Reeling from their exposure to the Eurozone debt crisis and needing to bolster their capital base, European banks are slashing their government bond holdings but risk making matters worse.

Top banks announced recently they are cutting their portfolios of bonds issued by such weak Eurozone members as Italy, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, aiming to minimize the risk to profit and to their capital.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi arrived Tuesday at the Vatican for a one-week visit, after wrapping up his pastoral trip to the United Stated.

Upon his arrival, al-Rahi called at the St. Maroun Church for “a profound prayer for the sake of Lebanon and peace in the Middle East.”

Part of an ancient Roman wall has collapsed at the archaeological site of Pompei in southern Italy following flash floods and storms across the country, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

The wall, built with the Roman "opus incertum" technique using irregularly shaped stones and concrete, collapsed on a stretch of the ancient city's external walls, near the Porta di Nola, in an area open to the public.

Italian police on Friday said they discovered a fake university in the north of the country where around 10 students were paying around 7,000 Euros ($9,600) for a worthless, unrecognized degree.

The university in Verona called "Carolus Magnus" (Charlemagne) was founded in 2005 in Rome by several people that belonged to a cultural association, which later transferred its headquarters to Verona, police said in a statement.

Alberto Giacometti's life-changing encounter with the ancient sculpture of the Etruscans is the starting point for a major Paris show that brings his art face to face with the works that inspired him.

More than 150 rare pieces by the Etruscans, a mysterious, seafaring civilization that ruled swathes of the Mediterranean until it was swallowed up by Rome in the first century BC, have made the trip from Italian museums for the show.

A strike by Italy's largest labor union against austerity measures has shut down air, land and sea transport and curtailed other public services throughout the country.

Workers for the state railway, city transit systems and ferry services all were on strike. Hospital workers, postal employees and bank tellers also joined in.

Italian authorities have arrested a 52-year-old man suspected of vandalizing one of the fountains in Rome's landmark Piazza Navona.

The suspect, who comes from Rome, was apprehended in the city center overnight after police recognized him by his distinctive shoes, said the sources.

Archeologists say they have located and excavated the ruins of a massive amphitheater used to train gladiators east of Vienna in what they call a "sensational discovery."

They say that the ruins located through ground radar measurements rival the Colosseum and the Ludus Magnus in Rome in their structure. The Ludus Magnus is the largest of the gladiatorial arenas in the Italian capital, while the Colosseum is the largest amphitheater ever built in the Roman Empire.

With Italy facing the prospect of drastic cuts to balance its budget in the years to come, a growing number of ordinary Italians are criticizing massive tax breaks given to the Roman Catholic Church.

A Facebook page set up by leftist campaigners in recent weeks asking the Vatican to help ease austerity in Italy has already collected 130,000 supporters. It asks for numerous exemptions given to the Church to be revised.

Coco Chanel: A fashion icon whose name has become shorthand for timeless French chic, a shrewd businesswoman who overcame a childhood of poverty to build a luxury supernova and ... a Nazi spy?

A new book by a Paris-based American historian suggests Chanel not only had a wartime affair with a German aristocrat and spy, but that she herself was also an agent of Germany's Abwehr military intelligence organization and a rabid anti-Semite.