Daily News Channel
To their admirers, they are Horatio Alger heroes, poor boys who worked their way out of the slums and backwaters of the Cauca Valley. Onetime delinquent Jose Santacruz Londono studied engineering, went into construction and emerged as Don Chepe, a billionaire whose marble citadel looms high above the sugarcane fields of Cali, the country’s third largest city.
Disasters in Italy have a predictable chronology: after the calamity strikes, rescues are attempted, destiny is lamented and pledges are made to rebuild destroyed towns. And without fail, as the first victims are still being buried, a criminal investigation is opened.
The Italian government declared a state of emergency Friday for the Sicilian city of Messina and surrounding areas after mudslides left at least 13 people dead and many others injured or missing.
Each year, Italians take part in a mid-summer ritual to honor the victims of the Mafia and speak out against the scourge of organized crime. From Palermo to Torino, politicians, church leaders and youth groups gather to mark the July 19, 1992, assassination of anti-mob magistrate Paolo Borsellino, who was killed along with five bodyguards in a meticulously planned car bombing outside his mother’s apartment in the Sicilian capital