Prosecutors seek six years’ jail for Berlusconi
ROME: Prosecutors have demanded that Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister and key backer of the fragile new government, serve six years in prison and face a lifetime ban from holding public office for allegedly paying for sex with an underage girl and abusing his office to cover it up.

Chimney smoke: a chemistry lesson from Vatican
AS the Sistine Chapel chimney spewed out clouds of very black smoke on Tuesday night, Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman, received a phone call from a journalist. How had the cardinal electors managed to

Papal tailors have all sizes covered
MAKING bespoke clothes is tricky when you don’t know who will wear them. But Gammarelli, the Roman tailor that has dressed every pope since 1922, gets around that by catering for every eventuality.

Italians weigh up ‘least worst’ option for election
ROME: In a classroom in central Rome, the topic of discussion was the Italian elections, and on the whiteboard were scrawled English words. Among them was the phrase “least worse”. Amid lengthy

San Giovanni’s ‘new poor’
SAN Giovanni in Persiceto, a northern Italian town just 14 miles (22.5 kilometres) from Bologna in the wealthy industrial region of Emilia Romagna, never used to have many problems.

Six things that are wrong with Italy
ROME: A stagnating economy, corruption, organised crime, political apathy, misogyny, youth unemployment... The person elected to run Italy next weekend will have a formidable to-do list

Italy’s ‘female question’
ENZA Miceli received a call [in December] from her children’s school asking her to come in for an appointment. Her husband was abroad. So Miceli, 44, a call centre worker, asked her supervisor if,

Citizenship rap
AMIR Issaa, a 34-year-old Italian hip-hop artist, has never conformed to stereotype. He has written about his Egyptian father going to jail and about the fraught nature of Italy’s integration process.