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...subdivision Berlusconi built outside of Milan when he was a young construction entrepreneur in the 1960s. A pioneer of private commercial television in Europe, he then sidestepped Italy's antimonopoly laws banning national private television by buying up scores of local stations. With assets spanning Italy's largest publishing company, an ad agency and the AC Milan football team, Berlusconi built up his Fininvest empire to become Italy's richest man. In 1993 he entered politics, declaring his newly launched party to be a "pole of liberty" - though for many, his sudden political awakening was a transparent effort to protect...
...constitutional ban on presidential re-election so he can run again in 2011, even though most Nicaraguans oppose the change. In Panama, members of the powerful Arias family have so far been able to block the will of a relative who left some $50 million to poor children - the largest private gift in the nation's history. Even Costa Rica, once Central America's hopeful exception, has been rocked in recent years by corruption scandals involving Presidents. (Read: "Costa Rica's President: It's Not Easy Staying Green...
...west in the desert nation of Turkmenistan, a quiet battle is under way for natural gas, oil and influence, and the U.S. and Europe are losing out to China and the Muslim world. There's a lot at stake: the Central Asian country has the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas and substantial oil reserves, putting it in the same energy league as Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq. Plus, its position just north of Afghanistan could be hugely beneficial to NATO as it seeks more reliable supply routes to its troops on the ground there. But the West...
...dispute presented a golden opportunity. The Middle East didn't waste time, stepping in with loans and development projects - or as one Western observer put it, "a rain of dollars." In June, the Islamic Development Bank - a lender in which Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran hold the three largest stakes - agreed to build a railroad connecting Turkmenistan and Iran, the first direct rail link between the Islamic Republic and Central Asia. "As of today, our relations with the Islamic bank have really been activated," Tuvakmammed Japarov, the country's deputy prime minister for the economy, tells TIME. In December...
...fill Russia's shoes as a natural gas middleman. A new gas pipeline connecting Iran and Turkmenistan is expected to open in December, nearly doubling the gas trade between the countries to 700 billion cubic feet a year. Because Iran already has one of the world's largest gas reserves, most of the imported Turkmen gas would be resold for profit. Not to be outdone, China signed a 30-year deal with Turkmenistan in June to buy up to 1.1 trillion cubic feet of Turkmen gas annually, starting in 2011. Work is expected to be completed...