Prodi Returns as Premier After Pact

Romano Prodi regained his job as prime minister after Communist hard-liners agreed to measures that will keep the country on course for a single European currency. Details of the deal were not immediately available, but Fausto Bertinotti’s Communist Refoundation Party was expected to approve a deficit-slashing 1998 budget plan in exchange for concessions such as a 35-hour workweek. Prodi stepped down Thursday after Bertinotti refused to back a budget that included nearly $3 billion in pension spending cuts.