Barbara Serra

The Prince of Trades

Since his meteoric rise to global notoriety in 2008 after nearly bankrupting his employer, the French banking giant Societe Generale, Jerome Kerviel has been called many things.

Rogue trader, most often. Financial genius, more rarely. Naïve, ambitious, a scapegoat.

But here's one you might not expect. Robin hood. A modern day anti-hero who steals from the rich to give to the poor.

For many in France, Kerviel is just that. They feel he took on a system which was flawed and unfair, and nearly brought about its collapse.

Never mind that it seems to have been completely unintentional.

Italy's Rock Star Prime Minister

A divorce that could cost him $65m a year. A kiss-and-tell book by a prostitute containing a detailed account of the night she alleges she spent with him. Oh, and let’s not forget the two ongoing corruption trials. It is difficult to know how Mr Berlusconi finds the time to run a G8 country like Italy.

And its even more tricky for some outsiders to understand how Italians can find it acceptable that a man with quite so many clouds hanging over his head should run their country. 

Victims twice over

At first, Karima Abd-Rabo’s description of her life sounds like the complaints of working mothers all over the world: splitting her time between work and the household chores, with the underlying guilty feeling that she’s not spending enough time with her children.

But Karima is different from other working mothers. She lives in Gaza, and was widowed during Israel’s recent war on the Strip. Her husband Ramzi died in an air raid in January. Suddenly she became the household’s main earner and solely responsible for her 3 youngest children.

On top of the tangible heartache, it’s a dramatic lifestyle change. She was just 15 when she got married. Her husband was her whole life:

Under the shadow of the wall in Bethlehem

I must have done dozens, even hundreds, of interviews about Israel and the Palestinian territories: the separation wall, the check points, the difficulties faced when moving around (or trying to) and the frustration they bring. But still, I only fully understood the situation when I had to travel from Israel to the West Bank for the pope's visit to Bethlehem.

A very sleepy press entourage gathered at the hotel lobby at 0445. Early starts are not unusual on these trips, but Bethlehem is only around 10 km from Jerusalem and we did not need to be at the welcoming ceremony until 0900. But when we got to the border we realised why we set off so early.