Taliban claims kidnapping of Italian journalist

The Taliban claimed Wednesday it kidnapped an Italian journalist, three days after an Italian newspaper lost touch with a veteran correspondent in southern Afghanistan. A Taliban spokesman claimed the militia captured a man who introduced himself as a Briton who worked for Italian daily La Repubblica - the same paper that raised the alarm about its reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo. "The man we arrested is an Italian and he told us he worked for the Rome-based La Repubblica newspaper," Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a man who claims to speak for the Taliban, told The Associated Press by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. Asked to identify the Italian, Ahmadi sent a text message with the name "Danikel."