World Briefs

Italian police have arrested 20 gladiator impersonators in an undercover sting aimed at ending a violent racket operating around Rome’s most famous tourist sites, Italian press reported yesterday.

Police disguised as gladiators, dustbin men and members of the public raided the gang made up of seven families working with five tourist agencies.

The modern gladiators are accused of attacking and intimidating competitors for a lucrative business in which gladiators collect up to €10 for having their picture taken alongside tourists in front of attractions.

The police officers disguised as gladiators were beaten up by the alleged criminal gladiators before other undercover officers swooped in.

Gladiators are a feature of the Roman landscape for tourists, with men decked out in bright red capes, helmets with plumes of red feathers and sandals while carrying swords and round shields.

They can be found outside the Colosseum, Castel Sant’Angelo, Piazza Venezia and even in front of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, preying on the millions of tourists who pass through Rome every year. (AFP)

Noach Flug dies

Noach Flug, a tireless advocate for the rights of Holocaust survivors, has died in Jerusalem. He was 86.

The Centre of Organisations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel said Flug died yesterday at Shaare Zedek Hospital.

Flug “worked day and night in Israel and around the world for the good of his fellow survivors,” centre spokesman Uri Arazi said. “He was a man of integrity and a leader.”

Born in Poland in 1925, Flug was deported from the Lodz ghetto, where he was a member of the anti-Nazi underground, to the Auschwitz death camp in August 1944. Nearly all his family was killed at that camp, but he managed to survive it and two other concentration camps.

In 1958 he emigrated to Israel, working as an economist and a diplomat.

But it was as a champion of Holocaust survivors in their fight for reparations that he left his greatest mark.

He held leading positions on the Jewish Claims Conference, the World Jewish Restitution Organisation, the International Auschwitz Committee and the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. (PA)

Freighter collides

Two fishermen were missing in the Gulf of Naples yesterday after a freighter bound for Marseille collided into their trawler, sinking it near the picturesque island of Ischia, the Italian coast guard said.

A third crew member on board the “Giovanni Padre” fishing trawler when it sank was plucked from the sea by another fishing boat and is currently in hospital.

The Jolly Grigio ship was ordered to dock in Naples for an investigation following the incident. (AFP)

Sea-crazy pilot

A “sea crazy” Australian helicopter pilot was arrested on the tiny Pacific outpost of Nauru after illegally landing on the island in search of sweets and soft drinks, a report said yesterday.

The 24-year-old’s helicopter was impounded and he was locked up after parking on a beach near Nauru’s main supermarket while he bought some chocolates and soda, a spokesman for the island’s government said.

He had been stationed on a Taiwanese fishing vessel for more than two months and told police he was going “sea crazy”, Nauru spokesman Rod Henshaw told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

“He said ‘look, we’re only a short hop from this island, let’s go and see what we can get in the way of a few snacks’,” Henshaw said of the sugar-starved pilot. (AFP)

Body in bag

The skeletal remains of a man wearing a suit were found tied up in a windsurfing bag, according to a man who saw the body.

Security guard Jason Mead, 38, said a man and woman walking their dog in Lovelinch Close, Peckham, south east London, yesterday morning alerted him and he saw the bag in some bushes.

Scotland Yard said the body had been placed at the scene some time in the past week.

An investigation has been launched into the death, which is being treated as unexplained.

A police spokesman said: “We believe that the skeletal remains were placed some time between 2 p.m. on Friday August 5 and the early hours of August 10.

“The remains are of a white male, believed to be five feet tall. He was wearing a suit. (PA)