Early this morning, 115 cardinals will gather in the Sistine Chapel and begin the process of selecting a new pope.

Dylan Matthews has a good rundown of what happens and The Week looks at how the Vatican is trying to prevent leaks.

The Italian political crisis deepened “when two party leaders ruled out the most likely options to form a government and avoid a new election,” Reuters reports.

“Populist leader Beppe Grillo slammed the door on overtures from center-left boss Pier Luigi Bersani with a stream of insults while Nichi Vendola, Bersani’s junior coalition partner, ruled out a government alliance with the center-right.”

These two options are currently seen as the only way to avoid another election.

“Early results from Italy’s election suggest the houses of parliament may split between left and right, causing new anxiety in the eurozone,” the BBC reports.

“Projections suggest Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left bloc has a narrow lead in the lower house while Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right is ahead in the powerful Senate. A protest movement led by comedian Beppe Grillo surged into third place.”

“Topless protesters targeted Italy’s former premier Silvio Berlusconi as he went to vote in the country’s election,” the Daily Mail reports.

“But the demonstrators, who had ‘Basta Berlusconi’, meaning ‘Enough of Berlusconi’, written on their bodies, were grabbed by police officers and dragged away before they could reach him.”

The body of Mikhail Pakhomov, a missing Moscow legislator and construction tycoon, “has been found in a private basement garage on the city’s outskirts, inside a rusted metal barrel filled with cement,” the New York Times reports.

Police said “he had been tortured and killed over an outstanding $80 million loan.”

“The killing recalled the brutal violence that routinely emerged from business disputes in the 1990s. Mr. Pakhomov, who was reported missing last Tuesday, was a promising young star in United Russia, the ruling party founded by President Vladimir V. Putin, and had served as head of a construction company that was reported to have won large contracts to develop utilities and infrastructure in several cities.”

Although Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation is the first in 600 years, the election of the next Pope remains generally the same, Dylan Matthews reports.

“But, as with normal papal successions, it will prompt the vote of the College of Cardinals, a group of up to 120 church leaders (current estimates put the number around 118) below the age limit of 80 who convene to elect new popes. Exactly how that process works, however, changes frequently, and indeed has changed since the election that elevated Benedict in 2005.”

However, research into papal elections is a sensitive subject because, the next Pope’s selection is “attributed to the will of God, a force not amenable to any empirical test that is in our power to conduct.”

The Week has eight possible contenders for the job.

When Chris Huhne wanted to resign his seat in the British Parliament, he had to instead be appointed to “a paid office of the Crown” which automatically disqualified him from holding a seat in the House of Commons.

The reason: “A resolution passed by the House of Commons on 2 March 1624 prohibits MPs directly from resigning their seats. Death, disqualification and expulsion are the only means by which a Member’s seat may be vacated during the lifetime of a Parliament.”

The Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed Huhne to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.

“As Israeli voters turned out in far higher numbers than expected on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an urgent evening plea for support as his challengers anticipated results that could significantly weaken his power in the third term that he was widely expected to win,” the New York Times reports.

“While Mr. Netanyahu’s joint campaign list with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction was still expected to win far more of Parliament’s 120 seats than the next-largest party, making him the likeliest candidate to lead the next government, a relatively weak showing and a surge for centrist and left-leaning parties could force him to moderate his policies and leave him with a fragile coalition of competing interests.”

Malik Obama, the step-brother of President Obama, said he will run for governor of the western Kenyan county of Siaya, Bloomberg reports.

New York Times: “President Hugo Chávez’s supporters have not ruled out swearing him in from his hospital in Havana. His detractors are calling for government investigators to go check his pulse themselves. The justices whom Mr. Chávez’s allies have named to the Supreme Court have decided that he can continue to govern in absentia.”

“In a country that Mr. Chávez has dominated for so long, his health crisis and the decision to proceed on Thursday with a quasi-presidential inauguration that he is unable to attend are producing a stream of bizarre developments and national angst about who is in charge.”

New York Times: “Some world leaders live in palaces. Some enjoy perks like having a discreet butler, a fleet of yachts or a wine cellar with vintage Champagnes. Then there is José Mujica, the former guerrilla who is Uruguay’s president. He lives in a run-down house on Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.”

“His net worth upon taking office in 2010 amounted to about $1,800 — the value of the 1987 Volkswagen Beetle parked in his garage. He never wears a tie and donates about 90 percent of his salary, largely to a program for expanding housing for the poor.”

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 76 years old and still married to his second wife, announced he was engaged to Francesca Pascale, his 27-year old girlfriend, the Telegraph reports.

Said Berlusconi: “Finally I feel less lonely.”

Berlusconi plans to launch his fourth bid to be prime minister in elections expected to be held in February next year unless current Prime Minister Mario Monti decides to run.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has confirmed his intention to run as a Senate candidate in the 2013 election in Australia “and will announce the formation of a WikiLeaks political party early next year.”

But since Assange is currently living in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, he could be unable to return to Australia if elected — in which case a nominee would fill the seat.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud, Sky News reports.

The verdict comes two days after Berlusconi, 76, announced he will not run for premier in upcoming elections.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF head who resigned in disgrace, “is seeking to throw out criminal charges in an inquiry into ties to a prostitution ring in northern France with the legal argument that the authorities are unfairly trying to ‘criminalize lust,'” the New York Times reports.”

“That defense and the investigation, which is facing a critical judicial hearing in late November, have offered a keyhole view into a clandestine practice in certain powerful circles of French society: secret soirees with lawyers, judges, police officials, journalists and musicians that start with a fine meal and end with naked guests and public sex with multiple partners.”

Strauss-Kahn broke his long silence in an interview: “I long thought that I could lead my life as I wanted. And that includes free behavior between consenting adults. There are numerous parties that exist like this in Paris, and you would be surprised to encounter certain people. I was naïve. I was too out of step with French society. I was wrong.”

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard “played her best hand with a brilliant attack on the Conservative opposition leader, Tony Abbott, accusing him of being sexist and a misogynist,” the Telegraph reports.

Gillard was defending parliamentary Speaker Peter Slipper who resigned “just hours after he survived a motion to sack him for lurid text messages he sent to a former staffer.”

The video is extraordinary.

“Defending the indefensible is a pretty tough job and could still cost her dear. But what she did have was an impressive set of insults to launch at the high and mighty Abbott – which has completely and cleverly shifted the focus of the entire news story ever since.”

[Read more…]

New York Times: “Large numbers of Venezuelans turned out to vote on Sunday in a landmark election that could give President Hugo Chávez a new term to extend and deepen his socialist revolution or replace him with a youthful, more moderate challenger, Henrique Capriles Radonski.”

“For the first time since Mr. Chávez took office in 1999, the outcome of a presidential election was in doubt. His long hold on power and his autocratic grip over all branches of government have led some in the opposition to question whether he would accept a defeat.”

Washington Post: “The wild card in the contest between two markedly different men that
began eight months ago is Chavez’s health. The 58-year-old former army
paratrooper, famous for his seemingly boundless energy and his
hours-long speeches, had until the past three months been mostly out of
sight, as doctors here and in Cuba treated him for a cancerous tumor.
Chavez said he is cured, but details of his illness are a state secret.”

Update: The Venezuela electoral council says Chavez won re-election, the AP reports.

The female wing of a civil rights group is urging women in Togo to stage a week-long sex strike — withholding sex from their husbands or partners — to demand the resignation of President Faure Gnassingbe, the AP reports.

Said one of the women leaders to the BBC: “We have many means to oblige men to understand what women want in Togo. If men refuse to hear our cries we will hold another demonstration that will be more powerful than a sex strike.”