Palermo, Italy
Sicilians re-elected Salvatore Cuffaro as governor this week, even though he is on trial for helping the Mafia. Cuffaro, known as “Kiss-Kiss” for his habit of kissing everyone, is accused of alerting a friend, who was under investigation for Mafia links, that his phone was being tapped. Cuffaro’s opponent in the election was Rita Borsellino, an anti-Mafia crusader whose brother was a magistrate who was murdered after prosecuting Mafia members. “We’ve gone backwards a lot,” Borsellino said. “The Mafia is a presence in politics again.” Cuffaro’s fellow Christian Democrats said he had been unfairly “slandered, denigrated, and attacked.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Book reviews: ‘Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America’ and ‘How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978–1998’Feature A political ‘witch hunt’ and Helen Garner’s journal entries
-
The backlash against ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli filterThe Explainer The studio's charming style has become part of a nebulous social media trend
-
Why are student loan borrowers falling behind on payments?Today's Big Question Delinquencies surge as the Trump administration upends the program
