Historic Italian city mulls ‘Venice-style’ entry payment to curb overcrowding, X-ray reveals Greek writer of historical scroll recovered from Roman villa, and extra information from Italy on Friday.
Historic Italian city mulls ‘Venice-style’ entry payment to curb overcrowding
The picturesque city of Sirmione, on the banks of Italy’s Lake Garda, is contemplating charging guests for entry after it was overwhelmed by tens of hundreds of vacationers final weekend.
Recognized for its thermal springs, picture-perfect outdated city and Roman ruins, the northern Italy vacation spot was visited by round 75,000 folks over the weekend – over 9 instances the variety of residents (8,000).
Movies broadly shared on social media confirmed massive crowds cramming Sirmione’s streets, in addition to the slender path resulting in its well-known Thirteenth-century fortress.
Vacationers confronted a 40-minute wait simply to get by way of the gates of the city’s historic centre, in accordance with native media.
After final weekend’s occasions, Sirmione’s Security Councillor Massimo Padovan stated that authorities are contemplating “an entry payment for day-trippers” alongside the traces of Venice’s contested ticketing system.
“The thought could be to exclude residents, employees, second-home house owners, and ‘in a single day’ vacationers [from the entry fee]” Padovan stated, including that the scheme would depend on a “easy, digital” fee platform.
Padovan additionally famous that the city council would think about further measures, together with a brand new parking system supposed “to encourage turnover and discourage lengthy stays” from folks not staying within the city in a single day.
Sirmione is just the newest in an extended record of Italian vacationer locations to buckle below the burden of overcrowding in latest months.
The ski resort of Roccaraso launched emergency crowd-control measures in late January after over 10,000 guests clogged the street main as much as the resort and overran its ski slopes, sparking anger among the many city’s 1,500 residents.
In February, a number of cities on the foot of Sicily’s Mount Etna issued crowd-safety ordinances after a whole bunch of vacationers swarmed the perimeters of the volcano following a spectacular eruption.
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X-ray reveals Greek writer of historical scroll recovered from Roman villa
A charred scroll recovered from a Roman villa that was buried below ash following a Mount Vesuvius eruption practically 2,000 years in the past has been recognized because the work of an historical Greek thinker due to new X-ray imaging know-how.
The carbonised scroll, which was unearthed from the ruins of Herculaneum, southeast of Naples, within the 18th century, was just about unwrapped by researchers in Oxford utilizing superior X-ray scanning.
The X-ray pictures revealed the textual content to be a part of On Vices, a multi-volume philosophical treatise written by Epicurean thinker Philodemus within the first century.
Dr Michael McOsker, who’s serving to decipher the textual content in partnership with Oxford researchers, instructed the Guardian that “this was the primary case the place the ink may very well be seen instantly within the scan”.
“No one knew what it was about. We didn’t even know if it had writing on,” he added.
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The scroll is one in all a whole bunch of historical texts present in a villa believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.
The constructing was buried in ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, destroying each Herculaneum and close by Pompeii.
A lot of the scrolls dug up from the villa’s ruins are too fragile to be bodily unrolled and their ink is made unreadable by the carbonised papyrus.
The most recent discovery builds on earlier breakthroughs made as a part of the Vesuvius Problem – a world competitors launched in 2023 which provides prizes for progress in studying the scrolls.
EU threatens to focus on US plane and automotive exports if tariff talks fail
The EU has threatened to focus on US vehicles and planes amongst a raft of merchandise value €95 billion ought to negotiations with Washington fail to avert a commerce conflict.
Trump introduced punishing 20-percent tariffs on a spate of EU items in April however then froze the measure till July.
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The US chief, nonetheless, maintained a ‘baseline’ 10-percent tariff on imports from around the globe, together with the EU.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday reiterated the bloc’s willpower to achieve a negotiated answer and keep away from tariffs on either side.
“The EU stays absolutely dedicated to discovering negotiated outcomes with the US,” she stated.
“We imagine there are good offers to be made for the advantage of customers and companies on either side of the Atlantic.”
Whereas pushing for a cope with the US, Brussels has been getting ready a sequence of retaliatory measures within the occasion that Trump’s tariffs have been to kick in once more.
In a 218-page doc printed on Thursday, the EU listed all of the merchandise it might goal in case of an all-out commerce conflict. These included US-made plane, vehicles, plastics, chemical substances, electrical tools and bourbon.
The bloc additionally stated it’s ready to take extra excessive measures, together with concentrating on US Large Tech corporations.
“All choices stay on the desk,” a senior EU official stated, in accordance with AFP.
With reporting from Luca Rufo.
