Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
A female tourist was thrown out of Venice after she was caught posing for photos topless on a war memorial.
The 30-year-old from the Czech Republic stripped off last Friday afternoon, dumping her belongings on the monument -- which pays homage to Italy's war heroes -- as she went for a swim in the freezing lagoon, and then laid beside the statue of a murdered female partisan to pose for photos.
She was banned from Venice for 48 hours and fined US$513.
Local Mario Nason was out walking with his son when he saw the woman and her two companions on the monument, which sits on the waterfront.
Dedicated to the women who gave their lives in their fight for freedom under fascism, it consists of a bronze statue of a murdered partisan, half in the water, half on a platform of bronze and concrete. Placed near the gardens of the Biennale, it is one of relatively few statues dedicated to women in Italy.
"It was a beautiful day and we saw two people taking photos. I saw a strange movement and then I saw this woman swimming without a care in the world," Nason told CNN.
"I thought she must be crazy, thinking she could swim on a freezing day.
"But then I saw she was trying to get out of the water by climbing onto the statue, wearing just her bikini bottoms.
"She got up on it, then she got back into the water, totally relaxed.
"Her boyfriend and another woman had jumped over the barrier and were on the monument, to take better photos of her. They were stood there beside her clothes that she'd left [on the monument], just as you do on the beach."
The woman, who has not been named, was apprehended by police. They fined her €350 (US$400) and hit her with an antisocial behaviour order, including a 48-hour ban from the city, which comes with a separate €100 (US$113) fine.
"It was incredible because [the tourists] were asking, 'How is this a problem?' They didn't have the slightest inkling of what they were doing," said Nason.
"It's like going to Rome, leaping in the Trevi Fountain and then saying, 'What do you mean, you can't do this?'
"You can say, whatever, they haven't killed anyone. But when I travel, if I see a fountain, I don't have the urge to jump in. If I'm in Paris, walking along the Seine, I don't throw myself into the river. If I went to Prague, threw my clothes on a monument and went for a swim, would nothing happen? It's common sense. Why do people do these things in Venice that they wouldn't do elsewhere?"
A spokesperson for the local police told CNN that according to their report, the woman was lying on the monument, imitating the dead partisan for a photo.
"She wanted the statue in the shot," they said. "I imagine she apologized."
Tourists behaving badly in Venice is nothing new. Only a week earlier, a man stripped off and took a dive into the Grand Canal -- he was never caught.
Others have been fined and forced out of the city for breaching decorum regulations. Last summer, a Scottish tourist was kicked out for diving off the Accademia Bridge into the Grand Canal after a boozy night out. And in 2019, a German couple was ejected for making coffee on a camping stove under the Rialto Bridge.
"Sitting in St. Mark's Square with a slice of pizza, or brewing coffee, is a marvelous thing to put on Facebook, but if 30 million tourists behave like that, Venice becomes a beach or a campsite," said Nason.
"This goes beyond the personal upset of the sensitivity around the partisan monument. They probably didn't know the statue of the woman lying there was a dead partisan. But it's treating Venice like a beach.
"Just because you have the urge to do something, doesn't mean you should do it."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.