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ORIGINAL LINK:GUARDIAN/
This news blog does not normally cover Italy but PM Silvio Berlusconi's latest sex scandal is too delicious to ignore. The telenovela continues.
It centers around a then17-year-old Moroccan belly-dancer Karima Keyek, who claimed that Berlusconi, 74, gave her more than $11,000 usd and jewelry after a Valentine's Day dinner held this year for 10 women at his mansion near Milan ...BUT did not sleep with her.
"It the first time in my life that a man has not tried to take me to bed. He behaved like a father, I swear," she said. More interesting are her detailed descriptions of Berlusconi's lavish parties that often morphed into "bunga-bunga" sessions involving after-dinner sex between male and female guests.
"He gave me an envelope with €7,000 in it and I told him I dreamed of gaining Italian citizenship and becoming a policewoman." She told the newspaper La Repubblica: "It was like going to the church charity where they give you a bag of shopping."
1ST UPDATE: 1 NOV. : Italy's interior minister Roberto Maroni apparently supported the Milan police officers accused of breaking rules to free the 17-year-old Moroccan belly dancer from custody under pressure from Berlusconi.
The opposition wants Berlusconi's resignation. "If it is confirmed that magistrates had decided to send the girl to a home, then we are looking at an intolerable mix of lies and crimes that are irreconcilable with the prime minister's role,"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/31/italy-silvio-berlusconi
2ND UPDATE: 3 NOV: NYTIMES: Trying to diffuse with "humor" the growing scandal over his relationship with Moroccan belly-dancer Karima El Mahroug, now 18, better known as "Ruby", Berlusconi stuck a handmade Italian loafer firmly into his mouth when he stated: “It’s better to be passionate about beautiful women than gay.” The comment outraged Nichi Vendola, a rising political star and the gay governor of Apulia. “The time for jokes is over,” he said. “Your jokes can’t amuse a country that is exhausted, impoverished, scared, precarious and abandoned.” Vendola, of course, called on Berlusconi to resign.
FOR MORE, SEE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/world/europe/03italy.html?ref=todayspaper
