Rome  - Italian police arrested Tuesday three mafia suspects linked to the killing of six African immigrants near Naples on September 19, news reports said.

Police surprised the three - all wanted members of the Casalesi crime family of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra - in their hideout, a small villa near Licola, a north-western suburb of Naples.

Police also seized two Kalashnikov assault rifles and two pistols which may have been used to gun down the Africans who were killed in nearby Castel Volturno, the reports say.

The arrests follow a massive manhunt involving more than 400 extra police launched in the aftermath of the killings of the Africans - three men from Ghana, two from Liberia and one from Togo.

Rome - The last two unions- both representing Alitalia flight attendants - on Monday finally joined other representatives of the financially troubled airline's workers in agreeing to a private consortium's takeover offer.

The decision by the SDL and AVIA unions to adhere to the CAI consortium's buyout plan ended more than two weeks of tortious talks.

Their failure would have seen the demise of Alitalia and would have represented a serious embarrassment to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government.

Warsaw  - An OSCE report launched Monday paints a "bleak picture" and shows "considerable gaps" in improving the situation of the Roma and Sinti people across Europe, officials said at an annual conference in Warsaw.

"The situation has not improved as much as hoped and expected" after the 56-member states adopted an action plan in 2003, said Ambassador Janez Lenarcic, director of the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. "There are still major steps to be taken to reach an acceptable level of implementation in our region."

Rome, Sept. 27 : Active efforts are on to revive and rehabilitate Benito Mussolini, Italy’s wartime dictator.

On Friday, urban planners and architectural historians from across Italy gathered in Rome to honour the “glories” of Fascist architecture.

The conference, at Latina, a model “new town” created in reclaimed marshland south of Rome by Mussolini in 1932, is the brainchild of Giorgio Frasinetti, the head of urban planning at Predappio, the town in Emilia-Romagna where Il Duce was born and is buried, reports The Times.

Rome - Pilots at Alitalia SpA gave their green light to a rescue plan for the Italian airline after nearly 15 hours of nonstop negotiations, Italy's ANSA news agency reported Saturday.

The pilots agreed to a takeover by a consortium of private investors after negotiating a reduction in sackings and manager contracts for captains.

The agreement meant only Alitalia's flight attendants union had yet to approve the deal designed to keep Italy's flagship carrier from collapse. Talks were scheduled with that union Monday.

Rome - Italian government officials were set later Thursday to hold talks with labour unions on the fate of troubled national carrier Alitalia, amid what news reports said was optimism on an agreement over the carrier's takeover by a private consortium.

The late-morning meeting including the nine unions representing Alitalia employees was scheduled to be held at Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office in Rome.

The premier's close aide Gianni Letta was expected to chair it.

"I am hopeful, but to say that everything has been concluded is not correct," Transport Minister Altero Matteoli said ahead of the talks.