Senior judges in Milan issued a stern rebuke to former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday after he tried to blame his huge alimony payments on the biased views of “feminist, communist” magistrates.
In the latest skirmish between the billionaire media magnate and the judiciary, the heads of the Milan tribunal and court of appeal issued a curt statement saying they “firmly rejected any insinuation of partiality” on the part of the magistrates who drew up the three-time prime minister’s divorce settlement, which he claims amounts to 200,000 euros (US$261,200) a day.
Livia Pomodoro and Giovanni Canzio added that their colleagues were “diligent professionals” and called on politicians to avoid making “any expression of derision” that could cause the public to think otherwise.
The retort followed the latest in a succession of lengthy television interviews with Berlusconi, 76, which have become a fixture of Italian politics in the run-up to next month’s elections.
Questioned on the La7 private TV network about his divorce from his second wife, former actor Veronica Lario, Berlusconi said the settlement amounted to 36 million euros a year, with 72 million euros in arrears. He also said it meant paying Lario 200,000 euros a day, although it was unclear how he had calculated that figure.
“These are three women judges, feminists and communists, OK? These are the Milan judges who have persecuted me since 1994,” he said.
The claim that he is the victim of a vindictive, leftwing judiciary has been a key part of Berlusconi’s political persona ever since he first came to power in the mid-1990s.
When he was found guilty of tax fraud by a Milan court last year and sentenced to four years in prison, he retorted that the decision was “a political sentence, the way so many other trials invented against me have been political.” He is appealing against the verdict.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS