Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

Italy's center-right government survived a vote of confidence Wednesday that nonetheless underscored Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's weakened political position after a key partner bolted from his ruling coalition last week. After a rowdy debate in the lower house, lawmakers voted 229 to 299 on a measure that would have censured an undersecretary in Berlusconi's government. A victory by the opposition probably would have prompted the collapse of the prime minister's 2-year-old coalition government and a realignment of right-wing and centrist parties.

Italy swore in a new Cabinet and Greece's recently anointed prime minister won an important vote of confidence as both countries scrambled Wednesday to avoid an economic disaster that could torpedo the Eurozone. The two nations are pinning their hopes on unelected, technocratic leaders tasked with bringing down staggering levels of government debt and restoring investor confidence in their badly battered economies. Failure by either country could spell doom for the euro, the currency they share with 15 other European nations.

Italian prosecutors are investigating accusations that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid a 17-year-old girl for sex and abused the powers of his office by trying to cover up the liaison, officials said Friday. The prime minister's lawyers quickly denied the allegations. The public prosecutor's office in Milan said in a statement that it was investigating allegations that Berlusconi and Lombardy regional councilor Nicole Minetti attempted to conceal encounters between the prime minister and a then-underage Moroccan dancer known by the stage name Ruby Heartbreak.

Eager to win back the confidence of financial markets, Italy's president on Sunday appointed economist Mario Monti to lead the country's new government. The move came almost 24 hours after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi submitted his resignation amid widespread celebration on the streets of Rome. President Giorgio Napolitano's announcement sets the stage for Monti, a former European Union commissioner, to form a new technocratic government that will try to navigate Italy out of the debt crisis with austerity measures sought by the European Union.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has spent a lot of time this week talking about one of his favorite subjects: Silvio Berlusconi. On Thursday, he called himself the best prime minister "that Italy has had in its 150-year history." Earlier in the week, he proclaimed, "The majority of Italians in their hearts would like to be like me, and see themselves in me and in how I behave." Giovanni Sartori is a preeminent Italian political scientist and columnist for the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Sicily's governor has resigned after being convicted of providing information that helped a Mafia boss. Salvatore Cuffaro told the island's regional assembly that his decision was "irrevocable." A Palermo court recently sentenced him to five years in prison for helping a mob boss whose home had been bugged by investigators. Cuffaro is from a small party that is an ally of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Italy will ignore an "unreal" European court ruling that bans crucifixes in state-run schools as it appeals the decision, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said. "Whatever the outcome of the appeal, there's no obligatory force to the decision," Berlusconi said. The ruling this week by the European Court of Human Rights stems from a complaint by a woman who said crosses displayed in her children's classrooms violated the way she wanted to raise them. Her children were 11 and 13 when she filed a complaint in 2001.

Italian police have arrested nearly 400 people -- many of them from Romania and North Africa -- in a weeklong crackdown on crime and illegal immigration, authorities said. The sweep was one of the first actions taken by conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's new government, which has pledged to improve safety on the streets after a recent spate of crimes blamed on foreigners. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni insisted the crackdown was on criminals, not foreigners. "There is no problem with the Romanian community," Maroni said.

A confident Romano Prodi insisted that his center-left coalition's Italian election victory was on solid ground, even as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called the vote fraudulent and demanded a recount. But Berlusconi later appeared to back away from his allegation of fraud, releasing a statement late in the evening in which he said the very thin margin of victory "requires a scrupulous check to ascertain any possible error or irregularity."

Two gunmen on a motorcycle killed a key advisor to Italy's government outside his home in Bologna in what Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denounced as an act of political "terrorism.. Marco Biagi, an economist and consultant to Labor Minister Roberto Maroni, was an author and promoter of labor reforms that have angered Italy's leftist opposition and prompted major unions to threaten a general strike for next month.

Italy's Parliament is pressing hard to ratify reforms clearing the way for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to resign, but it will be left to his successor to solve structural problems decades in the making that are central to the debt crisis now dragging down the European — and the global — economies. The nation's $2.6-trillion public debt is the result of low productivity, corruption, suffocating bureaucracy and poor tax policies. Its economic performance between 2000 and 2010 was so bad, according to some estimates, that only Haiti and Zimbabwe fared worse in average annual growth.

After weeks of deepening drama over Europe's debt crisis, global financial markets now fear that the unthinkable may be inevitable: a partial breakup of the continent's 12-year-old currency union. Stocks plummeted worldwide Wednesday as the 2-year-old debt debacle took a frightening turn, threatening to engulf Italy and deal a heavy blow to investors' faith in the Eurozone's future. The virtual bankruptcy of Greece, the trigger for the severe bout of market volatility that began in early August, has become a sideshow to Italy's nightmare: Just as they'd done with Greece, investors are bailing out of Italian government debt, worried that they won't be repaid in full.

Even a politician with the survival skills of Silvio Berlusconi proved, in the end, to be no match for the power of global financial markets. The beleaguered Italian prime minister bowed to the reality of international pressure and withering domestic support Tuesday, promising to resign once Parliament passes a reform package of cuts aimed at reining in a runaway debt crisis. The question now is whether Berlusconi's departure would be enough to arrest the decline in Italy's perilous financial condition, which has moved the front line of Europe's debt crisis from peripheral countries such as Greece and Ireland to one of its central economies.

Italy's beleaguered prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has survived more than 50 no-confidence votes and multiple accusations of criminal and sexual impropriety, including charges he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl. But the 75-year-old billionaire may have finally met his match in the bond market. With dwindling confidence in Berlusconi's ability to manage Italy's affairs — and the Eurozone's debt crisis hanging in the balance — investors Monday pushed up Italian bond yields to a euro-era high of 6.63%.

A judge Tuesday ordered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial on charges that he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl, then abused his authority by trying to get her released from custody after police picked her up on suspicion of stealing. It was a major setback for the 74-year-old premier, whose personal entanglements for months have overshadowed the business of governing Italy. Berlusconi denies any wrongdoing and says there is a plot by left-wing judges and his political foes to force him from office.

Italian prosecutors are investigating accusations that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid a 17-year-old girl for sex and abused the powers of his office by trying to cover up the liaison, officials said Friday. The prime minister's lawyers quickly denied the allegations. The public prosecutor's office in Milan said in a statement that it was investigating allegations that Berlusconi and Lombardy regional councilor Nicole Minetti attempted to conceal encounters between the prime minister and a then-underage Moroccan dancer known by the stage name Ruby Heartbreak.

Eager to win back the confidence of financial markets, Italy's president on Sunday appointed economist Mario Monti to lead the country's new government. The move came almost 24 hours after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi submitted his resignation amid widespread celebration on the streets of Rome. President Giorgio Napolitano's announcement sets the stage for Monti, a former European Union commissioner, to form a new technocratic government that will try to navigate Italy out of the debt crisis with austerity measures sought by the European Union.

Italy's center-right government survived a vote of confidence Wednesday that nonetheless underscored Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's weakened political position after a key partner bolted from his ruling coalition last week. After a rowdy debate in the lower house, lawmakers voted 229 to 299 on a measure that would have censured an undersecretary in Berlusconi's government. A victory by the opposition probably would have prompted the collapse of the prime minister's 2-year-old coalition government and a realignment of right-wing and centrist parties.

Tens of thousands of Italians took to the streets Friday to protest public spending cuts that are part of a tide of government austerity washing over Europe. Demonstrators demanded that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi modify his plan to freeze public-sector salaries and slash local government funding, a tough retrenchment that he says is necessary to bring down Italy's budget deficit and bolster confidence in the battered euro. The protest came a day after hundreds of thousands of demonstrators turned out in France to denounce a move to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. Germany, Portugal, Spain and Greece are all grappling with rising discontent over tough new public spending regimes.