"Italy's parliament was on Wednesday set to approve a highly controversial law that will give Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while he remains in office.

The center-left opposition has condemned the bill, which the Senate approved earlier this month, as unconstitutional and says its content and timing are designed solely to protect billionaire Berlusconi, Italy's richest man.

The bill's backers say it merely restores to Italian politicians some legal protection removed in the wake of corruption scandals in the early 1990s and which many other countries have.

The immediate effect of the bill will be to freeze a current trial in Milan, where Berlusconi is charged with bribing judges in a 1980s corporate takeover battle nearly a decade before he entered politics."

whilst same berlusconi is being overtaken on the right over immigration..

Sicilian fishermen always know when they set out to sea that the chances are they will come back with human remains, as well as fish, in their nets. They describe the 100-mile stretch of water between Sicily and Tunisia a "liquid tomb".

In the past few weeks, Italians have watched in despair as the calm, still waters of summer have encouraged a surge of illegal immigrants to attempt the hazardous journey, crammed into tin-pot vessels, from north Africa to Italy. Just in June, 3,000 people have arrived at the tiny Italian outpost island of Lampedusa, between Sicily and Tunisia. Despite the calm weather, scores have also perished.

This week a wooden boat capsized off Lampedusa leaving its 70-odd passengers to sink or swim. Military police fished 11 bodies from the water and took survivors to the island's bursting temporary detention centre. One of 145 passengers on another vessel was a three-year-old Somalian girl. As similar scenes play themselves out along miles of Italy's southern coastline, the Italian debate on immigration is blazing with the fiery leader of the xenophobic Northern League, Umberto Bossi, complaining that the government had not effectively implemented a new immigration law he co-wrote last year.

Bossi, who is also minister for reforms and a heavyweight in Silvio Berlusconi's government coalition, wrote the law with Gianfranco Fini, the deputy prime minister and leader of the "post Fascist" National Alliance, which obliges all immigrants to have a work visa on arrival in the country. In an interview with Corriere della Sera on Monday, Bossi, who has frequently threatened to pull out of the government coalition if his "reforms" are not applied, suggested Italian marine patrols ought to fire on oncoming vessels full of illegal immigrants to deter them from ever reaching the country's shores.

"At the second or third warning, boom... the cannon should fire. Without so much beating around the bush. It should be cannonfire that takes out whoever is there. Otherwise we'll never end this problem," he was reported as saying. [...] Illegal immigrants must be chased away, either nicely or nastily. Only those with a work contract can come in. The rest, out! There comes a time when force has to be used."