Foreign News: The Campaign Begins

Politics erupted the length of Italy last week, with a lava flow of candidates, party slogans and oratory. For all its ancient past, Italy has been a united nation for barely a century, and a republic for only seven years. This year's national election, the first since 1948, brought out 8,500 candidates for 590 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 237 seats in the Senate.

Election day was seven weeks off, but on the campaign's first Sunday, Italians from the shore of Como to the slums of Palermo gathered at a record 2,300...

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