Men's tennis number one player tested positive twice for an anabolic steroid, will forfeit $325,000, but won't be banned

The theory is someone using the banned substance was giving him a lot of massages, thereby passing on the banned substance "transdermally."

An independent panel held a hearing on Aug. 15 and "determined a finding of No Fault or Negligence applied in the case, resulting in no period of ineligibility," according to the ITIA.

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He will, however, lose the $325,000 and 400 points that he had earned at the tournament in Indian Wells.

FWIW, a substack article from May:  

Over the past decade the drug has resurfaced in Italian football and across Italy’s wider sporting landscape. Between 2019 and 2023, 38 Italian athletes have tested positive for clostebol despite the fact it is scarcely produced in oral or injectable form by pharmaceutical companies

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If an athlete handles the cream, even in applying it to another individual, then they can risk testing positive. This has been one of the common defences used in Clostebol cases.

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It remains bewildering, however, that Italy’s athletes are missing the warning sign printed on clostebol creams and sprays in Italy, which clearly states that the product contains ‘doping’ substances.

A water emergency prompted the mayor of Capri to order a halt to the arrival of tourists

AP:

The emergency was caused by a failure in the mainland's water system that provides vital supplies to the world-known island.

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Ferries and hydrofoils that had already departed for Capri were contacted by radio by the maritime authorities, which ordered their return to port and disembarkation of passengers.

Later last night:

On Saturday evening, however, the island’s mayor Paolo Falco said the ban had been “revoked” after a technical issue preventing the arrival of water from the mainland had been fixed. 

Lighting the rocket dove in church to celebrate Easter

@firenzetv Anche per quest’anno il volo della Colombina è stato perfetto🕊️ Uno spettacolo straordinario, Buona Pasqua💚 #firenze #scoppiodelcarro2023 #scoppiodelcarrofirenze #scoppiodelcarro #calciostorico #calciostoricofiorentino #tradizione #tradizionefiorentina #firenzetv #pasqua #pasqua2023 ♬ suono originale - Firenze Tv

It's the Scoppio del Carro (Explosion of the Wagon), and sending the dove off like a missile (called the "Colombina" and symbolizing the Holy Spirit) is just step one of the fireworks:

There's been “a crescendo of terroristic attacks” by "an informal anarchist network" against Italian diplomatic targets in several countries

AP:

The attacks and as well as a series of protests, including one planned Tuesday in Madrid, are in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, who has been on a hunger strike since October to protest a strict prison regime reserved for terrorists and mafiosi. The 55-year-old militant is serving a 10-year sentence for shooting in the leg an energy executive for a state-controlled company and 20 years for a series of dynamite attacks in Italy.

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The most serious of the attacks was the firebombing of two cars at the residence of an Italian diplomat in Athens in early December

Wikipedia:

On 7 May 2012, Cospito and his accomplice, Nicola Gai, rode on a motorbike to the house of Roberto Adinolfi, executive of the Italian nuclear power company Ansaldo Nucleare. The pair shot Adinolfi in the leg three times, facturing his knee

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While serving his sentence, Cospito received an additional 20 year term for the 2006 bombing of a Carabinieri cadet barracks near Turin. The bombing was planned with a booby-trap technique, with two explosive devices: a minor one to lure cadets out, and a second one with a much higher potential (500 grams of black powder, along with bolts, screws and stones) timed to explode 15 minutes later, to kill them. The court found that only by chance the two explosions resulted in no casualties

3d billboard for Genshin Impact; Italian sculptor denies statue is sexist and says he wished he could have made it nude; Move over Capcom, here's Marvel vs. A24

Barbara 3D Billboard in Chengdu China#GenshinImapct #原神 pic.twitter.com/vBkgY6JaXB

— Genshin Impact Memes (@Genshinmem) September 24, 2021

La statua appena inaugurata a #Sapri e dedicata alla #Spigolatrice è un’offesa alle donne e alla storia che dovrebbe celebrare.

Ma come possono perfino le istituzioni accettare la rappresentazione della donna come corpo sessualizzato?

Il maschilismo è uno dei mali dell'Italia. pic.twitter.com/2msLhgJvso

— laura boldrini (@lauraboldrini) September 26, 2021

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Emanuele Stifano (@emanuelestifano)

(The Guardian discusses the controversy.)

tá na mão pic.twitter.com/7YdVT74EPf

— Gus Kondo (@gustavokondo) September 26, 2021

A trial involving 320 suspected mobsters and associates began this week in Italy

CNN:

The trial is being held in a converted call-center in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme, with defendants placed in metal cages and rows of desks set up for the hundreds of lawyers, prosecutors, journalists and spectators expected to attend.

Many of the accused are white-collar workers, including lawyers, accountants, businesspeople, local politicians and police officers

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The last time Italy tried hundreds of alleged mafiosi simultaneously was in 1986 in Palermo in a case which represented a turning point in the fight against Cosa Nostra, marking the beginning of the group's sharp decline.

"Secret bunkers and mountain hideouts: hunting Italy's mafia bosses"

The Guardian:

The Cacciatori unit searches the rugged landscape of Calabria for fugitives who have dug themselves deep into the earth

On the slopes of the Aspromonte mountains, Pasquale Marando, a man known as the Pablo Escobar of the Calabrian mafia, the feared ’Ndrangheta, built a secret bunker whose entrance was the mouth of a pizza oven.

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Before his eventual arrest in 2016, [he] spent 20 years as a fugitive in the Calabrian mountains, where the wanted men of the ’Ndrangheta have for decades planned and built elaborate mirror cities underneath their villages. It is a literal underworld of bunkers located behind sliding staircases, hidden trapdoors and manholes linked by endless tunnels that merge and separate, leading to escape routes among the sewer system or amid the brambles of a dry river bed.

"The War of the Bucket . . . was fought in 1325, between the rival city-states of Bologna and Modena"

Sometimes I feel like complaining about how modern technology and social media cause people to blow small things way out of proportion, but then I remember that in 1325, the Italian city-states of Modena and Bologna went to war over this actual bucket and 2,000 people died pic.twitter.com/MesKN7DJjN

— Katie Henry (@KT_NRE) September 7, 2018

Wikipedia:

It was provoked when Modenese soldiers stole the bucket from a city well, but was really an episode in the over 300-year-long struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines. Modena won the Battle of Zappolino (the only battle of the war), and the bucket remains in Modena to this day.

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From the late Middle Ages until the Renaissance, northern Italy was divided between factions supporting the rival political claims of the Holy Roman Emperor ("Ghibellines") and the Pope ("Guelfs"). Modena was Ghibelline; Bologna was Guelph.

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In this atmosphere of tension and hostility, some Modenese soldiers slipped into the center of Bologna, and stole a civic bucket filled with loot from the main city well in the center of Bologna. The humiliated Bolognese demanded the return of the bucket, and when that was refused declared war on Modena.

"The strangest accusation was that the Chinese in Tuscany weren’t dying—or, at least, that they weren’t leaving any bodies behind"

"The Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Tuscany"

In 1991, the regional government began an investigation into why, during the previous twelve months, not a single Chinese death had been officially recorded in Prato or in two nearby towns. In 2005, the government was still mystified—that year, more than a thousand Chinese arrivals were registered, and only three deaths. Locals suspected that Chinese mobsters were disposing of corpses in exchange for passports, which they then sold to new arrivals, a scheme that took advantage of the native population’s apparent inability to tell any one Chinese person from another.

"Thieves steal Indian maharajahs' jewels 'worth millions' from Venice exhibition"

"'The glass case was opened up as if it were a tin can while the alarm, if it worked at all, went off late,' said [] the head of Venice police."

"Police Broke Up a Drug-Fueled Vatican Priest Orgy"

Vice:

The organizer of the shindig was a 50-year-old aide to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio—the president of many congregations including the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts—named Luigi Capozzi. Coccopalmerio is a heavy hitter in the church being one of the Pope's key advisors—he was appointed by Pope Benedict in 2007.

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On top of frequent pedophilia scandals, it seems the Vatican has, for lack of a better term, a little bit of an orgy problem. In 2015, a 50-year-old priest in southern Italy was suspended for gay orgies, and earlier this year a priest from Naples had been suspended for similar allegations.

"Italian police accused a mafia-linked gang of controlling one of the country’s largest migrant centers"

Vice:

On Monday, police arrested 68 people linked to the operation, and charged them with skimming $35 million in funds destined to help new arrivals over the past decade.

Among those arrested was a Catholic priest who was paid almost $150,000 in a single year for providing “spiritual services.”

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Investigators said “that the clan controlled, for profit, the management of the reception centre” at Isola di Capo Rizzuto and had been doing so for over a decade.

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This is not the first time the Arena clan has branched out into areas not typically associated with mafia operations. In 2012, Italian police seized assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars — including one of Europe’s largest wind farms.

"Death toll from Italy's hotel avalanche rises to 14, as prosecutors study email that begged for help hours before disaster struck"

TG:

Hotel owner Bruno Di Tommaso sent an urgent email to police and local authorities just hours before the avalanche smothered the Rigopiano Hotel in a blanket of snow, ice, debris and pine trees, last Wednesday.

He said his guests had been left "terrified" by four powerful earthquakes, all of more than magnitude 5.0, that had shaken central Italy that day.

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Survivors have recounted how they ate snow to stay alive while they were trapped in the shattered remains of the hotel.

On Monday, exhausted rescuers found something to cheer about when they came across three sheepdog puppies, resembling small polar bears, trapped in the boiler room of the hotel.

(Article includes multiple photos of the puppies.)

McDonald's "launches $20-million lawsuit after Italian city says no to plans for outlet near famed cathedral"

WSJ:

Eager to lure some of the roughly three million tourists visiting the Duomo each year, McDonald’s was willing to rewrite its own rule book to win over the city.

Wait staff would serve customers at tables, thus eliminating takeaway orders to deflect the city’s fears of hordes of picnicking tourists. The Americans also promised to source 80% of ingredients locally, including 100 tons of Tuscany’s prided Chianina beef for burgers.

But city officials were nonetheless merciless

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In its complaint in Florence, McDonald’s in turn threatens other suits should other towns pass similar local identity regulations.