Forza! Berlusconi as former PM cleared

LOS ANGELES: Pop star Robin Thicke’s 2013 dance floor hit

plagiarised late singer Marvin Gaye, a Los Angeles court has found, ordering Thicke and co-writer Pharrell Williams to pay Gaye’s family more than $7.3 million.

It found infringed on the copyright for Gaye’s 1977 song ROME: Italy’s three-time prime minister has been cleared of embarrassing sex for hire and abuse of power charges. But the road to his political comeback is fraught with obstacles, shortening the odds of success.

Italy’s scandal-prone former premier Silvio Berlusconi has come out clean from the so-called “bunga bunga” affair, but faces an uphill task in trying to remain politically influential amid slumping poll ratings and growing turmoil in his Forza Italia party.

Allies of the embattled 78-year-old, who is still embroiled in other legal cases, were quick to hail his acquittal in the sex for hire trial as marking a turn in his fortunes.

“Infinite joy for the decision of the court. Berlusconi is in the game stronger than before, with a great party behind his back. Today Italy is a better country,” Forza Italia’s speaker in the lower chamber of parliament, Renato Brunetta, said on Twitter.

Berlusconi’s first priority is to rally his troops ahead of regional elections in May, and preserve his leadership of Italy’s conservative opposition, which is under attack from a far-right populist, Northern League leader Matteo Salvini.

Salvini, who has aligned his anti-migration, anti-EU party with the French National Front and Italian neo-Fascists, led a rally in Rome on February 28 in which his supporters displayed a banner describing Berlusconi as “politically dead”.

“Salvini is clearly cannibalising what is left of Forza Italia, where Silvio Berlusconi’s clout is long gone and more and more votes are up for grabs,” Francesco Galietti from the Policy Sonar think tank wrote. – Sapa-dpa