"Ehh...Buona Sera"! Welcome to another mysterious issue of "Only In Italy"!

"Grazie" for all your feedback that's flowing into our office tastier and smoother than goat milk. It gives us a great idea of who love us...and hate us!

Hey Pasqualino, I ALWAYS enjoy the newsletters and the recipes...mmm... Mi hai fatto ridere con l'articolo della Mafia. Being a Siciliana in Australia, as soon as somebody asks what my origins are and I say "Sicilian", the first words they say after that are, "Aaaahhh, the Mafia"! Bedda matri!!! And so what are their origins? Convicts! LOL.

Ciao beddu, keep up the good work! Ninuzza

The shocking part of the letter is not her fight with the English language but the fact that she lives in Australia. There are Sicilians in Australia?

Hmmm...Then it's true when they say that the only time Koala bears change the expression on their monotone faces is when they encounter Sicilians.

Enjoy the issue, keep writing and grazie!

Tanti Saluti,             
"Only In Italy" Staff      

Rome - March 23, 2004 - IT IS the last resting place of some of Italy’s greatest names, reserved only for those ‘illustrious’ souls who have made an outstanding impression on the wider world.

Within the walls of the famous Campo Verano Cemetery, which lies just outside Rome’s old city walls, are the remains of stars such as La Dolce Vita’s leading man, Marcello Mastroianni and renowned film director Luchino Visconti.

But the elite graveyard is now at the center of an intriguing corruption scandal, with 72-year-old fashion legend Paola Fendi at the center of it all.

Fendi, who has built up one of the world’s most iconic fashion houses, is due to appear in court on corruption charges after allegedly bribing a city official by gifting his daughter a Fendi-designed wedding dress in exchange for permission to build a magnificent mausoleum for herself in Campo Verano.

Now Rome is buzzing with the scandal which will see Fendi, whose name graces some of the finest leather and fashion goods in the world, forced to defend herself in court in June against humiliating allegations that she has been cutting corners in order to join the pantheon of Rome’s greats.

The Verano - which also hosts the likes of 'Bicycle Thief' director Vittorio De Sica - is officially full and admission is limited to those who already own a plot or have made an eminent name for themselves in the fields of culture and science.

Fendi won permission to build her vault in 2001, allegedly after giving the wedding dress to the daughter of Vincenzo Tardiola, the deputy director of the city’s cemetery department. But Fendi’s lawyers have denied any wrong doing.

One elderly woman who returned from abroad to find that an unknown intruder had bribed his way into her 80-year-old family vault. The same woman discovered that seven of the vault’s remaining plots had been bought by an accountant with telecom giant Telecom Italia.

Can you believe the audacity of this Italian designing hag?

How about we throw all that over-priced plastic designer crap she hypnotized you into buying into the coffin with her?

Milan - February 29, 2004 - Annamaria had always been a bit self-conscious. In the Bel Paese, where at 69 Sophia Loren still turns heads, the 20-year-old was painfully aware of her flat chest.

And then along came the adverts in Italian newspapers offering free plastic surgery. Only one drawback: you had to have it on camera, in front of several million viewers.

This week Annamaria bared her A cups to the nation on prime-time TV, dotted lines penned around them by surgeon Roy de Vita as he mapped out the planned 'before' and 'after'.

'Don't worry, my treasure,' said Annamaria, before sinking under anesthetic. More than three million stomachs turned as the surgeon sliced open her breasts and fished around inside with his gloved fingers and a light to slide silicon implants into place.

Scalpel: Nobody's Perfect is the latest extreme in Italian reality shows. The one-hour program features three or four young girls each week, each desperate to improve a part of her body she thinks is so ugly it is ruining her life. Along with Annamaria, Giada had five liters of fat tissue sucked out of her bottom, turning her, according to one presenter, into a 'panther'. Francesco and Roberto, twins, had their identical large noses shrunk.

Scalpel is hosted by Italy's best known drag queen, a blond-wigged giant known as 'Platinette', and a formerly arch-conservative president of the lower house of parliament, Irene Pivetti. After only a few weeks on Italia 1, one of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's three Mediaset television channels, it has rapidly become one of the most watched prime-time shows.

'It's not supposed to be scientific,' said show coordinator Flavio Natalia, amid a wave of complaints that the show has taken game-show culture to the height of bad taste. 'It's entertainment. But I assure you we take the surgery part very seriously.'

Entertainment? This is where Italian television has crash landed!

"I couldn't believe what I was married to..."

Rome - March 19, 2004 - An Italian street vendor and mother of two scaled the Coliseum on Friday and said she would remain perched on the outside wall until authorities give her a permit.

Firemen, police, tourists and friends looked on anxiously as 34-year-old Rosa Gangiano paced for hours along a stone ledge some 25 meters (yards) above the ground.

The Coliseum, where once the baying Roman mob feasted on gory gladiatorial battles, is Italy's most visited archaeological site attracting almost three million tourists a year.

Vendors say they have worked around the amphitheater for years, selling paintings and other tourist souvenirs, and have continuously asked authorities for licenses but in vain.

All of us at the news office send our sincerest solidarity to her. We hope this situation will have a happy ending soon because every human being on the green planet has the right to work for a decent living.