Odds and Ends from World Media

Time for Italians to put Berlusconi out to pasture?
From The Guardian:

Not satisfied with having once referred to Barack Obama as “sun-tanned”, Silvio Berlusconi today returned to the subject, telling a reporter he was paler than the US president.
After a journalist commented that his response to the global economic crisis made him seem like Obama, Italy’s [...]

“Let me say this as plainly as I can - by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

From The Guardian:
Almost six years after the invasion of Iraq, the end is finally in sight for America’s involvement in its longest and bloodiest conflict since Vietnam. Barack Obama yesterday set out a timetable that will see all US combat units out by summer next year and the remainder by the end of 2011.
Obama said [...]