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NEW YORK — "Captain" Lou Albano, who became one of the most recognized professional wrestlers of the 1980s after appearing in Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" music video, died Wednesday. He was 76.

Albano, whose real name was Louis Vincent Albano, died in Westchester County in suburban New York, said Dawn Marie, founder of Wrestlers Rescue, an organization that helps raise money for the health care of retired wrestlers. He died of natural causes, Marie said.

World Wrestling Entertainment called him one of the company's "most popular and charismatic legends."

With his trademark Hawaiian shirts, wiry goatee and rubber bands hung like piercings from his cheek, Albano was an outsize personality who, in a career spanning nearly five decades, was known as much for his showmanship as for his talent in the ring.

His fame skyrocketed when he appeared in Lauper's landmark 1983 music video, playing a scruffy, overbearing father in a white tank top who gets shoved against a wall by the singer.

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NEW YORK — The umbrella title is "Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet," but that's a misnomer.

The two, "School" and "Keep Your Pantheon," are related – by laughs. The double bill, now on view at off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, are slight but funny comedies by the man who has given us much more weighty works such as "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed-the-Plow."

Still, there are a parade of chuckles and a couple of outright guffaws to be found in these works, especially "Pantheon," a neat bit of inspired buffoonery directed by Neil Pepe. The play may be set in ancient Rome, yet it's more reminiscent of 20th-century burlesque sketches. Think "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" without the music.

Only now we are in the company of a sad-sack troupe of actors, headed by a broken-down – and broke – acting teacher named Strabo, played by the gloriously hangdog Brian Murray. The rent is due, there are no acting gigs in sight, and Strabo has designs on a pretty but dim boy (a hilarious Michael Cassidy) who has trouble thinking and speaking at the same time. But wait. A job may be in the offing at the Sicilian Cork Festival. But first, this ragged band of players has to audition.

Therein lies a surprisingly convoluted plot, particularly for a play that lasts only a little over 60 minutes. Murray and Cassidy are joined by an excellent band of actors including John Pankow, Todd Weeks, Rod McLachlan and several Mamet veterans including J.J. Johnston, Jordan Lage and Jack Wallace.

MILAN — An Italian prosecutor on Wednesday urged a court in Milan to give 26 Americans 10 to 13 years in prison each for the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in a CIA renditions operation.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro also asked the court to convict and sentence the former head of Italy's military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari, to 13 years in prison and requested lesser sentences for two other Italian defendants.

Spataro gave his closing arguments in a trial that is the first in any country to scrutinize the CIA's extraordinary renditions. Under that program, the U.S. spy agency transferred terrorism suspects to third countries for interrogation.

Spataro asked for 13 years in prison for Jeff Castelli, former Rome CIA station chief, and 12 years for Robert Seldon Lady, former Milan CIA station chief, as well as for Sabrina De Sousa, who was in the Rome Embassy and was described by the prosecution as Lady's superior.

The prosecutor alleges that Castelli and Pollari were the chief organizers of the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a suspected terrorist also known as Abu Omar.

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Pope Benedict XVI will next year make the first visit to Britain by a pontiff in decades, British media reported Wednesday.

Reporters traveling to New York with Prime Minister Gordon Brown reported news of the planned visit, but Brown's Downing Street office refused to officially confirm it.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said he was encouraged and pleased by reports of the pope's visit. He said the British government had invited the pope on several occasions, but that any official confirmation would have to come from the Vatican.

"We are glad the Holy Father is giving such consideration to the invitations he has received from Her Majesty's government, which accord closely to the wishes and requests also expressed by the bishops of England and Wales," Nichols said in a statement. "The prospect of a visit by Pope Benedict fills us with joy."

Three British newspapers and the Sky News and BBC broadcasters all cited unidentified sources in reporting the planned visit.

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