If I had to choose a book or two myself, I'd probably go for Seasons in Basilicata or Tuscan Countess : The Life and Extraordinary Times of Matilda of Canossa. Basilicata is one of the most beautiful and underappreciated regions in Italy; it's home to the caves of Matera, several unspoiled beaches and possibly the best food/produce/olive oil of the whole region. It's also got a fascinating history, which I'm sure the book delves into. And I've read reviews of Tuscan Countess that compare it to a Pirandello play - I'm sure that's over the top, but it sounds fascinating nonetheless, and Matilda - one of only five women buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome - sounds pretty kickass.

The 105-foot tree from the Alpine forests of Italy's Trento region stands at the center of the square, next to a large Nativity scene still under construction. A choir sang "O' Come All Ye Faithful" in Latin as the tree's lights flickered on.

... American Cardinal Edmund Szoka, who presided at the ceremony, said this year's tree was the tallest of John Paul's 22-year tradition. Each year, the tree comes from a different country in Europe or region of Italy.

The people of the Trento region donated the 2004 tree in memory of John Paul's trip to Adamello, a mountain peak in the area, 20 years ago. At the time the pope took a few runs down the mountain on skis, a sport he used to practice before age and Parkinson's disease made movement difficult."

The tree is 110 years old and weighs 87,000 kilos (about 191,400 lbs).

Check out some of the gorgeous pictures:

"I want to thank the prime minister for his understanding about the need for the free world to succeed in Afghanistan and Iraq," Bush said following a White House meting with the Italian leader. "He's the kind of man, when he gives you his word, he keeps his word, which is the sign of an impressive, strong leader."

And when he promises to screw you over, well, he'll keep that promise as well.

...Bush was expected to hear from Berlusconi that Europe has deep concerns about the weakness of the dollar and that a stronger US currency is needed to safeguard US-EU trade ties.

"The dollar must not be too weakened compared to the euro because that creates the risk of damaging trade relations between the two sides," Berlusconi said recently.

"We need a shift in the direction of the (European) Central Bank's policy to change the relationship between the euro and the dollar," Berlusconi told a meeting of his ruling party last weekend.

The White House has repeatedly insisted that Bush favors a "strong dollar policy" even as the US currency slid to record lows against the euro, and on Wednesday McClellan offered no new solutions to its weakness.

Bush and Berlusconi were expected to discuss security and elections set for January in Iraq, where Italy currently has a 3,000-strong military contingent deployed as part of coalition forces.

Other topics were expected to include the US leader's stated goal of overhauling international institutions, including the United Nations.

Italy fears being relegated to second-class status within the European Union if Germany is ever given a seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

And Gate1Travel has a six-day, $849 Venice Carnevale deal.

They're right. Why would Italy need to try to reduce emissions, anyways? They're FINE!

>>Sahara Jumps Mediterranean into Europe; Global warming threatens to create dust belt around the globe. "A fifth of Spanish land is so degraded that it is turning into desert, according to figures released for the first time yesterday, and in Italy tracts of land in the south are now abandoned and technically desert."

>>Climate Changes Blamed For Deaths. "WHO cited heat wave figures from some countries, including France's 14,802 "excess" deaths blamed on the heat spell. It said Italy had more than 7,000 "excess deaths in the over 65-year-old" group compared to the same period a year earlier, and Portugal had 1,300 heat wave deaths."

>>Global warming hits winemakers. "Lack of snow last winter, almost no rain in spring or summer and searing temperatures for prolonged periods have had a major impact on the grape harvest.

There has been a 20% reduction in output.

"Less water of course means less wine," he says."

Italy doesn't need agriculture, wine, or, you know, not dead people to keep on truckin'. Good decision, folks.

You can see some shots from the 2004 calendar at this photo gallery. We're partial to Mr. January, ourselves.

Related: "Frate Indovino" priest calendar beats pinups, and Sexy calendars go bust, Italians prefer saints to pinups, both from zoomata.com. Combine this with the recent study that reveals 2/3 of Italians prefer pasta to sex, and the place doesn't seem nearly as sexy. Except for those priests.

WORST ITALIAN ECONOMIC OUTLOOK SINCE WWII-CONFINDUSTRIA
(AGI) - Rome, Italy, Dec. 14 - "I cannot remember seeing since World War Two such a negative array of indicators on all fronts by comparison with our competitors," said Confindustria chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, commenting on Italy's economic outlook based on macroeconomic forecasts which were released today by the employer's association study centre. The data show that "we are faced with structural problems," said Montezemolo. "When a country doesn't grow for at least 15 years, has lower output than its European partners, has stagnant investments, has a falling export quota, has stagnant production, has higher labour costs than other countries, then we're not faced with casual problems," he said. Montezemolo then reasserted the lack of competition in some sectors, such as services, while "the high bureaucratic costs leave all of Europe behind, as does the record breaking slowness of the legal system." In light of all this, Montezemolo defined the forecasts of his organisation "interesting, useful, to be analysed, and above all made into concrete facts. We have the duty to face these problems with all our might, without letting ourselves be dragged down by pessimism."

It might be a little too late for that, buddy.

Brotto is a glamorous figure in suede trousers and high heels, with a deep tan, a ready smile and perfect English. Brotto is the coordinator of the final design of the Venice barrier, and her name arouses strong reactions in Venice.

The Venice flood barrier has been decades in the planning, has been endlessly debated and remains intensely controversial. Unlike in London and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where the barriers created anxieties but the population was broadly willing to trade some environmental impact for safety, the Venice barrier (or, strictly speaking, four barriers, which will be strung between the islands that separate the lagoon from the Adriatic) has split the city down the middle. Opinion polls sometimes show Venetians broadly in favor, sometimes against (depending, usually, on how the question is framed). Brotto assures me most people want the barrier, but acknowledges that "those who are against it are very noisy." They have, she says, created a false dichotomy between the barrier and other, more gradualist measures to deal with flooding. Both are necessary, she insists; and the consortium of engineering and construction companies that is building the barriers is also raising canal banks in the city, restoring salt marshes in the lagoon and dealing with the legacy of industrial pollution.

Brotto admits there will be some environmental disruption during construction -- "but we are taking mitigating measures, such as using an ecological dredger to reduce turbidity." She is adamant, however, that the gates remain necessary. They will be closed, she anticipates, five to seven times a year. "With this solution, we will solve all problems for Venice and the other settlements around the lagoon. Definitely."

"So," says Gherardo Ortalli, professor of medieval history at Venice University, "are you going to write that the barriers will solve all the problems for Venice? That is what the world wants to believe. A lovely story with a happy ending." I have come to meet Professor Ortalli at a palazzo close to the Grand Canal, the headquarters of an ancient institute of arts, letters and science, of which he is the administrator. In the fading light of a winter afternoon there is something gloomy about the building, an impression that Ortalli's mood does nothing to dispel. "This town is ending," he says. "When I arrived here 30 years ago, there were 130,000 inhabitants. Now we are half that. But the numbers are not so important. Young people are being priced out of the city, and those of us left behind are old and exhausted."

Other interesting facts from the piece:

But we really thought that De Niro's avoidance of the country, cancellation of appointments with Italian officials in October (which involved turning up 45 minutes late for a ceremony in Milan at which he was to receive the city's highest award, the Golden Ambrosius Medal; the mayor of Milan described the incident as "an incredible display of bad manners") and failure to attend the Tribeca Film Festival in Rome (he flew to Rome but refused to emerge from his private aircraft and after half an hour flew to Paris) would do the trick. Apparently not.

But now, now! De Niro's making it all better. See, his late father has an art show in Rome, and all of a sudden, De Niro has decided that he a) wants to promote the show, even though he hates art, b) deserves Italian citizenship and c) should be feted by dozens of Italian celebrities.

We're sure this has nothing to do with capitalizing on his father's art exhibit or promoting his New York film festival. We're sure De Niro just wants to let bygones be bygones and get back to his roots. We're sure he's an opportunistic asshole who'll continue to give Italians an ethnically stereotyped name. And we're pretty sure he's hungover at his dead father's art show.

An Italian town is setting donkeys to work mowing the grass on the side of its highways in an effort to save money and reduce pollution.

Fed up with paying some 100,000 euros (69,000 pounds) a year to cut the grass on its out-of-town roads with tractor-mowers, the local government of Treviso, near Venice, said on Tuesday it had bought six donkeys to do the work instead.

"This purchase will allow us to save cash as well as launch an experimental ecological project," said local government chief Luca Zaia, who paid just over 2,000 euros for the six animals.

Motorists need not fear running down the donkeys -- they will only be allowed to munch the grass in roadside areas that are fenced off from traffic.

In other news, the Italian town of Brescia announced that gorillas would be performing nighttime construction on the nearby autostrada.

Well, it seems Christ has sent a minion over to the wax museum to stop all this blasphemy -- by punching the figures in the face:

A protester has attacked a controversial waxwork Nativity scene featuring England soccer captain David Beckham as Joseph and his pop star wife "Posh Spice" Victoria as the Virgin Mary.

"He pushed Posh and Becks over. It caused some damage but we don't know how much. The baby Jesus is fine," said a spokeswoman for Madame Tussaud's waxwork museum in London on Monday.

Another article says the figures of Posh and Becks were "pummeled" several times in the face.

Way to go, protestor. It takes a lot of balls to beat up some inanimate wax people.

An ambulance is there to help, but the first one to arrive at a double shooting on Oct. 28 - the day Naples began worrying that its bad old days might be creeping back - was torn up by people on the street.

The second one, carrying Dr. Carmine Russo, an emergency doctor in one of the dreariest Naples neighborhoods, was menaced all the way back to the hospital by hoodlums on scooters. Two members of the Camorra, an age-old version of the Mafia in Naples, died that day, setting off a new gang war that has since claimed more than 25 lives.

"After those two, it's been a massacre," said Dr. Russo, a cigar-chomping 52, who has tended many of the victims. People have been shot on the street, incinerated in their cars. One man died face down in his pizza, in the center of the city that invented it. Several poor areas on the outskirts now feel a bit like occupied lands, after hundreds of arrests and a raid this week that involved more than 1,000 police officers.

Violence like this would agonize any city, but for Naples - which for centuries has defined a certain excess of beauty and baseness alike - it is especially troubling.

The article goes on to mention further worries about gang violence, homicides (there have been more than 120 homicides in Naples this year, compared with 64 in 2002), crime, and the age-old question of the "lagging south" vs. the richer, more industrialized north.

The latter half of the piece details the Camorra -- basically an organization that is to Naples what the Mafia has been to Sicily -- a very corrupt, violent, connected and powerful mob. The center of Naples has been cleaned up in recent years, but apparently members of the Camorra are backing a comeback in the suburbs and outskirts.

But there is worry too in the city center. At a photo gallery downtown, a poster hangs as a reminder of the less savory past. It shows the Piazza del Plebiscito in its old incarnation as a parking lot. A caption reads, "So we don't go back."

The gallery owner, Stefano Fittipaldi, 58, said he did not think things had gone that far yet, but he did get a worrying call recently from friends who had relatives planning to visit Naples from Germany.

"Their life insurance company said Naples was a dangerous city, and they wanted more money," he said. "That hurts."

For the record, when I spent time in Naples, I found it to be a thrilling and vibrant city -- certainly seamy and dirty, but fascinating, and if you used common sense and didn't walk alone, it didn't seem like there was much risk of being a crime victim. You were probably more likely to be injured by a crazed Vespa driver. But my visit was almost two years ago, so perhaps things have changed since then. You can see a few shots of my trip to Naples here.