Presenting her long-awaited closing arguments in the so-called Rubygate trial, Ilda Boccassini, the prosecutor who has led the case against Berlusconi, said the centre-right billionaire should be convicted on both charges involving Karima el-Mahroug, a former nightclub dancer from Morocco whose stage name was Ruby Heartstealer.

A verdict is expected in the coming months. If he is found guilty, Berlusconi will be able to launch two appeals, a process which would take years to complete. Boccassini argued there was “no doubt” that the then prime minister had paid for sex with Mahroug when she was 17 — under the legal age for prostitution in Italy. She also argued that when, in May 2010, the teenager was arrested on suspicion of theft, Berlusconi had put pressure on the police to release her, claiming she was a relative of the now-deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Berlusconi, a three-time premier whose Freedom People (PdL) party shares power in Enrico Letta’s grand coalition government and is leading once again in the polls, strongly denies both charges, claiming the trial is just another episode in his “persecution” by Italy’s magistrates.

On Saturday, he turned a political rally in the northern city of Brescia into a protest against the Italian judiciary which was attended by Angelino Alfano, the new interior minister — much to Letta’s irritation.

And, in a bizarre intervention on the eve of the summing up, Berlusconi appeared on one of his own television channels on Sunday to insist that he had never been anything but a benevolent friend to Mahroug and had given her some money purely out of a desire to help her build a life for herself.

The young woman also appeared on the show, which gave viewers a glimpse inside the Arcore villa, near Milan, where so-called “bunga bunga” soirees took place, including a dimly-lit basement area and dining room with crimson tablecloth and candelabra.

Boccassini’s portrayal of Mahroug was brutal. She argued that the Moroccan girl had bought into a negative “Italian dream” of getting into show business to make money. Raising eyebrows, the prosecutor referred to Mahroug as “an intelligent person . . . with that oriental cunning of her origins”.

She added: “Let there be no doubt that Karima Mahroug had sex with Berlusconi and received benefits for it.”

In the meantime, the former prime minister’s conviction for tax fraud — which carries a four-year jail sentence and a five-year ban from public office — was upheld. He denies the charges. The penalties will not come into effect unless the verdict is made definitive after a second appeal, by which time the statute of limitations may well have expired.

 By arrangement with the Guardian

Chemistry, Lombardi joked, was not his strong point. But valiantly, on Wednesday, the Jesuit priest nonetheless embarked on a detailed description of smoke-making at the Sistine Chapel’s two stoves.

It was not easy. Lombardi, deftly able to navigate the obscurest of Vatican minutiae, showed signs of acute unease when it came to the periodic table.

His English-speaking assistant, Fr Tom Rosica, experienced even greater difficulty when it came to translating the names of the various chemicals from Italian to English – though, as he said, he had only been presented with them minutes before.

Apologetically, he explained: “I don’t study this stuff; I study the Bible.”

The system they were outlining was not straightforward. There are two stoves in the Sistine Chapel, one that has been used in conclaves since 1939, and one, introduced in 2005, which has an electronic smoke-producing device in it.

The ballot papers are burned in the first, while the device in the second activates a cartridge holding five lots of chemical mixture that are loaded gradually over the course of seven minutes. This is designed to make the smoke either clearly black or clearly white.

For the black smoke the mixture is potassium perchlorate, anthracene and sulphur, the Vatican confirmed. For the white version it is potassium chlorate, lactose and a pine resin known as Greek pitch. The two stoves join in one pipe that connects them to the chimney.

At the end of his explanation Lombardi received a round of applause from the press corps.

“It used to be that a theology qualification was useful to cover the Vatican,” tweeted Michael Kelly, editor of The Irish Catholic. “Now I’m wishing I did chemistry.”

By arrangement with the Guardian

Unveiled in its window on Sunday were three ivory cassocks in small, medium and large — a choice which it hopes will keep it covered no matter who emerges from the Sistine Chapel as the next leader of the Roman Catholic church.

Alongside the robes would go a white skullcap, a red velvet cape and four or five pairs of red shoes, said Lorenzo Gammarelli, one of the business’s owners. “We are providing more than three pairs of shoes because you can adjust a cassock or a suit but you must wear the right size shoes,” he said.

Cardinals have yet to fix a date for a conclave to elect Benedict XVI’s successor, but once they do, the cassocks and other papal paraphernalia will be dispatched from Gammarelli to the Vatican. They have to arrive before it begins, said Gammarelli, as the new pope will need them for his first appearance before the faithful in St Peter’s square and they will not be able to enter once the secretive proceedings kick off.

The business, which has been catering to the Roman curia and papacy since 1798, has supplied every pope since 1922 when it began keeping records, Gammarelli said.

The seven pontiffs ranged in size from the portly John XXIII to his slender successor, Paul VI.

However, Gammarelli, based near the Pantheon, does not have a monopoly: Benedict was reported to also be ordering tunics from rival outfitters Euroclero.

This time, the business has had to work even harder than usual to get the clothes ready on time after Benedict’s shock abdication.

“We were completely surprised, as everyone else I think,” said Gammarelli. The fact that the pope had not died meant that the mourning period usually observed for nine days did not take place.

“We received the order a few days after Benedict declared that he was going to resign and we finished on Friday, so we took quite a while,” he said. “To make one cassock we need three and a half days.”— The Guardian, London

Ahead of elections to choose a new government and parliament, the Italians who rejoiced when Silvio Berlusconi left office 15 months ago are well aware of the importance of the vote for the future of their country. Many have their own laundry lists of areas they say need improving or overhauling, from corruption and clientelism to the media and parliament itself.But rather than speaking optimistically about the election’s potential for renewal, many voters are going to the ballot box uninspired and anxious that, instead of providing a turning point, the election will prove a dead end. “We are worried that there will be this big change (politically) but that in fact nothing will change,” said Eleonora, another of the class’s English students. With just days to go, she, like an estimated five million people — 10 per cent of the electorate — had not yet made up her mind who to vote for. “I don’t know,” she said. “I always voted for the left, but this time I’m really in doubt.”

According to the last official polls released two weeks ago, the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) led by Pier Luigi Bersani is most likely — but by no means certain — to emerge with the most votes and lead a new government, probably backed by Monti. But the size of its majority — and therefore how capable it would be of producing a stable, reformist government — would depend both on how successful Berlusconi’s attempted comeback ultimately proves and how many people shun mainstream politics altogether by casting their vote for the Five Star Movement (M5S) of former comedian Beppe Grillo.The M5S has proved a powerful draw for disaffected voters fed up with the same old faces dominating Italian politics. In a front page editorial, the Corriere della Sera said it had become an outlet for rage and frustration, “The traditional parties are incapable of indicating any other course.”

But, though the novelty is compelling, many are unsure about what Grillo stands for — and what his change might look like. “I think he will bring a breath of fresh air — people (elected to parliament) who are not politicians; that can be a good thing, although it isn’t necessarily. But I also think he’s a bit of a demagogue, so that’s what I’m worried about,” said Alberto Milone, a 29-year-old software engineer based in the southern town of Lecce.

Over Pugliese antipasti, Milone said that, despite the apparent array of choice available to voters, there was no obvious candidate for him, “I don’t feel there’s a person who really represents me.” Like many, he will vote for the PD because he sees Bersani as a credible candidate for prime minister, even if he is lacking in charisma and is tainted — in the eyes of many — with the sins of his party’s past, both as a feeble opposition and as a lacklustre government.

But Milone worries that the numbers won’t add up for Bersani, and that he won’t have a strong enough majority to be able to govern properly or to reform. He is far from the only one to think like this.

“The big problem for me is the fractured nature of the parliament. We need a strong majority,” said Giovanni, a civil engineer also in the English class who will vote for the PD. “It is normally possible to govern (in Italy) with a big majority but impossible with a small one — and always more difficult than in Britain, France or Germany. Even a small party wants to be heard.” He is terrified, he added, by the potential return of Berlusconi.

Though Italy has a historically high turn-out rate — it topped 80 per cent at the last election in 2008 — there remain people who simply won’t vote. Maurizio Melito, a 32-year-old from Lecce, is the definition of an engaged citizen: he is a youth worker, a cultural centre co-ordinator, a teacher, and he sleeps 10 nights a month in a rehabilitation centre for the drug and alcohol addicted. He speaks eloquently about the impact of policies on his native Puglia and votes in local elections. But he regards national politicians as “the educated mafia” and says they are the problem, rather than the solution to, Italy’s woes. “I will not vote,” he said. “It’s not the vote that’s going to change the situation — for me this is a shame. I would really like to be able to vote.”

By arrangement with the Guardian

Now, however, after five years of decline which has seen many nearby companies close and unemployment rise, Sarti says that even this most solid of towns is feeling the strain. “There are a lot of people who five years ago didn’t need social services but who now do,” he says. “They are the new poor.”

Sarti, who has lived all his 48 years in and around San Giovanni and now works in the welfare department of the town council, says numerous small and medium-sized companies in the area have gone under in the past few years, causing big problems for a community whose lifeblood has traditionally been manufacturing and industry.

Frustratingly for Sarti, the town council has not been able to respond to the increase in demand for its services as it once might have. In a double whammy familiar in many austerity-hit countries, its funds have been cut significantly just as its safety net has been needed the most by those who are out of work or on reduced hours.

Sarti also says the council has seen a significant rise in the number of young people needing treatment for mental health concerns.

He wants to see a government that will maintain social funding and that, most importantly, is led by a party that is “serious”. That, for him, means either the Democratic Party or the Union of the Centre, and, in keeping with the strongly left-wing traditions of the area, he has decided to cast his vote for the former. It categorically rules out not only Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom party but also Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement and the Civil Revolution party led by former anti-mafia prosecutor Antonio Ingroia. “They say a lot of things that I, a man who uses his mind, cannot believe,” he says.
— The Guardian, London

1. The economy: With the effects of austerity taking their toll and fears building about long-term capacity for growth, it is little wonder that Italy’s economic situation has taken centre stage in the election campaign.

The country is now in its longest recession in 20 years, the economy having contracted for the last six consecutive quarters and languished in more than a decade of almost nonexistent growth. Unemployment is at more than 11 per cent; for under-25s, it is more than 36 per cent. Italy has the second highest ratio of sovereign debt to GDP in the EU.

Economists say much more needs to be done to affect the kind of deep and lasting change needed to get Italy growing again.
They focus on Italy’s lack of competitiveness; its untapped labour market resources — women and young people; a thorough reform of product markets and of crucial institutions such as the justice and education systems.

2. Women:

Held back by ingrained cultural attitudes, inadequate public services and political under-representation, women in Italy may have better educational qualifications than their male counterparts but they are significantly less likely to be in paid work.

Italy’s female employment rate is, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 46.5 per cent — better only than Greece, Mexico and Turkey among advanced economies, and 12 percentage points below the EU average.)

“It’s a country in which women are still very connected to a traditional vision of their role. Care work is work principally done by women. So we find ourselves in a situation where women aren’t getting work,” said Maddalena Vianello, a leading feminist activist. “If they get it, statistics show that they are more precarious, worse paid and in professional positions which, let’s say, are inferior in relation to their level of education.”

3. The justice system: Slow-moving, hugely bloated and sometimes alarmingly politicised, Italy’s justice system needs fixing. In a critical report last year, the Council of Europe’s top official for human rights, Nils Muiznieks, said Italy could “ill-afford” such an inefficient system, which is estimated to waste the equivalent of one per cent of GDP.

Italy is one of the most litigious countries in Europe, with more than 2.8m cases brought in 2011 alone, and has by far the most lawyers of any EU country — around 240,000. But the system simply cannot cope.

A shockingly high proportion of inmates in Italy’s overcrowded prisons are awaiting trial. Meanwhile, others remain free pending appeals against lower court convictions.

4. Organised crime and corruption: If there is one industry in Italy that has not suffered from the economic crisis, it is organised crime. It is a sector that booms year in, year out. With three significant mafia organisations — the ‘Ndrangheta, the Camorra and the Sicilian mafia — the country remains a hub of organised illicit activity, even if the nature of that activity is changing with the times.

During the recession, organised crime groups took advantage of ordinary Italians’ plight, offering loans to individuals or businesses with extortionate rates of interest, thus making a whole new group of people beholden to them. According to a report last year by anti-crime group SOS Impresa, the people acting effectively as loan sharks are likely to be apparently respectable professionals. “This is extortion with a clean face,” it said.

5. Politics: Italy has had more national elections and more governments than any other big European power since the Second World War. Only one government has lasted the full five-year term since 1945. In this election, the number of different possible outcomes and permutations is daunting even for the most dedicated student of Italian politics. Apathy and disenchantment are rife. “I’ve developed a sort of sickness from politics,” said first-time voter Gianmarco Caprio. “Here in Italy we get so much of it — on TV, or just when you hear people talk in a bar that one can reach the point of saturation. I’ve had enough of politics, and of the same politicians that dare to come out and still make the same old populistic claims.” One outcome, by no means to be ruled out, would neatly encapsulate the vapidity of Italian politics: if the centre-right wins the lower house but no one controls the senate, the most likely upshot would be… further elections. And political and economic mayhem.

6. The north/south divide: In 1861, the year of Italy’s birth, unification pioneer Massimo d’Azeglio declared: “We have made Italy; now we must make Italians.” To what extent this task has been accomplished remains, more than 150 years later, unclear.
The disparity between wealthy north and poorer south is one of the country’s most impervious and worrying problems.

According to the Bank of Italy, GDP per person is more than 40 per cent lower in the south than in the centre and north — a situation that has endured for the past 30 years and has only worsened with the current recession.

In his valedictory New Year’s Eve speech, President Giorgio Napolitano repeatedly drew attention to the issue, speaking of the urgent need to invest in the south which, he said, was home to 70 per cent of all children in Italy living in relative poverty.
Italy, he stressed, needed a vision of economic growth for “the whole country”.

Unfortunately this kind of political message has more often been drowned out in recent years by others that seek to further entrench the differences rather than erase them.

By arrangement with the Guardian

With a female employment rate of 46.5 per cent — the third lowest in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), better only than Greece, Mexico and Turkey, and 12 percentage points lower than the EU average — Italy has a problem getting its women into work and keeping them there.

“Italy is not using to the best of its ability a significant part of its human capital — women. It is a colossal loss for our economy,” wrote Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, two leading economists, on the front page of Corriere della Sera last month. “The next government will have to put the question of female employment at the heart of its programme.”

For many who watched with horror and incredulity as Silvio Berlusconi spent years combining the job of prime minister with sexist buffoon, such a move would be refreshing. But they say that this element of his legacy, which drew on Italy’s traditional gender roles and pushed them to grotesque extremes in the form of “bunga bunga” soirees and barely clad television showgirls, will be difficult to overcome.

When it comes to female unemployment, observers agree that tackling the cultural roots of the problem is crucial. In Italy, particularly in the south, the female population is still expected to be “the ultimate caregiver”.

Maddalena Vianello, a researcher and feminist activist, believes a “revolution of mentality” is needed to redistribute the burden of unpaid domestic work, be it housework, childcare or looking after the elderly. That may take some time. According to figures published in 2011 by the OECD, Italian women spent three hours 40 minutes more per day on unpaid work than their male counterparts.

Defenders of the status quo argue that women, in performing the role of what the Italians call the “angel of the hearth”, are performing a hugely valuable function.

But Giavazzi, a professor of economics at Bocconi University in Milan, does not agree. “It’s very inefficient because you have people with good university degrees who could be very productive on the market and instead work at home,” he said.

If women manage to find work in Italy — in a country where the unemployment rate is 11 per cent — their experiences can be discouraging. Families who cannot rely on relatives to look after children — a common strategy among working-age Italians — will have to find childcare, the public provision of which in southern Italy is patchy and often over-subscribed.

What can the next government do to fix this problem? For many, the answer is clear: better public services that will allow women greater freedom by providing more care for preschool children and elderly people. Others, such as Giavazzi, advocate easing the tax burden to boost women’s pay. — The Guardian, London

It is the latest expression of his frustration about prejudice and pigeon-holing. Born to an Italian mother on an island in the middle of the Tiber, he previously released a single entitled Foreigner in My Country. Now he has taken up the cause of those who, despite being born and brought up in Italy like him, have no access to Italian citizenship and technically remain foreigners in the only country they have ever known. Due to legislation which is, say critics, increasingly anachronistic, the children of immigrants in Italy must wait until they are 18 to be able to acquire citizenship. In order to qualify for nationality as adults, they must have been on Italian soil “without interruption” throughout their childhood.

The issue, subject of a political impasse for years, shows signs of returning to the forefront of debate. Desperate for an opportunity not to be missed, campaigners are stepping up the pressure and Issaa, in a rap released as part of a petition on Change.org, has been doing his bit.

“More than half a million people living secretly as foreigners in this country,” run the lyrics of Dear President. “There’s Daniel, there’s Amir, there’s Simone/ We want our rights; we’re not asking a favour.”

To its critics, Italy’s citizenship law — based largely on the concept of jus sanguinis, the right of blood — reflects the country’s past as a country of emigration rather than its present, and future, as one of immigration.

And, as Issaa wrote in the petition to the outgoing president, Giorgio Napolitano, it is woefully out of step with the country’s reality in 2013. Napolitano, to Issaa’s delight, highlighted the issue in his New Year’s Eve address, asking how the current situation was “conceivable” in a country that wanted to be open and inclusive.

According to the national statistics institute, there are more than 500,000 children resident in Italy whose parents come from countries outside the EU and have to spend their infancy and teenage years with a residency permit and tight restrictions on their movements.

Until 2008, one was Mario Balotelli, the Manchester City footballer who, despite being born in Sicily and fostered by an Italian family, was technically considered a Ghanaian citizen and was therefore ineligible to play for Italy until the age of 18.
— The Guardian, London