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By Philip Pullella ROME, Jan 16 (Reuters) - As the Costa Concordia shifted dangerously on Monday, Italy's environment minister raised the prospect of an environmental disaster if the 2,300 tonnes of fuel on the half-submerged cruise ship leaks. The ship's fuel tanks were full, having just left the port of Civitavecchia, north of Rome, for a week-long Mediterranean cruise, when it ran aground on Friday

The sinking Costa Concordia; courtsey of Wikimedia Commons/Rvongher Rescue efforts were called off earlier today in the aftermath of a Costa Concordia shipwreck on rocks off the coast of Italy three days ago. Six of the cruise liner’s 4,200 passengers and crewmembers have been reported dead, so far, and another 15 or more remain missing

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. -- With its fast food restaurants, churches and strip malls, this city in southeast Florida looks like much of America. But on a sunny day last month, city official Hector Castro talked about its resemblance to Italy's slowly sinking Venice

'Tis the season for giving thanks and sharing blame. The supercomittee, the White House, "the One Percent," Greece, Italy -- the accusations seem to be swirling everywhere this fall.

In case you missed the news, a team of physicists reported in September that the tiny subatomic particles known as neutrinos could violate the cosmic speed limit set by Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The researchers, working on an experiment called OPERA, beamed neutrinos through the earth’s crust, from CERN, the laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, to Gran Sasso National Laboratory in L’Aquila, Italy, an underground physics lab. According to the scientists’ estimates, the neutrinos arrived at their destination around 60 nanoseconds quicker than the speed of light

There’s a fundamental difference between the rebels of the past and today: Generation Y are born entrepreneurs. Every generation rebels against their parents. When parents approve, their offspring disapproves.

In the house where Vincenzo Ulturale grew up in Naples, Italy, his parents converted the family living room into a makeshift workshop where they sewed neckwear and taught their son to do the same.

What's Greece got to do with your business? How worried should you be?

Think your electricity bill is high? It's not. Neither is your heating bill or the price you pay at the pump.

The ground shook violently in L'Aquila, Italy, early in the morning of April 6, 2009, more violently than it had during the tremors the area had been experiencing for months. After the dust settled and the recovery effort was over, 308 people were dead. Now the local prosecutor is charging the scientific committee responsible for predicting earthquakes with failing to give the people of L'Aquila adequate warning.

A team of scientists from Italy and Germany has recently developed a model to predict the friction occurring when a rough surface in wet conditions (such as a road on a rainy day) is in sliding contact with a rubber material (such as a car tire tread block) in an article to be published shortly in the European Physical Journal E.

Forget poking on Facebook or IMing people, shaking a hand or putting an arm on someone else's shoulder is where social interaction really begins. In Japan, this need for touch has extended to a focus on pets, including cafes for petting cats

The goal of this "primordial" creative business lounge is to keep workers at ease. And despite its clean white design, nature is never far away at the Thinkgarden in Milan.

Carpooling--going strong overseas--may be finally rev up here thanks to the domestic launch of Europe's incredibly successful ridesharing program. Carpooling--which has has never really taken off in the U.S.--is about to get a little help from a European invasion. Carpooling.com , launched as an MBA class project in Germany six years ago, is now a continent-wide phenomenon that has cracked what it takes to get millions of people to open their doors to relative strangers: safety, convenience, and a little cash.

West Richland, Wash., isn’t Modena, Italy, or Stuttgart, Germany, or Molsheim, France.