A weekend rally by Silvio Berlusconi in northern Italy has heightened tensions in the uneasy new coalition government, with Prime Minister Enrico Letta on Sunday demanding that his ministers stay away from such gatherings. Former prime minister Berlusconi, whose People of Freedom party has joined the grand left-right coalition, told a crowd assembled in a square in the northern town of Brescia on Saturday that he remained loyal to the government.

Italy's Democratic Party on Saturday elected union boss Guglielmo Epifani as its temporary leader to replace Pier Luigi Bersani, who stepped aside at the height of the country's leadership crisis following inconclusive February elections. Epifani, a former leader of the left-wing union CGIL, was the only candidate and won the secret ballot with 85.8 percent of the vote. Fifty-nine of the 600 delegates cast blank ballots in a show of discontent. Bersani told the meeting that the PD needed to "regain enthusiasm" and build momentum for the party's congress in October.

An Italian far-right group unfurled a racist banner against Congolese-born Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge, who is Italy's first black minister, local media reported on Thursday. "Kyenge, Go Back to Congo" read a banner put up by the group in the central city of Macerata outside an office of the minister's leftist Democratic Party. The group, Forza Nuova, said in a statement: "You cannot sell off Italian citizenship to elements that are foreign to our culture, just as we cannot force citizens to applaud a multi-racial society."

By Philip Pullella ROME (Reuters) - Giulio Andreotti, who served as Italian prime minister seven times and whose name was synonymous with political survival and cunning in the land that gave the world Machiavelli, died on Monday at the age of 94. Andreotti, who for more than half a century was known as "Mr Italy" because of the many offices he held, died at home, family sources said. He had suffered from respiratory problems for years and had been in hospital several times.