Briefly

BRITAIN

Queen honors dead from all wars

LONDON | Queen Elizabeth II led Britain’s annual ceremony for the country’s war dead Sunday, honoring them with a moment of silence as the military reported that more than 200 British soldiers have been killed in combat in Afghanistan.

As Big Ben chimed 11 a.m., the queen joined thousands of troops, veterans and civilians in the traditional two-minute silence on Remembrance Sunday beside London’s major war memorial, the Cenotaph. The silence was broken by a single artillery blast and the sound of Royal Marine buglers playing “Last Post.”

The remembrance service is held every year on the nearest Sunday to the anniversary of the end of World War I at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, and now pays tribute to the dead in all conflicts, including World War II, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Defense said Sunday that two more British soldiers in Afghanistan had joined the ranks of the honored.

ITALY

Mob boss caught disguised with wig

ROME | Italy on Sunday hailed the capture of a wig-disguised mobster who had been on the list of the country’s top 30 fugitives.

Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa’s office said paramilitary police arrested Luigi Esposito on Saturday in Posillipo, a northern coastal suburb of Naples. Esposito, on the run since 2003, was using a wig and false name when captured.

Esposito winked at relatives and pursed his lips in a sign of a kiss Saturday outside the Naples police headquarters as officers led him off to prison.

Naples newspaper Il Mattino quoted local commander Mario Cinque as describing Esposito as an expert money-launderer who funneled illicit cash from drug trafficking into tourism and other businesses for the Camorra crime syndicate.

VATICAN

Benedict honors Pope Paul VI

BRESCIA, Italy | Pope Benedict XVI made a one-day pilgrimage Sunday to northern Italy to pay tribute to Paul VI, his predecessor who made him a cardinal.

Thousands held umbrellas or pulled jackets tightly about them as a chilly rain fell during Benedict’s Mass in Paul VI Square outside the cathedral in Brescia, 55 miles east of Milan.

A canopy sheltered Benedict from the downpour as he hailed Paul VI’s achievements as a reforming pope.

In 1977, a year before Pope Paul VI died, he elevated German prelate Joseph Ratzinger, then 50 - relatively young to become a “prince of the church” - to the rank of cardinal. Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI when he was elected pontiff in 2005.

SWITZERLAND

Probe opened into terrorist physicist

BERN | Switzerland has opened its own investigation into the case of a nuclear physicist whom France has suspected of al Qaeda links, an official said Sunday.

The French suspect, who worked at the world’s largest atom smasher on the Swiss-French border and at a Swiss technology institute, is unspecified in Switzerland’s investigation, but it is the same case as the French one, Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman Walburga Bur said.

She said the investigation was opened at the end of October and is directed at an unknown person or persons on suspicion of supporting a criminal organization. In line with French and Swiss judicial policy, authorities have not identified him.

Ms. Bur, who confirmed a report in the weekly NZZ am Sonntag, refused to say more about the case.

From wire dispatches and staff reports