Wednesday, 15 May 2013 21:34
Posted by Abdul Ahad
ROME: Italy's Silvio Berlusconi will not provoke a political crisis even if he is convicted next month for having sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of office, his lawyer said on Wednesday."It's a long way from grumbling to a political crisis," Niccolo Ghedini, who represents the former prime minister and is also a lawmaker from his party, told a press conference in Rome."Even if he is convicted, Berlusconi has no interest in a crisis because he helped create the government and wants stability," Ghedini said.The lawyer also accused Berlusconi's enemies in parliament of wanting to "do away" with the billionaire tycoon in parliament because they could not defeat him at the ballot box."He is always resurrecting," Ghedini said.Berlusconi's People of Freedom party has joined with the main centre-left Democratic Party in a grand coalition government formed last month to put an end to a long political deadlock.Ghedini reiterated the ...
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ROME: Italy's Silvio Berlusconi will not provoke a political crisis even if he is convicted next month for having sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of office, his lawyer said on Wednesday."It's a long way from grumbling to a political crisis," Niccolo Ghedini, who represents the former prime minister and is also a lawmaker from his party, told a press conference in Rome."Even if he is convicted, Berlusconi has no interest in a crisis because he helped create the government and wants stability," Ghedini said.The lawyer also accused Berlusconi's enemies in parliament of wanting to "do away" with the billionaire tycoon in parliament because they could not defeat him at the ballot box."He is always resurrecting," Ghedini said.Berlusconi's People of Freedom party has joined with the main centre-left Democratic Party in a grand coalition government formed last month to put an end to a long political deadlock.Ghedini reiterated the ...
LONDON: Mervyn King, the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, heaped criticism on a planned tax on financial transactions in Europe, saying it was unlikely to help the region's embattled economy."I don't think it is likely to help very much, and indeed the thing I find most striking is that here in Europe I can't find anyone in the central-banking community who thinks it's a good idea," King told reporters on Wednesday, after presenting ...
FRANKFURT: The German economy, Europe's biggest, grew only fractionally at the start of 2013 as the freezing winter weather put the brakes on activity, official data showed on Tuesday.German gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by just 0.1 percent in the period from January to March, the federal statistics office Destatis calculated in a preliminary estimate.Analysts had been expecting a slightly bigger rebound of around 0.3 percent after the economy shrank by a revised 0.7 percent ...
PARIS: France entered a recession in the first quarter this year with gross domestic product contracting 0.2 percent, after shrinking the same amount in the last quarter of 2012, the official INSEE statistics office said Wednesday.A recession corresponds to a drop in growth over two quarters. The French finance ministry said that it still expected a tiny expansion of 0.1 percent for 2013 however.INSEE also revised lower the fall in purchasing power for French households ...
MARSEILLE: A French prosecutor on Tuesday called for the founder of a firm whose faulty breast implants sparked a global health scare to be given a four-year prison sentence on fraud charges.In closing arguments at the trial in Marseille, prosecutor Jacques Dallest also called for PIP founder Jean-Claude Mas to pay a 100,000 euro ($130,000) fine and to be banned from working in medical services or from running a company.The defence is to present its ...
WARSAW: Central European leader Poland got off to a weaker than expected start this year, quarterly data showed on Tuesday, amid expectations that central banks in the region will further cut interest rates to boost demand and spur a sluggish recovery.The only EU member to have grown each year over the last two decades, Poland mustered just 0.1 percent growth in the first quarter, initial official data showed, after zero growth in the last quarter ...
MOSCOW: Russia has detained an American citizen accused of trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer to work for the CIA, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday.It said the man was an employee at the US embassy in Moscow but also worked for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. The embassy declined immediate comment.A spokesman for the FSB identified the man as Ryan Fogle, a third secretary at the embassy, and said he ...
