IMMUNE-SYSTEM DISORDERS….

Federation Council President Yegor Stroev proposed last week to give former Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin lifetime membership in the Council, which acts as the upper house of Russia’s parliament. Council member Mikhail Prusak, governor of Novgorod, would cover future ex-presidents as well. Under the Constitution, membership in the Council provides an immunity from criminal prosecution that only the Council itself could withdraw. … Oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who speculated last month that Putin would have him arrested, enjoys parliamentary immunity as an elected member of the State Duma from Karachaevo-Cherkessia. A group in that region calling itself the “Council of Elders” has written to Duma President Gennady Seleznev asking that Berezovsky be thrown out of the Duma and a new election held. And the Prosecutor General’s Office, which in 1999 rescinded a warrant for Berezovsky’s arrest, now threatens to reinstitute the charges or bring new ones pursuant to a Swiss investigation of Berezovsky’s financial transactions. Berezovsky himself has gone missing and may be abroad. He is probably not in Switzerland.