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'We don't need Bezos': Venetians plan to protest billionaire's wedding

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'We don't need Bezos': Venetians plan to protest billionaire's wedding
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While last-minute preparations for US billionaire Jeff Bezos’ lavish Venice wedding next week should be under way, protesters are drawing up plans in parallel to block streets and waterways and send a message: the Amazon founder is not welcome in their city.

For some Venetians, the wedding of Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV journalist, which is rumoured to be costing some €10 million, represents the sell-off of their city to the highest bidder – and they are mobilising against it. 

Marta Sottoriva, an organiser of the No Space for Bezos campaign, told Euronews that activists are demonstrating against Bezos’ wedding because of what it represents for the city.

“We are not protesting the wedding per se, but a vision of Venice … as a city that people come and consume,” Sottoriva said. 

The billionaire is also a “symbol for a type of wealth built on the exploitation of the many”, citing Amazon’s resistance to unionisation, Sottoriva said, while noting his presence at US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

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Sottoriva argued the city increasingly caters to tourists and large-scale events rather than its residents, resulting in “depopulation and the closure of many services and spaces for locals”. In some ways, the problem of overtourism and the billionaire’s luxury event “represent the same vision of the city as a commodity”, she said.

‘We need houses and decent wages’

Scant details have been made official about the wedding, but some 200 guests are expected to attend and are said to have booked the city’s most expensive hotels, while the Amazon founder will be travelling with his yachts.

While the campaign does not expect to stop the wedding, it hopes to throw a spanner in the works. The activists have already begun to take a stand, most notably by hanging a banner daubed with Bezos’ name crossed out on the bell tower of San Giorgio Basilica on Thursday, while posters advertising their actions are plastered around the city.

The group is planning its main demonstration for 28 June. “We will create some inconvenience and delays and make the protest visible,” Sottoriva said, adding that the peaceful protests will feature people blocking roads, clogging up canals on boats and kayaks and jumping into the water. 

She hopes hundreds will come out across Venice. “We’ll also have people playing music – it’s going to be a party for the city, too.”

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It is not the first time Bezos’s presence has courted controversy in Europe: in 2022, Rotterdam faced criticism for considering dismantling its iconic De Hef Bridge so that his yacht could pass, despite the city council’s promise not to disturb the monument after it was restored five years prior.

Venice has become a poster child for the impacts of overtourism, with the number of visitors ballooning in recent decades, with some 30 million visiting the small city each year.

Just 51,000 locals reside in the historic centre, with around 250,000 more living on Venice’s mainland. Some Venetians complain that they have been pushed out of their neighbourhoods by rising costs and that tourism is straining the city’s infrastructure and diluting Venice’s unique character.

The city has introduced a tourist tax, with a daily fee for visitors, which its mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, said aims to help the city to dampen down massive influxes of travellers, though critics say it has failed to dissuade tourists from coming in droves.

But some see the wedding as an opportunity, with some business owners telling Italian media that they oppose the protests and that events like Bezos’ wedding bring in custom.

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The wedding has also been wholeheartedly embraced by the mayor, with Brugnaro saying he felt “honoured” that Bezos had picked Venice. “We are very proud,’’ he told the AP last week, adding that he hoped he would get the chance to meet the billionaire.

“I don’t know if I will have time, or if he will, to meet and shake hands, but it’s an honour that they chose Venice. Venice once again reveals itself to be a global stage.’’

Unsurprisingly, Sottoriva holds a contrasting view. “We don’t need Bezos. We need houses, decent wages, and a sustainable future.” 

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,235

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,235

Here are the key events on day 1,235 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, July 13:

Fighting

  • Ukrainian officials said Russian air attacks overnight on Saturday killed at least two people in the western city of Chernivtsi and wounded 38 others across Ukraine.
  • The raids also damaged civilian infrastructure from Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast to Lviv, Lutsk and Chernivtsi in the west.
  • The Russian Ministry of Defence said it attacked companies in Ukraine’s military-industrial complex in Lviv, Kharkiv and Lutsk, as well as a military aerodrome.
  • The United Nations Human Rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said that June saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured.
  • In Russia, a man was killed in the Belgorod region after a shell struck a private house, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Politics and diplomacy

  • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told visiting Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that his country was ready to “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine.
  • Earlier, Lavrov held talks with his North Korean counterpart, Choe Son Hui, in Wonsan, and they issued a joint statement pledging support to safeguard the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other’s countries, according to North Korean state media.
  • Lavrov also warned the United States, South Korea and Japan against forming “alliances directed against anyone, including North Korea and, of course, Russia”.
  • Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, said his government hoped to reach an agreement with the European Union and its partners on guarantees that Slovakia would not suffer from the end of Russian gas supplies by Tuesday. Slovakia has been blocking the EU’s 18th sanctions package on Russia over its disagreement with a proposal to end all imports of Russian gas from 2028. Slovakia, which gets the majority of its gas from Russian supplier Gazprom under a long-term deal valid until 2034, argues the move could cause shortages, a rise in prices and transit fees, and lead to damage claims.
  • Russia blamed Western sanctions for the collapse of its agreement with the UN to facilitate exports of Russian food and fertilisers. The three-year agreement was signed in 2022 in a bid to rein in global food prices.

Weapons

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was “close to reaching a multilevel agreement” with the US “on new Patriot systems and missiles for them”. Ukraine was stepping up production of its own interceptor systems, he added.
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Trump's tariff collections expected to grow in June US budget data

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Trump's tariff collections expected to grow in June US budget data
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday will reveal the strength of President Donald Trump’s tariff revenues in its June budget data, as collections from multiple waves of new import duties start to build into a substantial government revenue source.
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17-year-old British teen dies after beach sand tunnel collapses during family vacation: report

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17-year-old British teen dies after beach sand tunnel collapses during family vacation: report

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A day at the beach turned tragic when a 17-year-old boy was killed after a sand tunnel he was digging abruptly collapsed, burying him alive.

The teen, identified as Riccardo Boni by several Italian media outlets, was vacationing in Montalto di Castro, Italy, with his family when the incident occurred on Thursday, July 10.

Boni’s family was staying at a resort in Montalto di Castro, approximately 70 miles north of Rome. The collapse happened around 3:00 p.m. local time while he was on the beach with his father and siblings.

According to local outlet Corriere della Sera, Riccardo Boni and his younger siblings had moved closer to the shoreline, where they began digging a large hole that was reportedly nearly five feet deep, in a more secluded area of the beach. Meanwhile, their father was nearby, dozing off under a beach umbrella. 

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FATHER AND SON DROWN IN LAKE MICHIGAN DURING WEEKEND FAMILY BOATING TRIP TRAGEDY

An aerial view shows Lido of Ostia, Rome’s seaside, with private beaches closed for the winter season, on November 10, 2024.  (Photo by Andrea BERNARDI / AFP) (Photo by ANDREA BERNARDI/AFP via Getty Images)

Suddenly, the walls of the tunnel gave way, trapping the teen beneath the sand, the outlet reported. 

The boy remained buried until his father woke up and realized his oldest son was missing. One of his brothers cried out, “Riccardo is under the sand,” according to The Sun. The siblings pointed to the location of the collapsed tunnel, prompting their father and nearby beachgoers to rush over and frantically dig in search of him.

FREAK ACCIDENT AT THE BEACH SENDS TEEN TO ICU AS MOM WARNS OF WATERFRONT DANGER

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Italian beach

A view of a beach in Cinque Terre, Liguria, Italy on July 27, 2024.  (Photo by Gian Marco Benedetto/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Tragically, the boy was found buried in the sand, unresponsive and showing no signs of life. First responders arrived within minutes, including an air ambulance, working to revive him, but it was too late, and the boy could not be saved, the outlet reported. 

“No-one realized what had happened,” Lieutenant Daniele Tramontana, the Carabiniere officer leading the police investigation, told The Sun.

AMERICAN TOURIST REPORTEDLY IMPALED ON ROME’S COLOSSEUM FENCE AS DOZENS WATCH IN HORROR

People walking and playing on a beach

Children dig a hole on a beach as people walk by.  (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“They lost a lot of time because they couldn’t see him. When they realized he was missing they began to look for him but it was too late,” he continued. 

A witness on the beach told Corriere della Serra that “no one on the beach had heard the teenager screaming because he was completely buried within minutes.” 

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A police investigation has since been opened “against persons unknown” in connection with the fatal accident, the outlet added, as authorities consider whether an autopsy will be required.

“I have spoken to colleagues, and we have never heard of anything like this happening before in Italy,” Tramontana said. “We deal with terrible situations all the time, but we can’t imagine how a game on the beach ended up this way.” 

Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. She covers topics including missing persons, homicides, national crime cases, illegal immigration, and more. Story tips and ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com

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