Rome - Three western hostages who work for the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders have yet to be released but are expected to be freed soon, Italian media reports said Saturday.

The Italian government retracted an announcement, made late Friday by the country's foreign minister in Rome, that the release had already happened.

A spokeswoman in Paris for the French-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF,) as the organization is formally known, did not confirm the release.

Amsterdam/Duisburg, Germany  - Giovanni Strangio had for months lived a modest life in the anonymity of Amsterdam until a careless error put police on his trail.

A German environmental sticker issued for a Peugeot car registered in the name of a 48-year-old contact person in Frankfurt led investigators to the suspected Mafia hit-man.

Late on Thursday evening Strangio, his wife, their young son and another man named Francesco Romeo were taken into custody at an apartment in the Amsterdam suburb of Diemen.

London  - Auction-goers with a penchant for celebrity will be able to snap up a momento from the opulently-furnished lakeside villa of late Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace at a sale at Sotheby's in London next week.

On offer are some 500 items from the spectacular neo-classical interior of Versace's Villa Fontanelle on Lake Como, ranging from paintings to furniture and silver works with an estimated value of 2 million pounds (2.75 million dollars), Sotheby's said.

The auction comes just weeks after the record-breaking sale in Paris of the private possessions of late French designer Yves Saint Laurent.

Rome  - A retired Serie B footballer has said he contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a nervous-system disease with an unusually high incidence among former Italian players.

Italian media reported Thursday that Stefano Turchi, 40, a forward with Ancona between 1990 and 1992 has suffered from ALS since 2005.

Turchi, in an interview with the Ancona-based newspaper Corriere Adriatico, said he considers himself lucky to have been hit by a less aggressive form of the illness that still allows him to talk and walk.

Milan - Italian cyclist Gi

Lampedusa, Italy - A large wooden boat carrying 332 would-be immigrants, including 23 women, arrived Wednesday at the Italian islet of Lampedusa, where reception facilities are already stretched, local officials said.

The group, whose nationality was yet to be determined, would bring to over 2,000 the number of migrants on Lampedusa, a spokeswoman for the local mayor said.