The long running financial comedy "Restructuring the Italian Banking System" is being rewritten with space for new actors, and possible restaging as farce.

Over the last few days, the Italian financial group (piloted by Giampiero Fiorani, guiding light of the Banca Popolare Italiana) seeking to block ABN Amro's attempted take-over of the Banca Antonveneta has received what seems to be a definitive check-mate. Indeed, at yesterday's board meeting ABN Amro's soldiers captured the board of directors of the Banca Antonveneta, but not without considerable assistance from Italian magistrates who have found what seems to be illicit activity between Fiorani and the tutelary deity of Italian banking Antonio Fazio of the Banca d'Italia. Telephone calls between Fazio and Fiorani were intercepted by the authorities, and, who knows how, published in Il Giorno, a newspaper notoriously close to Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. The phone calls seem to reveal that Fazio conspired to overrule a report by Bank of Italia technicians favoring the ABN Amro bid and criticizing the questionable sources of the funding for the rival Fiorani Banca Popolare forces. There are even rather titilating reports of Fiorani's calls to Fazio's wife who would seem to be a notable "power behind the throne" at Banca Italia. Furthermore the fact that two of Fazio's children are (by pure coincidence,of course) beholden to Fiorani for their employment further tarnishes Fazio's reputation, and with it that of the Bank of Italy, long a bastion of financial rectitude in the wild west of Italian finance.

It seems that Fazio may well be forced to resign as director of the Banca d'Italia, a position which enjoys life tenure. Indeed, some reformers are calling for a change in the life tenure provision, while other non-centrist commentators are lamenting the the fall from grace even with respect to the much vituperated past epoch of Christian Democratic hegemony.

Other recent stories of interest include il Manifesto report on the clandestine activity of a German ship (the Alliance) operating off the coast Sardegna where it ran-aground on a reef causing some environmental damage. Ostensibly the Alliance is engaged in oceanographic research, but, allegedly, it is ``really" testing robot "kayaks" designed by the U.S. Office of Naval Research to carry and launch torpedoes, or perhaps also testing a new type of sonar. Naturally there are authoratative denials of any untoward activity. The interested reader can consult elbareport.it for on Il Manifesto further details.

Recent issued of il Manifesto have also contained interesting articles by Giuliana Sgrena, the reported liberated by N. Calipari and wounded in the same "check-point incident" in which Calipari was killed, in which she eulogizes Adnan al Bayati, an Iraqi who assisted her and other reporters in getting the news from Iraq out. Al Bayati was assassinated by three pistol shots fired by men without masks and in the presence of his wife and 18-month old daughter. Sgrena state that a number of Iraqi journalists have been "eliminated" in recent weeks, and, since Western journalists seldom dare to leave the Green Zone, the flow of reliable news from the rest of Iraq is being reduced to less than a trickle.

Il Manifesto also reports an angry siege of Bagram Air Base near Kabul by local Afghans after a series of searches conducted by American forces without permission from the governing Afghan authorities. Moreover, it seems that the Taleban and Mullah Omar are increasing their activity in opposing the American forces in Afghanistan.This story seems to have received little attention in the American press..