logo
Angry Venice locals protest ahead of Jeff Bezos wedding party

Angry Venice locals protest ahead of Jeff Bezos wedding party

Independent5 hours ago

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sanchez are set to hold their wedding in Venice from June 24-26, an event expected to be a lavish display of wealth.
Local Venetians are protesting the high-profile wedding, viewing it as another instance of overtourism and a symbol of the city being exploited by wealthy visitors.
Demonstrators, including Marta Sottoriva, hung a No Space for Bezos banner on the Rialto bridge, arguing the event primarily benefits luxury businesses rather than the broader local economy.
The wedding is estimated to cost millions, with significant bookings of luxury hotels and water taxis, though city officials and some locals downplay its overall impact on Venice 's daily life.
Protesters plan further big, colorful, non-violent demonstrations during the three-day event to speak out against a system that allows ultra-rich individuals to buy a city.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Sinner and singer Bocelli strike up partnership for new single
Sinner and singer Bocelli strike up partnership for new single

Reuters

time17 minutes ago

  • Reuters

Sinner and singer Bocelli strike up partnership for new single

June 20 (Reuters) - World number one Jannik Sinner has formed a new doubles partnership but the duo will be battling for chart success rather than Grand Slam titles after the Italian released a single with compatriot and opera tenor Andrea Bocelli on Friday. The three-time Grand Slam champion Sinner promoted the song titled 'Polvere e Gloria' or 'Dust and Glory' on Instagram. The video features footage from the pair's childhoods and more recent clips of the singer and Sinner, clutching a racket and tennis ball, in front of a piano in Bocelli's home in Tuscany. Sinner's speeches form part of the song, which is in Italian and English, with Bocelli in full flow. "Every life is a potential work of art: each of us bears the sweet responsibility of nurturing our talents in the daily acrobatics of living, pursuing our dreams while remaining steadfastly true to our values," the pair wrote on Instagram. "This duet is such a bold leap that it has ignited our passion, born of shared and unwavering desire to express our deep belief that nothing is impossible." Sinner, the U.S. Open and Australian Open champion, said he was honoured to be part of the project with Bocelli, describing the singer as a "unique and extraordinary voice" and "a flag for our country in the rest of the world". "I could never have imagined hearing my voice in one of his songs. It's extremely moving," the 23-year-old added. Sinner, who was beaten by Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz in an epic French Open final earlier this month, lost in the last 16 of the Halle Open on Thursday in a blow to his preparations for Wimbledon which gets underway on June 30.

The internet's nastiest gossipmonger has been exposed and guess what – he wants his privacy
The internet's nastiest gossipmonger has been exposed and guess what – he wants his privacy

The Guardian

time20 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

The internet's nastiest gossipmonger has been exposed and guess what – he wants his privacy

With as much as two weeks to kill before nuclear winter sets in, many of you will be looking to road-test your new fallout suits. In which case: can I interest you in the sensational unmasking of the founder of Tattle Life? It turns out the guy who operates the radioactively toxic gossip forum is a 'vegan influencer' – I think it's one of those new types of job, dear – and his name is Sebastian Bond. From that professional description, Sebastian would never hurt a living creature – unless it's a mummy blogger, in which case he would gut her like a pig. Metaphorically, of course! Sorry, but that is simply the price you pay for not declaring the nappies you're unboxing on Instagram are actually sponsored. But I'm racing ahead. If you're not familiar with Tattle Life, it's an online forum that claims to be 'a commentary website on public business social media accounts' – much in the way the torpedoing of the Lusitania was a commentary on the commercial cruise business. At one point Tattle Life was said to have 12 million monthly visitors. Which, to put it into context, is more than the Times and Sunday Times website gets, and considerably surpasses the visitor numbers of something like GB News. The other thing Tattle Life says about itself on its homepage is: 'We have a zero-tolerance policy to any content that is abusive, hateful or harmful.' This is a little bit like the Racing Post saying it has a zero-tolerance policy for stories about horses, greyhounds or sports betting. In effect, Tattle Life comprises a pulsating collection of live threads, in which anonymous users spend their lengthy wine time ignoring their own kids in order to obsessively tear down Stacey Solomon for some infinitesimal perceived mistake she's made with hers that day. That's it, Tattlers – you crack open another chilled box of rosé and remorselessly slag off, dox or expose this or that influencer/Instagrammer/minor rando for infringements of a code of which you're the self-appointed enforcers. And if you don't like that description of yourselves, boohoo. What, NOW you want accuracy and restraint? Anyway, the site has been positively thriving like this for some years, despite regular petitions to take it down and frequent outpourings of distress from celebrities, sublebrities and whatever the class of recognition below even that is, many of whom believe it has either destroyed their professional lives and/or mental health, or had an incredibly good go at trying. Two such victims were Neil and Donna Sands, a Northern Irish couple with a clothing line and various other small businesses. Donna discovered she had been targeted by site users in 2021, when a friend alerted her to the fact that people in her office were laughing over a 45-page thread about her. Forty-five pages! I guess no snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible. The deranged interest/abuse continued, to the point of posting her whereabouts at any given time, and drove Donna almost to the point of nervous breakdown. The pair sued Tattle Life for defamation and, after a long and complex battle, won. They were awarded a combined £300,000 in damages as well as costs – now estimated to total about £2m. But who was to pay? Tattle Life was run anonymously, and it was only a week ago that the high court of justice in Northern Ireland lifted various reporting restrictions and orders, leading to one Sebastian Bond being exposed as the operator of the site. Many think the floodgates to further legal action will now open, but whatever Tattle Life's fate, it's interesting as a period piece. The site sprang up in an era when fame came to be regarded as a grasping business decision and not as a cultural accolade. Anyone who made money in the public eye was fair game for anything. And look, no one likes a grift, we can all have sympathy for people who feel they're being missold something or other, and most of us would fear the Faustian bargain of explicitly monetising our personal lives, let alone our children. But the elevation of even tiny bits of poetic licence by individuals most people have never heard of to the level of massive consumer fraud is mad – and says so much more about the self-styled cops of our age than the robbers. In the end, investigators got Bond via his own site's preferred methods – obsessively tracking his public digital footprint, piecing together bits of often contradictory information, searching for chinks in his armour. The biter was bit. And, would you believe, Sebastian had pretended to be a woman on Tattle. Went by the name of Helen McDougal. 'I was just not surprised that it was a man pretending to be a woman,' Donna Sands told the Mail this week, 'and pitting these women against each other – driving them to their darkest places.' So where is Sebastian Bond now? Some reports place him in Thailand, while others ran pictures of his parents' nice house in Somerset. As for who he is … he's a man posing as a woman in the course of drawing profit, an individual dedicated to exposure who didn't have the nuts to reveal himself, a grifter who'd rather vanish than face his own music. In fact, so vast is the disconnect between who Sebastian really is and who he presented as for his moneymaking activities that there really ought to be hundreds of skin-flayingly vicious threads about him on Tattle Life. And yet, needless to say, there aren't. Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Car insurance payouts to keep rising after hitting record £11.7bn last year
Car insurance payouts to keep rising after hitting record £11.7bn last year

Daily Mail​

time21 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Car insurance payouts to keep rising after hitting record £11.7bn last year

UK motor claims inflation is set remain elevated over the next year after total payouts hit a record high in 2024, according to EY analysis. However, the group still expects rates paid by customers to fall thanks to a competitive market backdrop, thereby putting further pressure on insurers' margins. EY analysts forecast the average cost of motor insurance claims to rise by around 6 per cent in 2025 and 2026, with damage inflation staying high and bodily injury inflation within the 3 to 5 per cent long-term range. Motor claims hit a record £11.7billion in 2024, according to the Association of British Insurers, with the average claim up 13 per cent year-on-year at £4,900. The predicted increase comes despite a 'significant decline' in the frequency of claims, EY said. It credited this to better car safety, lower speed limits, workplace behaviour changes, and even a reluctance among motorists to make claims as a result of greater insurance costs in the UK. EY expects motor insurers' margins to hit breakeven levels this year before slipping into an underwriting loss of around 107 per cent in 2026 as rates lag behind claims inflation. A combined operating ratio (CoR) exceeding 100 indicates that insurance companies are making an underwriting loss, while a ratio below that figure denotes a profit. The UK motor insurance industry had a CoR of 97 per cent in 2024, despite paying out a record £11.7billion in claims. This was still a considerable improvement on the 113 per cent recorded the previous year when soaring claims, labour and parts costs outpaced the growth in premiums. New business rates in the UK car insurance sector shrank by 14 per cent to £757 last year, according to the Confused/WTW Motor premium index. It noted that the rates of decline had slowed from 7 per cent in the first quarter to 2.6 per cent in the following three months. WTW suggested this could be the result of greater consolidation in the UK motor insurance market. Aviva is likely to finalise the £3.7billion takeover of Direct Line Group, which is home to Churchill Insurance and vehicle recovery provider Green Flag, in July following approval from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority. Belgian insurer Ageas also agreed in April to acquire Esure from private equity giant Bain Capital in a £1.4billion deal that will create Britain's third-largest home and motor insurer.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store