ROME, Dec. 5  -- Researchers at Italy's Bologna University say they've found a way to choose the gender of foals using frozen sperm and egg cells.

ROME, Dec. 5  -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says he has canceled a trip to Italy because of the death of Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II.

Medvedev told Italian President Giorgio Napolitano he would be traveling from India to Moscow to honor the memory of Alexy, who died Friday at the age of 79, the Italian news agency, ANSA, reported.

The Russian church has received condolences from Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church despite past tensions that existed between the two religious groups.

A temporarily patriarch will be chosen Saturday by the Holy Synod of Russian Orthodox Church, Kommersant said. The newspaper said a new patriarch should be elected by May 2009.

NAPLES, Italy, Dec. 4  -- A vendor spokesman in Naples, Italy, says police shut down a shopping area offering nativity figurines, including one of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama.

The unidentified spokesman said police shut down the Via San Gregorio Armeno shopping area of the city in an attempt to stop certain open-air vendors who are suspected of operating without authorization, the Italian news agency, ANSA, reported Wednesday.

Among the nativity statue offerings set to be offered by the Christmas vendors were ones featuring the U.S president-elect. Also included in the holiday theme are Inter Milan soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic and his coach, Jose Mourinho.

Rome - Some 25,000 would-be immigrants attempted to reach Italy illegally by sea in January-September 2008 marking a 107 per cent increase compared to the previous year, according to a senior official of the European Union's border security agency Frontex.

Frontex deputy executive director Gil Arias Fernandez, speaking in Rome on Thursday, also singled out what he said was lack of co-operation by Libya in attempts by the EU to curb illegal immigration across the Mediterranean Sea.

London, Dec 4 : An Italian masterpiece featuring a semi-naked woman, consigned to an attic for 200 years, has sold for 2.84m pounds at an auction in London.

Giambattista Tiepolo’s artwork, Portrait of a lady as Flora, had been hidden in the attic of a French chateau since the 19th Century, and was expected to sell off for 900,000 pounds at the Christie''s sale.

It has been assumed that the reason the picture was kept hidden in the attic by the seller’s grandparents because it shows a woman baring her naked breast.