ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, mired in a prostitution scandal, faces a tax fraud trial on Monday, the first of four court cases that will bring his legal woes back into the spotlight over coming months.

The case involves the acquisition of television rights by Italy’s biggest private broadcaster Mediaset, the crown jewel in Berlusconi’s vast business empire, and is resuming after effectively being put on hold for a year.

ROME (Reuters) – Foreigners arriving in Italy from Libya on Monday spoke of all-night gunfire, shadowy security men on the streets of Tripoli and hundreds of people at the airport trying to escape the growing violence.

“People are fighting each other in the streets, it’s a civil war,” said Zoran Siljak, a Serbian paint factory worker who had just landed at Rome Fiumicino Airport from Tripoli.

ROME (Reuters) – Italian prosecutors will on Wednesday request immediate trial for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on charges of paying for sex with an underaged girl and improperly pressuring police to release her from custody.

Their application, which means the prosecutors believe they have enough evidence in the case to skip a preliminary hearing, will add to the pressure on the 74-year-old premier, whose center-right government is hanging on to power by a thread.

ROME (Reuters) – Italian prosecutors will request on Wednesday an immediate trial for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is accused of paying for sex with an underage girl and later abusing his power to get police to release her.

The request, which means the prosecutors believe they have enough evidence in the case to skip a preliminary hearing, will add to the pressure on the 74-year-old premier, whose centre-right government is hanging on to power by a thread.

ROME (Reuters) – G20-leader France and the U.N. food agency FAO warned on Friday about the risk of a new global food crisis and ensuing riots, calling for greater regulation to curb speculation on commodities markets.

The warning came a day after the Food and Agriculture Organization said its global food price index had climbed to a record high in January, increasing for the seventh consecutive month.

ROME (Reuters) – Market deregulation since 1999 has fueled speculation on commodities markets which , and that needs to be corrected to curb food price volatility, the head of FAO said on Thursday.

“We have created an environment that allows pure speculation,” FAO Director General Jacques Diouf told Reuters Insider TV shortly after the agency said its closely watched Food Price Index had climbed to a record high in January.

ROME (Reuters) – The only woman in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right party who dared to speak out against his relationship with young women said on Tuesday she was being expelled from the movement.

While party heavyweights have rushed to defend Berlusconi, mired in a prostitution scandal, Sara Giudice, a 25-year-old city council official in Milan, criticised his taste for starlets and said he should stop giving them jobs in politics.

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose conservative government is hanging on by a thread, said on Monday he would present a plan next month that would aim to triple Italy’s growth rate within five years.

Berlusconi said in a statement the plan would target GDP growth of 3 to 4 percent in five years, a level of economic expansion not seen in Italy for over a decade and some three times the 1.3 percent rate forecast by the government in 2011.

ROME (Reuters) – The latest scandal surrounding Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has damaged his public image but support for his party has risen, meaning he would likely win an early election, a respected pollster said on Sunday.

Presenting the findings of his latest ISPO survey for Corriere della Sera daily, Renato Mannheimer said that while half of those interviewed thought Berlusconi should resign, support for his center-right party had increased.

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused magistrates on Saturday of illegally spying on him as he refused to appear before prosecutors who allege that he had sex with an under-age prostitute.

As the opposition urged him to resign over the latest sex scandal, Berlusconi said he had no intention of stepping down, keeping up his offensive against magistrates he says are biased and bent on trying to oust him from power.