Fortunately there are also other less gruesome stories, including several that come under the category of "the usual summer news perennials":

There are also a few news items of a less hackneyed type, for example the story of a sort of memorandum of reconciliation agreed to in the small town of Schio, near Vicenza, this weekend, and solemnized in a church ceremony. On July 7, 1945 a group of partisans massacred 54 fascist detainees (including 19 women). The perpetrators were condemned by an Allied military tribunal, but never brought to justice. This week-end the political heirs of both sides underwrote the common agreement of reconciliation. It's difficult for those of us who live in Italy today (even the native Italians born after the war) to realize just how bitter the division between red and black was immediately after WWII. It has taken 60 years of imperfect but substantial democracy to heal the wounds opened by "il ventennio" (the twenty years of fascism here), and especially the civil war which accompanied the end of WWII. Needless to say, the case of Schio is just one among many bitter memories of brutality perpetrated by both sides. The process of reconciliation is not yet complete, and probably will not be complete until all those who lived that period have passed from the scene.

Finally il Manifesto featured an ironic op-ed on the impending takeover of the Banca Nazionale di Lavoro by a S. Ricucci's co-operative linked Unipol. The author Alessandro Robecchi poses a series of questions now on the agenda for the new management, for instance, will the tellers now refer to one another as "Comrade", and will dead-beat loans be referred to (still conjectural) Siberian branches of BNL to work out repayment terms.

The summer silly season has not yet arrived, but its harbingers are clearly visible.