Category: Blog

Tourist-flooded Venice approved guidelines on Tuesday for testing a new fee for day-trippers on peak visitor weekends next year. The city council gave the go-ahead for the guidelines, tweaking earlier plans for a fee that were announced a year ago. Final approval of the plan will come up for consideration on Sept. 12. The fee, […]

More than 50 security forces were killed and dozens wounded during intense fighting with jihadis in northern Burkina Faso, the army said Tuesday. Seventeen soldiers and three dozen volunteer fighters, who assist the military, were killed in Koumbri commune in Yatenga province on Monday, the army said in a statement. Several dozen of the Islamic […]

Britain’s Conservative government relaxed planning rules Tuesday and lifted restrictions that effectively banned the building of new onshore wind farms in England. Rules introduced in 2015 by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, who also led a Conservative administration, allowed a single objection to a wind turbine application to block its development. The regulations led to a […]

Two executives of a Swedish oil exploration and production company went on trial Tuesday in Stockholm for securing the company’s operations in Sudan through their alleged complicity in war crimes in 20 years ago. Swedish prosecutors claim that former Lundin Oil chairman Ian Lundin and the company’s former CEO, Alex Schneiter supported the Sudanese government […]

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is bringing his young daughter to military and state events to cement loyalty to the ruling family, South Korean officials say.  Kim Jun Ae, the daughter of Kim Jong Un believed to be approximately 10 years old, has made an unusual amount of public appearances over the last year. […]

Egypt on Tuesday resumed direct commercial flights to Sudan for the first time since a devastating war broke out between Sudan’s rival general nearly five months ago. Flight MS865, operated by Egypt’s national carrier EgyptAir, departed from Cairo early Tuesday, and arrived in Sudan’s eastern city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea, with 120 […]

Drug cartels have pinpointed Ecuador’s banana trade as the ideal distribution method for cocaine, even as authorities across Europe catch the shipments – each one worth millions.  “It is because of bananas that there are so many ports,” Jose Hidalgo, executive director of the Association of Banana Exporters of Ecuador, told The Associated Press. “It […]

A confidential International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report assessed that international efforts to monitor Iran’s nuclear program have made “no progress” despite promises from Tehran. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi requested that Iran “work with the agency in earnest and in a sustained way towards the fulfillment of the commitments,” the agency said in the […]

The U.S. Consulate in Matamoros, Mexico, issued an emergency alert to shelter in place amid an outbreak of gun violence on Monday.  The consulate announced that its “employees are currently under a shelter in place order” due to violent crime in the city.  Officials encouraged other U.S. citizens to take similar precautions.  MS-13 AND MEXICAN […]

An Austrian court on Tuesday found a famous actor guilty of possessing and producing tens of thousands of files of child pornography and sentenced him to a two-year suspended prison sentence. Florian Teichtmeister previously pleaded guilty to collecting and, in some cases, processing, files containing depictions of abuse, public broadcaster ORF reported. The Vienna state […]