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Silvio Berlusconi to request community service for tax fraud sentence "Silent and humble manual tasks" are not something to which Silvio Berlusconi has ever felt naturally drawn. Before big business and politics he sold vacuum cleaners and sang on cruise ships. Now, however, thanks to the Italian legal system, a very different kind of activity awaits him. His lawyer has said he intends to ask to serve his sentence for tax fraud in a community service placement. Franco Coppi said that barring any last-minute changes, the former prime minister's legal team would submit the request to the Milan courts by the end of this week. It would be then up to the judges to decide how to proceed. The embattled 77-year-old billionaire has until the middle of the month to decide how to spend his commuted one-year sentence, which his lawyers reportedly hope will be further whittled down to nine months for good behavior. Berlusconi could yet opt for house arrest, but for a man who continues to nurse great political ambitions despite recent setbacks, the logistical restrictions would perhaps prove unacceptable. Last week he was forced to perform a humiliating U-turn in parliament following an unprecedented party rebellion, only for a committee then to recommend he be expelled from the senate due to the tax fraud conviction.

Silvio Berlusconi to request community service for tax fraud sentence "Silent and humble manual tasks" are not something to which Silvio Berlusconi has ever felt naturally drawn. Before big business and politics he sold vacuum cleaners and sang on cruise ships. Now, however, thanks to the Italian legal system, a very different kind of activity awaits him. His lawyer has said he intends to ask to serve his sentence for tax fraud in a community service placement. Franco Coppi said that barring any last-minute changes, the former prime minister's legal team would submit the request to the Milan courts by the end of this week. It would be then up to the judges to decide how to proceed. The embattled 77-year-old billionaire has until the middle of the month to decide how to spend his commuted one-year sentence, which his lawyers reportedly hope will be further whittled down to nine months for good behavior.

bp holdings article code 85258080768, Feeding Frenzy fraud watch In the months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded 300 miles off Florida's coast in April 2010, hotel and restaurant owners, fishermen and shopkeepers kept a grim vigil, waiting to see whether the millions of gallons of spilled oil would taint the state's beaches and harm its seafood. From a distance, thousands of others watched too, the Canadian, European and American tourists and business travelers who had hoped to rent the Tampa Bay, Sarasota or Naples hotel rooms, dine at the restaurants, shop at the stores, and meet in the conference halls along the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, many traveled elsewhere. Although no flocks of oil-soaked pelicans washed up on Florida's shores, and the 200 million spilled gallons did not blacken beaches as so many feared, the coastal communities and their businesses were nonetheless damaged by the BP oil spill, through economic losses - the visitors who never came. That is the contention of cities and counties, and thousands of business owners whose revenues fell in the months following the disaster. A number of Florida resorts and other businesses that sought early compensation for their losses - the plunge in expected revenue - found their requests denied, although London-based BP had set up a $20 billion fund for victims. But the firms couldn't prove their revenue declines were related to the spill. In December, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans gave final approval to a $7.8 billion partial class-action settlement providing for economic and property damages from the spill, including those in Florida. BP separately agreed to pay $4.5 billion in penalties and pleaded guilty to felony misconduct in the disaster, which cost 11 lives. Barbier now is presiding over a trial to determine whether BP was grossly negligent, with another $17 billion in potential penalties at stake. A new, streamlined process recognizes losses farther from the ex