Milan, Italy  - The collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers reverberated in Italy's financial capital of Milan where the stock exchange plunged nearly 3.6 per cent by midday Monday.

Milan, Italy - The death in Italy of a 19-year-old Burkina Faso-born man after he was allegedly bludgeoned for stealing biscuits has provoked outrage with some blaming the conservative government for contributing to a "climate of hate" in the country.

A 51-year-old owner of a bar in Milan and his 31-year-old son were arrested Sunday for attacking Abdul Salam Guiebre, who news reports said held Italian citizenship acquired after coming to the country as a child.

Witnesses said that on Saturday night they saw the two men jump into a van and chase Guiebre and a group of other African immigrants down a street near Milan's central railway station.

Berlin - A 90-year-old man who was a lieutenant in Nazi Germany's forces went on trial in Munich on Monday for 14 murders during a World War II reprisal rampage in Italy.

The man has already been convicted once in absentia in La Spezia by an Italian military court of directing the June 26-27, 1944, atrocity at Falzano, a hamlet in Tuscany, but the September 2006 life-imprisonment sentence cannot be enforced in Germany.

Interrogated by German police for the Italian trial, he confirmed he had been an officer in battalion 818 of the Mountain Combat Engineers in Italy, but denied the atrocity.

At Falzano, the German Army shot three men and a woman in revenge for an ambush that killed two German soldiers.

Rome - Alitalia's Italian government-appointed commissioner on Saturday told labour union representatives that dwindling fuel supplies at the near-bankrupt airline meant that it could not guarantee flights beyond another day, news reports said.

"For tomorrow we have our flights guaranteed, but not for Monday. They are no longer supplying us with fuel," Commissioner Augusto Fantozzi told the unions, according to the ANSA news agency.

He also warned that Alitalia would begin to lay-off flight crews from 34 planes which have already been grounded as part of cost-cutting measures, ANSA said.

Rome - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi lashed out Saturday at unions representing Alitalia employees, saying their opposition to a government plan to save the troubled state-controlled airline is politically motivated.

Berlusconi was speaking a day after a group of private Italian investors, CAI, broke off talks with the unions who reject an estimated 7,000 job cuts as specified in the cost-slashing rescue plan.