Word: italianizer
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...girlfriend, Elena Perminova, who is 22 and heavily pregnant. We are sitting in the dining room of Lebedev's house in the ultra-exclusive enclave of Rublyovka, just west of Moscow, early this year. The house includes an underground pool with a cherub-laden fresco on the ceiling, Italian marble floors and a huge ovoid window onto a grand staircase that, Lebedev says, is typical of classical Italian architecture. Outside, there are four or five guards milling around in the driveway. Former President Boris Yeltsin once lived beyond the trees on the other side of a nearby tennis court...
Immediately, I felt a patriotic defensiveness for a country not truly my own. (Yes, I have spent many vacations here living with my grandmother and I love the place deeply, but I am not Italian...
...bloody criminal organization 'Ndrangheta, based in Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, is today considered the most powerful organized-crime syndicate in Italy, surpassing the legendary Sicilian Mafia after having taken over much of the trafficking of South American cocaine into Europe. With billions in narcodollars, 'Ndrangheta is constantly on the lookout for ways to invest its ill-gotten cash in legitimate enterprises, explains Alberto Cisterna, a Rome-based magistrate who has long followed the Calabrian Mob. He says that high-profile urban centers are actually considered the best places for crooks to simultaneously hide their illicit wealth...
...restaurant was back open and operating by late morning, though a state-appointed manager will manage it for the time being, while the owner is forced to prove, under a special Italian statute, that he is clean of Mob ties. Police allege that top bosses from the Alvaro-Palamara faction of the Calabrian Mafia used a barber from a small rural town in Calabria as a frontman to buy the historic café in 2005 for some $350,000 dollars, though its commercial value is estimated at $60 million. Italian authorities suspect that the difference between the official price...
...place. The Prime Minister has already said a chunk of his August vacation will be spent near the decidedly less glamorous L'Aquila, continuing efforts to rebuild the city (and his image) after the April earthquake. Some have even suggested that he may make a pilgrimage to the revered Italian saint Padre Pio as a way to respond to Catholic criticism of his behavior. Can you say Santo Silvio? (See pictures of Padre Pio's saintly return...