Rome  - Serie A leaders Inter Milan beat tail-enders Chievo 4-2 Sunday to open up a nine-point lead on pursuers Juventus and AC Milan, who were due to play a classic tie later Sunday in Turin.

A brace from Zlatan Ibrahimovic moved the defending champions on to 39 points from 16 games, while Napoli lie level with Juve and Milan on 30 after a 3-0 defeat of Lecce on Saturday.

Fiorentina beat Catania 2-0, Genoa and Atalanta drew 1-1 in a game that the hosts ended with 10 men against a nine-man Bergamo side.

Rome  - Marco Di Vaio scored a brace for Bologna Saturday as they crushed Torino 5-2 in a pulsating game that left both sides in the lower reaches of the Italian Serie A.

Midfielder Simone Barone and his team mate Ignazio Abate twice put Torino ahead, but the hosts never relented and reversed the score from 2-1 largely thanks to Di Vaio's great form.

Barone, a World Cup winner in 2006, on seven minutes scored his first goal this season firing past Francesco Antonioli as the dithering home defenders failed to clear a cross from the right.

Francesco Valiani tried an immediate reply for Bologna on eight minutes, but had his low shot saved, while Torino striker Rolando Bianchi also saw his close-range effort saved on 12 minutes.

Rome - A boy was feared drowned after falling into Rome's Tiber river, which was swollen after days of heavy rain, officials said Saturday.

The young Irish boy was among crowds of curious and anxious onlookers who had come out during the night to look at and take pictures of the river as it threatened to burst its banks.

Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno said early Saturday that the situation had "stabilized."

The Tiber reached a level of 12.5 metres, the highest for decades.

Apart from minor flooding in Monterondo, the Italian capital had managed to keep its feet dry, the mayor said.

"The flood has not passed, but for now, we can put our minds at rest," Alemanno said.

Rome - Italy's largest labour union federation signalled the start of a four-hour nationwide strike Friday with a march by hundreds of its members down the streets of a rainswept Rome.

The leftist CGIL federation is protesting what it says is Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government's "inadequate" response to salaries, pensions and education reform.

However, the strike is being viewed as a show of strength by the CGIL after the country's other two main union groupings, the more moderate CISL and UIL, refused to participate, branding the work stoppage "irresponsible."

Rome - Serie A side Catania have renewed the contract of coach Walter Zenga until

Rome - Police divers on Thursday pulled the body of a woman from a car submerged in a flooded tunnel near Rome following a night of heavy rains and snowfalls around Italy.

The identity of the woman and the cause of her death were not immediately clear, the ANSA news agency reported.

The tunnel near Monterotondo was among several areas in and around the Italian capital hit by storms that left several motorways and roads blocked.

Authorities urged commuters to use public transport instead of their cars.