Italian Riot Police

Last week, the Italian authorities, acting as per Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s instructions, have made major education cuts.

This law has not remained without an answer. Tens of thousands of people affected by it (teachers, students, even parents) have demonstrated against it on the streets of Italian cities like Milan, Turin, Venice, Naples and Rome.

Cutting the education budget with several billions of Euro is likely to cause the loss of almost 130,000 teaching jobs.

The organizers of the protests have said that 90% of the Italian schools have been closed and that almost one million persons marched in Rome, but there is no official statement regarding this aspect.

The new education law includes several changes of the teaching system: primary school children will have only one all-purpose teacher for five years, and they will receive grades, in order to evaluate their conduct.

The opposition is currently trying to raise the necessary number of signatures that will allow the organization of a referendum on these reforms.

Meredith Kercher

Meredith Kercher was a British young woman who was studying at the University of Perugia, Italy, as an exchange student.

Last November, she was found dead in her room and the examiner’s office established her death had been a murder. She had been stabbed in the neck while unwillingly engaged in sexual games. The killer wanted to make it look like burglary and subtracted some of the victim’s money, credit cards and cell phone.

The police had three suspects: Amanda Knox, American citizen, her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and an Ivory Coast native, Rudy Guede.  All three denied all allegations.

After analysing the evidence found in the room, and the various DNA samples found on Kercher’s underwear, the police have concluded that the murderer is Rudy Guede. He has been trialled and this Tuesday he has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Also, Judge Paolo Micheli has ruled that the girl’s former house mates will be prosecuted as well for complicity to murder, in a trial due to begin on the 4th of December. Knox and Sollecito have been in jail since shortly after the murder and their attorneys have now appealed for house arrest, at least until the final sentence is issued. The judge has not yet given a final answer to that request.

Milan, Via Montenapoleone

Milan, Italy. At midday, Via Montenapoleone- one of the city’s fanciest shopping streets – is very crowded. People are coming in and out of stores; surveillance cameras watch their every move.

One would think that in such conditions the less probable thing to happen would be a robbery in a jewellery store. Yet, that is not true.

On Friday, 24th of October a thief has managed to steal jewellery worth one million dollars from a shop owned by Gino Pederzani. He did all that in broad daylight, after having gained access to the shop by posing as a window cleaner.

The man was wearing the cleaning company’s uniform and took advantage of the personnel’s lack of attention; he unscrewed the window, calmly collected the pieces of jewellery, placed them in the bucket and then disappeared into the shopping crowd.

His prejudice aside, the owner of the shop appreciates the whole operation as a ‘masterpiece’ and admires the thief’s audacity. Nevertheless, he said he will make sure such events no longer happen in his shop in the future by improving the security techniques.

Superenalotto Ticket

Playing the lottery has turned into a national sport for Italians, especially in the last few months in which nobody has won the big prize.

The jackpot now stands at 95 million Euros, which is determining more and more Italians to buy lottery tickets.

As much as this prize attracts the population, there are some who are against it; the Codacons group, a consumer rights organizations, is fighting in court to obtain the seizure of the country’s national lottery grand prize.

They say such a large amount of money only helps to encourage the Italians’ passion for gambling.
And they do have a point; the grand prize has not been won since April, and only last weekend 100 million tickets were sold to the population.

Codacons says the SuperEnalotto is making people bet more and more money every time and, in extreme cases they even spend all their life savings. The group suggests that the best way to deal with this situation would be to seize the money and distribute it to other types of lottery games, seeing that the chances to win the big prize are of 600 million to one anyway.

Parmigiano Reggiano

In view of the financial crisis affecting the world’s economy, Italy is faced with a crisis of its own. The Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano) producers are extremely discontent about the ever higher production costs and the ever falling prices.

They have decided to appeal to the government for help and they ask for higher selling prices for their products, as according to them, are much lower than the fabrication costs.

Parmigiano Reggiano is considered one of Italy’s national symbols and is therefore of great importance to all, including the Government. With that in mind and also thinking about the number of jobs that would be lost, the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has initiated a series of discussions with the producers.

Market studies show that Italy produces an 11% more parmesan than eight years ago, and that happens despite the fact that the Italian populations consumes less.

Due to the abundance of producing companies, the supermarket chains can now purchase whole sale parmigiano on much lower prices than before. This is one of the reasons for which the producers ask for the prices per kilogram go from 7-7.5 euros to at least 8 -8.5 euros.

Tamoil

A few months ago the youngest son of Muammar Gaddafi was arrested in Switzerland for a short time, under assault charges. As a result, starting now, there will be no more Libyan oil delivered to Switzerland until further notice.

No specific details have been released to the press, Isaam Zanati, chief of Tamoil, declaring only that this was caused by recent events.  The Libyan company has over 300 petrol stations on Swiss territory, which basically translates into 20% of the local market.

Hannibal and his wife, who were accused of physical abuse against two of their employees, were released on bail after spending three days in jail. The employees received large amounts of money to forget about this incident, after which the two have been released of charges and official apologies have been sent to Libya, but they did not get them to change their minds.

The Tamoil representatives declared that the oil delivery to all other European countries they have contracts with (mainly Italy and Germany) will not be affected in any way.