There are many sights in Europe that attract millions of tourists from all over the world every year.
A great example is the Trevi Fountain in Rome. On an annual basis, the capital of Italy is visited by about 2.78 million tourists, and we can draw our own conclusions as to how many of them stop by the fountain.
And also how many of them observe the established tradition of making a wish and then throwing a coin into the fountain. Because of all this, the responsible authorities have organized the cleaning of Di Trevi twice a week – on Mondays and Fridays.
Thus, in a few hours, the fountain is emptied, and workers collect the thousands of coins found at the bottom. Videos can be seen on social media showing workers raking the coins with shovels and pouring them into special sacks.
According to delicious.com.au, €1.5 million worth of coins are collected from the Trevi Fountain each year and donated to charities.
Photo by Henry Acevedo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/fountain-di-trevi-in-rome-19009237/
Inflatable boats, motors and vests, which can be used to transport illegal migrants, were detained at the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint on the Bulgarian-Turkish border. This became clear today at the point where Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov welcomed a British delegation led by State Minister for Immigration Robert Jenkir. He thanked our country for its efforts. The detained boats and engines for them had to pass through Bulgaria in transit.
It has become clear that the two countries have been working together for months in the fight against illegal goods. We have made significant progress in terms of cargo in transit, inspection procedures and the corresponding seizure of illegally transported boats, engines and accessories for them that do not meet European standards. This proves the ongoing efforts of our country to fight against illegal migration, the interior minister stressed. Great Britain is the country that gives us serious and extremely active support. Minister Stoyanov thanked the British minister for the announced package of support, which will also help Bulgaria’s quest to join Schengen. I believe today’s signing is the right time because we are in the final stages and look forward to our acceptance in December. As a result of your initiative, we realize a serious opportunity for the prevention of illegal migration, added the Bulgarian interior minister.
The British were shown the seized boats and other goods found some time ago. The British delegation was given a demonstration of how tracking dogs are used to check vehicles. A “Statement on enhanced cooperation” was also signed.
An exhibition organized by the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, France, offers a new look at history, reported AFP, quoted by BTA.
The aim is to introduce visitors to the point of view of African, Asian, American and other peoples.
It is important to understand that Europeans managed to place themselves at the center of the world, but other nations and empires did it too, explained the organizers of the exhibition.
“Europe does not have a monopoly on historiography either in terms of the narrative or the perspective on the past,” said historian Pierre Sengaravelou, who is among the exhibition’s curators.
The exhibition is a journey through space and time thanks to more than 150 exhibits – geographical maps, manuscripts, archaeological finds, paintings, textiles. Many of them are on public display for the first time.
With nearly 45,000 sqm spreaded over three sites, the Mucem is a must-see in Marseille.
It is located at the entrance to the port, on the J4 harbor mole and in Fort Saint-Jean: two places highly symbolic of the city’s current development and its age.
A government project supported by the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, the first major national museum dedicated to the civilizations of the Mediterranean for the 21st century and directed by Bruno Suzzarelli, opened its doors in Marseille on the 7th of June 2013. It has quickly become one of the most visited museums in Marseille. The museum’s collections are preserved at the ‘Belle de Mai’ in the Conservation and Resource Center.
Photo: MUCEM Musée des Civilisations, de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée /
The studies will help scientists to prevent night waking problems
A new study shows that specific patterns in DNA may determine whether we develop insomnia, reports MailOnline.
Researchers in the Netherlands collected genetic information from 2,500 unborn babies and followed them up to age 15, measuring their sleep patterns.
They found that teenagers with genes known to affect sleep were more likely to wake up during the night than their peers without these DNA configurations.
A genetic predisposition to poor sleep patterns has already been demonstrated in adults. Scientists have identified mutations in genes such as NPSR1 and ADRB1 that can lead to sleepless nights.
However, the latest findings show that the gene for “bad sleep” is active throughout a person’s life, BTA informs
Researchers from Rotterdam University Medical Center and the Netherlands’ Erasmus University Medical Center are using their findings to highlight the importance of identifying poor sleep in early childhood – as early as infancy – to prevent lifelong insomnia.
DNA samples were collected from 2,458 European children born between April 2002 and January 2006, using cord blood and blood from the same children at age six.
In parallel with the DNA analysis, the mothers reported on their children’s sleep patterns at ages one and a half, three and six years, and then at ages 10 to 15. A subset of 975 teenagers wore sleep-tracking devices for about two weeks.
The researchers generated DNA risk markers for each teenager and found more insomnia-related sleep problems, such as night waking and trouble falling asleep during childhood, in those with high genetic predisposition markers. The scientists explained:
“We provide indirect evidence for the persistence of the poor sleep phenotype across the lifespan. This opens the door to further research into the genetically based early detection and prevention of sleep problems.” Their findings were published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
It has been established that solving sleep problems at an early age of the child leads to better conditions for his development and academic success.
Another 2022 study, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, found that nearly 93 percent of low-achieving students had sleep disorders, compared with 83 percent of average students and 36 percent of high-achieving students.
The importance of sleep should not be overstated, yet a study by the National Sleep Foundation in the US found that over 87 percent of American high school students sleep less than the recommended eight to ten hours a night.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has described the problem of poor sleep quality among teenagers as an “epidemic” driven by “electronic media use, caffeine consumption and early school starts.”
That data helped fuel a movement of parents and sleep experts lobbying state legislatures to introduce later school start times.
California and Florida are the only two states that have adopted later start time rules, requiring classes in public high schools to begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
The “Europe Transformation Lab” gathered (between 25th of October 2023 – 2nd of November 2023) 26 participants from different European Countries who agreed with the founding values of the European Union on human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and human rights.
The organisation and facilitation team came from Brazil, Vatican City, Greece, Denmark.
The goal of “Transformation Europe Lab” (Co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union) is to provide an overview on how to build communities via community organising and non-violent direct actions (NVDA).
In the modern age with the migration crisis, climate crisis, post-pandemic recovery, international war and extremism on the rise across Europe, and there is the urge of equipping youth workers with skills of community development, which they can transfer to youth.
The hosting organization – Food Reformers are committed to engaging in the activities, taking ownership of their tasks and to collaborate with other members and external stakeholders while always respecting the community, the members and the environment. We encourage clear communication for creating a safe space; with a value system based on three solid pillars; commitment, respect and openness.
The aims of the training:
promoting peace building by introducing past successful non-violent actions, that made real impact
providing participants with skills and tools necessary for transforming social and inter-group conflicts
making participants aware of their role in civic society and promote activism and social responsibility
making participants able to spread the ideas and knowledge on community building and NVDA to young people all across Europe.
Food Reformers respect the personal needs and professional endeavours of each member, and are open to anyone who wants to be a Food Reformers or join the activities regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or background, focusd on the Zero waste philosophy, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Social Responsibility, Up-cycling and circular economy, Participatory Entrepreneurship and Desing Methods among others.
Food Reformers is a food waste organisation that cooks mainly with surplus vegetables and promotes meatless meals. This action is informed by the huge impact that the meat industry has on our planet and how it contributes to climate change. Additionally, they approach meatless meals as a way to provide more inclusive meal solutions while accommodating most people’s dietary restrictions / preferences. To further contribute to food waste management, their aim to cook using surplus vegetables, that the volunteers gather from different sources eg: supermarkets. Surplus food is food that is supposted to be thown out, but is still eatable and fresh.
Participants from eleven partner countries including Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Turkey and Bulgaria, joined the Erasmus+ training course in Kolding, Denmark.
They have been selected to participate in the training course because of theit eagerness to receive a vivid and rich intercultural experience and to benefit from the project activity while having a lot of experiences to share and valuable insights to exchange with the rest of the group.
A six-rotor drone in flight – illustrative photo. Image credit: Richard Unten via Flickr, CC BY 2.0
For reasons of food security and economic incentive, farmers continuously seek to maximize their marketable crop yields. As plants grow inconsistently, at the time of harvesting, there will inevitably be variations in quality and size of individual crops. Therefore, Finding the optimal harvest time is a priority for farmers.
A new approach of using drones and artificial intelligence demonstrably improves this estimation by carefully and accurately analyzing individual crops to assess their likely growth characteristics.
Drone-based AI pipeline. A visual overview of the system to capture and analyze image data about crops, which then informs a model to help farmers know the best time to harvest their fields. Image credit: Guo et al. CC-BY
Some optimistic science fiction stories talk about a post-scarcity future, where human needs are catered for and hard labor is provided by machines. There are some ways in which this vision appears to predict some elements of current technological progress. One such area is in agricultural research, where automation has been making an impact.
For the first time, researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, have demonstrated a largely automated system to improve crop yields, which can benefit many and may help pave the way for future systems that could one day harvest crops directly.
“The idea is relatively simple, but the design, implementation and execution is extraordinarily complex,” said Associate Professor Wei Guo from the Laboratory of Field Phenomics.
“If farmers know the ideal time to harvest crop fields, they can reduce waste, which is good for them, for consumers and the environment. But optimum harvest times are not an easy thing to predict and ideally require detailed knowledge of each plant; such data would be cost and time prohibitive if people were employed to collect it. This is where the drones come in.”
Guo has a background in both computer science and agricultural science, so is ideally suited to finding ways cutting-edge hardware and software could aid agriculture. He and his team have demonstrated that some low-cost drones with specialized software can image and analyze young plants — broccoli in the case of this study — and accurately predict their expected growth characteristics.
The drones carry out the imaging process multiple times and do so without human interaction, meaning the system requires little in terms of labor costs.
Data visualization on aerial photos. The cost of human labor and time involved prohibits manual cataloging of individual plants in a field. Here, the catalog data collected by the drones and produced by a deep learning system is superimposed onto photos of the fields. Image credit: Guo et al. CC-BY
“It might surprise some to know that by harvesting a field as little as a day before or after the optimal time could reduce the potential income of that field for the farmer by 3.7% to as much as 20.4%,” said Guo.
“But with our system, drones identify and catalog every plant in the field, and their imaging data feeds a model that uses deep learning to produce easy-to-understand visual data for farmers. Given the current relative low costs of drones and computers, a commercial version of this system should be within reach to many farmers.”
The team’s main challenge was in the image analysis and deep learning aspects. Collecting the image data itself is relatively trivial, but given the way plants move in the wind and how the light changes with time and the seasons, the image data contains a lot of variation that machines often find hard to compensate for.
So, when training their system, the team had to invest a huge amount of time labeling various aspects of images the drones might see, in order to help the system learn to identify what it was seeing correctly. The vast data throughput was also challenging — image data was often of the order of trillions of pixels, tens of thousands of times larger than even a high-end smartphone camera.
“I’m inspired to find more ways that plant phenotyping (measuring of plant growth traits) can go from the lab to the field in order to help solve the major problems we face,” said Guo.
Volker Türk highlighted the dichotomy at the border crossing, describing it as a “lifeline” for the 2.3 million residents of Gaza over the past month, although “unjustly, outrageously thin.”
But it is also “the gates to a living nightmare”, he continued, as people in Gaza “have been suffocating, under persistent bombardment, mourning their families, struggling for water, for food, for electricity and fuel.”
The human rights chief is the latest senior UN official to travel to the region since Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 240 others who were taken inside the enclave.
In response, Israel has been repeatedly bombarding the Gaza Strip, in addition to imposing a total siege on the enclave and launching a ground invasion, ordering civilians in the north to move south.
Mr. Türk said the atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian armed groups, and the continued holding of hostages, were heinous and constitute war crimes.
“The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians is also a war crime, as is unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” he added.
Warning that “we have fallen off a precipice,” he stated that “even in the context of a 56-year occupation, the situation is the most dangerous we have faced for people in Gaza, in Israel, in the West Bank but also regionally.”
Mr. Türk issued an urgent appeal for the parties to agree to a ceasefire now so that three “critical human rights imperatives” can be met.
He called for sufficient aid deliveries into Gaza, the release of all hostages and enabling “the political space to finally implement a durable end to the occupation, based on the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis to self-determination.”
Distinguish between Hamas and Palestinians: Guterres
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday that the number of civilians killed in Gaza shows that something is “clearly wrong” with Israel’s operations against Hamas.
“There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields. But when one looks at the number of civilians that were killed with the military operations, there is something that is clearly wrong,” he told the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, hosted by the news agency.
“It is also important to make Israel understand that it is against the interests of Israel to see every day the terrible image of the dramatic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people,” he said. “That doesn’t help Israel in relation to the global public opinion.”
While he strongly condemned the Hamas attack on Israel, Mr. Guterres said “we need to distinguish – Hamas is one thing, the Palestinian people (are) another”, adding “if we don’t make that distinction, I think it’s humanity itself that will lose its meaning.”
On Thursday, MEPs elected Victor Negrescu (S&D, Romania) by acclamation to replace outgoing Quaestor Monika Beňová (Non-Attached, Slovakia).
Victor Negrescu
Mr Negrescu was the sole candidate. Based on Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, a new Quaestor is elected to fill a vacancy in the existing order of precedence – so he has become Parliament’s third Quaestor.
The College of Quaestors (five in total) are primarily responsible for administrative and financial matters directly concerning MEPs. MEPs aim to ensure that the composition of the Bureau (comprising the President and Vice-Presidents, with Quaestors participating in an advisory capacity) broadly reflects the size of the political groups in Parliament.
You most likely do not know the Kapkanets family. It is normal. I tell you, it is, sorry, it was a Ukrainian family that lived in Volnovakha, located in the Donetsk region. The family was made up of nine members, and last October, at the end, they prepared to celebrate the birthday of Natalia Kapkanets, the mother. One of her relatives had given her some flowers and they had prepared a small feast with the few things they had managed to get, living as they did in a place occupied by the Russian army.
The party passed without incident. The children, Mikita, 5 years old, and Nastia, 9, were playing without excessive fuss, when shortly before eating, soldiers from the occupation army, which under the orders of Vladimir Putin, maintain the territories occupied under “Empire of Machine Guns.” All the members of the Kapkanets family remained silent, while the soldiers exhorted them to leave their house and go to another place, to take the few belongings they could and leave their house so that the glorious soldiers of the army of mother Russia could stay there. . The Kapkanets family refused to abandon the house they had worked so hard to build over the years. And curiously, when faced with his refusal, those soldiers only uttered threats and left.
Not without some fear, the party continued without further incident. And when night came, everyone went to sleep, after having spent a day contented and happy. Marred only by the unpleasant visit of the Russian soldiers.
Late at night, neighbors heard a series of gunshots at the Kapkanets’ house. By the time they decided to go, they saw a Russian army truck driving away loaded with soldiers. The first to enter were horrified, as they contemplated the body of a person riddled with bullets on the old green sofa in a living room, which, covered with two blankets, was slowly turning red. In the living room the flowers that Mrs. Kapkanets had received were trampled on the floor.
Pedro Andryushchenko, one of the advisors to the mayor of Mariupol, confirmed in a statement: “It was an obvious liquidation operation; The nine bodies were shot and the majority of these impacts were to the head.”
The first neighbors to enter found 9-year-old Nastia, hugging 5-year-old Mikita, as if she were trying to protect her. Both of their heads had been smashed and her blood was splashed on the back of the bed and the wall where it rested. Also the Ukrainian ombudsman Dmitro Lubinets stated “According to preliminary data, the soldiers killed the entire Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and refused to leave the house to them.”
Of course, given the seriousness of what happened in Volnovaja, the Donetsk Prosecutor General’s Office had no choice but to initiate an investigation that ended with the rapid and surprising arrest of two soldiers of the Russian occupation army. Neither affiliation nor any information was given about these soldiers that could confirm that said news is true.
Massacres like that of the Kapkanets family are very common in the area occupied by the Russian army, where the law of soldiers sent to a disorderly and bloody conflict prevails, where for the murderers who make up said army, human life has no value.
Of course Vladimir Putin has not commented anything on this fact, nor have we heard any questions at the United Nations headquarters about said family. Non-Governmental Organizations do not talk about the matter either and the major media have barely covered the news. However, Natalia will not see her daughters Mikita and Nastia grow up, nor will they see her children, if they had any. A horror.
The Kapkanets family is just a close reminder that in any conflict the human being becomes a beast. Beasts that receive orders from people who are hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the place where the events occur, and who serve interests, often unknown and spurious. Today, as I write these words, I feel that the murder of the Kapkanets family is a little bit everyone’s fault, including mine. And that is why I did not want to miss the opportunity to remember them in this chronicle where I have put more heart than head, with the sole purpose that we are moved by the horror that is experienced every moment in this world, even if it is while we drink coffee and toast sitting in an old bistro near the Eiffel Tower.
For more information: Kapkanets Family Internet. Russian soldiers murders. Rotyslav Averchuk (Lviv-Ukraine).
Creating economic ties to ensure peace is a fundamental principle of geopolitical relations. The best example is Western Europe, which has been at peace since 1945 thanks to political agreements but mainly economic ones among the states that make up the European Union.
The establishment of common economic interests is a credible path to ensure the stability of the South Caucasus, in addition to compelling each party to recognize the territorial integrity of their neighbor.
When reading certain statements from the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, it becomes clear that they share a common goal: to end the long-standing war in the South Caucasus.
After Armenia recognized Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan and lost control over Karabakh during September military operations. This territorial loss removes the only permanent obstacle to any normalization of its relations with Azerbaijan. Both countries share a common goal: to bring the South Caucasus, one of the world’s least infrastructure-endowed regions, out of isolation and increase its connectivity to Asia and Europe.
Until now, the border between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey has been closed, and for Azerbaijan, the export of hydrocarbons to Europe depends on the transit possibilities through Georgia.
Peace through Economics
Economic peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan could bring numerous benefits:
Economic Growth: Stability fosters an environment conducive to economic growth. Both countries could benefit from increased foreign investments and expansion of their economic sectors.
Trade: The end of hostilities would facilitate cross-border trade, creating opportunities for export and import, stimulating both economies by expanding their respective markets.
Economic Cooperation: The South Caucasus is strategically important for energy. Economic peace could foster cooperation in the energy sector, facilitating the construction and use of pipelines and energy infrastructure.
Tourism: Peace eliminates security-related obstacles, fostering tourism growth. Both countries could benefit from the rise in tourism, attracting international visitors and boosting local economies.
Job Creation: A stable and growing economy creates job opportunities. Peace would promote job creation in various sectors, contributing to reducing unemployment and improving living conditions.
Economic Infrastructure: Economic cooperation could lead to the development of cross-border infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and railway connections, facilitating cross-border trade and strengthening ties between the two countries.
Financial Stability: Economic peace would contribute to financial stability, enhancing investor confidence and promoting the development of the financial sector.
Zangezur Corridor, Development Opportunity
If both parties agree to open the Zangezur Corridor, it will serve as a means to connect these two countries to Turkey, Russia, Central Asia, and Europe. It is important to note that both NATO and Russia support the opening of this corridor.
The Zangezur Corridor would facilitate commercial exchanges between the countries in the region in a short period through an expansion of transport networks. This opening would also increase international transportation in the “north-south” international corridor, also known as the “middle” corridor.
Following the opening of the Zangezur Corridor, the region’s appeal to investors would only grow stronger.
Countries Hindering Peace
Russia can be an obstacle to peace. It is well-established that Moscow deliberately maintained the “frozen conflict” in Nagorno-Karabakh and perpetuated instability in the region to preserve its influence and undermine Western interests in Eurasia.
Iran has been trying for years to strengthen its religious influence over Azerbaijan’s citizens. The government in Baku remains firm against this Islamist propagation. For the Mullahs, the rapprochement between Baku and Jerusalem is a crime, and they will do everything to ensure that the opening of the Zangezur corridor will not succeed.
Economic peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the opening of the Zangezur Corridor could create an environment conducive to mutual prosperity, fostering economic growth, trade, and cooperation in various sectors.
