The world’s most famous fountain is no longer free Niv Bavarsky It now costs two euros (~$2.35) to visit Rome’s treasured Trevi Fountain —not including the three coins you’ll have to toss to marry a local, as the superstition goes. In a bid to tame crowd chaos , the city started charging tourists a fee this week to access the ornate sculptural fountain featured in Federico Fellini ’s film La Dolce Vita and the Instagram story of every Roman holidayer. Additionally, there’s now a five-euro charge for some city museums . Still worth it The city says it’s not trying to deter visitors, but rather aims to raise a projected $7.6 million yearly to fund historic preservation and crowd control efforts at the site, insisting that two euros is peanuts for the chance to behold the Baroque-era marble masterpiece. A local official conjectured that if the fountain were located in New York, it would cost “at least $100.” But there are still two ways to visit Italy’s landmark water spewer...

  Progress is not measured only in miles Ten teams began the 2025-26 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race on August 31, with the 14th edition completing the first half of the multi-leg course around the world. Racing identical Tony Castro designed Clipper 70s , this event for amateurs is en route to the Philippines , with the milestone prompting reflection. "I set out to sail around the world and discovered that the greater journey was inward," noted crew Jimmy Johnson . "What began as an adventure became a lesson in humility, endurance, and gratitude . The ocean strips life down to its essentials . Out here, you learn that strength isn't found in force, but in patience, awareness, and the willingness to continue when comfort disappears. "There comes a moment when you believe you have nothing left to give. The sea teaches you that this moment is rarely the end, it is often the beginn...

  Prime number: 80 years of slush Nick Illuzada Wherever you stand on the great pulp vs. no pulp debate, if you prefer your OJ still a little bit frozen with a slight metallic tang, we’ve got some bad news for you. After 80 years, Minute Maid is discontinuing its canned frozen juice concentrates in the US and Canada. All five flavors—orange juice, lemonade, limeade, pink lemonade, and raspberry lemonade—will disappear from store shelves once they sell out. The story of frozen juice concentrate is a tale as American as Fievel’s : The product was born when the US army ordered 500,000 pounds of orange juice in 1945 from a company then known as Florida Foods —though the war ended before it could be delivered. The company made it commercially available in 1946 as Minute Maid. It caught on, and the Minute Maid brand was bought in 1960 by Coca-Cola , which didn’t bring out non-frozen juice under its banner until 1973. But now, consumer tastes have shifted away from the slushy stuf...

‘Hockey’s not hockey any more’: did three-on-three overtime ruin Canada’s Olympics? | Winter Olympics 2026 | The Guardian Hockey’s not hockey any more’: did three-on-three overtime ruin Canada’s Olympics? Two Olympic finals between Canada and the US were settled by sudden death. The format made the showpieces feel more like a coin toss than a climax Tom Dart Mon 23 Feb 2026 00.05 GMT Share 42 Prefer the Guardian on Google Two Olympic finals against the US, two strong performances, two sudden-death losses . Canada is so over overtime. While all good things must come to an end, it’s hard to fathom why hockey’s international rule-makers think that the very best things – huge clashes that were some of the hottest tickets of the entire Olympics – should be ended using three-on-three golden-goal overtime, a concept beloved only by people with a train to catch or firm dinner reservations. Forty-six years after the Miracle on Ice, the US men and women celebrated with a pair of huge assists fro...

  Spain became the first European country to ban social media for teens . Starting next week, people under 16 will no longer be able to access many social media platforms after the Spanish government passed a series of measures designed to hold tech companies responsible for the harm done to their users. “Social media has become a failed state, a place where laws are ignored, and crime is endured,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said. Spain joins Australia in officially banning social platforms for teens, while France and other countries are considering similar restrictions.

  The biggest stars at the Olympics are drones Nick Iluzada Ever get the feeling you’re being followed? For Olympians, it’s not paranoia—it’s a high-tech drone camera trailing close behind . It is, also, an exhilarating (sometimes nauseating) first-person perspective for us couch potatoes…but not without some drawbacks. More than two dozen drones deployed by the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) have been used for high-speed sports like luge and downhill skiing, but have yet to be used for curling (it’s already too electric). Safety first: The drones are controlled by a three-person team with a pilot who has expertise in the particular sport. OBS CEO Yiannis Exarchos said the drones underwent controlled crash tests and are never flown in front of competitors or above them, where they can create shadows. But… some have raised concerns about safety and aesthetics: Several athletes who can’t afford a distraction when operating at breakneck speeds have said the drones are not...

Quebec keeps 33% tuition hike for out‑of‑province students after court ruling The province will not go back to court to seek approval of the rewritten rules, a Higher Education Ministry spokesperson said. Author of the article:By Andy Riga Published Feb 02, 2026Last updated 16 hours ago 3 minute read McGill (above) and Concordia have cited the tuition increase for non-Quebec students, which caused a drop in out-of-province applications, as a key reason why they have been compelled to make deep budget cuts. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette Quebec is keeping a 33 per cent tuition increase for non‑francophone students from outside the province, saying its revised university funding policy complies with a Quebec Superior Court ruling that found the hike “unreasonable.” In the April 2025 ruling, Justice Éric Dufour invalidated the hike as drafted but gave the province nine months to update its framework. In an updated policy published late last month, the province explained the rat...

  Homes are not selling like hotcakes Lindsey Nicholson/Getty Images Last month, the housing market had the energy of a spider web-covered basement that’s used for storage. After months of recovery, sales of preowned US homes decreased by 8.4% in January from December, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported yesterday. Despite mortgage rates falling throughout 2025: Home sales were down 4.4% from a year ago, amounting to the worst month for home closings in more than two years. Dwellings sat unsold for a median of 46 days last month, compared with 41 days a year prior. Housewarming recession The NAR says arctic weather in parts of the US may be partially to blame for market frigidness, but places that weren’t impacted also experienced home sales declines. Analysts attribute tepid homebuying to economic uncertainty, on top of low inventory that’s keeping prices high. The number of homes on the market rose by 3.4% in January from a year earlier, but given the mon...

  Parks may be driving Disney toward its next CEO Gary Hershorn/Getty Images It sounds like Disney adults are having a big say in who will be named the company’s new CEO. Bloomberg reported that theme parks head Josh D’Amaro is the favorite to replace two-term chief Bob Iger thanks to his division’s consistent profitability. His edge comes as parks once again bolstered the Mouse’s middling earnings report , which beat estimates but sent the stock tumbling 7% yesterday. Disney’s experiences unit, which includes parks and cruises, reported a record $10 billion in profit last quarter. Since D’Amaro was placed atop Space Mountain in 2020, the experiences unit has accounted for a majority of the company’s profits. Kalshi gives D’Amaro an 89% chance to do his best Tom Wambsgans and move from parks to the CEO chair when the board votes on a new company leader this week. Hitting it out of the parks: Total attendance at Disney’s US theme parks only climbed 1% in the most recent quart...

RG Richardson Interactive Markets eBook by R.G. Richardson - EPUB | Rakuten Kobo Singapore RG Richardson Interactive Markets - Chinese, English and German R.G. Richardson City Guides. Interactive City Guides, Job Search, Interactive Notes, Shopping and Real Estate Guides. This guide is all about 11,900 preset searches including 8 search engines! You can now avoid spelling mistakes and language difficulties making this guide simple enough for everybody to use. These guides have extensive hotel and restaurant searches; not to mention real estate, shopping, job and employment opportunities available in the guides. Sit in the coffee shop and start searching away on their WiFi and start using our interactive city search guides and brochures with 8 search engines including one Chinese! For PC, Mac, Pad, or iPhone or mobile phone enabled search tool with multi-search engine capability built right in. This guide searches for food, hotels, real estate, historical sites, sports, concerts, even p...

  ‘Millions wasted killing healthy B.C. ostriches:’ Animal Justice | Oak Bay News ‘Millions wasted killing healthy B.C. ostriches:’ Animal Justice Published 6:00 pm Thursday, January 29, 2026 By Jennifer Smith CFIA and RCMP created a wall of hay bales around the ostriches in Edgewood in 2025. (Facebook photo) Animal Justice is deeply troubled after learning that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s killing of more than 300 healthy ostriches in Edgewood last year, months after avian influenza was first detected on the farm, cost Canadian taxpayers at least $6.8 million. The massive sum was revealed this week in a response to a parliamentary inquiry from Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee MP Scott Anderson in December. The total includes $2.3 million spent on staff time, and $1.3 million on lawyers and legal fees. “The amount of money spent is absolutely outrageous,” said lawyer and Animal Justice executive director Camille Labchuk. “Millions of taxpayers’ dollars were poured down the dra...

  When your sailing needs more than wind If spending vast sums of money in sailing is what you like to do, the global charter fleet includes a small but exceptional group of sailing yachts. Since 2018, this has exceeded the 100-metre mark, with BOAT International profiling seven of the largest sailing yachts available for charter in 2026: Black Pearl – 105-metre Maltese Falcon – 88-metre Aquijo – 85.9-metre Sea Eagle – 81-metre Vertigo – 67.2-metre Spirit of the Cs – 64-metre Athos – 63.2-metre When a day of sailing requires a gym, pool, jacuzzi, sauna, and an impressive toy box, this list has your boat . If you are curious about the 200 largest sailing yachts in the world, click here .

  What a K-shaped economy actually means In a K-shaped recovery, different parts of the economy move in opposite directions at the same time following a  recession or downturn . One segment—the upper arm of the K—experiences an increase in wealth due to rising asset values or incomes. The lower arm faces increasing financial strain due to declining  purchasing power  along with stagnating or decreasing wages. Together, these diverging paths form the image of a letter K on an economic chart, with one pointing upward, and the other slanting downward. The defining feature of a  K-shaped economy  is simultaneous growth and decline, split across different segments of society. It is distinct from a  V-shaped recovery , which is marked by a sharp and broad rebound, and a  U-shaped recovery , defined by a slower but widespread climb to growth. In short, a K-shaped economy embodies the saying: “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”

  Prime number: Not budging Getty Images Like the guy who snagged the window table at your favorite coffee shop and immediately opened up a blank doc called “screenplay,” homeowners are staying put. They’re keeping their homes for the longest time since at least the turn of the millennium, according to Axios: At the end of 2025, US homesellers had been in their abodes for 8.6 years on average, the longest time in data dating back to 2000 (back when it was 4.2 years). The time homeowners are keeping their houses has increased in nearly every major metro area over that period, industry data provider ATTOM said. That can make it hard for buyers, but the change may be coming to the housing market: Realtor.com found that homeowners with mortgage rates of 6+% recently surpassed the share with rates below 3% for the first time since 2020, giving fewer owners a reason not to move. And the Wall Street Journal reports that a Redfin analysis showed that ~62% of last year’s buyers snagged...

  The UCP is a separatist party. There, we said it. The premier of Alberta has cleared her throat and made it known that she hasn’t (yet) penned her name to any petition calling for separating from Canada. Whew, that’s good, no? Except, wait. Just the fact that this  was a CBC headline yesterday  demonstrates how long it has remained weirdly unclear whether Smith is okay with the federation going to hell. She continues to claim she’s for a “sovereign” Alberta in a “unified” Canada, whatever that means. Writing in The Tyee, David Climenhaga  gives the hook to all the tap dancing : “If you don’t understand by now that the United Conservative Party led by Danielle Smith is a separatist party, then you haven’t been paying attention.” Climenhaga quotes well-connected Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid who wrote: “At the top level of the UCP they’re pondering whether to hold a vote on the party turning separatist.” Says Climenhaga: “Fair enough. They should.” Because, well...

  Trump officially revoked the US’ ability to regulate pollution. Yesterday, President Trump’s EPA repealed the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human health and the environment, which served as the legal underpinning for all climate regulation. The repeal of the Obama-era “endangerment finding” means that the federal government will no longer have the ability to control pollution—if it survives legal challenges. Environmental activists are certain to launch a legal fight that observers believe will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

We need more meaningful citizen involvement - Victoria Times Colonist Gene Miller: We need more meaningful citizen involvement, not just complaint Civic conversation about matters larger than construction congestion and more credible than forged political accomplishment is sorely needed. Gene Miller Jan 26, 2026 5:15 AM Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday talked about a new and enlarged role for Canada on the world stage, a role that all of us should be proud to embody, while not blind to risks when you pop your head up, writes Gene Miller. Sean Kilpatrick, The Canadian Press Listen to this article 00:05:28 It’s Tuesday evening, and I have just finished listening to our prime minister deliver an extraordinarily courageous and cautionary speech at the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland. It was breathtakingly courageous because it was utterly truthful about the rapidly emerging new world order and what th...

  For Today’s Conservatives, Misinformation Is the Norm | The Tyee For Today’s Conservatives, Misinformation Is the Norm Pierre Poilievre’s post about my client was false. It reached half a million people. Michael Spratt  TodayThe Tyee Michael Spratt is a certified criminal law specialist and partner at the Ottawa criminal law firm  AGP LLP . This piece was  originally published  by  Canadian Lawyer . Our journalism is supported by readers like you. Click here to support The Tyee. 17 Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, says the author, deliberately misrepresented how the justice system works to score points. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick, the Canadian Press. Listen to this article 7 min Canadian politics has always had its share of spin. What feels newer, and far more corrosive, is the growing comfort some politicians now have with simply abandoning the facts altogether, particularly when courts or public institutions are involved. Misrepresentation is no long...