Brussels
We want a government: More than 34,000 people rallied in Brussels this week to demand that Belgium’s bickering political parties form some kind of government. The country has had no government for the past seven months—a European record—since June parliamentary elections produced a stalemate. Flemish nationalists won in Flanders, the country’s rich, Dutch-speaking north, while Socialists won in Wallonia, the poorer, French-speaking south. The standoff has intensified rumblings of secession in Flanders. A Facebook group called Shame initiated the rally. One of the organizers, Thomas Decreus, said it was meant to show that “the people can act where politicians fail—working together across the language barrier.”
Rome
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Berlusconi rails on talk show: Furious over the coverage of his latest sex scandal, embattled Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi traded insults with a talk-show host on live television this week. Berlusconi phoned in to the show to defend the honor of one of his protégées, Nicole Minetti, a 25-year-old dental hygienist who caught Berlusconi’s eye while cleaning his teeth last year and became a politician for his party. The show’s panel was discussing prosecutors’ allegations that Minetti recruited and managed a “stable” of women who had sex with Berlusconi in exchange for money, jewelry, and apartments. Berlusconi said the show—which airs on one of the few channels the prime minister doesn’t own—was a “television whorehouse” making “crude, vile, repugnant” claims. The host, in turn, called the prime minister a “buffoon.”
Tirana, Albania
Protests turn deadly: Three people were killed by police in Tirana last week during a massive protest that Prime Minister Sali Berisha called a coup attempt by the Socialist Party. The Socialists, led by Tirana Mayor Edi Rama, refused to recognize the results of the 2009 parliamentary elections, which gave Berisha a second term, and they’ve held peaceful protests every few months since then. Last week, though, the crowd was much larger, at around 100,000, and some people began throwing sticks and rocks at Berisha’s office building. Police responded with tear gas, water cannons, and firearms. Rama, who has accused Berisha of corruption, appealed for international intervention.
