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 Italy's Maxxi museum, which opened just two years ago, has been hard hit by the country's economic problems, which have resulted in widespread cuts in cultural funding. Now the high-profile art museum, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, faces possible closure.

The Italian government has been persistent, tenacious and very effective in forcing repatriation of its looted antiquities. Seizing the ethical high ground, then playing legal and diplomatic hardball, it has extracted scores of prized objects from American museums. None was hit harder than L.A.'s Getty Museum, which has bid adieu to 40 pieces Italy was able to prove had been illegally dug from its soil.

Police say they have arrested an Italian man in a crackdown on an Islamic extremist network suspected of supporting international terrorism. Alfonso Polverino, an anti-terrorism police official in Cagliari, Sardinia, said the man was arrested early Monday in Pesaro, an Adriatic sea town.Polverino told Sky TG24 TV that the man, not immediately identified, was suspected of training Islamic extremists.
 

Michael Pevzner of Kingston knows what makes him laugh. And a combination of faith, family, and food tickled his theatrical funny bone enough to know he wanted to do a play with that theme.That mix is the basis of “Over the River and Through the Woods,’’ a production of Nemasket River Productions that Pevzner is directing at the Alley Theatre in Middleborough Friday and Saturday, and May 4-5, with shows at 8 p.m.It was written by Joe DiPietro (“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,’’), and is about Nick, a single Italian-American from New Jersey who wants to move away, snipping powerful Italian connections with his grandparents, who connive to keep him close.