bit weird. The opening two words are the famous Greek motto "know thyself", in the possibly less famous Greek original. I just thought it might catch a reader's eye. Because the point is not exactly a novelty. Make an effort to know yourself. Seek to be aware of the kind of thing you are. Try and have at least a little ( Read more... )

...not always a bad thing. In the West Ashley Pierpoint district of Charleston, South Carolina, a young black woman - who apparently prefers to remain anonymous - received an invitation to join one of the most ancient and famous political groups in the USA. The Ku Klux Klan.

I've heard about the Polish presidential flag, eagle and all, being flown upside down during a state visit. I've heard about the Belgian PM singing the French national anthem in place of his own. I've heard of the Polish interpreter whose incompetence nearly caused an international incident when President Carter (typically) visited Communist Poland ( Read more... )

As a human being, I would cross the road to avoid inverarity. But as a writer, he bloody takes your breath away. He just pulled - unnoticed by anyone except yours truly - one of the most fantastic feats of sleight of hand in the history of literature - NO exaggeration! - hiding a fact in plain sight and not letting the readers see it till he was good and ( Read more... )

28 people have been arrested in Palermo, Sicily, for Mafia activities. Apparently they had managed by corrupt means to get several supply contracts for a popular TV series about cops fighting the Mafia.

Norway, probably the richest country in Europe, floating on a sea of oil as well as a lot of successful business sectors, has according to reports suddenly suffered from a desperate shortage of a major raw material which risks wrecking this year's Norwegian Christmas season ( Read more... )

A few years back, a man called Cesare Lupo was condemned to a fair few years in jail for Mafia crimes. While in jail, he joined the external law course of the University of Catanzaro (southern Italy) and graduated in 2008 with a respectable 104 out of 110, with a thesis on "Extortion aggravated by facilitation towards Cosa Nostra." One year later ( Read more... )

The Italian government's threatened abolition of 36 Provinces (roughly the equivalent of counties) and of all local authorities of less than 1000 inhabitants, as part of the recent emergency expenditure-cutting budget, has predictably caused an uproar. Filettino, a village in the mountains east of Rome, has actually declared independence as the " ( Read more... )

Luca Zambelli, 41, was given eighteen years by an Italian court - one for each knife wound he inflicted on his first wife in the process of killing her. Francesca Brandoli, 38, got life formurdering her estranged first husband and (during the same assault) murderously attacking his girlfriend. They met in jail, fell in love, and have now married.

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