Italian Red Cross

Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraq insurgents -- with the knowledge of the Italian government -- last year and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two kidnapped aid workers, a top Italian Red Cross official said in an interview published Thursday. Maurizio Scelli, chief of the Italian Red Cross, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa that he had kept the deal secret from U.S.

Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraq insurgents -- with the knowledge of the Italian government -- last year and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two kidnapped aid workers, a top Italian Red Cross official said in an interview published Thursday. Maurizio Scelli, chief of the Italian Red Cross, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa that he had kept the deal secret from U.S.

The Italian Red Cross has been told that all prisoners of war held by Iraq are in good condition, Defense Minister Virginio Rognoni said Friday. The minister said the information was given to Italy by the head of the Algerian Red Crescent, who just returned from Iraq. Rognoni said the news is "comforting" but that there is no way to immediately verify the report.

Islamic militants in the southern Philippines freed an ailing Italian Red Cross worker after six months of captivity. Eugenio Vagni, 63, had difficulty walking because of a hernia, but otherwise appeared to be in good health as his Abu Sayyaf captors handed him over to a provincial vice governor on Jolo Island. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said no ransom had been paid.

Authorities began relocating thousands of Albanian refugees to camps throughout Italy, relieving the burden on the overwhelmed port of Brindisi. The refugees, who had spent several days on the docks with only plastic sheets to protect them, were transported by trains and buses. Brindisi officials said about 11,000 Albanians remain in refugee camps run by the Italian Red Cross and army and in military barracks in nearby Restinco. Another 6,000 are housed in schools.

Thousands of Albanians seeking asylum in foreign embassies in Tirana will be ferried to Italy under an agreement being worked out between Albania and the United Nations, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. "We hope the operation can begin by the end of the week," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Rome. He spoke on condition of anonymity. Another source said it could begin as early as Thursday. A representative of U.N.

Elizabeth "Betty" Johnson Wilson, philanthropist and fund-raiser for the arts and for programs benefiting children, has died. She was 79. Wilson, the wife of former ambassador to the Vatican William A. Wilson, died Tuesday at the UCLA Medical Center after a stroke. The popular hostess accompanied her husband to Rome in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan named him as the nation's first ambassador to the Vatican.

The repressive curtain around Europe's most backward society was flicked aside revealingly Friday for the first time in 45 years as about 4,000 grimy but exuberant Albanians streamed ashore here to new lives in Western refuge. The refugees emerged almost trance-like from an internationally sponsored boatlift that transported them from a homeland wrapped in stubborn Stalinist isolation since the end of World War II. "We worked, the Communist leaders ate.

One of Egypt's top tourist attractions, King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, has been closed to visitors since November, 1990--and antiquities officials say it will remain closed until they can figure out how to protect it from the destructive organisms resulting from overexposure to tourists. The tomb was closed initially so experts could study bacteria and fungi first isolated in the burial chamber in 1988.

Wails of grief gave way to howls of panic Friday when aftershocks jolted this village as it recovered the last of 26 children -- including all the first-graders except one -- killed when an earthquake destroyed their school. Two elderly women were killed in their homes and a teacher was crushed with her students Thursday as they prepared to celebrate Halloween. Officials said late Friday that the final death toll was 29.

As the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar continued Tuesday, American defense officials confirmed that U.S. Marines were helping with "information gathering" at a former Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. The Marines have been "actively doing a search . . . in the Helmand province west of Kandahar," while Special Forces have been working with anti-Taliban soldiers in the region, said Army Col. Rick Thomas at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla.