Prosecutors say an Italian businessman recruited about 30 girls to attend parties at Premier Silvio Berlusconi's homes, selecting them for their looks and age and paying some of them to have sex with the Italian leader.

    They allege that between September 2008 and May 2009 Gianpaolo Tarantini recruited women of "young age, slender frame," and told them what to wear and how to behave at the parties, according to a newly filed court document.

Preferably not tall, no high heels.

Actually, this AP blurb hardly reveals the enormity of the case. It will frontpage throughout the world once it gets rolling. Nor is it possible to even detail the revelations, as they come out by the minute, all major Italian news sources vying to rush out the sordid details of over a thousand published wiretaps that represent only one percent of the wiretaps made in the past two years on the case.

The recent case of Tarantini's arrest by the Procura of Naples on charges of extortion was meant to sidetrack the Bari case which has finally been made public.

I'll try to explain this.

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The subsequent charge of frequenting underage prostitutes stems from this initial investigation. Contrary to press reports, neither Berlusconi nor his residences were ever put under surveillance. According to the so-called "Boato law" members of parliament and the government cannot be wiretapped or be object of search warrants without prior consent from parliament. A law that is greatly at odds with common sense.

The trial date is set for April 6th.

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Promoted by Jerome a Paris

The initiative has brought nearly unanimous outrage, often colourfully ironic, by opposition and civic leaders. A petition by three of Italy's most prominent jurists stigmatizes the action as a grave attack on the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They further call attention to the fact that Berlusconi's suit is being ignored by Italy's media and regret that lawyers and judges would have ever gone to such lengths to give a legal veneer to a blatantly arbitrary act.   The petition now on line has gathered well over 16000 signatures in hardly three hours.

Feel free to adhere.

from the diaries with minor edit - Nomad

On the second occasion she alleges having passed the entire night in Mr. Berlusconi's services and was paid € 2000 by the man who organized the encounter. Ms. D'Addario had been hired by a company allegedly involved in attempts at corruption over hospital and building contracts. According to D'Addario, Berlusconi greeted her by associating her with a construction project that her good graces represented.

Breaking news, promoted by Sassafras

Editor's note: de Gondi provides regular coverage of Berlusconi's tragic shenanigans on eurotrib - on an almost daily basis

The National Association of Magistrates issued a harsh note declaring that the law spells "the death of criminal justice in Italy." The law drastically limits the possibility for investigative judges to resort to wiretaps. Whereas wiretaps could be authorized on the basis of "compelling evidence of a crime" it may now only be requested on "compelling evidence of guilt" and only if "absolutely indispensable." A request for wiretaps must be approved by three judges rather than one. This has prompted the wry comment that to condemn a person to life imprisonment one judge is enough while to listen to a mafia boss three are needed.

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The media campaign found sympathetic ears in the English press, accustomed to plurality and a degree of independence uncommon by Italian standards. The Times ran several articles as well as an editorial calling Berlusconi to account for both the Noemi affair and the motivations for the guilty verdict in the Mills' case. The Guardian followed suit yesterday in an editorial. Today The Observer also called Mr. Berlusconi to account, concluding however that la Repubblica may have to wait a long time for answers. Today la Repubblica claims to have answered five of the questions on their own merit.

Fresh news promoted by afew

The row is over Berlusconi and his government that use the pretext of the Englaro case to verbally assault the President and the Constitution. Berlusconi forced his ministers to take a unanimous decision to make a three line decree. When Napolitano declined to sign it, Berlusconi attacked him alleging that the president is obliged to sign it, which is categorically false, a deliberate public misrepresentation of the division of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Berlusconi then attacked the Constitution declaring that it was written by philo-Soviet ideologues and that he would do away with it for that. His rant was that the present Constitution does not allow him to govern. Apparently- at this point- one may conclude that he hasn't the ability since he controls all the media, the executive and a grovelling rubberstamp parliament.

Promoted by Colman

May 2, 1968 Paris

At the Sorbonne right wing militants ransack and destroy the classrooms occupied by the student movement.

May 3, 1968 Paris

A student demonstration against the rightwing incursion at the Sorbonne degenerates into a four-hour pitched battle in the Quartier Latin against police forces. The students tear up cobblestones and improvise barricades.

These are but two small news items, perhaps crucial, that triggered what was to be known as May 1968. But May 68 began long before, throughout the world. Berkeley `64. Trento `66. Germany, Spain, Poland, Algeria, Mexico, student movements most often were countered with state violence.

Mariastella Gelmini as Beatified Ignorance

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Roberto Saviano is under death threats for denouncing the criminal deeds of the Camorra in his book Gomorra, translated and read all over the world. His freedom is under threat as well as his autonomy as a writer, his chances to meet his family, to enjoy a social life, to take part in public life, to travel in his own country.

A young writer, guilty of having investigated organized crime, revealing its methods and its structure, is forced to live a hidden, underground life, while the Camorra bosses send him death threats from prison ordering him to stop writing for his newspaper, La Repubblica, and to keep silent.

The State must make every effort to protect Saviano and to defeat the Camorra. But this is not a mere police case. It's a problem of democracy. Saviano's freedom and safety concerns everyone of us as citizens.

Signing this appeal we intend to take charge of it, as a personal commitment, urging the State at the same time to assume its responsibilities because it's intolerable that something like this can happen in Europe in 2008.

DARIO FO
MIKHAIL GORBACIOV
GUNTHER GRASS
RITA LEVI MONTALCINI
ORHAN PAMUK
DESMOND TUTU

You can sign the letter here.

(More beneath the fold...)

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The defence bartered enough time to allow many from the village to flee into the mountains. Bad Hand destroyed the village of over 200 lodges and rounded up about 500 ponies. The battle spelled the end of the Cheyenne war trail. Without horses and shelter many died of exposure and hunger, others surrendered. Chief Dull Knife and some surviving warriors managed to go North to join Crazy Horse at the Tongue River. The white man's winter campaign kept the Crazy Horse village on the run. The scarcity of game and the harshness of winter left little choice for the Northern Plains tribes. It was either to go further North to the Grandmother's land or negotiate with Great Father's little chiefs. Described as driven by bitterness against Crazy Horse in some press reports at the time, Dull Knife surrendered in April 1877. Three weeks later Crazy Horse disarmed to make peace with White Hat and Three Stars.

Travelling in space and time - with a slight edit, afew

"May the worst lose."

Courtesy of l'Espresso

Update [2008-4-14 9:17:26 by DoDo]: Polling booths closed, exit polls are in, live-blogging begins!

from the diaries. Read it all. -- Jérôme