Ohhh, quanto è bella Romaaa! Welcome to the newsletter that backs up Berlusconi's belief that the crisis will end when everyone in the world can afford a facelift. "Only In Italy!"

What seems to be your major problem with Sicily? Karen

Thanks for the question, Karen.

FYI: Our news staff lives and (barely) operates 25 minutes from Corleone. What gave you the idea we have a problem with Sicily? It's well known one should NEVER have a problem with Sicily.

We love it! It's our Disney World...and Palermo is our Epcot center!

Enjoy the issue, keep writing and Grazie!

Rovereto - March 14, 2009 - Is Europe bringing back the automat? Claudio Torghele hopes so.

Over the last decade, Mr. Torghele, 56, an entrepreneur in this northern Italian city who first made money selling pasta in California, has developed a vending machine that cooks pizza. The machine does not just slip a frozen pizza into a microwave. It actually whips up flour, water, tomato sauce and fresh ingredients to produce a piping hot pizza in about three minutes.

The machine, which Mr. Torghele calls "Let's Pizza", is only the spearhead of a trend. Restaurants reminiscent of the old Horn & Hardart chain in the United States, which are fully automatic, are also showing up around the Continent.

Unlike the old automats (the last Horn & Hardart closed in 1991), which were staffed with workers who refilled the machines with creamed spinach and baked beans as fast as customers pulled them out, these restaurants consist entirely of vending machines.

In Milan, a two-hour drive west of Rovereto, a franchise chain called Brekky has opened the first three of what is planned to be a large chain of restaurants in which customers can buy cold dishes like salads and sandwiches, and warm dishes like pasta, from vending machines.

The idea for a pizza robot came to Mr. Torghele after he worked in California in the mid-1990s creating a fresh pasta manufacturer. "At food courts I saw a trend toward vending machines," he said at his office in this mountain town. "In fast food, I saw pizza everywhere."

With backing from a Dutch investment fund, his own capital and money from friends, he set to work. A plan to simply miniaturize industrial technology for producing frozen pizza failed, but by 2003 Mr. Torghele had produced a machine ready to be tested in Chicago and shown at a trade fair in Orlando, Fla.

That same year, with the help of Unilever, the British-Dutch food giant, he test-marketed 20 machines in Germany. "We had a bicycle," he said. "Now we had to pedal."

The machine Mr. Torghele and his engineers produced is outfitted with little windows so the customer can watch the pizza being made. As in the Charlie Chaplin film "Modern Times" (in miniature and without Chaplin) wheels turn and gears grind. The customer presses a button to choose one of four varieties - margherita (plain cheese and tomato sauce), bacon, ham or fresh greens. A plastic container dumps flour into a drum resembling a tiny washing machine; a squirt of water follows, and the drum goes into a spin cycle, forming a blob of dough that is then pressed flat to form a 12-inch disk.

Tomato paste is squirted onto the dough and cheese is added before it is lifted into a small infrared oven. The baked pizza then slips onto a cardboard tray and out into the customer's waiting hands. Mr. Torghele says the pizza will cost as little $4.50, depending on the variety.

It is not surprising that the new drive to offer fresh-made food is coming from Italy. Italians may be legendary for long lunches of pasta and wine, but they also lead Europe in vending machines, with more than 614,000 installed, compared with 593,000 in France and 562,000 in Britain, according to the European Vending Association in Brussels.

Much of Italy's strength in vending comes from coffee. An Italian coffee vending machine may offer up to 18 different varieties, including espresso, cappuccino, ristretto, lungo and macchiato.

But with coffee markets increasingly saturated, machine manufacturers are casting about for new products to push, like books, DVDs, scarves and handkerchiefs, even model cars and trains.

Operators are also increasingly offering fresh produce, like apples, and other healthy food at schools and fitness centers.

Now, with the economic crisis spreading across Europe, the industry faces a different landscape. On the one hand, as factories close, potential vending machine sites disappear. On the other hand, as consumers find themselves with less cash, the lower-priced items in vending machines become attractive.

Where does this leave Mr. Torghele and his pizza machine? Initially, he thought the United States would be his primary market, but he learned that market would be hard to penetrate. Instead, when his machine goes into regular production this summer, he will be focusing on Italy and its neighbors. But vending machine prices there average about $2,600, and his machine will sell for $32,000.

Still, experts in the business are not discouraging. "You have to have a location; you have to understand where to go with that machine," Mr. Iannuzzi said. "But there is a future for that."

Rome - March 13, 2009 - Speed traps must be signposted in time for motorists to slow down, Italy's highest court said Friday.

The Cassation Court said signs alerting drivers to the cameras must be placed "at least 400 meters (440 yards)" before the devices.

The court, whose rulings set precedents, issued its verdict in the case of a Calabrian company, Speed Control, which was found guilty of hiding cameras to make profits with municipal authorities who fined speeding drivers. The supreme court recalled that, by law, 400 meters is the minimum distance for alerting drivers to the presence of speed traps.

It pointed out that Italian traffic law is aimed more at preventing accidents than punishing offenders.

After the arrests of leading Cosa Nostra figures in recent years including those of Palermo Mafia kingpins Salvatore Lo Piccolo and his son Sandro in November 2007, police are on high alert for mobsters stepping in to fill a possible power void at the head of the organization.