Word: battisti
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...Italian Member of Parliament and longtime foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, chastised the "French radical-chic" efforts to block extradition. "The fact that Carla Bruni [helped] Petrella avoid extradition to Italy is something grave," adding there appeared to be "a sort of convergence" with the Battisti case. "It's all unprecedented," Boniver told reporters...
...past two weeks another similar case has emerged, after Brazil blocked the extradition to Italy of leftist Cesare Battisti, convicted of four murders in the 1980s. Battisti had also long taken refuge in France, where he became a successful author of mystery novels, and a cause celebre among Parisian leftist intellectuals. He was arrested in 2007 by French police, but managed to flee to Brazil. Italian media reports last week claimed that during the French First Couple's recent trip to Rio de Janeiro, Bruni had lobbied Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to block the extradition...
...Sunday, making her first appearance on Italian TV since marrying Sarkozy, Bruni vigorously denied any involvement in the Battisti case, calling reports that she'd brought the case up with Lula "slanderous." Still, French novelist Fred Vargas, who has been leading the campaign in support of Battisti and has managed to speak to top Brazilian officials, has said that she'd lobbied Bruni directly about the case. (See pictures of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni celebrating Bastille...
That means that barring a swift and sudden reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, by the end of the century an average July day will almost certainly be hotter than the hottest heat waves we experience now. And the extreme heat will wilt our crops. Battisti and Naylor looked at the effect that major heat waves have had on agriculture in the past - like the ruthless heat in Western Europe during the summer of 2003 - and found that crop yields have suffered deeply. In Italy, maize yields fell 36% in 2003, compared with the previous year, and in France they fell...
What's more, in their study, Battisti and Naylor looked only at the effect of higher temperatures - not at the possible effect of changing precipitation patterns. Yet many climatologists believe that global warming will make dry areas dryer and further damage farming, which is especially dire news for sub-Saharan Africa, a region that already struggles with heat waves, droughts and famines even as population continues to grow. "Climate change is going to be a major concern for Africa," says Nteranya Sanginga, director of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Nairobi...