ROME

Diego Maradona had some time on his hands on Tuesday, until Italian tax police near Naples took two Rolex watches the Argentine soccer legend was wearing, to chip away at a â,¬30-million (,5-million) unpaid income tax bill. ”We were surprised he was wearing them because he knows that when he comes to Italy he risks losing something,” said tax policeman Geremia Guercia.

The scandal threatening to bring Italian football to its knees is now starting to affect the national team’s World Cup preparations, according to the Italian press on Wednesday. With 41 people and most of Italy’s big clubs being dragged through the mud, the press said a ”morbid atmosphere” has descended over the camp.

Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is still banking on a check of spoiled ballots from last month’s super-tight elections to return him to power, according to a copy of a letter to world leaders reproduced in the media on Thursday. ”I hope to return to government after more than a million spoiled ballots are checked,” the conservative Berlusconi wrote in the letter.

Coastguards escorted to land hundreds of migrants floating at sea off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday, causing an emergency at its overwhelmed transit centre, the Ansa news agency reported. Coastguards intercepted three vessels, carrying some 400 suspected illegal immigrants, to the Italian island south of Sicily early on Monday.

Italy’s financial police searched the offices of scandal-hit Serie A club Juventus on Thursday. Officers arrived early morning and went through documents. Former Juventus general director Luciano Moggi, the central figure of the Italian match-fixing scandal, has now been placed under formal investigation for suspected false accounting and tax evasion.

Giorgio Napolitano, sworn into office on Monday as Italy’s 11th president, is a former communist who, at the age of 80, is one of the country’s most-experienced politicians. The life senator and former speaker of the lower house Chamber of Deputies moves into the presidential Quirinale Palace for a seven-year term.

Italy’s Parliament failed to elect a new president of the republic in a second round of voting on Tuesday, with the country’s two opposing blocs engaged in intense negotiations aimed at resolving the political stalemate. Giorgio Napolitano, a highly respected life senator backed by Romano Prodi’s centre-left coalition, has emerged as the front-runner.

Media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi was set to take a bow as Italy’s prime minister on Wednesday, but has promised to be a thorn in the side of centre-left nemesis Romano Prodi in opposition. The supreme court was expected to copper-fasten Prodi’s provisional victory in last week’s polls.

Romano Prodi on Wednesday dismissed calls by outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for a German-style grand coalition in Italy, saying he would form ”a strong government” despite his wafer-thin majority in the Senate. ”There is no need for a grand coalition because we have a majority that allows us to govern,” Prodi said.

The Italian elections split the nation in half, with a bitterly contested race failing to produce a clear winner in Parliament on Tuesday, more than 12 hours after polls closed, and threatening a new season of political instability. Near-final returns on Tuesday showed Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives holding a razor-thin lead in the Senate and Romano Prodi’s center-left winning the lower house by the smallest of margins.

Inter Milan president Giacinto Facchetti on Sunday condemned the group of fans who attacked several of the club’s players at Milan’s Malpensa airport. In the early hours of Sunday morning, around 100 Inter supporters, still angry about their team’s exit from the Champions League on Tuesday, were waiting for the squad as they got off their flight from Ascoli.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi caused an uproar in Italy on Tuesday by blasting a particularly vulgar insult at left-wing voters. Addressing a meeting of shopkeepers in Rome, Berlusconi said: ”I have too high an esteem of Italians’ intelligence to believe that there are so many coglioni who may vote against their self-interest. I apologise for my coarse but effective language.”

One of Italy’s top executives was caught speeding on a motorway in northern Italy at 311kph while trying out his new car, the press reported on Saturday. Riccardo Ruggiero runs Telecom Italia, the country’s main telecoms operator with a turnover of €30-billion last year.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said on Monday Saddam Hussein should still be considered Iraq’s legal president and the current government illegitimate as it was elected under an occupation regime. In an interview with an Italian television channel, he slammed the practice of sending in troops to get rid of heads of state.

Italian coast guards intercepted about 250 would-be illegal immigrants off the coast of southern Italy on Thursday night, port officials said on Friday. A small motorised trawler was stopped about 20km off the island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, overnight, a Palerma port official told Agence France-Presse. It was carrying about 210 people.

About 6,7-million people in Sudan, including in the war-ravaged Darfur region, are exposed to malnutrition and will need food assistance this year, two United Nations food agencies say. The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme estimate that about 728 000 tonnes of food aid will be required.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Monday came under fire from Church officials as well as his own allies for comparing himself to Jesus Christ. Addressing party supporters over dinner at the weekend, Berlusconi had said he felt like ”the Jesus Christ of Italian politics”.

The Italian government said on Monday it will be relaxing its strict doping laws for next month’s Winter Olympics in Turin, much to the relief of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada). The IOC and Wada had been concerned that some athletes could end up with jail sentences.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) appealed on Monday for -million in aid to Sudan, saying aid coupled with long-term development is crucial to lasting peace there. The agency said that despite a peace accord in 2005, Sudan’s humanitarian needs for 2006 ”remain immense”.

Serie A side Roma could face a stadium ban after Nazi and fascist symbols were spotted in the home supporters enclosure in Sunday’s 3-0 win over Livorno. Flags bearing swastikas and Celtic crosses were seen in the Curva Sud where Roma’s hard core fans congregate.

Some protesters briefly grabbed the Olympic torch from Italian track star Eleanora Berlanda as the relay passed through the Italian town of Trento on Monday. Four protesters known as ”the disobedient ones” — demonstrators associated with the anti-globalisation movement — nabbed the torch.

Ferrari will on Tuesday officially unveil their new car for the 2006 Formula One season which they hope will recapture the title from Renault. The car has already been seen having made an unexpectedly early debut at Fiorano on January 16 where seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher drove it for 51 laps.