Every voice has its own colour, but sometimes they’re hard to tell apart – and when the singers are not of the same sex, things get interesting. On successive days I heard counter-tenor Iestyn Davies in the Lufthansa Festival performance of Handel’s ‘Athalia’, and mezzo Marijana Mijanovic singing in Handel’s ‘Agrippina’ - and I could have sworn it was the same voice.

Sir Michael Bishop, the chairman of BMI British Midland, launched High Court proceedings against Lufthansa yesterday to try to force the German airline to complete its purchase of BMI.

As the world, his wife, her orchestra and their opera house settle into the Handel/ Haydn/Purcell/Mendelssohn groove, how refreshing to find a festival that breaks the anniversary trend.

Lufthansa flight attendants walked off the job today at Germany's busiest airport to press their demand for higher wages.

Just like the steam billowing from a manhole on Broadway, Breslin's prose reeks of New York. His staccato style is well suited to this mug's gallery of Mafia nogoodniks, such as Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (so called because he used one "to break heads") and the foul-mouthed John Gotti, aka The Teflon Don. Breslin rubbed shoulders with the real Sopranos, but claims that "I chased stories not beatings". Many of his stories come from McGuire's bar in Queens, where Jimmy Burke (who was famously played by De Niro in GoodFellas) paid his tab from $6m stolen from Lufthansa. Checking Breslin's unlikely yarns, Abe Rosenthal, the editor of the New York Times, visited the bar and found a man cleaning an automatic.

Outlook Another day, another nail in the coffin of independent airlines. The hundreds of passengers who turned up at Gatwick yesterday hoping to board flights with the now defunct Sterling Airways hadn't even made it home again before news was breaking of Sir Michael Bishop's decision to sell his stake in BMI to Lufthansa.

Alitalia, the hilarious national airline of Italy, is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. The Italian government has been trying to find a buyer for the airline for two years now, without any success. Now it looks almost certain to go under. Following the collapse of Swissair, and the Belgian Sabena, Alitalia's situation makes one wonder why on earth any nation state wanted to own an airline in the first place. It just doesn't seem like a very good idea at all.

Two planes carrying a total of 287 passengers collided today on the ground at Manchester airport. The aircraft touched wings as they were taxiing to the first runway.

A strike by Lufthansa ground and cabin staff over pay has so far barely disrupted flights to and from German airports, the airline said today.