The local newspapers in Italy’s smaller cities and towns advertise with eye-catching headline boards, designed to be as sensational as possible. Usually one board reports two headlines of the day or week, and sometimes the juxtaposition is unintentionally funny.

Struck by a toilet seat thrown from the train - Priest collapses at mass! (Okay, I cheated a bit - colpita is in the feminine form, so we know the victim of the flying toilet seat was female.)

Struck by a toilet seat thrown from the train - Priest collapses at mass! (Okay, I cheated a bit - colpita is in the feminine form, so we know the victim of the flying toilet seat was female.)

Chiavenna, Dec 2006

Madesimo: costs of tele-heating* inflame the town

Talamona: criminal blaze destroys the kids’ nativity scene.

At the newstand: the book K2

Chiavenna: offerings stolen from the nativity scene

Two tourists injured on the ski slopes in Madesimo

*Teleriscaldamento, available in some Italian towns, recovers heat from power stations and pipes it into homes.

Lecco, Dec 2006

Alarm in the Business Piazza*

Father dies while wrapping Christmas presents

30,000 Lecchesi (people of Lecco) forced to junk their cars (a new environmental law will forbid use of cars older than 1993, i.e. pre-catalytic).

Investigation: ‘Ndrangheta and business - treasure hunt for the [riches] of the [crime] bosses

In the car with a pistol - young person in handcuffs.

* As reader Marco Andreis points out, Piazza Affari is a real piazza in Milan, “just off via della Posta, a few blocks from Piazza Cordusio. Palazzo Mezzanotte, in Piazza Affari, was thei headquarters of the Borsa Valori di Milano, the Milan Stock Exchange. Nowadays, after privatisation, the Gruppo Borsa Italiana is located there.

So the name of the square was and is still used as a synonym of the Stock Exchange or, in a more general sense, of the Italian financial and business community. More or less as in the US, where Wall Street means the New York Stock Exchange.”

Chiavenna, Dec 2006

New Year’s Eve in the piazza: Chiavenna live on TV

Provera [says]: “No to the Muslim demands. We’ll/let’s defend our nativity scenes.”

Dec, 2006 - There were a few stories around Italy (though not, I believe, in Chiavenna) about nativity scenes being removed from schools after protests from non-Christian (not necessarily Muslim) parents. Provera, whoever he is, evidently tried to make political capital out of this.

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