The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 7

THE OTTAWA CITIZEN BREAKING NEWS AT OTTAWACITIZEN.COM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY lo. 2011 A7 worn i Berlusconi will face female judges Bad Company Italian PM sent to trial for sex, abuse of power charges Lju J' mV PHIUPPINES 10,000 lose homes In slum blaze Around 10,000 people lost their homes and a child was killed Tuesday after fire razed one of the Philippines' largest slums, authorities said, in the latest disaster highlighting Manila's widespread poverty and urban blight The blaze ripped through the sprawling Bahay Toro slum, and bumed for three hours before firefighters could get it under control. The cause of the blaze was unknown, officials said. A five-year-old boy was killed, six other people were injured and 2,000 families were left homeless. HAITI Aristide to return to Haiti before election Former Haitian President Jean-Be rtrand Aristide will return to Port-au-Prince before the second round of presidential elections on March 20, his lawyer said Tuesday.

"Yes, I believe it will happen before the election," lawyer Ira Kurzban said in Miami when asked about Aristide's anticipated arrival back in Haiti after years of exile in South Africa. But for now, the man who fled Haiti in 2004 after accusations of massive corruption and rights abuses remains in South Africa, Kurzban said. University political scientist Grant Amyot, co-author of the book The End of the Berlusconi Era Berlusconi has been tried on numerous occasions in the past on charges ranging from tax fraud and embezzlement to false accounting and attempted bribery of a judge. But he has always ultimately avoided conviction, sometimes by getting his party to pass laws to delay the proceedings or suspend the trials. But Amyot said that kind of tactic is unlikely, given that his trial is set to begin in early ApriL A conviction itself is unlikely to remove the prime minister from office, analysts say, because the appeals process could mean the case drags on for years.

But a tawdry trial, his waning popularity among women, and the impression that the government is distracted from major issues could chip away at his support in an election expected this year. fM.iM'OMOMtKMTt.Atp TTT IMAjtS Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will go on trial over allegations he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl and abused his power by trying to get her cleared of theft. BY PETER O'NEIL PARIS Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's regime, dubbed a "tartocraey" due to the playboy billionaires inclusion of ex-showgirls in his cabinet is facing its greatest challenge yet after a judge sent him to trial Tuesday on sex and abuse of power charges. Berlusconi, the subject of a massive national protest Sunday over his treatment of women, will be tried in April by three female judges. "It would be a delicious irony, indeed, if the people who finally pushed Berlusconi out of power were the women he has spent so much of his career exploiting and degrading," wrote James Walston, a professor of international relations at the American University of Rome, on the Foreign Policy Magazine website.

The 74-year-old is accused of paying to have sex with Mo roccan Karima el-Mahroug, then 17, while she was a guest at one of his "bunga bunga" parties in a villa near Milan. He is also charged with abuse of power because he used his clout to get el-Mahroug, a showgirl with the stage name Ruby Heart-Steal-er, released from jail after she had been accused of theft Berlusconi, who has rejected all charges, is accusing the judiciary of attempting a "coup." He has deployed his powerful media empire to try to discredit the prosecution. El-Mahroug, now 18, has said she didn't have sex with the prime minister but did receive almost $10,000 from him after attending one of his parties. The sex charge against Berlusconi carries a maximum term of three years in jail. The abuse of power can land a politician in jail for a dozen years.

"It's the biggest threat to his political career," said Queen's There is prevailing attitude among many men that Berlusconi is 'doing what I'm doing, or would like to JAMES WALSTON, Professor, American University of Rome "It's going to bring out a lot of dirt about his private life" Walston said. Berlusconi directly or indirectly controls five of the seven major TV channels. He also owns a number of print publications, and is using them to allege that he is a victim of a conspiracy by the judiciary and his leftist opponents. While analysts dont rule Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is not the first world leader to find himself before the courts over his sexual behaviour. I Then U.S.

president Bill Clinton escapes removal from office in a Senate impeachment trial in February 1999, and apologizes to the American people for misleading them about his affair with ex-White House intern Monica Lewinsky. I Israeli former president Moshe Katzav is convicted in December 2010, by a Tel Aviv court of two counts of rape for assaulting a former employee when he was tourism minister, capping a four-year process that saw him resign his post. I Zimbabwe's former president Canaan Banana is given a one-year prison term in May 2000 for sodomy and other homosexual offences committed mainly against his male aides when he was president in the 1980s. He is released in January 2001, having served eight months of his sentence. I Malaysia's former deputy premier, turned opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim is sentenced to nine years in prison in August 2000 for sodomy, but is released in 2004 after the sexual misconduct count is overturned, allowing him to make a comeback to politics.

He now faces 20 years in prison if found guilty of sodomizing an aide in a separate case. I South Africa's current President Jacob Zuma. elected in May 2009, was found not guilty in May 2006 of raping an HIV-positive family friend at his Johannesburg residence. Agence france-Presse demonstration shows Italian women are getting fed up. Whether it's enough to unseat him, 1 don't know." POSTMEDIA NEWS Gl'JSEPPt AKtSU.

4FP Ot'TV iMAOtS Karima El Mahroug denies having sex with Berlusconi. ir i i yj out the possibility Berlusconi could survive the latest challenge, his fight isn't likely to help his country's international reputation. The United Nations ranks Italy as the 23rd most developed country in the world in terms of health, education, living standards and income. But the World Economic Forum's gender gap index puts Italy at a dismal 74th place, while Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index places Italy in 67th place. Reporters Without Borders has Italy in 49th place in terms of press freedom.

In all three rankings, Italy is in the company of impoverished Third World countries and former eastern European communist dictatorships. Walston said the TV shows on Berlusconi's networks are famous for featuring scantily-clad, wiggling young women who act as voiceless props. His cabinet, dominated by older men, includes five women between the ages of 33 and 43. One of them, former topless model and showgirl Mara called to entertain the prime minister by Nicole Minetti, an alluring ex-dental hygienist and regional representative for Berlusconi's party. It was the prime minister's trusted aide Minetti who then helped get Ruby out of prison after she was arrested for alleged theft in May, when her roommate accused her of stealing $4,000.

Berlusconi called the police station and told officials to release her, claiming she was the niece of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and asking police to hand her over to Minetti, ostensibly in an effort to prevent diplomatic fallout But instead of accompanying Ruby home, Minetti turned her over to a Brazilian prostitute called Michelle, UNITED STATES Letters to Obama becoming a book President Barack Obama may have inadvertently stolen an author's thunder on Tuesday when he said someone is working on a book about the 10 letters from regular Americans that he reads every night Obama receives a folder full of the letters every day, chosen from the thousands that the White House Correspondence Office receives. Aides say Obama reads the letters as a way to stay in touch with the public. On Tuesday, he was asked during a news conference about whether he feels the pain of Americans who have been hit by the economic downturn. By letting the book slip in his answ er, he either shared the unnamed author's secret or provided a burst of publicity for the new book. ITALY Knox's parents to stand trial for libel The parents of a U.S.

student convicted of murdering her British roommate in 2007 were ordered Tuesday to also stand trial in Italy for allegedly libelling police in Perugia, the town where the murder took place. The trial of Curt Knox and Edda Mel-las is set for July 4. In a 2009 interview with Britain's Sunday Times, Knox and Mel-las said that their daughter Amanda Knox "had not been given an interpreter, had not received food and water, and had been physically and verbally abused" by police after her arrest for the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher. Sex, lies and Rubygate Carfagna, is minister for equal opportunities. All are attractive, according to Walston, and three had "very close personal connections" with the prime minister.

Walston, who has lived in Italy since 1974, says Italy's toleration of Berlusconi is rooted in the influence of the Catholic Church, and the belief that all sorts of moral and criminal failings can be forgiven. There is also a prevailing attitude among many men that Berlusconi is "doing what I'm doing, or would like to do," he said. "If, as is likely, there are elections in Italy in the next couple of months or so, there is a fair possibility that he could win because the opposition is so divided," he said. "Its getting less and less likely, but it's not impossible." Until Sunday's mass demonstration many women had accepted Berlusconi's indiscretions and the allegations of corruption, including the unproven charge he has links to the Mafia, according to Walston. "That is changing.

The The indignant leader later protested he had no idea that Ruby was not Mubarak's niece, claiming the story was part of a series of lies that the teenager had told him, including fibbing about her age. The accusation announced on Tuesday is that Berlusconi paid Ruby for sex when she was under 18, illegal under Italian law, though both the minxy Moroccan and the premier deny having ever had sex. A star witness in Berlusconi's upcoming trial, Ruby has branched out from dancing into other lucrativ pastimes, posing in her underwear for a television ad and making appearances in discotheques across the country- AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE She's a teen with a temper and a reputation for theft who could finally bring down the Italian prime minister. ELLA IDE looks at the troubled life of Karima El Mahroug. became the pin-up girl for the Italian media's sensational coverage of rumoured orgies hosted by Berlusconi, with prostitutes and would-be showgirls.

Ruby, whose real name is Karima El Mahroug, moved with her family from Morocco to Letojanni, a small town in Sicily, in 2003. She lived with her hawker father, housewife mother and three younger siblings until running away from home at age 14. Apparently spotted by one of Berlusconi's cronies in a Milan discotheque, Ruby was ROME Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may be ruing the day he met Ruby the Heartstealer, the exotic young starlet at the heart of a sex scandal which is set to land him in court in April. The pole-dancer attended raunchy parties thrown by the 74-year-old prime minister in his private residence in Milan, where she claims he showered her with money and gifts, when she was just 17. As Italian magistrates launched a probe into the premier's private life, Ruby rirt 1 MHfYS A i WV VV iTVf 5 44i Jit 4-lf-' i MiMI tMi-faiilHB OTTAWA'S BEST FOR FITNESS! join The Train Yards Location Today and ff r- Receive: I 7.

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