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A former big wheel in the Sicilian health system serving 15 years for ties to the Mafia has been released to house arrest because he is allergic to the high-bean diet in his maximum-security jail.

Tonino Guerra, a prolific Italian screenwriter and poet whose roster of film collaborators, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos, amounted to a who’s who of European cinema’s golden age, died on Wednesday at his home in Santarcangelo di Romagna, in northern Italy near the Adriatic coast. He was 92.

There must be times when Elsa Fornero feels she has the world's worst job.When the 63-year-old stepped out to buy a new pair of shoes last weekend, she was accompanied by no fewer than 10 police officers: six plainclothes bodyguards and another four to close off the pedestrian precinct in Turin where she went shopping. There are anti-mafia prosecutors who get less protection.

Assunta Linza, a bright-eyed 33-year-old with a college degree in psychology, has been unemployed since June, after losing a temporary job as a call-center operator. Her father, who is 60 and has a fifth-grade education, took early retirement with full benefits at age 42 from a job as a workman at the Italian state railway company.