Rome
Legislators from Italy’s socially conservative Christian Democratic Party were scrambling this week to distance themselves from a colleague who was caught in a sex-and-drugs scandal. Cosimo Mele, 50, resigned from his party after a prostitute overdosed on cocaine in his hotel room. Still, he insists he is being unfairly judged. “Of course I recognize Christian values,” Mele said. “But I cannot be branded a bad father and a bad husband simply because after five or six days away from home an occasion presented itself.” The Italian parliament has been embarrassed by a series of accusations that legislators frequently use cocaine. Mele was one of the Christian Democrats who lobbied for mandatory drug testing of members of parliament.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Book reviews: ‘Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America’ and ‘How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978–1998’Feature A political ‘witch hunt’ and Helen Garner’s journal entries
-
The backlash against ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli filterThe Explainer The studio's charming style has become part of a nebulous social media trend
-
Why are student loan borrowers falling behind on payments?Today's Big Question Delinquencies surge as the Trump administration upends the program
