World Notes RACISM

"Not even God could resolve the present situation in Florence," lamented Giorgio Morales, the city's mayor. He and the 15 members of the Florence city council stepped down last week, frustrated by a spasm of racial violence that has shaken the cradle of Italian humanism.

Late last month rampaging white hoodlums attacked blacks with iron bars and baseball bats, injuring three North African immigrants. As the assaults continued, authorities flooded the city with 300 police to quell the violence and chase out immigrant street vendors, who have angered native-born merchants, inflaming tensions. After a hunger strike by more than 100 Senegalese, the city agreed to new rules governing street sales.

Meanwhile, North Africans were having a rough time in France as well. There, three men of Maghrebian extraction were slain in separate attacks.