PLACIDO DOMINGO SINGS JOHN PAUL II POEMS (ANSA) - Vatican City, November 21 - Spanish tenor Placido Domingo has made an album of songs based on poems written by late Pope John Paul II. The album, 'Infinite Love', will be presented in the Vatican next Friday. Domingo, 67, has said the poems by the pope, who died three years ago, were of ''great literary value''. He said he had asked his composer son, also called P...

SOCCER: JUVENTUS STADIUM PRESENTED (ANSA) - Turin, November 21 - Turin soccer giants Juventus on Thursday night presented its future home, the first stadium to be built and owned by an Italian soccer club. The stadium has been conceived as a US-style stadium packed with family-friendly, business-geared and security elements that will discourage hooligans, the club said. It has also been designed to bring the pla...

FEATURE ARTICLE: MILVIAN BRIDGE Many young lovers had imitated the ritual that the lamppost had begun to buckle under the weight of so many padlocks. The loss of the lamppost did not stop young lovers from the rest of Italy coming to the bridge in order to chain their locks and so the Mayor of Rome had to find a solution. Recently, the Mayor has had all of the original lovelocks have been moved to Rome's City Hall and are on display...

HIGH WATER BACK IN VENICE (ANSA) - Venice, Decemebr 2 - High waters returned to Venice on Tuesday but were significantly below the near-record flooding of Monday. High tide was expected to peak at 115cm above normal levels at 11:15am (local) with between 8% and 11% of the city under water. On Monday Venice ...

CHRISTMAS PRICES HIKES TO DRIVE DOWN SPENDING (ANSA) - Rome, December 2 - Expected prices hikes during the Christmas holiday period will result in a significant drop in consumer spending, according to the consumer group Federconsumatori. Double-digit increase are expected for Christmas trees and other traditional holiday products, ...

US/ITALY: RICE SKIPS ROME VISIT (ANSA) - Rome, December 2 - United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been forced to cancel her visit to Rome on Wednesday in the aftermath of last week's terrorist attacks in India's commercial capital Mumbai. Rice was to have come to the Italian capital from Brussels follo...

'NEW' ALITALIA TO TAKE OFF AFTER CHRISTMAS, SCAJOLA SAYS (ANSA) - Brussels, December 2 - Italy's new national airline, which will replace the bankrupt carrier Alitalia, will take off after the Christmas holidays, Industry Minister Claudio Scajola said on Tuesday. The need to postpone the debut, he explained, was to avoid any problems during t...

GERMAN MAN FOUND DEAD ON ETNA (ANSA) - Catania, December 2 - A German tourist was found dead on Etna Tuesday after going missing in bad weather at the weekend. Thomas Reichart, 32, is believed to have slipped on an icy path and fallen to his death in a gully. Reichart, from a town near Stuttgart, was a passionate...

'LEWINSKY' JIBE OFFENSIVE, COURT SAYS (ANSA) - Rome, December 2 - It is an offence to liken a woman to Monica Lewinsky, Italy's highest court ruled Tuesday. The Cassation Court ordered a retrial in the case of a southern Italian lawyer sued for accusing a Puglia woman of having a ''Lewinskian nature''. Gennarina M. was...