Stockholm  - On the eve of Thursday's announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature, punters seemed to favour a winner from other countries than the United States.

At least according to two online betting sites.

The speculation mirrors that of Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter that in a survey Wednesday concluded that 85 per cent of all literature laureates since 1995 have been Europeans.

Rome - Italy's scientific community is up in arms over what it charges as the unfair exclusion of an Italian researcher from this year's Nobel Prize for physics.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday awarded the prize to US researcher Yoichiro Nambu and his Japanese colleagues Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa, for discoveries linked to describing the smallest building blocks in nature.

Mauritius Based Pavers Foresight Smart Ventures announced a 50:50 JV with the 150 millon Euro Company "Fly Flot" of Italy. 

Fly Flot is the largest footwear manufacturer in Europe, with presence in 57 countries, and produces close to 7.2 Million pairs of footwear annually. The firm among the worldwide leaders in direct injection polyurethane comfort technology.

Under the arrangement, both partners would invest Euro 2 million for the setup of a Greenfield plant in Tamil Nadu. 

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel renewed her opposition Monday to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's proposal for a European fund to help banks in trouble.

Closer cooperation between members of the European Union was needed to bring security to financial markets, the chancellor told a joint press conference ahead of talks in Berlin.

"Every country has to live up to its own responsibilities," she said, calling for a more coherent approach to the financial crisis which has spilled over to Europe from the United States.

Rome - Hit-men shot dead Sunday the uncle of a mafia turncoat at a recreational club near Naples, southern Italy, news reports said.

The 60-year-old man, Stanislao Cantelli, was playing cards with friends at the centre in Casal di Principe, when unidentified gunmen repeatedly shot him with 9mm calibre pistols, the ANSA news agency reported.

Cantelli's nephew, Luigi Diana, is a former member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan version of the mafia, who began collaborating with authorities.

Madrid - Spain and Italy "clarified" their spat over Madrid's immigration policies on Friday, after Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni described Spain's system as "permissive," Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega has said.

Maroni had claimed in an interview with Italian media on Thursday that there were now less than 120,000 Roma Gypsies in Italy, because many of them had gone to "the more permissive Spain of (Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez) Zapatero."