By: Charlie Sternberg Use of this constitutes acceptance of our privacy policy The material on this site may not be reproduced except with the prior written permission of Rodman Media Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker FORT SMITH -- Area children and adults who have a hard time staying up late enough to watch the ball drop will have a new way to experience New Year's Eve this year This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC Material from the Associated Press is Copyright © 2025 audio and/or video material shall not be published rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use The AP will not be held liable for any delays errors or omissions therefrom or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part thereof or for any damages arising from any of the foregoing Marshals Museum has been named as a recipient of a NEA Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts Italy is Europe's leading kiwi producer and the third in the world From the province of Latina come Zespri kiwis whose welfare is delegated to shady third parties Independent Italian publication IrpiMedia investigates Gurjinder Singh recounts fifteen years of exploitation in the kiwi fields of Latina province in Italy’s Lazio region Sitting in a bar in the central square of Cisterna di Latina Gurjinder is fifty years old and has worked for several firms in the area In the smaller ones he never had a contract and received his pay in cash at the end of the day he worked in a company where over 70 workers were employed They were supervised in groups by foremen who often insulted them and threatened to beat them up In 2021 Italy exported 320,000 tonnes of kiwi fruit to fifty countries, for a turnover of over €400 million. This made it Europe's leading producer and the third in the world after China and New Zealand Lazio is Italy's top region for growing the "green berry" one third of all retail-marketed kiwis come from the multinational Zespri it is a market leader and present in six countries In Italy alone it accounts for almost 3000 hectares of fields plus hundreds of local producers and thousands of labourers It is difficult to know the exact number of farm workers employed in the kiwi harvest because "they often work illegally," explains Laura Hardeep Kaur a trade unionist with FLAI CGIL in Latina province Most of the labourers are Indians from Punjab there are approximately 9,500 Indian labourers in Latina with more than one million days registered in fixed-term contracts a migration specialist at La Sapienza University in Rome estimates that there are about 30,000 Sikhs in the area He is under protection after receiving threats for his efforts to fight the "caporalato" system – a designation for abusive labour – in Lazio's Agro Pontino (Pontine Marshes) Included in the estimate are those without residence permits and those who have recently arrived but have yet to be counted From more than fifty interviews conducted for this investigation in Italy and in India between May and December 2022 – with workers Punjab travel agents and intermediaries – a picture emerges of singularly undignified working conditions irregular contracts and the constant threat of violence There is also the never-ending blackmail linked to the residence permit which is impossible to renew without a company providing a formal job contract averaging between €5 and €6 – well below the approximately €9 gross per hour established by the provincial contract as the basic wage of an agricultural worker The stratagem of so-called "grey work" is often used – the payment of wages partly regularly and partly in the black It is a widespread system among entrepreneurs in the area enabling them to pay lower social levies and taxes while maintaining a formal regularity that makes controls more difficult Other abuses also seem commonplace: dismissals without justification and a lack of – theoretically compulsory – personal protective equipment such as gloves and masks The business where Gurjinder Singh worked for three years sells kiwis to Zespri the "caporale" (supervisor) filmed him three times while he stopped to drink or because something got into his eyes The videos served – at least that's what the supervisor threatened – as "proof" of his inefficiency to be handed over to the head of the company The "warning" could also serve to justify not paying other workers their full wages Stories of abuse by bosses and supervisors are frequent among the area's Sikh community There have even been cases of punitive attacks on labourers who have tried to rebel Some have been hit by cars as they cycled to the fields or – on at least one occasion – threatened in front of their home with a shotgun I had to earn for my four children and my wife crossing the province of Latina means immersing oneself in a landscape of kiwi fields and coloured crates Each colour of bin corresponds to a Producers' Organisation (OP) cooperatives which take charge of the kiwis destined for the foreign market Thirteen of these have a licence to sell to Zespri The multinational is best known for its yellow-fleshed variety the most widely planted in Agro Pontino (69% Zespri is the owner of the international patent of the same name and only allows its plants to be cultivated on the basis of a contract It determines the number of hectares and licences for cultivation distributing them to consortia or cooperatives which The local producers do not pay for the licence but are required to become members of the cooperatives that bear the costs of the packaging From the fields the kiwis are taken to the large warehouses of the OPs and then to the factories There they are packaged and become Zespri kiwis: the multinational company's label is the first stage in their marketing across Europe Marco Omizzolo describes it as a kind of "entrepreneurial treacle" where there are those who produce and those who sell to another producer with more than 200 million boxes of kiwi fruit sold worldwide Helping the expansion in Lazio was the climate which is almost identical to New Zealand's and vice versa: for the multinational this means year-round production and profits In 2019 there were 2,700 hectares of SunGold kiwis in Italy but also sets the technical characteristics of the kiwis: weight It is essential not to damage the fruit when placing it in the boxes By: Tim Wright FORT SMITH -- The race is on for the second annual Fort Smith General Darby Challenge The April 27 event will be a fundraiser for the Fort Smith Museum of History and the Darby House. Participants can register on the museum's website to compete in a ruck march The start and finish line will be located at Cisterna Park in Downtown Fort Smith at 1001 Garrison Ave William Orlando Darby was a Fort Smith native who served in the U.S he was posthumously promoted to brigadier general This year's Fort Smith General Darby Challenge commemorates the 80th anniversary of Darby's death and the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII according to a press release from the Fort Smith Museum of History It is also a sister-city event with Fort Smith's sister cities Last year's inaugural event raised $45,000 for the museum and Darby House The museum is still accepting sponsors and vendors for this year and is encouraging community members to watch the race as spectators to cheer the runners on Sponsor and vendor forms can be found on the museum's website as well Darby embodies the spirit of service and sacrifice that continues to inspire the community today," Fort Smith Public Relations Manager Josh Buchfink said The city is proud to participate in the Darby Challenge The event honors Darby's legacy and strengthens Fort Smith's international bonds with its sister cities The cities' partnership is allows the respective communities to reflect on their shared history commemorate the 80th anniversary of Darby's sacrifice and the end of World War II and pay tribute to those who never made it home There will be a showing of a film produced by Grant Thomas about Fort Smith and its sister cities after the race event The film viewing is open to challenge participants and the public Cisterna di Latina is situated about an hour south of Rome in central Italy inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea with a population of just under 40,000 Fort Smith and Cisterna di Latina became sister cities and for 40 years the signs declaring this relationship have greeted locals and visitors alike to both cities according to a previous Fort Smith news release and 4th Ranger Battalions were not successful in their attempt to liberate Cisterna their honorable efforts and sacrifices led to the city's eventual liberation from Nazi control in May 1944 The heavy loss of life and capture of the American soldiers have not been forgotten by the residents of Cisterna Darby was originally buried in Cisterna in 1945 but he was reinterred at Fort Smith National Cemetery on March 11 "I met Cristian Scardigno in 2021 when we traveled to Fort Smith's sister city Hom have finally been identified using mitochondrial DNA testing nearly 80 years after he went MIA Hom had left his hometown of Boston to fight against German forces in Italy as part of Company B during a defensive campaign against German forces The Germans had not reported him as a prisoner of war According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) Hom’s whereabouts remained a complete mystery until September 1944 The 3044th American Graves Registration Company stumbled on remains in Ponte Rotto roughly three miles west of Cisterna di Latina The company could not identify the remains at the time They were also unable to find any identity tags The company decided to send the remains to the Central Identification Point (CIP) at Nettuno for processing declared that the remains were too fragmented to make an identification The only conclusion they could arrive at was that the remains were those of an American soldier the CIP declared the remains unidentifiable and had them permanently interred at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in 1948 That seemed to be the end of Hom’s story until one curious historian decided to take a shot at solving this mystery a DPAA historian studying American casualties during the war believed that the remains found in Cisterna likely belonged to Hom the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery exhumed the remains and sent them to DPAA for testing A specialized team at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska used anthropological analysis and mitochondrial DNA to make a positive identification The DPAA is now in the process of communicating with family members to plan a funeral Hom will be buried in Brooklyn in October of this year Hom’s name on the Walls of the Missing at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno will be followed by a rosette symbolling that he has been found A similar story broke earlier this month with the discovery of the body of a WWII sailor According to the New York Post 24-year-old Anthony Di Petta was shot down by enemy fire in the Pacific government declared Petta non-recoverable on July 16 a nonprofit group identified Di Petta’s plane and recovered remains and other material evidence the DPAA laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii used dental records and mitochondrial DNA to positively identify Di Petta nearly 80 years after his fatal crash After learning about the discovery and identification of Wing O. Hom, dive into 66 iconic photos from World War Two. Then, read about how DNA testing led a Virginia woman to solve a decades-old double murder.