Acting on a directive from the Anti-Mafia District Directorate of Palermo the police have arrested five individuals—two of whom had already been definitively convicted of mafia association—accused of repeated acts of extortion and illegal competition with threats or violence and of facilitating the mafia association known as Cosa Nostra According to investigations conducted by the SCO and the mobile squads of Agrigento and Palermo it was hypothesized that there was "pervasive control and illicit management of agro-pastoral activities" in the areas of Santa Margherita Belice and Sambuca di Sicilia in the province of Agrigento extending to the border with Contessa Entellina in the province of Palermo 45-year-old Piero Guzzardo (who was first taken to the police headquarters in Agrigento) A precautionary measure was also notified in prison to 72-year-old Pietro Campo A sixth person is also under investigation using the undisputed intimidating force stemming from being recognized as leading figures of the Santa Margherita di Belice mafia command allegedly exerted significant control over the area’s agro-pastoral economy and the use of agricultural funds from the Belice hinterland several incidents were recorded where the suspects forced the owners and managers of agricultural lands to surrender large areas of land for the illicit grazing of livestock demanding the payment of minimal rents which This control over agricultural lands sometimes also translated into a prohibition on conducting ancillary agricultural activities that would alter the free grazing of flocks thus imposing a stringent dominance over others’ real estate also functional to maximizing profits from dairy production "In this context," explain the investigators "there was sometimes an absence of explicit threats as the suspects could impose their will using silent intimidating behaviors echoed by the subjugation capacity stemming from their recognized criminal role along with multiple episodes of damage (arson and livestock theft)—perpetrated by unknown individuals—suffered over the years by owners who had decided instead to dedicate the lands to crops that would limit the grazing of the flocks." The investigations also relied on statements from some victims who opposed the "control system" of the sector after the harvesting carried out by the owners the goods would be improperly acquired and packaged by the suspects in prison without any payment i paramenti sacri rivestono un ruolo di primaria importanza Mancano pochi giorni all'inizio del 72° Raduno Nazionale dei Bersaglieri che dall'8 all'11 maggio 2025 trasformerà Marsala in un palcoscenico di storia dedicato a uno dei corpi militari più rappresentativi.. You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed The contents published on these pages by theNational Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology are distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  Charismatic narcissists are always more appealing than brains It is one of the most beautiful artefacts in the world of literature: the manuscript of Il Gattopardo Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s smart old blue notebook is not the Lindisfarne Gospels crossing the paper with the precision of a machine There are three or four neat corrections every three pages And yet the words and sentences conjure prose which tells a story for all time — and particularly for ours You will find this notebook displayed in a glass case in the museum dedicated to Lampedusa in Santa Margherita di Belice is a ghost: all that remained after the earthquake of January 14th The quake is thought to have killed more than 400 people Photographs displayed in the rebuilt church beside the palace look like the end of the world Lampedusa refers to the catastrophe obliquely in the last line of the book: writing of his characters and their world he concludes: “Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust.” Such dry lyricism The dead are hugely present in life and the living here In the wake of the great quake of Covid-19 we in Britain and across the West might feel more Sicilian: less insulated than we were We are in need of mighty stories to show us what happens: what happens to people to politics and life and place when the world lurches under your feet and you look down and there is History amid the bronze hills and heat-crazed valleys who smites the Leopard’s nephew Tancredi with a terminal case of love at first sight Don Calogero Sedara: self-made businessman By Ben Judah As a child the young Lampedusa had the privilege of the same summer house: there is memoir everywhere in this novel When it was bombed by the United States Air Force during WWII he became very depressed the Baltic German noblewoman and psychoanalyst suggested he write about his family’s past Lampedusa filled that handsome simple notebook with a story set among his forbears in 1860 — the year Garibaldi and his thousand red-capped fighters liberated Sicily from the ghastly Bourbon regime He has swapped the uniform of the Bourbon forces for a red cap It’s a pithily Sicilian judgement on political forces every bit as pitiless as the terremoto which stills seems to shake the spectral village of Poggioreale an abandoned village near Santa Margherita di Belice in the landscape where this part of the story is set excitedly or fearfully — the post-pandemic version of reality do you find yourself more concerned that things might be different The lives of the ordinary people on Lampedusa’s island barely improved when Italy replaced the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies brutal politicians and the brutal sun remained There was still starvation in the South when the twentieth century came We have known the merest tremor of premonition at the sight and thought of empty shelves given where our planet and we may be headed By James Kirkup it is not their great estates — all losing money — or their tottering to-be-bombed palaces that get the family through the times of change and prepare them for their coming years of decline and irrelevance care and respect which transcends class and cash; it is an obsession with the land Lampedusa describes his landscape more beautifully than anyone who has ever written about Sicily The quality of love in his description is fraternal The picture it paints applies exactly to the west of Sicily today: “aridly undulating to the horizon in hillock after hillock conceived apparently in a delirious moment of creation; a sea suddenly petrified at the instant when a change of wind had flung the waves into a frenzy.” When I visited in a gap between lockdowns late last summer I found Sicily fundamentally the same place I have known since living there in 2005: beautiful still suffering the depredations of the Mafia and their pocket politicians The Sicilians have been honouring all Europeans helping and treating the desperate passengers crossing the sea in small boats from Africa Here there is ever much more to love there than there is to hate The Prince loves his wife but starts the story informing her in so many words that he will be visiting his favourite prostitute that night is too brainy and insufficiently sexy to win the heart of Tancredi preferring the shockingly attractive and dully self-involved Angelica None of the characters are destined for romantic contentment By Horatio Clare they might have been happier if they had been able to see themselves as clearly as they saw each other The Covid years have shown us plenty about ourselves and each other — about connection about the clarity the present moment brings If you read the book and then watch Luchino Visconti’s adaptation — the match is brilliant and mutually complementary — you will understand its languor My current mantra is Today and Tomorrow: if those I love are well and happy today and tomorrow then we have a great deal to be thankful for I think I first learned that way of living in Sicily When he finished his masterpiece — he knew it was good but he died before it made him famous — Lampedusa allowed himself the smallest flourish “Fine” — “The End” — he wrote in the middle of that page of his notebook this phlegmatic genius in his perfect black suit with his bitter cigarette and his dark daily coffee His latest book Heavy Light is available now Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" Please click here to view our media pack for more information on advertising and partnership opportunities with UnHerd Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker