Focus::Daily News
NEWSLINE
NYT. Telling Italians that the fate of their country and the euro was at stake, Prime Minister Mario Monti unveiled a radical and ambitious package of spending cuts and tax increases on Sunday, including deeply unpopular moves like raising the country’s retirement age. (Read the article)
ANSA. Measuring over 30 meters and weighing nearly five tons, a spruce tree from the Ukraine was delivered to Vatican City Friday and will now be decorated for Christmas. (Read the article)
ANSA. United States President Barack Obama is going to meet new Italian Premier Mario Monti but a date for the encounter has not yet been set, the American ambassador in Rome said Friday. (Read the article)
NEW YORK TIMES. SOME have taken to calling him simply “Re Giorgio,” or King George, for his stately defense of Italian democratic institutions and the outsize albeit behind-the-scenes role he played in the rapid shift from the cinematic government of Silvio Berlusconi to the technocratic one of Mario Monti. (Read the article)
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Giuliano Melani, a businessman from a small town in Tuscany, bought a full-page ad in Italy's largest newspaper this month, urging his compatriots to seize control of the country's spiraling debt crisis by buying up Italian treasury bills. (Read the article by Deborah Ball and Sabrina Cohen)
ANSA. The scaffolding and advertizing came down from Venice's famous Bridge of Sighs after a three-year restoration project officially ended. "It has returned to the city," said Venice Mayor Giorgio Orsoni of the bridge that connects the Ducal Palace and the one-time prison of the Doges. (Read the article)
UN NEWS CENTER. The United Nations cultural agency and Italy announced today that they have agreed to work together to restore Pompeii, the famed Roman-era archaeological site that was badly damaged by torrential rains late last year. (Read the article)
ANSA. Homosexuality is still off-limits in the Italian soccer world and any footballing gays would be advised not to come out, according to the head of the Italian Footballers' Association (AIC). (Read the article)
THE DAILY MAIL. French men may have a reputation for wooing the ladies, but a new study shows that it is actually Brits - with their terrible chat up lines - who are more successful at chatting up women. British men are also surprisingly considered better at cooking than the French...although both nations were left in the shade by Italians. (Read the article by Lauren Paxman)
FOX NEWS. One of Thomas Jefferson's rules for living was, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” As an American and as a "cittadino" in the northern city of Bologna, I’ve watched politicians in Washington and in Rome ignore Jefferson’s wise words as they test the patience of their electorates by continuing to spend recklessly. (Read the article by Matthew Melchiorre)