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talian authorities have seized a superyacht worth $578 million from a Russian billionaire who was sanctioned by the the European Union following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko's 470-foot Sailing Yacht A—believed to be the world's biggest—has been sequestered at the northern port of Trieste, the Italian prime minister's office said. Industrialist Melnichenko, who owns the fertilizer producer EuroChem Group and coal company SUEK, is among several prominent Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the EU since the start of the Ukraine War. He is worth around $11 billion according to Forbes.

ROME — Italy’s universal vaccine mandate for workers went into effect Friday, triggering countrywide strikes and protest rallies. In the northern city of Trieste, for example, over 5,000 protesters flooded the port and rejected offers of free coronavirus tests while in Genoa the ferry terminal as well as the international airport terminal have been blocked by large anti-Green Pass manifestations. Along with strikes, employers are reporting unusually high numbers of workers calling in sick, Italian media report. Some 80 percent of Italians have received the vaccine, along with the four and a half million who have been infected with coronavirus...

18th century map of the Inner Austrian districts of Görz and Trieste created between 1789 and 1797. Credit: University of Bristol ====================================================================== A lost world in a former empire in Europe has been brought to life thanks to University of Bristol researchers who used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to analyse 47,000 multilingual pages from newspapers dating back to 1873. The study, published in Historical Methods, aimed to discover whether historical changes could be detected from the collective content of local newspapers from the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca. The findings reveal a series of political and cultural events...

The mountainous, limestone landscape near Trieste, Italy is a wonder to behold. Slightly acidic water carves and erodes the soluble, sedimentary rock over many thousands of years, fracturing the terrain and creating jagged formations. Above ground is a garden of naturally-cut sculptures. Below ground lies a system of weathered caves. The place fosters a distinct feeling of oldness. It is in this picturesque setting that a team of Italian and Australian scientists has discovered an ancient Roman highway. The etched lines of the archaic road are just tens of centimeters deep, but stand out clearly in exquisite images created with...

Scientists said earlier this year that they had found some secret rooms in Tutankhamen's tomb. What could they contain? A popular theory was the tomb of Queen Nefertiti. But other scientists later said that there was good reason to doubt the claims, which were based on scans. Now, the situation has gotten a little bit uglier. A team of radar technicians performed a second, more detailed set of scans on the tomb earlier this year, and sent their results off to Egypt's ministry of antiquities. But the government now has refused to release their findings, and scientists are beginning to...

Radar experts are casting doubt on claims that King Tutankhamun's tomb contains hidden, undiscovered chambers — and they're calling for more data to be released. At a March 17 newsconference, officials at Egypt's antiquities ministry released radar data that they said showed the presence of hidden cavities inside the tomb of King Tut. The scans, carried out by Japanese radar technologist Hirokatsu Watanabe, "suggest the presence of two empty spaces or cavities beyond the decorated North and West walls of the burial chamber," they said in a statement. The scans also suggest the "presence of metallic and organic substances," and...

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. ~ Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965) (speech, Fulton Missouri, 5 March...

In a rather self-serving review article entitled “A historical perspective on the discovery of statins,” Japanese biochemist Akira Endo hits all the conventional and PC notes in his 10-page (including references) trip down memory lane. From the get-go, in the abstract itself he tells us that… “Cholesterol is essential for the functioning of all human organs, but it is nevertheless the cause of coronary heart disease. Building on that knowledge, scientists and the pharmaceutical industry have successfully developed a remarkably effective class of drugs–the statins–that lower cholesterol levels in blood and reduce the frequency of heart attacks.” We would expect...