BOLOGNA: He is dressed in urban fatigues, but there will be no blending in for Lapo Elkann. There never really has been. Born into the all-powerful Agnelli family, the Italian version of the Kennedys in power, money and tragedy, he was one of their bright spots: a top executive at Fiat, with an idiosyncratic style, a kinetic charm and a publicly cultivated reputation as one of Italys most enviable bachelors.

In October 2005 all that came to a very public end. He was found near death in a coma from a cocaine and heroin overdose, in the apartment of a 54-year-old transsexual prostitute named Patrizia. It was front-page news in every major newspaper Д including the one owned by his family. When he awoke and was released from the hospital, he promptly left the country.

Now, he is back, in what has been a slow and meticulously managed return to Italy after an 18-month exile in America following the incident in Turin that nearly cost him his life and what seemed like an extremely charmed existence.

Ostensibly, his renewed visibility is to promote his new designer eyewear line, Italian-Independent. But another far more delicate campaign is at work here, the one to reconcile his image Д and by extension that of his family Д with his fellow countrymen.

Elkann, 29, is very clear, however, about one thing: He is not asking for anyones forgiveness.

“I have never let down Italy and I never will,” he said during a rare interview in the lobby of a hotel on the outskirts of Bologna. “I love my country and I owe a lot to my country, and in that sense whatever I can and will be able to do for my country I will do.”

With his mane of red hair pulled back, Elkann spoke candidly on a range of subjects that include his new passion for design (”I am not yet even a decent designer, but I love it”), the mission statement of his new company (”My key goal is to make complexity become your simplicity”) and why he currently prefers life in New York over Italy (”It doesnt allow you to be lazy”).

But the task of reinserting himself into Italy will not be easy for Elkann. Apart from his own problems, he has the steep history of his family to contend with.

“I believe that in Italy there are two important things; one is the Vatican and the other is the Agnelli family,” said Giancarlo Galli, who wrote a biography of Gianni Agnelli, Elkanns grandfather. “And in the same way Italians love and hate the Vatican they also love and hate the Agnellis,” he said.

Gianni Agnelli is a near-mythic figure in Italy: A fabled industrialist who turned his families automobile company into the most important company in Italy and one of the major European car builders. He was also a subtle, yet extremely powerful, behind-the- scenes political player for decades.

One potential liability for Elkann is his maverick streak. He has a disdain for convention and his unpredictability can flare up, as it did during the interview when he aired an extraordinary theory: that his overdose may have been part of a setup orchestrated by Luciano Moggi, the disgraced former head of Juventus who resigned last year and remains under investigation for his role in the game-fixing soccer scandal and with whom Elkann says he argued a week before the incident.

Juventus is owned by the Agnelli family. “Why was there a photographer already waiting at the hospital” when he arrived in the ambulance? he asked.

Elkann speaks in grandiose terms befitting someone of his pedigree but also emits an affected earnestness of someone who seems to be grasping for some acknowledgment that has long escaped his reach. He is sober now, but he smokes throughout the interview, at the end of which he openly admits that he is no saint. He blamed the strain of watching his family company pass through an especially difficult period for the events of the now infamous evening.

“I am an obsessive personality,” he said. “And if you are an obsessive personality you need to be aware of it and be able to drive it with success. There are moments in your life when you are driving it well but you shift and you shift badly and you hurt yourself. Its like a car accident; we all have crashes, and I was very lucky not to die in that crash.”

A FROZEN sea on Mars may harbour life several metres below the surface, according to British scientists.

The Elysium sea, which is 560 miles wide, contains ice that appeared within the past five million years.

Dormant cell-life trapped in the ice would have been exposed for only a relatively short period of time to the lethal radiation that bombards the planet.

Water also provided a good shield against cosmic radiation and was easier to drill through than rock, said the scientists. They believe Elysium would be an ideal place to search for life - but warned that it would be necessary to dig deep.

Future probes would have to be equipped to drill to a depth of several metres, beyond the range of current robotic instruments. Even in the Elysium ice, radiation would have killed off any living organisms closer to the surface.

Lewis Dartnell, of University College London, who led the British and Swiss team, said: “Finding hints that life once existed - proteins, DNA fragments or fossils - would be a major discovery in itself, but the holy grail for astrobiologists is finding a living cell that we can warm up, feed nutrients and reawaken for studying.

“It just isn’t plausible that dormant life is still surviving in the near-subsurface of Mars - within the first couple of metres below the surface - in the face of the ionising radiation field.

“Finding life on Mars depends on liquid water surfacing, but the last time liquid water was widespread on Mars was billions of years ago. Even the hardiest cells we know of could not possibly survive the cosmic radiation levels near the surface.”

Other possible sites where life might have survived are newly formed craters.

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RENO, Nev., Feb. 21 (UPI) — Ormat Technologies, Inc. announced that two of its 20-year power purchase agreements were approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada.

The PPAs were signed between the Nevada Power Company, a subsidiary of Sierra Pacific Resources, and two of its subsidiaries, Renewable Energy Access reported. Recently there has been discussion over the potential for geothermal power in the United States.

“Geothermal power has an impressive track record of being clean and reliable and is becoming competitively priced with conventional power generation,” said Tom Fair, executive for Sierra Pacific Resources’ renewable energy program.

The two geothermal power plants are expected to be in operation on a commercial scale by the end of 2009. A transmission line between Sierra Pacific Power and Nevada Power is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

Under the PPAs, Ormat’s Buffalo Valley Project in Lander County and Carson Lake Project in Churchill County are each expected to produce between 18 and 30 megawatts annually.

“Fuel diversity is important to our company and our customers, not only to meet the state’s goals for renewable energy standards, but to help stabilize energy prices during times of volatile energy markets,” Fair said.

Ormat Technologies, Inc. is a energy power business involved heavily in geothermal power. Currently, it owns six geothermal power plants, four of them in the United States.