Silvio Berlusconi, scandal-ridden former Italian prime minister, dies aged 86

The billionaire media tycoon and former AC Milan owner who entered politics at the head of his own Forza Italia in the 1990s as the traditional parties of the right collapsed led three governments between 1994 and 2011 and succeeded in making a comeback in 2017 despite a career tainted by sex scandals, allegations of corruption and a tax fraud conviction.

He died at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, where he had spent six weeks this springundergoing treatment for a lung infection linked to a chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia before being readmitted.

The former prime minister’s funeral is to be held on Wednesday in Milan – a city deeply associated with Berlusconi – when Italy will also mark a national day of mourning. Supporters draped in the flags of Forza Italia and AC Milan, which he owned between 1986 and 2107, gathered on Monday outside the Milan hospital where he died.

Born in Milan in 1936 to a middle-class family, Berlusconi began his business career in property development before going on to found Mediaset, Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster.

Forza Italia was founded in 1993 and a year later, Berlusconi was the first prime minister to be elected without previously having held a government office. His second term in office, between 2001 and 2006, was the longest served by any Italian leader since the second world war. He returned to power in 2008 but was forced to resign in 2011 amid an acute debt crisis and facing allegations he had hosted “bunga bunga” sex parties with underage girls, something he denied.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/12/silvio-berlusconi-former-italian-prime-minister-dies?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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Gina Lollobrigida, Italian star of the 1950s and 60s, dies aged 95

Addio Lollobrigida la Bellissima

Gina Lollobrigida, the 1950s Italian bombshell who starred in films including “Fanfan la Tulipe,” “Beat the Devil,” “Trapeze” and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” has died. She was 95.

According to Italian news agency Lapresse, Lollobrigida died in a clinic in Rome. No cause of death has been cited. In September she had had surgery to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall, but she recovered and competed for a Senate seat in Italy’s elections held last year in September, though she did not win.

After resisting Howard Hughes’ offer to make movies in Hollywood in 1950, Lollobrigida starred with Gerard Philipe in the 1952 French swashbuckler “Fanfan la Tulipe,” a fest winner and popular favorite. 

Her first American movie, shot in Italy, was John Huston’s 1953 film noir spoof “Beat the Devil,” in which she starred with Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones. The same year she starred with Vittorio De Sica in Luigi Comencini’s “Bread, Love and Dreams,” for which she won a BAFTA for best actress in a foreign film.

Lollobrigida starred in director Robert Z. Leonard’s Italian-language “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” (aka Beautiful but Dangerous”), for which she received the best actress award at the inaugural David di Donatello Awards in 1956.

That year, she also starred in Carol Reed’s “Trapeze,” also starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and lensed in Paris. Also in 1956 she shot an Italian- and French-produced remake of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” in which Anthony Quinn played Quasimodo but Lollobrigida, playing Esmerelda, was first billed.

More high-profile projects followed, including King Vidor’s “Solomon and Sheba,” with Yul Brynner, and WWII movie “Never So Few,” with Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford and Steve McQueen, both in 1959; in 1961 she starred with Rock Hudson in the comedy “Come September.” By this point she was regularly shuttling between Italian, American and the occasional French production.

As her movie career faded, Lollobrigida pursued other interests, including photojournalism and sculpting; she also ran, unsuccessfully, for a seat in the European Parliament.

In 2018, Lollobrigida was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She is survived by a son.

https://variety.com/2023/film/global/gina-lollobrigida-italian-bombshell-movie-star-dead-dies-1235490756/

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Italy’s right-wing coalition led by far-right Meloni wins election, exit polls say

A right-wing alliance led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party looks set to win a clear majority in the next parliament, exit polls said on Sunday after voting ended in an Italian national election.

If confirmed, the result would cap a remarkable rise for Meloni, whose party won only 4% of the vote in the last national election in 2018, but this time around was forecast to emerge as Italy’s largest group on 22.5-26.5%.

As leader of the biggest party in the winning alliance, she is the obvious choice to become Italy’s first woman prime minister, but the transfer of power is traditionally slow and it could take several weeks before the new government is sworn in.

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