Italian prez in tribute to mob victims

Italian President Sergio Mattarella, whose brother was murdered by the Cosa Nostra, traveled to an organized-crime stronghold in southern Italy on Sunday to honor hundreds of Italians slain by the country’s mobsters over the past decades.

Mattarella praised the judges, prosecutors, police, union leaders, businessmen and politicians who combatted organized crime.

During the ceremony in Locri, a Calabrian town that is a longtime base of the ’Ndrángheta crime syndicate, Mattarella lamented that “the Mafia is still strong” and controls or tries to infiltrate much of Italy’s economy.