Turin, Italy  - Andrea Pininfarina, the scion of one of Italy's most celebrated car-design companies, died Thursday when a scooter he was riding was hit by a car. He was 51.

Pininfarina, president and CEO of Pininfarina, the company founded by his grandfather in 1930, was apparently on his way to work when the accident occurred on a road outside the north-western city of Turin, traffic police said.

Pininfarina was riding a Vespa scooter when he was hit by a car driven by a 78-year-old man who was not injured in the accident but was being treated for shock.

The name Pininfarina is associated with the sleek designs of some of the most famous Ferrari sports cars models, including the Ferrari Testarossa.

Reggio Calabria, Italy - Italian police arrested Thursday a wanted Calabrian mafia boss who is the brother-in-law of a chief suspect in the August 2007 killings of six Italians in Duisburg, Germany, news reports said.

Police blocked the 31-year-old Paolo Nirta, after a short chase on foot down the narrow alleys of San Luca, a town considered the stronghold of the Calabrian version of the mafia, the 'Ndrangheta.

Nirta is the suspected acting-boss of the Nirta family which has been locked in a bloody fued with a rival clan, the Pelle-Vottari family, since the early 1990s.

Islamabad - Pakistani Army aviators on Wednesday airlifted an Italian climber left stranded on K2, the world's second-highest mountain, by an ice fall last week, officials said.

Suffering from frostbite, Marco Confortola took five days to descend to an advance base camp at an altitude of 5,800 metres, but efforts to rescue him on Tuesday were hampered by foggy conditions.

"Confortola has been rescued by a military helicopter in the morning (on Wednesday)," Italian embassy spokesman Sergio Oddo told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Oddo said the mountaineer was being flown to the town of Skardu where he would undergo a medical check-up and later depart for Islamabad by "first available flight."

Bolzano, Italy  - Pope Benedict XVI arrived Monday in Bolzano at the foothills of Italy's Dolomite Alps to begin a two week-long holiday that follows a hectic first half of 2008 for the 81-year-old pontiff.

Benedict, who last week returned from an intense 10-day visit to Australia where he presided over World Youth Day celebrations, was greeted in Bolzano by local dignitaries and church officials.

Islamabad  - The two Italian climbers who were rescued from a deadly Himalayan peak two days ago left Islamabad on Saturday for Milan.

Simon Kehrer and Walter Nones were attempting a new route up Nanga Parbat (the Naked Mountain in the Urdu language), when their teammate and celebrated mountaineer Karl Unterkirchner fell to his death in a crevasse on July 15.

Both remained stranded on the 8,126-metre "Killer Mountain" until Thursday, when an army helicopter evacuated them to the nearby town of Gilgit, from where they arrived in Islamabad the following day.

Rome - The government of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced Saturday a nationwide state of emergency in reaction to a stark increase in illegal immigration to the country's south.

The move is to provide local authorities with greater means to deal with the rising tide of wound-be immigrants arriving by boat.

According to the daily La Repubblica, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni plans to build new intake centres throughout the country.