Italy

FOR generations of Americans, Arturo Toscanini was the greatest conductor of their time, perhaps of all time. He set new performance standards and enforced a style of following a score as literally and faithfully as possible, an approach that still draws adherents. Though his star has dimmed since his death in 1957, the Italian conductor still ranks among the top in the field.

A military tribunal convicted 10 former members of the Nazi SS in the 1944 slaughter of more than 700 people near Bologna, news reports said. The 10 received life sentences for murder, the Italian news agency ANSA and state-run RAI television said. The men were tried in absentia, and all are believed to be living in Germany. The defendants, who were members of the 16th SS Division, were tried in a military court in the northern port town of La Spezia.

Up here in the Alpine Dolomites, the wide vista is painted with warm, vivid colors: swatches of deep-green pines, golden straw, grassy pastures and pink limestone ridges. It would be an idyllic panorama -- if this were not the dead of winter and the height of the ski season in Italy's most renowned, and most stylish, mountain resort. Just about the only snow to speak of these days is artificial, spewed from the "cannons" lining steep runs that wind for hundreds of yards down the jagged peaks.

More than 2,000 people throughout Italy, most of them foreigners, have been accused of human trafficking after an investigation that uncovered minors and adults forced into prostitution and working in sweatshops, police said. Most of the suspects and victims came from countries in Eastern Europe, but also from Asia and Africa, a police official said. Some prostitutes were brought from Iraq.

Magistrates have seized a villa in northern Italy belonging to a former CIA station chief who faces a possible indictment in the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, officials said. The villa belonging to Robert Seldon Lady will be held until the end of the trial. In the case of a conviction, it will be sold to pay for court costs and possibly damages to the injured party, said prosecutor Armando Spataro, who requested that the house be seized.

A former Italian intelligence chief who faces indictment over the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in the CIA's "extraordinary renditions" program said Monday that he never took part in illegal activity. Nicolo Pollari said at a hearing that he was unable to defend himself properly, asserting that documents that would clarify his position had been excluded from the proceedings because they contained state secrets, his lawyers said.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi publicly apologized to his wife after she challenged him in an open letter because of flirtatious comments he reportedly made to other women. "Forgive me, I beg you. And take this public show of my private pride giving in to your fury as an act of love," said the letter from Berlusconi released by his Forza Italia party. The letter from his wife, Veronica Lario, was published in La Repubblica -- a left-leaning daily critical of Berlusconi.

In a move that could deal a serious blow to Italy's prosecution of its former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that authorities cannot use evidence recently seized from the home and office of a longtime Hollywood producer and co-defendant. The extraordinary action by U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson was requested by attorneys for producer Frank Agrama and agreed to by the U.S.

Tears slid down the cheeks of Sicilian policemen Monday. A procession through Catania trailed an officer's coffin and featured his 9-year-old son carrying his late father's beret into the cathedral. Onlookers clapped solemnly per tradition. Italy's main public TV channel trained on the funeral for two live hours. Pope Benedict XVI sent a telegram of condolence. Could this moment spur reform for a nation's soccer violence plague?