Excerpt:
Norway's Progress Party has demanded a personal apology from US President Barack Obama after his nomination for Norway's new ambassador described its members as "fringe elements" who "spew out their hatred".
"I think this is unacceptable and a provocation," Jan Arild Ellingsen, the party's justice spokesman, told Norway's TV2 television channel. "I expect the US president to apologize to both Norway and the Progress Party".
George Tsunis, a Greek-American property millionaire who was one of Obama's biggest individual campaign donors, displayed only the scantiest knowledge of Norway at a senate hearing this week ahead of his appointment, describing the Progress Party, which has seven ministers in the government, as if it were a fringe far-right group.