Immigrants from Senegal protest against racism in Florence, Italy, on Dec. 17, 2011. Four days earlier, an Italian man killed two African street sellers and wounded three others in a shooting spree in Florence.
Two Africans were killed and three wounded in a shooting at a street market in Florence, Italy, on Dec. 13. The Italian man who carried out the shooting committed suicide.
The Italian city of Florence prides itself on welcoming foreign migrants. But the killing of two Africans last month has raised new questions about racism in Italy.
With the economic crisis worsening, there are signs xenophobia could increase as Italians start to compete with immigrants for a slice of the shrinking economic pie.
On Dec. 13, a known right-wing extremist opened fire in two separate marketplaces, leaving two Senegalese dead and seriously injuring three others. The killer then shot himself.
Last fall, wealthy Chinese gathered at a Beijing hotel to hear a pitch by Patrick Quinn, the governor of Illinois. He wanted them to invest in a convention center project at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
"You can't have capitalism without capital," Quinn said to the group of potential investors. "So we really are interested in encouraging people from everywhere, particularly here in China ... to consider the state of Illinois as a place to make investments."
The required minimum investment: half a million dollars.
All of the Republican presidential hopefuls take on President Obama in their stump speeches, attacking his health care plan, his jobs record and more.
But the shorthand former House Speaker Newt Gingrich uses, calling the nation's first black president the "food stamp president," is raising questions.
It's a theme Gingrich has used since Iowa, and he returned to it during a forum in Charleston, S.C., over the weekend.
Opponents of Wis. Gov. Scott Walker will deliver a truckload of petitions to the state's elections board Tuesday in an effort to force a recall election. Thousands of volunteers have spent the past two months canvassing the state collecting signatures.
Organizers are confident Walker will need to face an election this year in order to keep his job. Talk of recalling the governor began nearly a year ago, after he signed a bill into law that strips most public unions of collective bargaining rights.
Rosamund Bernier is the author of Matisse, Picasso, Miró — As I Knew Them. A longtime contributing editor to Vogue, she as made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1999.
In 1947, Vogue magazine sent Rosamond Bernier to Paris, to cover European cultural life as it recovered after World War II. She met everyone who was anybody — Pablo Picasso befriended her, Henri Matisse wooed her, Alice B. Toklas baked for her. Bernier's memoir Some of My Lives is a lively compendium of this moveable feast of art and genius – and of the author's own considerable charm.
It's often assumed that even in tough times, lawyers can find good jobs. But that proposition is being overturned by a tight legal market, and by a glut of graduates.
The nation's law schools are facing growing pressure to be more upfront about their graduates' job prospects. Many students say they were lured in by juicy job numbers, but when they got out, all they ended up with is massive debt.
Reaching Behind Bars:Prison Show host and former inmate David Babb takes to the air every Friday night at 9 p.m. to deliver news about the Texas penal system and to take calls from listeners, who often have messages for their incarcerated loved ones.
John Chris Hernandez listens to The Prison Show from his cell at the Eastham Unit penitentiary in East Texas. Hernandez is currently serving a life sentence for murder.
Janice Oeffner places a ring on the finger of Dawn Williams during an on-air proxy wedding between Williams and a Texas inmate. On-air proxy weddings have become so common that The Prison Show has a wedding coordinator to help guide couples through the paperwork.
Every Friday at 9 p.m., thousands of prisoners across East Texas settle into their bunks, pull out their hand-held radios and tune in to The Prison Show, the only radio show in the country that caters to prisoners and the families they've left behind.
These days, memoirs are often the target of contempt. A scathing slam in New York Times Book Review this year inveighed against "oversharing"; and in the New Yorker, the memoirist was likened to "a drunken guest at a wedding... motivated by an overpowering need to be the center of attention." If the narrative deals with socially unacceptable matters like abuse, addiction, family dysfunction, or even poverty, the scorn gets even thicker.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is considering a bill that would eliminate the state's 6 percent tax on cosmetic medical procedures like Botox by July 2013.
If you watch much TV, you probably know that the Real Housewives of New Jersey are no strangers to the surgeon's knife. And if the state's plastic surgeons get their way, those housewives may be able to save a few dollars on their next procedure.
New Jersey's legislature has voted to phase out the so-called "Botax" — a 6 percent tax on cosmetic surgery and elective procedures like Botox — and the bill is currently on Gov. Chris Christie's desk for approval.
The search for survivors of the Costa Concordia disaster continues Thursday in Giglio Porto, Italy. At least 11 people were killed after the vessel ran aground last week. More than 20 people are still missing.
Workers prepare to recover fuel from the damaged ship on Wednesday. The ship was carrying about a half-million gallons of fuel. So far, there is no sign that it has leaked.
Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco (center) arrives Tuesday at the Grosseto court in Italy for a hearing. In a dramatic phone conversation, De Falco was heard ordering Francesco Schettino, the captain of the stricken cruise liner, to get back onboard and oversee the evacuation.
Capt. Francesco Schettino (right) is taken into custody by police in Porto Santo Stefano, Italy, on Jan. 14. Schettino was released Tuesday and is under house arrest in southern Italy. He is being investigated on possible manslaughter charges and abandoning his ship.
Rescuers exploded four holes in the hull of the ship to gain easier access to areas that had not yet been searched. Here, a scuba diver recovers a body Tuesday.
The Costa Concordia sails from Limassol, Cyprus, in April 2009. The ship ran aground off the coast of Giglio Island, Italy, on Saturday, forcing the 4,200 passengers onboard to evacuate.
