Word: marini
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...President of the Italian Senate, Franco Marini has had some trying days lately. Last week he had to restore order in the august Senate chambers when the center-right opposition exploded in celebration after Romano Prodi's center-left government lost a decisive confidence vote, sealing its collapse. When two members of the National Alliance party popped bottles of spumante and waved slices of mortadella to mock Prodi - nicknamed "Mortadella" for his presumed resemblance to the pink sausage popular in his hometown of Bologna - the white-haired, pipe-smoking Senate President pounded his gavel and ordered Senate guards to immediately...
...merda!" and made the gesture of firing a gun. The targeted Senator then duly fainted (or feigned a fainting) in his soft chamber chair. Finally, just after the votes were counted, victorious center-right lawmakers uncorked Spumanti directly on the Senate floor. "Take them away!," implored Senate President Franco Marini, pounding his gavel as the bubbly spilled out of the bottles onto the carpet. "This isn't a tavern here!" The final tally after nearly an hour: 161-156 to bring down the coalition, 20 months after Prodi eked out a victory over his perennial nemesis Silvio Berlusconi, the controversial...
...lunch at Les Editeurs. Part café, part restaurant, part library, this is the kind of enigmatic, open-all-day place Paris does so wonderfully well. I've had every type of meal there: breakfasts of croissants, orange juice and piping-hot fresh coffee; lunchtime feasts of moules marinières and chips washed down with Puligny-Montrachet; afternoon tea while reading English newspapers; and sumptuous four-course dinners upstairs in the cozy main dining room. Never once have I left feeling unsated...
...Today, Tuesday, we were summoned to a press conference at 12:30 p.m. with Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal master of ceremonies, and Joaquin Navarro-Valls, Pope John Paul II's longtime spokesman. Getting there, through the throngs of people on the streets of Vatican City was a major challenge. Watching on TV, you will have seen the hundreds of thousands jamming onto the Via Della Conciliazione, the wide boulevard leading up to St. Peter's Basilica. But what you don't see on TV is that the parallel side streets are also packed, wall to wall. The crowd here...
...press conference, Marini and Navarro-Valls simply chuckled at the efforts of all the veteran Vaticanisti journalists trying to pry details about the conclave out of them. What they did confirm was that they will follow the tradition of releasing a puff of white smoke above the Sistine Chapel once they've made their choice. But the last time this happened, when JohnPaul II was chosen, there was confusion because the smoke was hazy and it was difficult to tell whether it was white or black. Archbishop Marini confirmed that the smoke will be used again, but added...