Milan, Italy
Paying for it: The government of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was rocked this week by new allegations that he paid prostitutes for sex. Prosecutors alleged that Berlusconi had sex with “a significant number” of young prostitutes, setting some of them up in apartments and giving others cash and jewelry. In particular, prosecutors are investigating allegations that the 74-year-old prime minister had sex with a Moroccan showgirl named Karima el Mahroug—aka “Ruby Heartbreak”—before she turned 18, a charge she denies. Berlusconi insisted he never paid for sex, and said prosecutors were “jealous’’ because they weren’t invited to his parties. He said their investigation was an attempt to “subvert the fundamental rules of democracy.”
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Warsaw
Was Columbus a Pole? Christopher Columbus might have been Polish rather than Italian, the Polish version of Newsweek reported this week. Citing new research by the Portuguese historian Manuel Rosa, Newsweek Polska said Columbus could have been a son of the Polish King Wladyslaw III, rather than of a Genovese weaver. The king was long believed to have died fighting the Ottoman Turks, but Rosa has presented evidence that Wladyslaw actually found refuge on the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he married a local woman and, the scholar contends, fathered Columbus. In support of his theory, Rosa points out that Columbus had red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin—traits more common among Poles than Italians.
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