Marika's newscast gives you a taste of what to expect when watching the news in Italy!

What's going on in Italy? Marika, Guido, Serena, and Anna give you the latest.

"Little Red Riding Hood" in a modern interpretation featuring Anna in the title role. Marika, on the other hand, has been miraculously transformed into a classic Italian nonna (grandma).

Magpies [gazze ladre] in folklore are known to be attracted by shiny things. Rossini's opera La Gazza Ladra recounts the story of Ninetta, a servant girl. She is wrongly accused of stealing the silverware that the family magpie stole.

Ninetta is in prison, condemned to death, and things are looking very bleak, indeed. Don't worry though; in the end, love and justice win out, and everyone except the magistrate lives happily ever after.

Marika and Anna conjugate the verb to be in the simple present, present perfect, and simple past.

Anna and Marika give examples of the past tense of the verb to be.

Marika and Anna go over the future and conditional tenses for the verb essere (to be). The vocabulary review covers the future and the conditional conjugations for this verb.

Anna and Marika take us through the imperative, the subjunctive and the gerund forms of the verb, essere (to be). The subjunctive is used less and less in modern English, so it can be tricky to learn in Italian, but little by little even these forms will become part of your Italian language skills.

Anna and Marika introduce the verb avere (to have) and show us the conjugation in the present, present perfect, simple past and past perfect.

Anna and Marika talk about their love lives, using the remote past and the remote past perfect, as well as the present and past conditional.

Marika and Anna present the verb avere (to have) in the subjunctive mood, which, in Italian, as you'll see, is used when the word che is used as a conjunction. This mood has practically disappeared from the English language.

Anna and Marika finish explaining the tenses of the verb "avere" (to have). They give examples of present and past participles, present and past gerunds, as well as the simple future and future perfect.

Anna and Marika are having lunch in the Trastevere quarter of Rome. Join them as they order traditional Roman pasta dishes and talk about Italian eating habits.

We are at the beautiful botanical gardens of Rome. Marika and Anna are sitting on a bench talking. In their conversation they take us through the different conjugations of the verb pensare (to think).