Italian police have launched an investigation into the torching of a car belonging to a model who alleged she was paid to attend a party with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The suspected arson attack on Thursday morning came as a second woman, Patrizia D’Addario, a former model and escort who claims she spent a night with Berlusconi at his Rome residence, said a break-in at her house could be connected to threats she made to go public about the night.
The women and 17 others have reportedly been questioned by Bari prosecutors who suspect a local businessman, Gianpaolo Tarantini, of “abetting prostitution” by paying women to attend parties, including those held by Berlusconi.
Barbara Montereale’s Honda Jazz was doused with gas and set alight in the southern city of Bari after she alleged that she had been paid 1,000 euros (US$1,400) by Tarantini to attend a party at Berlusconi’s holiday home in Sardinia.
Montereale also claimed that D’Addario had told her she had sex with Berlusconi in November, after a dinner at his Rome residence.
D’Addario declined to confirm that in an interview with La Repubblica on Thursday, but did say that Berlusconi had “openly caressed” her on a sofa in front of a bodyguard. She also said she attended two parties at his Rome residence, including one at which about 20 women flocked around him as if they were at a “harem.”
D’Addario said she was not paid for spending the night with Berlusconi, but secured a promise from him to help win her a building permit for a hotel in Bari.
When that help was not forthcoming, D’Addario said she felt betrayed and told a friend about secret audio tapes she had made during her night with Berlusconi. A few days later, she said, a computer, CDs, underwear and the Versace dress she wore that night were stolen from her home.
“I was frightened, then began to understand,” she said.
Berlusconi said this week he had never paid for sex, preferring the pleasure of conquest. He said he did not recall D’Addario.
“I didn’t know her name and didn’t remember her face,” he said.
Berlusconi’s wife announced she would divorce him last month, accusing him of “frequenting minors” after he attended the 18th birthday party of aspiring model Noemi Letizia.
On Thursday Berlusconi said: “I will not change. The Italians want me like this.”
His governing coalition performed well in this month’s EU and local elections, but as new allegations emerge, he has faced a growing groundswell of Catholic objections to his lifestyle. This week, Italy’s most popular Catholic magazine said he had “passed the limits of decency.”
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
RSS