"The New Brooklyn is now pursuing the final frontier of influence, City Hall, in the person of a 6-foot-5 Italian-American who drinks organic milk, recycles obsessively and likes to call people 'brother.'" Michael Barbaro presents his portrait of mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, 52, the city’s public advocate and the husband of an African-American writer.

 No more stuffing your suitcases with delicacies bought in Italy, hoping the sniffer dogs at JFK or other American airports won't detect the banned-in-the-USA foodstuffs inside your luggage.In the U.S., they're called cured meats, the French say charcuterie and in Italy, the word for cured-pork products is salumi.

 

 Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's 2010 relationship with Moroccan Karima El Mahroug, nicknamed Ruby Rubacuori (Italian for Heart Stealer),' has led to underage prostitution charges for the Italian leader, who as Europe's most famous 'creepy old man,' is no stranger to scandal.

 This is turning out to be a tricky Cannes competition for French film-makers. François Ozon's Jeune et Jolie was interestingly made, but Arnaud Desplechin's Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian was a baffling, cumbersome bore. 

 The Italian city of Verona is planning to raise some much-needed revenue from one of the world’s most romantic landmarks: the balcony where Shakespeare’s doomed heroine Juliet supposedly cried out, "Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" 

 There are more than 720,000 children across Italy living in absolute poverty right now, making the country one of the worst places in Europe to be a child these days, according to a new report by Save the Children Italy as it launched a “Childhood Alarm” initiative on Monday.