Rome  - David Beckham's attorneys are discussing with Los Angeles Galaxy the footballer's possible stay at AC Milan past the end of his loan contract on March 8, Milan vice president Adriano Galliani said on Wednesday.

Galliani told the Milan website that the California club are the legitimate owners of the 33-year-old English star but that Milan would be happy to take him over for good.

Rome  - Adrian Mutu scored a brace Monday as Fiorentina won 3-1 away to Bologna in a Serie A game called off Sunday due to heavy snowfall.

Bologna's defence was in trouble on six minutes as both captain Claudio Terzi and goalkeeper Francesco Antonioli failed to intervene allowing the Romanian to connect with Riccardo Montolivo's long feed and volley home from few metres off.

Ten minutes later, Montolivo again split the defence and sent away the striker, who came face to face with Antonioli and beat him to notch his 101st goal with Italian sides.

Rome - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government came under fire on Monday for allegedly fostering anti-immigrant sentiment after an Indian man was brutally beaten and set alight at the weekend.

Opposition leader Walter Veltroni said the attack was due to "xenophobic preaching and a climate of hate and fear" created by Berlusconi's centre-right administration.

The 35-year-old immigrant, from the northern Indian state of Punjab, was attacked early on Sunday while he was sleeping on a bench at a railway station in Nettuno, some
60 kilometres south of Rome.

Rome - The recent conflict in the Gaza Strip has badly damaged the territory's agriculture sector exacerbating food shortages, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Friday.

"Almost all of Gaza's 13,000 families who depend on farming, herding and fishing have suffered damage to their assets during the recent conflict and many farms have been completely destroyed," the Rome-based FAO said in a statement.

Vatican City - Plans to crown the Roman Catholic Church's rehabilitation of Galileo Galilei by placing a statue of the Italian astronomer in the Vatican, have been "indefinitely suspended" a top church official said Thursday.

But the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, confirmed the Holy See is organizing a series of conferences commemorating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of the telescope.

Ravasi was speaking at a news conference in which he outlined the Vatican's participation in the United Nations-designated International Year of Astronomy - for which

Rome - Roma defender Marco Cassetti will be sidelined for two months due to a torn muscle in his right leg, the Serie A side's web site reported Thursday. Cassetti, 31, sustained the injury late in the Roma's 2-1 victory over guests Palermo Wednesday night.

His long layoff reopens the door for Christian Panucci, 35, who appeared set on leaving Roma after a row over his refusal to sit on the bench for last weekend's game at Napoli.