linkItalian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's top aide said yesterday he would not resign over a damaging scandal in which he was photographed talking to a transsexual prostitute.
Silvio Sircana, promoted last month from being Prodi's personal spokesman to mouthpiece for the entire government, is the focus of a wider scandal in which paparazzi photographers are accused of blackmailing celebrities.
Yesterday's newspapers printed a blurred photograph of Sircana, who is married with two children, in his car talking to a scantily clad female-looking figure standing on a pavement.
