Italians are in love with Facebook.  I cannot believe how many friends that I now have because of Facebook.  Every day I communicate with lovely people from all over Italy and my friends list gets bigger and bigger!

They sent me funny clips from Italian television, which I, in turn, pass on to my American friends.  They keep me posted on major news events, and we talk about everyday life there.  My Italian grammar is terrible but still we seem to communicate very well.

I became a fan of “La Sicilia” on Facebook, an organization that has thousands of members, and every day I am sent breathe-taking photos from all over the Island.  Join!

(From ANSA): Italian researchers have shown how a cheap analysis procedure can be used to detect leukemia in children early and spare them costly chemotherapy.  The study has been published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Oncology, where it was described as ''impressive'' by one of the world's top leukemia experts, Ching-Hon Pui.

In this study, researchers in Florence, Padua, and Monza examined hundreds of children with a technique called flow cytometry, where cells are blasted with electrons to see if they contain anomalies.  The technique spotted the early signs of a disease called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in which white blood cells crowd out normal cells in the bone marrow and cause damage and death.

“This new method enables us to identify the prognosis of the young patient in a matter of days, allowing us to map out the proper treatment,” said the study, performed under the aegis of the Italian Association for Pediatric Oncologic Hematology.

Sicilians at Risk Due To Economy

(ANSA) - Rome, October 8 - Over three million people in Italy cannot afford to feed themselves, an Italian food bank reported Thursday.  The study, by Milan University researchers, showed that 4.4% of Italian families live so far beneath the poverty line that they run the risk of hunger.

According to the study, presented at a conference on poverty at Rome's City Hall, the problem is most widespread on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia where one in ten residents live under the poverty line.

A Little Good Sicilian Economic News

The European Commission approved 2.4 billion of tax credits (approx. $3.6 billion USD) for Sicily saying the package did not break EU competition rules.   The Italian government wants to boost business on the island by easing credit for start-ups between 2009 and 2013.

Better News J (But It’s Calabria!)

Italian prostitutes can have home help as long as it isn't a permanent service, Italy's top appeals court said.  The Cassation Court, whose rulings set precedents, turned down an appeal against the acquittal of a waiter accused of helping sex workers in a small town in Calabria.  Vincenzo R. was found to have brought water, towels, and clean sheets to a group of prostitutes working out of their homes.  Abetting prostitution and living off sex workers’ earnings is a crime in Italy, but it is not against the law to sell sex.