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The 18 coffins were placed in two neat rows beneath the late-afternoon sun as the mayor and other dignitaries took their seats inside the hilltop cemetery. A Catholic vicar-general offered a homily. A Muslim imam unfurled a small rug and knelt in prayer, his singsong voice rising above the stone mausoleums toward the blue of the Mediterranean.

Controversy as Giuseppe Grassonelli's Malerba wins Sciascia-Racalmare prize, named after writer who challenged Cosa Nostra. The memoir of a mafia boss serving life imprisonment for a string of murders has won a Sicilian literary prize named after one of the first Italian writers to challenge – not without controversy – the Cosa Nostra.

Al Pacino made two trips up the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, with a pair of movies about aging, regret, giving up and letting go. 

 A group of four gay men in Italy got more than a bill when the check for their meals arrived — reports say the waiter actually printed a warning that the table contained 'faggots' on the receipt.