3 BOOS

....and not for the first time, to the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who continues to use his majority in the Italian parliament to pass laws that exempt him from prosecution while he holds office and at the same time takes out writs to prevent those few newspapers and TV stations he does not own from investigating some of his more questionable activities. The mystery, of course, is that a majority of the Italian public continues to approve of the way Berlusconi does his job, suggesting that the choice of politicians in other parties must be very limited indeed.