Carabinieri to raid MFA

Story of the day is this news from Geoff Edgers and Sofia Celeste in the Globe: Italian police will travel to Boston next month to "persuade" the Museum of Fine Arts to return ancient art they say was looted from their country. The splendiferously titled Colonel Ferdinando Musella, chief of the Carabinieri Special Unit for the Protection of  Artistic Patrimony, says he has not told the MFA - or other U.S. museums that he plans to hit - that he is coming. And the total number of objects he'll demand from the MGA is "many, many more" than the 29 previously cited - he actually pulls up the database for Celeste in his Rome office, revealing 116 pieces that may be in question.  All this comes a day after the Metropolitan Museum in New York agreed to return 21 artifacts, and amid a Rome trial involving a former curator and dealer connected to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. MFA director Malcolm Rogers says the museum is eager to cooperate. But one former Met official tells the Globe the Italians have "smoking gun after smoking gun after smoking gun."