By Catherine Hornby

ROME (Reuters) - Some of Italy's top politicians on Saturday rallied behind the country's first black minister, a target of racist slurs since her appointment in April, after a spectator threw bananas at her while she was making a speech.

Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge, who is originally from Democratic Republic of Congo, was appearing at a political rally in Cervia in central Italy on Friday, when someone in the audience threw bananas towards the stage, narrowly missing it.

Kyenge has faced almost daily racial slurs and threats since joining the government. Earlier this month a senator from the anti-immigration Northern League party likened her to an orangutan and only apologized after a storm of criticism.

Last month, a local Northern League councilor said Kyenge should be raped so she understands how victims of crimes committed by immigrants feel. The councilor has received a suspended jail sentence and a temporary ban from public office.

Shortly before Friday's incident, members of the far-right Forza Nuova group left mannequins covered in fake blood near the site of the Democratic Party rally in protest against Kyenge's proposal to make anyone born on Italian soil a citizen.

"Immigration kills," was written on leaflets accompanying the dummies - a slogan Forza Nuova has previously used when referring to murders committed by immigrants in Italy.

However, on Saturday the group denied that one of its members had thrown the bananas. Italian police are trying to identify the culprit.

Kyenge responded to the gesture on Twitter, calling it "sad" and a waste of food.

"The courage and optimism to change things has to come above all from the bottom up to reach the institutions," she added.

Several politicians, including her peers in Prime Minister Enrico Letta's government, responded with messages of support and condemnation on Saturday.

Environment Minister Andrea Orlando said on Twitter he felt "utmost indignation for this lowly act", while Education Minister Maria Chiara Carrozza praised Kyenge for her courage and determination in such a hostile climate.

Veneto region governor Luca Zaia from the Northern League, who is due to participate in an immigration debate with Kyenge in August, also spoke out against the incident on Saturday.

"Throwing bananas, personal insults ... acts like these play no part in the civilized and democratic discussion needed between the minister and those who don't share her opinion," the ANSA news agency quoted him as saying.

(Reporting by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

This week, news broke that if all the methane off the East Siberian seafloor was released, the fallout would cost $60 trillion—a huge, staggering number.

For comparison’s sake, the world’s GDP is $70 trillion. The findings assume that 50 gigatons of methane would be released over the course of 10-to-20 years in a warming pulse.

Some climate scientists disagree with the underlying assumption. Gavin Schmidt has taken to Twitter to argue that 50 gigatons is an excessive estimate; prior warming periods didn’t show similarly large releases of methane.

On the other hand, climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann tells TakePart: “The precise magnitude [of methane] is an object of valid debate, but the possibility of a substantial release cannot be dismissed out of hand.” Climate modelers have underestimated Greenland sheet ice and Arctic sea ice melt, so the estimate is not outside the realm of possibility.

The authors make it clear that they’re responding to exuberant claims of $100 billion in short term benefits from a warming Arctic—if the sea ice melts, trade routes will be shortened. Neither the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its Global Risk Report, nor the International Monetary Fund in its World Economic Outlook, recognizes the potential economic threat from changes in the Arctic.

Very large numbers make us sit up and take notice, but they’re also hard to grasp. What is climate change currently costing even without that warming pulse? A NRDC report estimates that American taxpayers, through the federal government, paid $100 billion in 2012—more than the cost of education or transportation. (And that doesn’t include what state and local governments, insurers, or private citizens paid.) Mann estimates the global cost at $1.4 trillion per year in coastal damage, droughts, fires, floods and hurricanes.

We know that Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to armor New York City to protect against the next Sandy has a $20 billion price tag. No similar grand proposal has been made for other great cities of the East Coast—Boston, Washington, D.C., or Charleston. No similar proposal has been made for Midwestern cities facing floods, or Southwestern cities, where wildfire season now starts July 1 and ends June 30.

And what of Miami? It contributed $263 billion to gross domestic product in 2010, according to the Bureau of Economic Advisors. Caught between rising seas to the east and the Everglades to the west, the city isdoomed to drown.

Abandoning Miami means not only moving or abandoning the businesses who create its gross domestic product, but walking away from its pricey real estate, its roads, hospitals, schools and infrastructure. The cost of relocating its people needs to be calculated both in dollars and in heartbreak. But if you ask people to estimate the cost of abandoning Miami, you get blank stares. It’s as if the language to ask the question hasn’t been invented yet.

“It is not difficult to envision much larger costs, [i.e. $60 trillion] given the potential larger and more abrupt warming [the more abrupt the warming, the more costly it is to try to adapt] that the authors calculate,” says Mann. And it’s not difficult to imagine that there are costs we haven’t even begun to imagine. And when you multiply those costs, city after city after city, suddenly $60 trillion becomes a very realistic and frightening number.

Original source: takepart.com

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — More than a thousand inmates escaped a prison Saturday in Libya as protesters stormed political party offices across the country, signs of the simmering unrest gripping a nation overrun by militias and awash in weaponry.

It wasn't immediately clear if the jailbreak at al-Kweifiya prison came as part of the demonstrations. Protesters had massed across Libya over the killing of an activist critical of the country's Muslim Brotherhood group.

Inmates started a riot and set fires after security forces opened fire on three detainees who tried to escape the facility outside of Benghazi, a security official at al-Kweifiya prison said. Gunmen quickly arrived to the prison after news of the riot spread, opening fire with rifles outside in a bid to free their imprisoned relatives, a Benghazi-based security official said.

Those who escaped either face or were convicted of serious charges, the prison official said.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to speak to journalists.

Special forces later arrested 18 of the escapees, while some returned on their own, said Mohammed Hejazi, a government security official in Benghazi. The three inmates wounded in the initial escape attempt were taken to a local hospital, he said.

There was confusion, however, about how many prisoners exactly broke out, with numbers of escapees ranging as high as 1,200.

At a news conference, Prime Minister Ali Zidan blamed the jailbreak on those living around the prison.

"The prison was (attacked) by the citizens who live nearby because they don't want a prison in their region" he said. "Special forces were present and could have got the situation under control by using their arms but they had received orders not (use) their weapons on citizens ... so the citizens opened the doors to the prisoners."

Zidan said an alert would be sent to border posts about the jailbreak and officers would receive a list of the escapees' names.

Benghazi's security is among the most precarious in post-revolution Libya. Last year, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in the city.

Meanwhile Saturday, hundreds gathered in the capital Tripoli after dawn prayers, denouncing the Friday shooting death of Abdul-Salam Al-Musmari. They set fire to tires in the street and demanded the dissolution of Islamist parties.

The two incidents highlighted Libya's deteriorating security situation and the challenges the North African country faces as it tries to restore calm nearly two years after the ouster and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

In Tripoli, protesters appeared to be inspired by events in neighboring Egypt, where millions took to the streets Friday to answer a call from the army chief, who said he wanted a mandate to stop "potential terrorism" by supporters of the country's ousted president, Mohammed Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood.

"We don't want the Brotherhood, we want the army and the police," Libyan protesters chanted, repeating a slogan also used in Egypt. Libya's nascent security forces are struggling to control the country's militias, most of whom have roots in the rebel groups that overthrew Gadhafi in 2011.

The activist Al-Musmari, who used to publicly criticize the Brotherhood, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Benghazi.

Some protesters stormed the headquarters of a Brotherhood-affiliated political party and another Islamist-allied party in the capital, destroying furniture. Witnesses say demonstrators also stormed a Brotherhood party in Benghazi.

Protesters angry with the Libya's weak central government also targeted the liberal National Forces Alliance, ransacking its headquarters. The party came on top in Libya's first free parliamentary elections last year.

Security forces in Libya have been unable to impose their authority on the country since Gadhafi's ouster. Militias, many made up of former rebels who fought in the civil war that toppled Gadhafi, have grown in the strength and in many areas rival the security forces in their firepower and reach. The armed forces also rely on militias for help securing the country in some cases.

On Saturday, a colonel was killed by gunmen in Benghazi. Another three security members were killed a day earlier when gunmen opened fire on them. Security members are frequently targets in the country.

Zidan, the prime minister, said that an investigation was launched into the circumstances around al-Musmari's slaying. He said a foreign criminal investigation team will join Libyan investigators in Tripoli and Benghazi on Monday. He did not offer further details.

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the Libyan government to "conduct a prompt and thorough investigation" of al-Musmari's death, believed to be the first targeted killing of a political activist.

"Libya's fragile transition is at stake if political killings go unpunished," said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "This makes investigating al-Musmari's murder all the more urgent."