Dumped by Berlusconi

The only woman in Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right party who dared to speak out against his relationship with young women said yesterday she was being expelled from the movement.

While party heavyweights have rushed to defend Berlusconi, mired in a prostitution scandal, Sara Giudice, a 25-year-old city council official in Milan, criticised his taste for starlets and said he should stop giving them jobs in politics.

"I have just been told that I will definitely be out," Giudice told Reuters. Berlusconi denies any wrongdoing.