The premier is a defendant in two trials in Milan accusing him of corruption and tax fraud. Both proceedings have been suspended thanks to the legislation, but will resume if the law is overturned by the Constitutional Court.

Berlusconi has always denied wrongdoing.

With journalists jammed in the courtroom, the 15 constitutional judges opened a hearing Tuesday during which the parties will lay out their cases.

A decision is not expected until Thursday.

The law, bitterly contested by the opposition, was passed in March by Berlusconi's conservative forces who control parliament, and went into effect the following month. It marked the third attempt at shielding Berlusconi during his various stints as head of government.

The legislation suspends court proceedings for up to 18 months if the defendant has a "legitimate impediment" stemming from being premier or a member of government. It was designed as a stopgap measure to buy the conservatives time while they prepare a more thorough immunity law for top officials.

Nine terror suspects were charged Monday with planning a series of bombings in Britain and ordered to remain in custody.

Details about their alleged plot were not released, but security officials said they were planning substantial attacks on British cities and landmarks. It was described as an extensive plot that posed a real threat to public safety.

The suspects were expected to be back in court Jan. 14 on a variety of terror-related charges including conspiracy to cause explosions.

Chief magistrate Howard Riddle at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court ordered the men be held until their next court date.

The nine men, and three others who have since been released without charge, were taken into custody last week during dawn raids in London, Cardiff and Stoke-on-Trent in central England.

The nine men ordered held are: Gurukanth Desai, 28, Omar Sharif Latif, 26, and Abdul Malik Miah, 24, from Cardiff, Mohammed Moksudur Rahman Chowdhury, 20, and Shah Mohammed Lutfar Rahman, 28, from London, and Nazam Hussain, 25, Usman Khan, 19, Mohibur Rahman, 26, and Abul Bosher Mohammed Shahjahan, 26, from Stoke-on-Trent.

Medvedev's comments came only a week after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, to the U.S. disgraced financier Bernard Madoff who cheated investors out of an estimated $20 billion through a Ponzi fraud. Putin said Khodorkovsky deserves no leniency — a statement widely denounced as interfering in the trial.

"Neither the president nor any other state official has the right to comment on this particular case before the verdict is passed," Medvedev said in a live interview with Russia's state TV stations.

Khodorkovsky was convicted of underpaying taxes on the profits from his Yukos oil company and is serving an eight-year sentence. His case has been widely seen as punishment for daring to challenge the Kremlin's political and economic power during Putin's presidency, in part by funding opposition parties in parliament.

Khodorkovsky is now facing a second trial on charges of embezzling $25 billion worth of oil. A judge is to begin delivering the long-awaited verdict on that case Monday.

Medvedev, who has promised to establish independent courts and strengthen the rule of law in Russia, insisted that he saw no evidence to support claims that prosecutors were selective in applying the law and punishing the tycoon for common business practices.

The head of the judiciary in England and Wales ruled Monday that there is no ban on using Twitter in court.

Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge said the use of "unobtrusive, hand held, virtually silent" equipment to give live text updates was unlikely to interfere with the administration of justice.

Among the traditions of British justice — alongside lawyers' black robes and horsehair wigs — are strict restrictions on communications. Cameras and recording equipment are banned, phones are usually prohibited, and even court artists are barred from sketching in the courtroom — they must make notes and then go outside to draw.

Twitter has been a gray area. Last week a judge allowed journalists to tweet from a bail hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — the first time it had been expressly permitted. But two days later the judge at another hearing for Assange said tweeting was barred.

The chief justice said there was no legal prohibition on using "a mobile phone, small laptop or similar piece of equipment, solely in order to make live text-based communications of the proceedings" — giving journalists a green light to tweet, text or liveblog from hearings.

But he said users would have to seek the judge's permission first, and this could be refused in criminal trials if there was a risk that information posted on Twitter might influence witnesses or jurors.

An appeals court ruled Thursday to uphold most of the fraud convictions against a South Korean scientist disgraced in a cloning scandal that shook the international scientific community.

Hwang Woo-suk — who gained worldwide fame in 2004 with claims to have created the first cloned human embryos — was sentenced by a Seoul district court in October to two years in prison on charges of embezzling $800,000 in research funds and illegally buying human eggs. That sentence was suspended, allowing him to stay free if he were to break no laws for three years.

Both Hwang and prosecutors appealed the verdict.

The Seoul High Court upheld most of those convictions Thursday, but dismissed one involving an alleged $100,000 in embezzled funds for lack of evidence, and reduced Hwang's sentence to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years.

Hwang made no comment during the packed courtroom proceedings.

Both Hwang and prosecutors have one week to appeal to the Supreme Court. Prosecutors had earlier demanded a four-year prison term for Hwang.

Hwang and his former colleagues at Seoul National University claimed in a paper published in the journal Science in 2004 that they had created the world's first cloned human embryos — and had extracted stem cells from them.

A German court rejected a lawsuit filed by Khaled el-Masri seeking to force Berlin into prosecuting suspected CIA agents who he alleges illegally detained him nearly eight years ago as part of the U.S. rendition program.

The Cologne Administrative Court, in a ruling on Dec. 7, supported Berlin's decision not to seek the Americans' extradition after Washington told the Germans in 2007 it would reject any attempts to prosecute its agents, citing national security concerns. The ruling was published on Friday.

The court ruled that "the German government's decision not to seek the extradition of the agents, despite the arrest warrant issued by a German court, was legal."

El-Masri's lawyer said he and his client were considering whether to appeal the ruling. They have one month to do so.

El-Masri, 44, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was illegally detained by CIA agents while entering Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003 and then transferred to a CIA-run prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was beaten, sodomized and injected with drugs.