London
Death of an oligarch: The financially ruined Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky was found dead in his Ascot mansion this week, an apparent suicide. One of Russia’s richest and most powerful men during the Yeltsin era, Berezovsky orchestrated the appointment of Vladimir Putin as Yeltsin’s successor, but quickly fell from favor and was forced to flee Russia for exile in the U.K. His associate Alexander Litvinenko, who had made criminal allegations against Putin, was poisoned in 2006, allegedly by Russian authorities. Last year Berezovsky’s $5.6 billion lawsuit against another Russian exile, Roman Abramovich, ended in a fiasco as the judge humiliated him and called him a liar.
Paris
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March against gay marriage: Hundreds of thousands of people swarmed the streets of Paris to demonstrate against France’s proposed legalization of gay marriage. While a slight majority of voters favor gay marriage, most oppose letting gay couples raise children through adoption, artificial insemination, or surrogacy, and many believe the law would allow all those options. The mass protest was fed by a more general frustration with the policies of President François Hollande, who has been forced by the European Union to impose an unpopular economic austerity plan on the country.
Paris
Sarkozy a suspect: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is under formal investigation for allegedly taking advantage of a senile campaign donor. L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, France’s richest woman, was diagnosed with dementia in 2006, when she was 83. The following year, her staffers said, Sarkozy made many trips to her home to retrieve envelopes of cash totaling more than $5 million. He says he made only one visit to Bettencourt, a longtime friend, and did not receive money. “At no point in my public life have I betrayed the duties of my position,” he said. Sarkozy has said he hopes to run for president again.
Rome
Knox nightmare continues: Italy’s Supreme Court has overturned the acquittal of American Amanda Knox in the 2007 murder of her British college roommate, Meredith Kercher, during a university year abroad in Perugia. Knox’s 2009 conviction was overturned in 2011, when an appellate court ruled that the prosecutor had ignored evidence that a drug dealer committed the crime and had concocted a bizarre theory that Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were Satanic sex fiends. The case will now go back to court for review. If a new trial is ordered and Knox is found guilty, Italy could ask for her extradition from the U.S.—a request unlikely to be granted. The U.S. forbids a second trial for the same crime after an acquittal; Italy does not.
