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blog：Berlusconi’s wife: Lies led to divorce

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:24:24 +0000

ROME: The estranged wife of Premier Silvio Berlusconi says in a book published Wednesday that it was her husband’s alleged lies that pushed her to file for divorce at the outset of the sex scandal involving the Italian conservative leader.
In the book, Veronica Lario recalls how in April she made the decision after her husband failed to mention he would attend the birthday party of an 18-year-old model in Naples, telling her only about his official business in the southern city.
The premier’s attendance at Noemi Letizia’s party was later reported in the media and sparked a series of allegations over Berlusconi’s purported fondness for young women.
Berlusconi, 72, has denied having any improper relationship with Letizia or any other women.
Tendenza Veronica, (Veronica’s Trend), is a revised edition of a book first published in 2004 by journalist Maria Latella. In the new edition, she quotes Lario as saying that the Naples incident was only the latest problem in her relationship with her husband.
“It was the latest lie. Better then to try to seek a last way to respect myself, better to divorce,” the 53-year-old Lario said. “He put me in this situation.”
Lario, a former actress with whom Berlusconi has three children, said her husband’s actions were embarrassing him at a global level.
“I cannot be his baby sitter and I cannot stop him any more from making himself ridiculous in front of the world,” she said. “I’m done.”
Lario’s lawyer was not available for comment.
Latella told AP Television News that the Naples party was “the turning point” for Lario.
“I asked her what about Noemi: ‘Maybe she is your husband’s daughter,’” Latella recalled. “Veronica’s answer was: ‘If she really were Silvio’s daughter, I would open the door of my home, but I know she is not.’”
The public denunciation of Berlusconi that ensued wasn’t the first time the usually private Lario openly complained about her husband’s reported flirtations.
Two years ago, she received a quick and public apology from Berlusconi when she wrote an open letter to La Repubblica – a left-leaning paper fiercely critical of Berlusconi – complaining about her husband telling TV starlet Mara Carfagna: “If I weren’t married, I would marry you immediately.”
Carfagna is now Berlusconi’s minister for equal opportunity.
Berlusconi has dismissed all the allegations as lies fabricated by the opposition and left-leaning media.
Although the scandal has been heavily played in the media for weeks, Berlusconi has so far kept his popularity in Italy largely intact. The center-right coalition, which won elections in the spring of 2008, has remained stable

blog：’Senator of Senators’ mourned worldwide

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:21:55 +0000

BOSTON: World leaders Wednesday lionized US Senator Edward Kennedy as a towering figure in American politics, praising his dedication to causes ranging from health care reform to peace in Northern Ireland.
The last surviving brother in a political dynasty, and one of the most influential senators in US history died Tuesday night at his home on Cape Cod after a year long struggle with brain cancer. He was 77.
In nearly 50 years in the Senate, Kennedy served alongside 10 presidents — his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy among them — compiling an impressive list of legislative achievements on health care, civil rights, immigration and more.
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he was “heartbroken” to hear of the death of Kennedy, a crucial supporter of his presidential candidacy.
“An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States senator of our time,” Obama said.
“For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts,” Obama said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Wednesday said the US politician was the “Senator of Senators”.
Kennedy was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen earlier this year for his services to the US-British relationship and to Northern Ireland.
Kennedy led the world in championing children’s education and healthcare, and believed that every single child should have the chance to realize their potential to the full, Brown said. Even facing illness and death, he never stopped fighting for the causes which were his life’s work.
Lord Owen, who served as British foreign secretary in the 1970s, said Kennedy was “the most influential senator” in the United States.
He said Kennedy had put his weight behind peace in Northern Ireland even at the risk of alienating powerful Irish-American allies, whose sympathies lay with the province’s Catholic Irish nationalists rather than the British Protestant majority.
Initially a strong supporter of the Irish nationalist cause, Kennedy was a key American promoter of the peace process, urging Britain to negotiate with the IRA-linked party Sinn Fein, and also reaching out to Protestant Unionists.
“His influence on the peace process, and his influence on successive American presidents was I think absolutely crucial,” Owen said.
To the American public, Kennedy was best known as the last surviving son of America’s most glamorous political family, father figure and, memorably, eulogist of an Irish-American clan plagued again and again by tragedy. But his career was forever marred by an accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969, when a car he was driving plunged off a bridge, killing a young woman.
Known as “Teddy,” Kennedy was the brother of President John Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, Senator Robert Kennedy, fatally shot while campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, and Joe Kennedy, a pilot killed in World War II.
When he first took the Senate seat previously held by John Kennedy in 1962, he was seen as something of a political lightweight who owed his ascent to his famous name.
Yet during his nearly half century in the chamber, Kennedy became known as one of Washington’s most effective senators, crafting legislation by working with lawmakers and presidents of both parties, and finding unlikely allies.
At the same time, he held fast to liberal causes deemed anachronistic by the centrist “New Democrats”, and was a lightning rod for conservative ire.
He helped enact measures to protect civil and labor rights, expand healthcare, upgrade schools, increase student aid and contain the spread of nuclear weapons.
The Democrat’s affability and capability to span the partisan divide on an array of legislative matters prompted an outpouring of condolences from those in the Republican Party as well as the Democrats.
The widow of another president, Ronald Reagan, was one of the first to speak out from the Republican Party.
“Given our political differences, people are sometimes surprised by how close Ronnie and I have been to the Kennedy family,” Nancy Reagan said in a statement from Los Angeles.
“But Ronnie and Ted could always find common ground, and they had great respect for one another. In recent years, Ted and I found our common ground in stem cell research, and I considered him an ally and a dear friend. I will miss him.”

blog：Kidnapped girl found 18 years later

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:20:25 +0000

Her scream. A frantic sprint on a mountain bike by her stepfather up the twisted mountain road as he tried to catch up to the Ford Granada and the unknown man and woman who had just ripped his family’s lives to shreds before his eyes.
A world renown tourist destination, South Lake Tahoe on the Nevada-California line is dominated in summer by gamblers, boaters and beach goers. In winter, by gamblers, skiers and snowboarders.
But beneath the facade of a tourist town, where workers come and go with each passing season, is a tight-knit community that never forgot Jaycee Lee Dugard, a little girl who loved the color pink.
Her mother, Terry Probyn, and stepfather, Carl, were relative newcomers to the Tahoe community.
“They were brand new to the district,” Sue Bush, Jaycee’s fifth grade teacher, said Friday. “I met them at parent-teacher conference twice.”
But the community shared their nightmare and embraced them, holding fundraisers, putting up fliers and adorning the town in pink ribbons to keep Jaycee in their hearts after she was kidnapped June 10, 1991.
In 2001, 10 years later, more than 100 people marched on US 50, the main highway through town, in a pink ribbon parade to remember the little girl and raise awareness of child safety and Jaycees’ unsolved kidnapping.
Terry Probyn, who left Tahoe in 1998 and moved to Southern California, returned for the anniversary.
“Someone out there knows what happened,” she said at the time. “We need peace. Give us that gift.”
It arrived, out of the blue, Wednesday night when she received a call from investigators, saying her daughter had been found alive. Nearly two decades of questions, what ifs, and suspicions against Dugard’s stepfather, Carl Probyn, were replaced by tears of joy.
Phillip Garrido, 58, and his 54-year-old wife, Nancy, were arrested last week on suspicion of abducting Dugard. They pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment.
Investigators said Dugard was taken to a house in Antioch, where she was kept hidden from the world in a secret, leafy backyard, where she lived in a shed compound.

blog：Kennedy’s successor to be chosen by special election

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:18:51 +0000

WASHINGTON: Unlike most states, a successor to fill Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s seat in the Senate will be chosen through a special election, not by the governor.
Massachusetts law requires a special election for the seat no sooner than 145 days and no later than 160 days after a vacancy occurs. The law bans an interim appointee.
The law was changed in 2004, when Senator John Kerry, a Democrat, became his party’s presidential nominee and Republican Mitt Romney was the state’s governor. Before the change, the governor would have appointed a replacement to serve until the next general election.
That would have created the opportunity for Romney to install a fellow Republican in office, a move that Democrats who control the state legislature sought to prevent.
Last week, Kennedy asked Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law to give Massachusetts’ current governor, Deval Patrick, a fellow supporter of President Barack Obama, the ability to appoint an interim replacement to Kennedy’s seat should Kennedy be unable to continue serving.
“It is vital for this Commonwealth to have two voices speaking for the needs of its citizens and two votes in the Senate during the approximately five months between a vacancy and an election,” Kennedy said in a letter to Patrick.
Though Massachusetts is dominated by Democrats, a change in the law isn’t a sure thing. Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Robert DeLeo – all Democrats – gave no indication if they would support the change.
Any change could not happen immediately. Lawmakers are not expected to return to formal sessions until after Labor Day.
Despite speculation that Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, could assume his Senate seat, family aides have said she is not interested in replacing her husband either temporarily or permanently. One of Kennedy’s nephews, former Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, has also been described as interested.
Other potential Democratic candidates include state Attorney-General Martha Coakley, US House Representative Stephen Lynch, Michael Capuano, Edward Markey, James McGovern and William Delahunt, and former House Representative Martin Meehan, now chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
On the Republican side, potential candidates include Cape Cod businessman Jeff Beatty, former lieutenant governor Kerry Healey, former US attorney Michael Sullivan and Chris Egan, former US ambassador to the Organization for Cooperation and Development.

blog：Madoff’s Long Island beach house put up for sale

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:17:04 +0000

MONTAUK, New York: Those who see Bernard Madoff as the personification of greed and excess might be disappointed by his beach house: It’s not that palatial.
At 3,014 square feet, (280 sq. meters), the home is cottage-size by superrich standards. Its furnishings are look as old as Madoff’s decades-long fraud. There’s no garage. Not even a walk-in closet.
But the 1.2-acre (0.49-hectare) lot sits closer to the surf than larger neighboring homes on the southeastern tip of Long Island. And the house features a grand, columned porch with stunning views — undeniable selling points.
The US Marshals Service, which seized the property just east of the Hamptons on July 1, puts it on the market this week to help pay back investors burned by Madoff’s epic fraud.
They also plan to soon enlist brokers to find buyers for a Manhattan apartment and a Palm Beach, Fla., estate once owned by the financier-turned-felon.
In estimates that federal regulators filed last year, Madoff valued his Manhattan apartment at $7 million and the Florida property at $11 million. He said the Montauk beach house, which he bought in 1979, was worth $3 million.
Federal authorities believe the seaside property could bring closer to $8 million. Whether Madoff’s notoriety hurts or helps remains to be seen.
“Our goal is to place the homes on the market soon to minimize the amount of time they remain in our inventory and maximize the return to the victims,” US Marshal Joseph R. Guccione said Monday.
Madoff, 71, was sentenced in June to 150 years in prison for orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme that spanned decades and spun a web of phantom wealth.
Thousands of investors with Madoff’s once-respected advisory firm believed their securities accounts were worth tens of billions of dollars. But investigators say the totals on the clients’ monthly account statements were fiction. In reality, Madoff never made investments, and instead siphoned new investors’ money to pay returns to existing ones, and to fuel a life of luxury.
Madoff’s punishment included a forfeiture order that stripped him and his wife, Ruth, of nearly all their wealth.
Deputy US Marshal Roland Ubaldo said furniture and any other personal belongings found inside will be sold at auction — “from pieces of art to Ruth Madoff’s shoes.”
The four-bedroom, three-bath beach house — which Ubaldo described as “simple, stylish and understated” — is at the bottom of a steep, lushly landscaped driveway off Old Montauk Highway.
The second-floor entrance leads to a small master bedroom with a private terrace. A staircase descends to a living room with vaulted ceilings, exposed beams and a stone fireplace.
Several sets of glass doors open onto the porch. A small swimming pool that also overlooks the Atlantic Ocean is to the left. A private path on the right winds to the beach through pine trees, rose bushes and dune grass.
The Madoffs’ interior decorating taste was nautical-meets-folk art. Still on view are American Indian rugs and pottery. A sculpture of howling wolves stands outside the front door; just inside is a large wooden goat. There’s a set of antique duck decoys on a hallway table and fishing poles in one corner.
The poles, along with golf clubs, an old exercise bike, outdoor wicker chairs and virtually everything else, have identification numbers, evidence of a painstaking inventory and appraisal for auction.