A female doctor in the Abruzzo earthquake zone who was told "I wouldn't mind being resuscitated by you" by Silvio Berlusconi said yesterday that the Prime Minister was only being "gallant" and insisted that she was not offended.
Dr Fabiola Carrieri, a specialist in intensive care from Milan who is working in a field hospital in Abruzzo, became an instant celebrity after Mr Berlusconi's remark during his latest walkabout in the tent cities set up to house the tens of thousands of homeless. Italian reports focused on her "long red hair and big blue eyes".
Dr Carrieri said that Mr Berlusconi had paid her a "gallant" compliment to "take the drama out of the situation". She said she had told the Prime Minister in reply that she hoped she would never have to resuscitate him. He had been "trying to raise a smile in the middle of all the sorrow we have all around us", she added.
She said that Mr Berlusconi had shown similar gallantry in approaching a woman patient whose husband was sitting at her bedside, saying that he hoped she would be better soon "so I can ask you to dance with me". Last week Mr Berlusconi, who has toured the earthquake zone daily, caused controversy by suggesting that those living in the tent cities should think of themselves as being on a camping holiday. He later said he had been trying to cheer them up.
Central Italy was shaken by a powerful 4.9 aftershock last night, which was felt in Rome, 44 miles (70km) away. Scientists have detected 10,000 aftershocks since the earthquake a week ago.
Rescue workers in L'Aquila have retrieved valuable 500 treasures from the badly damaged cathedral, including a 20in (50cm) cross by the 15th-century artist Nicola da Guardiagrele. A team from the Culture Ministry has begun to carry out an inventory of churches, historic buildings and their contents.
The earthquake left 294 dead and thousands homeless. Technicians said that of the thousand or so structures surveyed so far, only a third wer usable or habitable. The local prosecutor has opened an inquiry into whether building regulations were violated in L'Aquila and surrounding towns and villages where modern as well as medieval structures collapsed.
Pietro Grasso, the chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, warned that money earmarked for reconstruction could end up in the hands of the Mafia, as happened after the 1980 earthquake in the Irpinia region near Naples, which killed 3,000 people and left 300,000 homeless. Some of those affected by the 1997 earthquake in Umbria are still in temporary prefabricated housing 12 years on because money for reconstruction was allegedly misappropriated by the Mafia.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6090133.ece
saranno comunisti anche loro?