Venice to trial €5 ticketing system for day visitors from 2024

Authorities want to cut number of tourists as Unesco considers putting Italian city on heritage danger list

Venice will trial a ticketing system from spring next year, with day visitors charged €5 to enter the Italian city’s historic centre in an attempt to reduce tourist numbers.

The city’s council executive backed the move on Tuesday, just weeks after Unesco recommended Venice be added to its list of world heritage sites in danger, in part due to the impact of mass tourism.

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French schools send home dozens of girls wearing Muslim abayas

Girls who refused to remove banned garment given letter saying ‘secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty’, says minister

On the first day of the new academic year French schools sent home dozens of girls for refusing to remove their abayas, the education minister said on Tuesday.

Defying a ban on the Muslim garment, nearly 300 girls showed up on Monday morning wearing an abaya, Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster. Most agreed to change, but 67 refused and were sent home, he said.

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Cuba uncovers ‘human trafficking ring’ recruiting for Russia’s war in Ukraine

Havana says it is dismantling network seeking to recruit Cubans as mercenaries as Moscow attempts to boost its forces

Cuba has uncovered a human trafficking ring aimed at recruiting Cubans to fight as mercenaries for Russia in its war in Ukraine, its foreign ministry has said, as Moscow seeks to increase the size of its forces.

In a statement, the Cuban foreign ministry said the authorities were working to “neutralise and dismantle” the network, which it said was operating within the Caribbean island nation and in Russia.

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Nine hundred people killed or injured by Russian cluster bombs in Ukraine, says monitor; Zelenskiy visits Bakhmut – as it happened

Russian use of widely banned weapons accelerates casualty figures, report says; Ukraine president discusses provision of artillery shells and missiles. This live blog is closed

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, described Ukraine’s counteroffensive on Tuesday as completely unsuccessful.

“Ukraine’s armed forces have not achieved their goals on any front,” the defence ministry quoted Shoigu as saying.

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Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money

Investigation claims networks convert illicit cash to bitcoin to pay people who sell false streams on the platform

Criminal gangs behind a rise in bombings and shootings in Sweden in recent years are using fake Spotify streams to launder money, a Swedish newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Criminal networks have for several years been using money from drug deals, robberies, fraud and contract killings to pay for false Spotify streams of songs published by artists with ties to the gangs, an investigative report in Svenska Dagbladet claimed.

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Berlin clubbers and green protesters unite to fight motorway plans

Proposed extension would threaten city’s cultural life, say protesters, as 20 nightclubs would be demolished

Berlin clubbers have united with environmental campaigners to fight plans to extend a city autobahn that threatens the future of about 20 nightclubs in the east of the city.

Thousands of techno fans and a broader clutch of protesters standing up for the city’s cultural life took to Berlin’s streets at the weekend in the latest in a string of demonstrations which have caused parts of the German capital to grind to a halt.

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Petrol prices expected to rise as oil cost climbs above $90 a barrel

Motorists could be hardest hit after Russia and Saudi Arabia extend cuts to supplies

Motorists are braced for higher pump prices after the cost of oil climbed above $90 a barrel for the first time this year as Russia and Saudi Arabia extended cuts to supplies.

Oil jumped to its highest price since last November, after the two oil-rich nations said they would prolong a plan to withhold supplies from the global market until December.

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Germany matches DNA from skulls stolen from African colony to living relatives

Remains pillaged in colonial era for ‘scientific’ experiments are DNA matched to Tanzanian descendants

Researchers in Berlin have identified living relatives of people whose remains were stolen from Tanzania and taken to Germany for “scientific” experiments during the colonial era.

Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History has been carrying out research since 2017 on about 1,100 skulls taken from what was then known as German East Africa.

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Sudan war crime trial of former oil firm executives starts in Sweden

Prosecutors say ex-chair and CEO were complicit in atrocities by Sudanese army and militias, which both deny

Two former executives of a Swedish oil company have gone on trial in Stockholm, accused of complicity in war crimes in Sudan between 1999 and 2003 – charges they both deny.

Ian Lundin, a Swede, and Alex Schneiter, a Swiss national, are accused of asking Sudan’s government to make its military responsible for security at the site of one of Lundin Oil’s exploration fields, which later led to aerial bombings, killing of civilians and burning of entire villages, according to the prosecution.

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Germany refuses to extradite man to UK over concerns about British jail conditions

Court in Karlsruhe decides against extradition of Albanian man ‘in view of the state of the British prison system’

A German court has refused to extradite to the UK a man accused of drug trafficking because of concerns about prison conditions in Britain, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind.

The decision has been described as a “severe rebuke” and “an embarrassment for the UK” by a member of the Law Society.

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No more cordon blur: France prepares to ban vegetarian products from using meaty language

Terms like ‘steak’, ‘grill’ and ‘spare ribs’ must be expunged from plant-based products, says agriculture ministry, amid simmering dispute

The French government has said it is preparing a new decree against meaty terms like “steak”, “grill” and “spare ribs” being used to describe plant-based products.

Its latest decree is “an issue of transparency and honesty responding to the legitimate expectations of consumers and producers”, agriculture minister Marc Fesneau said in a statement on Monday.

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Image appears to show Russian general Sergei Surovikin for first time since Wagner mutiny

Unverified image purportedly shows Surovikin with his wife for the first time since his removal as Ukraine war chief following Wagner rebellion

A photo has emerged that appears to show Russian general Sergei Surovikin, who is regarded as an ally of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner and has not been seen in public since the militia’s brief rebellion in June.

“General Sergei Surovikin is out. Alive, healthy, at home, with his family, in Moscow. Photo taken today,” Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian journalist and the daughter of Vladimir Putin’s one-time boss, said on Telegram.

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Five detained in Cyprus after British woman accuses them of gang-rape

Alleged victim says she was sexually assaulted by a group of Israeli men while on holiday in Ayia Napa

A group of young Israeli men have been detained in Cyprus after local police said they needed time to investigate accusations of gang-rape from a British woman on holiday in Ayia Napa.

The five men, all aged 19 or 20, were remanded on order of a district court magistrate in Famagusta for a further eight days after their arrest late on Sunday. The Briton, who is 20 and cannot legally be identified, told police she had been sexually assaulted by the Israelis after being “taken by force” from the pool area of her hotel to her room.

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China’s share of Europe’s electric car market accelerates as UK leads sales

Chinese-owned MG’s MG4 is Britain’s bestselling EV after Tesla’s Model Y in first seven months of year

China’s share of the European electric car market has more than doubled in less than two years as the world’s second largest economy tries to take the lead in the transition away from petrol and diesel cars.

The UK is the largest market in Europe for Chinese electric car brands, accounting for almost a third of sales in 2023 so far, according to data from Schmidt Automotive Research on the 18 largest European car markets. About 5% of all new car sales in the UK were from Chinese brands in the first seven months of 2023, a market share second only to Sweden.

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Ukraine’s defence minister resigns after Zelenskiy removes him from post

Oleksii Reznikov, whose ministry has been hit by corruption scandals, confirms in letter he is stepping down

Ukraine’s defence minister has submitted his resignation letter after Volodymyr Zelenskiy removed him from his post on Sunday night, in the biggest reshuffle by the president of his government team since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.

Oleksii Reznikov, whose ministry has been hit by corruption scandals, said he had written to the chair of Ukraine’s parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, confirming he was stepping down.

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Putin says no grain deal until west meets obligations; Kyiv reports advances in east and south – as it happened

Russian president says the Black Sea grain deal will not be restored until restrictions on the export of Russian agricultural products are lifted

The abduction of Ukrainian children and their subsequent transportation to Russia is being investigated as potential genocide by an independent international commission of inquiry on Ukraine.

Chairman Erik Møse told a press conference on Monday that the commission is trying to establish what has happened to the children once they enter occupied territory or Russia itself.

In order to find that there is such a genocidal act with respect to the transfer of children, you would have to know exactly what is happening further on in the Russian Federation.

We have limited access to this and the information we are receiving is not always the same.

We receive some information from persons who have been able to reach from Ukrainian parents who have been able to go either into the occupied territories or even into Russia to retrieve their children or grandchildren and that gives an indication.

We will pursue these investigations and see whether, as a whole, there is an intent to destroy a group and these are the strict qualifications under the genocide convention. As of now, we have no such conclusion and our work continues.

I have submitted my letter of resignation to Ruslan Stefanchuk, Chairman of the Parliament of Ukraine.

It was an honor to serve the Ukrainian people and work for the #UAarmy for the last 22 months, the toughest period of Ukraine’s modern history.

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No sign of Black Sea grain breakthrough after Erdoğan-Putin talks

Turkish and Russian leaders hold talks as Moscow continues to attack Ukrainian grain-exporting ports

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has concluded face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin by claiming a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea could be revived.

But there was no evidence of a breakthrough as the Russian leader again accused the west of reneging on promises.

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French actor Mathieu Kassovitz ‘seriously injured’ in motorbike accident

Actor famous for Amélie, The Bureau and La Haine, which he also wrote and directed, reportedly in a ‘worrying’ condition

The French actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz is in a “worrying” condition after a motorbike accident in greater Paris on Sunday, authorities say.

The 56-year-old, who is best known for his 1995 film La Haine and his role in the 2001 film Amélie, was on a motorcycle training course at the time, a police source told Agence France-Presse.

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‘A psychological weapon’: inside a Ukrainian factory making decoy kit

Plastic, wood, foam and metal are skilfully shaped into copies of weapons to fool Russian attackers

In a dusty workshop, a unique group of Ukrainian weapons experts race to produce artillery guns that will never be fired, radar trucks that cannot detect anything, and missiles without explosives.

The pieces are decoys that aim to draw Russian fire, wasting enemy ammunition, missiles and drones while protecting real equipment and the soldiers manning it.

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Climate crisis poses greatest risk to people with respiratory illnesses, experts warn

Call for EU to match WHO’s air pollution regulatory limits as impact of climate emergency interlinks with human health

The climate crisis may pose the greatest risks to people with respiratory illnesses, with high temperatures and changing weather patterns exacerbating lung health problems, experts have said.

Respiratory experts have called on the EU to lower its regulatory limits for air pollution in line with the World Health Organization (WHO). In a European Respiratory Journal editorial, they said: “We need to do all we can to help alleviate patients’ suffering.”

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