The election was comprehensively won by Silvio Berlusconi with substantial majorities in both houses. Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord, part of the Berlusconi coalition, did well with 8% of the vote.
Extreme parties from left and right were eliminated, giving Italy effectively a two party system for the first time in its history.
Jostling for ministries has begun, but Berlusconi is out of contact at his Sardinian villa with Vladimir Putin.
Berlusconi has made his position on women clear. The women of the right are more attractive than those of the left. His Spanish counterpart Zapatero has too many women in his administration making it impossible to govern. He will have four women out of twelve top posts. Tipped for promotion are the lawyer Giulia Buongiorno and the former Miss Italy contestant Mara Carfagna.
The timetable from here is not frantic: two weeks after the election, on April 29th will be the first session of Parliament. At this time MPs elected in more than one constituency must decide which they intend to represent. Then there’s the May Day holiday and a couple of extra days off. After that, on May 5, Government consultations begin. Given this time frame, Italy should have a new government raring to go by the middle of May.
The election for Rome’s mayor will go to a run-off between Francesco Rutelli of the left and Gianni Allemanno of the Right.
Former health minister Girolamo Sirchia, the man behind Italy's smoking ban, has been convicted of accepting kickbacks in a trial into corruption at a hospital in Milan.
Several Italian papers published a picture which purported to show a friend of Miuccia Prada, the head of the fashion house and left wing supporter, unable to reach the steps of her private plane, getting his bodyguard to lie on the ground and stepping on him. The tale was strongly denied by a Prada spokesman.
A man from Lecco has been sentenced to ten days in prison and fined 40 euros for ogling a woman on a train. She claims his looks were offensive, he claims he could not help looking at her because they were in the same compartment.
Every newspaper in Italy is given a subsidy by the State, which costs a total of 1 billion euros per year
Guinness World Records have confirmed that an American health food supermarket has entered the record books for the largest number of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese wheels cracked open simultaneously, 270. The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium decrees that the cheeses should be prised open rather than cut, and that five different knives are used in the process. Shortest time taken was 81 seconds. The cheeses weigh around 40 kilos.
The most recent figures also show that 20% of all smokers in Italy are aged between 15 and 24, numbering more than 1.2 million in total.
The Court of Cassation said living together outside wedlock offended none of society's rules or customs and broke no Italian law. Nearly half of all young couples setting up home for the first time have not yet taken their vows and have no immediate plans to do so.
There were 250,000 weddings in 2005 compared to 419,000 in 1972. This may be due to the high cost of marriage, which has increased by 40% in the last seven years to an average of 27,000 euros.
Further development of Rome’s newest underground line has been halted by the discovery of an ancient marble staircase underneath the Piazza Venezia, the square where Benito Mussolini gave his speeches.
Vincenzo Di Costanzo, a former church custodian of Forli’ is on trial for faking an incident in which a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood in the city's Santa Lucia Church in March 2006. Police say Di Costanzo dripped his own blood onto the face of the statue in an attempt to simulate a miracle.
There has been a number of such attempts in recent years including one couple who tried to charge people to see a weeping statue in their garden.
Only 43% of businesses and 34% of households regularly use the internet in Italy, putting it 4th from bottom in the EU tables, ahead only of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. The number of schools connected was however higher than the EU average.
In 1970 30% of university teachers were over 45; today that figure is 70%.
Both Japan and China have lifted their bans on Mozzarella.
The Palazzo Guinigi in Lucca is staging an exhibition ‘The Greatest Italian Comic Artists’ but have been reminded the election was last week.
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