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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to the capital of Brasilia to a hero’s welcome Monday and the difficult job of forging political alliances to shore up a government weakened by corruption allegations.

While Silva was re-elected with the largest number of votes of any president in Brazil’s history, his Worker’s Party saw its share of seats reduced in Congress.

Silva was greeted at Brasilia’s airport Monday by about 200 supporters waving the red flags of his Workers’ Party after winning 61 percent of the ballot — more than 58 million votes — in Sunday’s runoff against Geraldo Alckmin, a former Sao Paulo governor.

But Brazil’s fragmented political system and a slew of corruption allegations complicate Silva’s efforts to make good on promises to improve the lives of the country’s poor and expand the economy.

Italian court orders Berlusconi, British lawyer tried for corruption

MILAN, Italy — A court Monday ordered former Premier Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial on charges of corruption along with the estranged husband of Britain’s culture minister.

Berlusconi is accused of ordering the payment in 1997 of at least $600,000 to his co-defendant British lawyer David Mills, a close friend, in exchange for the lawyer’s false testimony in two trials against Berlusconi. Both deny the allegations.

Mills is married to British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell.

They formally separated in March.

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office declined to comment on the decision, and a spokesman in Jowell’s office also declined to comment.

Judge Fabio Paparella issued the ruling after refusing a defense motion to remove himself from the case because he is presiding over a separate case charging Berlusconi and Mills with false accounting, embezzlement and tax fraud in the purchase by Berlusconi’s Mediaset empire of TV rights for U.S. movies.

The new case is set to go to trial March 13. If convicted, Mills and Berlusconi could be sentenced to between three and eight years in prison, according to prosecutors.

Berlusconi’s lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, said the decision to open another trial against Berlusconi was expected, but he expressed disappointment the judge didn’t wait for a higher court to decide on whether he should step aside.

"Everything went as we thought it would. It is like scripted,” Ghedini said outside the courtroom.

He noted that two requests were pending to higher courts for Paparella to step aside in the case — leaving open the possibility if one or the other succeeds that the charges will supersede their statute of limitations, which runs out in February 2008. "This is not what we want. We want an acquittal,” Ghedini said.