Padoan China mission nets 2-bln euro-investment in CDP

Deal latest in rash of 'Marco Polo effect' Chinese acquisitions

(ANSA) - Beijing, July 24 - An agreement Thursday for sale of a 35% share in Cdp-Reti to State Grid Corporation of China reflects an increasing trend for Chinese investment in Italy in what some experts have dubbed the "Marco Polo effect". The agreement between Sgcc and the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (Cdp) worth some 2 billion euros is the main result of an Italian trade visit under way in China led by Treasury Minister Pier Carlo Padoan accompanied by Cdp President Franco Bassanini, diplomatic sources say.

Padoan underlined that while hunting for investors Italy is determined to meet a commitment to the EU to privatise State-run industries worth some 0.7% of GDP. "We are working on several different chapters," he said. The minister insisted on the need for long-term investment in both directions as a major plank of Italy's rotating chairmanship of the European Union. During the trip the CDP also signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Development Bank for promotion of Chinese investment in Italy.

Bassanini said managers of the China Investment Corporation (CIC) invited him to open a permanent CDP office in Beijing. One early harbinger of the "Maco Polo" trend - coined by authors of a study for the Chatham House think tank in London -- was the Huawei telecommunications concern, which opened a Milan office in 2004 and today has cooperation accords with all the main Italian operators in the sector. In 2012 Shandong Heavy Industries Group-Weichai acquired a controlling interest in the Ferretti luxury yacht producer with a 374-million-euro investment.

The People's Bank of China, the central bank, has bought stakes of 2% each in the Italian energy giants ENI and ENEL. Some 79 Chinese companies are believed to be doing business in Italy including more than 52 from Hong Kong with an overall turnover of 2.665 million euros, providing work for some 5,534 people, according to T-Mag magazine. is one of the giants of the Chinese "new economy," SGCC was founded in 2002 with capital of 200 billion yuan (some 24 billion euros) to manage domestic energy distribution and invest in the sector abroad.

The agreement will be signed in Rome by the end of July, marking "an important result" for the Italian trade mission under way in China aiming "to reinforce trade and investment relations between China and Italy, which are already good and offer many other prospects," Padoan said. On Friday the trade mission's final leg will be a stop in Hong Kong to woo possible investors from the former British-run territory. 

Venice Film festival presents lineup

Mexican director's 'Birdman' to open 71st edition

(ANSA) - Rome, July 24 - The 71st Venice Film Festival will open next month with a wide range of international offerings, including a biopic on iconic Italian writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini starring brooding American actor Willem Dafoe. Organizers of the world's oldest film festival unveiled the event's lineup Thursday by announcing that the program will be opened on August 27 with the premier of Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's latest work, the black comedy 'Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance'.

Starring American actors Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, Birdman tells the tale of a down-and-out actor who recalls happier days when he played a superhero. Birdman also stars British actresses Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough. Hong Kong director Ann Hui's 'The Golden Era', a story of a radical writer living in a period of Japanese imperialism in China, will close the Lido-based festival on September 6. Many of the films in this year's lineup deal with the dark subjects of economic recession, hardship, and war, said festival director Alberto Barbera said as the lineup was unveiled in Rome. Still, selecting just 55 films from 1,500 contenders was "painful", he said.

The subject matter, like the national origins of the films, ranges widely and includes Abel Ferrara's anticipated 'Pasolini' with Dafoe portraying the respected writer, poet and film director Pasolini, who was murdered in 1975; and 'The Cut' by Turkish director Fatih Akin, which tells the tale of a mute father searching for his daughters. French film composer Alexandre Desplat will head the main jury panel that includes British actor Tim Roth, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, Italian actor-director Carlo Verdone, and Chinese actress and director Joan Chen. The international lineup also includes Swedish director Roy Andersson's 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence' while David Oelhoffen's 'Loin des Hommes' stars Viggo Mortensen as a teacher who becomes friendly with a dissident during Frances war with Algeria.

Three Italian films are in the running for the festival's top prize - the coveted Golden Lion - including 'Il Giovane Favoloso' by Mario Martone, mafia saga 'Anime Nere' by Francesco Munzi and 'Hungry Hearts' by Saverio Costanzo. Several films will also be shown, apart from the competitors, including 'The Sound and The Fury' by Hollywood actor-director James Franco, an adaptation of the novel by American writer William Faulkner; 'She's Funny That Way' from Peter Bogdanovich; and The Humbling from Barry Levinson.

Danish director Lars Von Trier will present an extended director's cut of his 'Nymphomaniac Volume II', which follows up on the original presented last year at the Berlin Film Festival. Meanwhile, a separate Venice Classics series will offer a number of restored classic films as well as industry-related documentaries such as Marco Spagnoli's homage to Sophia Loren 'Women of Myth' accompanied by a showing of Ettore Scola's restored 1977 film 'Una Giornata Particolare' (A Special Day) starring Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. 

BSkyB buys Sky Italia for three billion euros

British group also takes Sky Deutschland to create Euro giant

(ANSA) - Rome, July 25 - Britain's BSkyB said Friday that it has struck a deal to buy 100% of Sky Italia and 57% of Sky Deutschland to create new European pay-TV giant with around 20 million customers. BSkyB has agreed to pay Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox £2.45 billion - around three million euros - for Sky Italia and £2.9 billion for the controlling stake in the German group. Murdoch's 21st Century Fox owns 39% of BSkyB, so the Australian-American tycoon will keep a big interest in Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland.

Murdoch reportedly organised the sales to free up cash for 21st Century Fox's bid to buy Time Warner, the company that owns Game of Thrones maker HBO and news business channel CNN. 

Milan Expo time travels through Arts and Foods Pavilion

Pavilion to explore food in art from 1851 to modern-day life

(ANSA) - Milan, July 25 - Visitors to the Arts & Foods Pavilion at Milan Expo 2015 will have the chance to travel through time to discover some of the ways in which food and the aesthetics of art and design have intersected.

The pavilion will be hosted at the Triennale Design Museum and promises a journey starting in 1851, the date of the first Expo world's fair. "Arts & Foods will involve all forms of media and all languages, from sculpture to painting, from video to advertising, from design to architecture," said Germano Celant, an Italian art historian, critic and curator of the pavilion. Arts & Foods will include contributions from artists, writers, directors, graphic designers, musicians, photographers, interior designers, and architects, all concerning the development of artistic expressions of how people view and consume food.

Celant said the pavilion will showcase "shared public and private places and spaces where furnishings, objects, appliances, and works of art create a narrative with a strong visual impact and sensory impression". The pavilion aims to document, through various art forms, the many ways in which people relate to and interact with food, from simple cooking utensils, to table settings and picnics, as well as food in public spaces like coffee bars and restaurants, and the changes that have come about through road, air, and space travel.

The Arts & Foods Pavilion will open its doors on April 10, 2015 and run through November 1. The theme of Milan Expo 2015 is "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life", with the world's fair focussed on food security, sustainable practices, nutrition, and the best of global culinary cultures. Celant is best known for coining the term "arte povera" (literally "poor art"), a modern art movement, in 1968, and is a leading authority on the subject. 

Police seize home-made explosive at TAV construction site

Protesters throw firecrackers, cops respond with tear gas

(ANSA) - Turin, July 25 - Police on Friday seized a homemade explosive, the remains of several rockets with a range of up to 150 meters, fireworks, and stones from a construction site at Chiomonte in the northern Susa Valley, where protests against construction of a TAV high-speed rail line linking Italy to France turned violent overnight.

The homemade explosive was made up of a small bottle of alcohol whose trigger was attached to a firecracker, ANSA sources said. Some of the firecrackers had been mounted onto homemade mortars to increase their range, police said. The seizure came after protesters threw firecrackers and police tried to disperse them with tear gas. One police officer sustained burns to his ankle, police said. Some 30 protesters against the Turin-Lyon rail link also temporarily blocked off a motorway that leads to France, setting tires alight. Work at the site was suspended during the protest, but resumed immediately after. More protests are planned for Saturday, organizers said.

Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi said Friday that the protests were being used to "attack the State". "What we have here is a criminal attack perpetrated by those who would use the project to attack the State," Lupi said. "They will not be allowed any space". No-TAV protests, which have sometimes turned violent, have built up steam in recent years and been taken up by leftist and anti-capitalist groups despite government efforts to persuade opponents that it is an essential piece of infrastructure, especially when Italy's economy has been suffering its longest postwar recession. The Italian and French governments have insisted that the link will not only speed passenger and freight traffic but also boost both countries' economies. 

Cycling: Nibali has Tour de France at his feet

Sicilian 'shark' set to complete sweep of grand tours

(ANSA) - Rome, July 25 - Italy's Vincenzo Nibali looks set to claim victory in the 2014 Tour de France this weekend and join an elite club of riders to have won all three of cycling's grand tours. The 29-year-old Sicilian, who is nicknamed the "shark", is expected to conserve his massive lead of over seven minutes over his nearest rival, Frence's Thibaut Pinot, in the flat 19th stage from Maubourguet Pays du Val d'Adour to Bergerac on Friday.

So the only thing that can stop him from adding to his 2010 Vuelta en Espana and 2013 Giro d'Italia titles looks to be a crash in Saturday's time trial. But looking fresh despite three weeks of gruelling competition, Nibali may well increase his lead on Saturday to set up a victory parade along Paris' Champs-Élysées in Sunday's finale. The Astana rider has worn the yellow leader jersey for all but two stages of this year's race, four of which he has won.

He had a dose of luck after crashes forced last year's champion Chris Froome and double Tour winner Alberto Contador out of the race. But he took full advantage, always finishing ahead of his rivals in the mountains, and will be a worthy winner. Victory will make Nibali the sixth rider to win all three grand tours after Contador, Frenchmen Bernard Hinault and Jacques Anquetil, fellow Italian Felice Gimondi and Belgian Eddy Merckx.

The last Italian to win the Tour was Marco 'the pirate' Pantani in 1998, when he also won the Giro. Pantani, whose career was hit by doping scandals, died aged 34 of a drugs overdose 10 years ago. 

Scientists call on UNIMORE to stop monkey experiments

'Invasive, painful procedures that always end in death'

(ANSA) - Bologna, July 25 - A group of 73 doctors, biologists and other scientists has called on the dean of Modena and Reggio Emilia University (UNIMORE) to stop raising and experimenting on monkeys, the Italian Anti-Vivisection League made known Friday.

"The experiments involve invasive procedures such as inserting screws into their eye sockets and steel wires into their neck muscles, and implanting recording devices in their brains," LAV officials said. "These kinds of experiments take years, and always end in death." The UNIMORE biology department has been raising and experimenting on the monkeys for decades, according to LAV. "Publications resulting from these invasive investigations have yet to provide answers applicable to human beings," said LAV biologist Michela Kuan. "These studies don't heal the sick".

The university earlier this month issued a statement saying that its research "provides answers to the manifold needs of Italian society". These include mandatory testing of new pharmaceutical products, the university said. Some 900,000 animals are used and killed in labs in Italy every year, according to LAV.