All articles tagged with #venice
A New York couple running shirtless in Venice learned that public bare-chested running is illegal there and could incur a €250 fine. After locals yelled at them, they apologized and corrected the situation, while online backlash highlighted tensions over tourists respecting local rules and norms across Europe.
An American couple, Julia Latoff and Mike Naccarella, learned in Venice that running shirtless in public is illegal and can incur fines up to €250; after locals glared at them, they stopped the run, bought a shirt from a tourist shop, and shared the experience to remind travelers to respect local customs.
AMD has launched the EPYC Venice family, a Zen 6-based HPC CPU lineup built on TSMC’s 2nm process, offering up to 256 cores, 203 billion transistors and up to 5 GHz clocks. AMD claims Venice delivers major performance and efficiency gains over prior generations and NVIDIA’s Vera, including up to 2.8x agents-per-watt in agent-sandbox workloads and up to 3.3x per-watt in general-purpose servers, across SP7 and SP8 variants designed for AI-host and HPC deployments.
AMD revealed the Helios AI Rack, a full-stack, liquid-cooled AI platform pairing 72 Instinct MI455X GPUs with 6th Gen AMD EPYC Venice CPUs on a 2nm process, plus Pensando networking (Vulcano 800 NIC and Salina DPU) and ROCm software. It promises massive FP4/FP8 compute (up to about 2.9 EFLOPS FP4 and 1.4 EFLOPS FP8), 31 TB of HBM4, and high-bandwidth interconnects designed to rival NVIDIA’s rack-scale solutions, with Azure-based deployments and early customers like Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, and Oracle. Price is around $5–5.5 million per rack and power draw around 225–245 kW.
Hundreds of protesters in Venice clashed with riot police as Trump-era U.S. Ambassador Tilman Fertitta arrived aboard a 117-meter luxury yacht for a Coastal Diplomacy tour, a display activists said symbolized U.S. wealth and influence; Fertitta called the trip a celebration of shared history and ties between the U.S. and Italy.
Venice activists plan to disrupt a visit by US ambassador Tilman Fertitta aboard his 117‑meter, about $450 million mega‑yacht during the Festa del Redentore, fearing the docking would turn the historic city into a backdrop for wealth. They cite past disruptions of high-profile weddings and raise safety and traffic concerns, adopting the slogan Venezia non si USA. Fertitta’s trip is billed as part of a Coastal Diplomacy 250 tour; officials have been contacted for comment as protesters mobilize.
Billionaire Tilman Fertitta, Trump’s envoy to Italy, is touring the Italian coast aboard his $450 million Boardwalk superyacht under a banner of “coastal diplomacy,” but Venetians and activist groups are planning protests in Venice over the wealth display during the Festa del Redentore, with comparisons to Bezos’ wedding protests; the trip includes stops along the coast and a Venice visit that could disrupt waterways, while officials say the aim is to strengthen Italy–U.S. ties amid ongoing political tensions with Rome.
Disney/Pixar released the teaser and poster for Gatto, signaling a dramatic visual shift toward painterly, illustrated-like animation. The film, directed by Enrico Casarosa, follows Nero, a black cat in debt to a local mob boss in a feline-run Venice, as an unlikely friendship drives him to reexamine his path. The teaser centers on a comedic interrogation with Rocco and features new voice stars Mark Ruffalo and Laurence Fishburne. Gatto is slated for a March 5, 2027 theatrical release, marking Pixar’s continued willingness to experiment with form and release timing.
Venice's La Fenice opera house dropped incoming music director Beatrice Venezi after months of protests by workers and orchestra members, with calls for Venezi and superintendent Nicola Colabianchi to resign, reflecting political tensions linked to Venezi's reported associations with Giorgia Meloni.
Venice’s Mose flood barriers have kept the city dry since 2020, but faster sea-level rise is forcing talk of a Plan B. Raised activation levels and staggered closures could harm the lagoon’s ecology and cost hundreds of thousands of euros per operation; the Lagoon Authority is seeking global ideas to reinvent Venice’s future beyond tourism to protect its lagoon and heritage.
A new Scientific Reports study evaluates Venice’s options against IPCC sea‑level rise projections and finds no single ‘best’ path. Protective measures like dikes or a wide “super levee” could shield the city up to about 0.5 m of rise at costs ranging from €0.5–4.5 billion (and over €30 billion for a broad barrier), but relocation may be needed beyond 4.5 m of rise after 2300, potentially costing up to €100 billion. Because large defenses take 30–50 years to build, early planning is essential. Venice’s challenges are compounded by its sinking ground (~1 mm/year), storm surges, and the need to balance residents, economy, ecosystems, and heritage in decision making.
European researchers compared four protection strategies for Venice against rising seas—open-lagoon closure with movable barriers, ring dikes, fully enclosing the lagoon by raising barrier islands, or relocating residents and monuments. Their projections show the open-lagoon approach becomes unreliable by around 2300 under even low-emission futures; ring dikes could work but would disrupt lagoon ecosystems and cost €0.5–4.5B; enclosing the lagoon could guard against up to 10 meters of rise but costs €30B+, sacrifices the lagoon ecosystem and port function; relocation is the costliest at about €100B and ends Venice's role as a functioning port. Large-scale projects could take up to 50 years to implement, underscoring the need for early planning.
Researchers map how Venice and its lagoon face escalating sea-level rise, outlining four main adaptation paths—open lagoon with MoSE, ring-dikes, closed lagoon, and retreat—showing the adaptation space shrinking with higher seas, identifying tipping points where transitions become unavoidable, and weighing the trade-offs among monuments, lagoon ecosystems, living culture, and the local economy to stress the need for early, coordinated action and large-scale planning to avoid the most disruptive outcomes.
Venice’s lagoon is being invaded by Mnemiopsis leidyi, the warty comb jelly known as the sea walnut, originally from the western Atlantic and now spreading through the Adriatic likely via ballast water and warmer waters linked to climate change. Scientists warn the invasive jellyfish are proliferating, clogging nets and preying on fish eggs, larvae and plankton, which harms the lagoon ecosystem and threatens the region’s multi‑billion‑euro fishing industry as conditions become increasingly favorable for its spread.
The article previews ten highly anticipated films set to premiere at the 2026 Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, including works by Spielberg, Iñárritu, Fincher, and Villeneuve, highlighting the festival's ongoing importance for global film promotion despite recent box office struggles.