Vatican City - The Vatican's top health issues official reiterated Tuesday the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to embryonic stem cell research - a field of study supported by US president-elect Barack Obama.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said stem cells taken from human embryos and involving the destruction of the embryos, "served no purpose with no health cure to date" resulting from such scientific research.

The Church instead championed research on adult stem cells that, Barragan said, have been shown to have "positive value."

Rome - A wildcat strike by Alitalia employees forced Tuesday the cancellation of at least 20 flights at Rome's Fiumicino airport and further disruptions at airports in Milan, Naples and Venice.

The 24-hour walkout by pilots, flight attendants and ground staff is to protest what they say is a breach in an agreement with labour unions by a private consortium, CAI, which has offered to buy Alitalia's state-owned controlling state.

Italian Transport Minister Altero Matteoli has branded as illegal the strike, which is not supported by most of the unions representing Alitalia's 17,000 employees.

Matteoli warned striking workers could face legal action if they pressed on with threats to stage new stoppages in the coming days.

Rome - Italy's foreign ministry confirmed Monday that two Italian Roman Catholic nuns have been abducted in Kenya.

"Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is constantly monitoring the situation," the ministry said in a statement in Rome.

The nuns may have been taken across the border into Somalia, the ANSA news agency said, citing Somali "news reports."

Rome, Dushanbe, Tajikistan - Fisheries production in the Central Asian and Caucasus republics has "plummeted dramatically" in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a UN food agency said Monday.

The crisis is topping the agenda when nine member nations of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) began meeting in Tajikistan on Monday

The Rome-based FAO estimates that between 1989 and 2006 annual inland fisheries and aquaculture production in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan fell from between 60 to 72 per cent.

Tajikistan's production dropped 94 per cent, and Kyrgyzstan's 98 per cent, during the same period.

Rome - Scores of buses, trams and subways were idled Monday in many Italian towns and cities as local public transport workers went on strike.

Rome, Johannesburg - Tributes began pouring in Monday for South African singer and anti-apartheid icon, Miriam Makeba, who died Sunday from a heart attack in an Italian clinic.

Makeba, 76, collapsed shortly after a performance on Sunday evening and was brought by ambulance to a hospital in Castel Volturno in southern Italy, where she died, a hospital director said.

"She arrived at the Pineta Grande hospital at around 11:15 on Sunday night. By then her heart had stopped beating and all attempts to revive her were unsuccessful," the director, Francesco Longanella, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.