Free Republic

A leading Italian senator has been chastised by Premier Enrico Letta for likening the country’s first black Cabinet minister to an orangutan, the latest high-profile racist episode in a nation grappling with immigration. … (Roberto) Calderoli, the Senate’s vice-president and a leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, later said he was making a joke and meant no offense to Cecile Kyenge, a Congolese-born doctor who is the country’s immigration minister. …

ROME (Reuters) - The row over controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad forced two ministers out of their jobs in Europe and the Middle East on Saturday after clashes between police and protesters claimed 11 lives in Libya. Initially resisting calls for his resignation, Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli stepped down after he was widely blamed for bloody clashes in Libya over cartoons of the Prophet which he had made into T-shirts and wore on television.In Tripoli, the General People's Congress fired Interior Minister Nasser al-Mabrouk Abdallah and police chiefs in Benghazi saying "disproportionate force" had been used to...