There is a lot to say about Pope Benedict XVI. He has taken the top off the popemobile, done away with the papal tiara, visited Auschwitz and taken a much harder line on contraception and same-sex marriage. The question is: will he ever be popular enough to become an air freshener?
The lira is still valid currency in a chain of four food stores in Milan. Although the lira was pensioned in favour of the euro in 2002, about 20% of business at “La Scelta” (the choice) stores comes from the old notes, owner Ernesto Colleoni told the Italian edition of Vanity Fair.
Hundreds of thousands of normally sane Milanese crowded the city center to fete an agonizingly close World Cup victory of Italy’s Azzurri over France’s Les Bleus. Everyone got in the act, trams clanged in response to car horns and even the firemen waved Tricolor flags from trucks. Who’s blue now?
Franco De Benedetto, a Milan construction worker who climbed a tree to “liberate” artist Maurizio Cattelan’s hanging dummy children, was sentenced to two months in prison for his crime against art.
