Free Republic

Silvio Berlusconi has won a crushing victory in the Italian general election to become prime minister for the third time. The 71-year-old media magnate defeated Walter Veltroni, the 52-year-old leader of the Democratic Party, by a considerable margin and has a large enough majority to rule Italy for a full five-year term. Mr Veltroni, who was a popular mayor of Rome before entering national politics, conceded defeat five hours after the polls closed, saying that the result was clear. "I have telephoned Mr Berlusconi to wish him well in the job," he said, adding that he was comforted that Italy...

An Italian priest, Giancarlo Bossi, who was kidnapped at gunpoint in the southern Philippines last month, has been freed. The news was announced by the Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, and coincides with the 87th birthday of Father Bossi's mother. Fourteen government soldiers were killed last week as they searched for the priest. The Philippine army blamed their deaths on Islamists linked to al-Qaeda. Father Bossi, who plans to meet with his parishioners before heading back to Italy to see his family, said his captors treated him "with respect." "I never had the sensation that they wanted to kill...

A SENIOR Italian government adviser on labour relations was murdered by gunmen apparently opposed to his proposals to make it easier to sack workers. Marco Biagi, 52, an affable professor responsible for drafting the government's package of labour market reforms, was shot dead by two attackers while cycling home on Tuesday night in Bologna, the nerve-centre of the Italian far Left. The murder is the most dramatic evidence so far of the political tension welling up in Italy since the Right-wing government of the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, took power last year, backed by the "post-fascist" National Alliance and the...