That controversial ruling this summer alienated the country's 120,000 registered Jews and 4 million Muslims, who saw it as a violation of religious freedom.
Vanessa Scialfa, 29, was killed by her partner in Sicily. Alessia Francesca Simonetta, 25, was pregnant when she was stabbed to death by her boyfriend in Milan.
One site in central Rome is known as "cat forum," thanks to its adjacent cat shelter. But Italian archaeology officials have issued the Torre Argentina Cat Shelter Association an eviction notice, and feline lovers from around the world are bracing for a cat fight.
The Roman ruins at Torre Argentina are an oasis in the middle of the city's chaotic traffic.
That's led to warnings from journalists, who see a threat to press freedom at a time when Spaniards want to understand why their financial stability is unraveling.
Independent newspapers and their owners are increasingly in debt to banks.
The "angry ones" are long gone from Spanish streets, but they've evolved into many grass-roots associations now filling the gaps left by the eroding welfare state, spawning a new form of anti-austerity resistance that embraces all branches of society, from those who have lost homes to foreclosures, to the entire judiciary.
Hardly a day passes in Spain without a noisy demonstration by one sector of society or another.
And yet at Christmastime, there's one area where Romans pull out all the stops — the dinner table.
Even with the economic crisis, outdoor markets, grocery shops and fishmongers are crowded with customers.
As in many Catholic countries, where the time leading up to the holiday was traditionally marked by fasting, the Christmas Eve meal in Rome is primarily based on fish, says Isabella Michelini, a tour guide and expert on local cul
Francesco Lotoro has found thousands of songs, symphonies and operas written in concentration, labor and POW camps in Germany and elsewhere before and during World War II.
By rescuing compositions written in imprisonment, Lotoro wants to fill the hole left in Europe's musical history and show how even the horrors of the Holocaust could not suppress artistic inspiration.
Lotoro's solitary ques
With further cutbacks and tax hikes about to kick in, Greece's social fabric is being torn apart.
Nowhere are cutbacks more visible and painful than in health care.
Universal coverage — which most countries in Western Europe have in some form — is no more in Greece.
The last of the great chivalrous orders is celebrating the 900th anniversary of its official recognition by Pope Paschal II. On Saturday, the Knights attended Mass in St. Peter's Basilica and received an audience with Pope Benedict XVI.
The Knights of Malta is also known as the Sovereign Military Order of St.
Just one day before his election as Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered a homily that, many analysts later said, became the platform of his papacy.
He denounced modern trends he said were undermining Catholicism and Western civilization.
"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desire
Many people believe the country's news media have failed to cover the crisis — and lost credibility along the way.
Beppe Grillo is a standup comedian and the country's most popular blogger; 63 years old, with a mane of grey curly hair, he's hyperactive and foul-mouthed.
Under pressure from Vatican-based cardinals, their American counterparts canceled their daily briefings that drew hundreds of news-starved journalists.
The clampdown was part of what is shaping up as a major confrontation over the future of the church between Vatican insiders and cardinals from the rest of the world.
Just an hour before the scheduled American briefing, an email announced it had been canceled.
In a terse statement later, the spokeswoman f
The 115 cardinal electors will remain at the Sistine Chapel incommunicado from the rest of the world as they vote. In the era of social media, however, Vatican officials are taking every precaution to prevent cardinals from yielding to the temptation to tweet and text.
In one corner of the chapel, workers have already installed a century-old cast-iron stove, where the voting ballots are to be burned after being tallied.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Not since the early centuries of the Roman Catholic Church has a pope come from outside Europe.
MONTAGNE: Pope Francis, the first pontiff ever to take that name, comes from Argentina.
