Voters in Italy's two wealthiest northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto are voting on Sunday in referendums for greater autonomy from Rome, in which a positive outcome could fan regional tensions in Europe at a time when neighboring Spain is cracking down to prevent Catalonia from breaking away.
Via StockBoardAsset.com,
Police in Rome evicted 100s of refugees that had occupied Piazza Independenza just one block from the country’s main train station.
The squatters were defiant so local police used water cannons and batons in the forceful eviction. As Reuters reports,
Some 100 refugees had occupied Piazza Independenza since Saturday, when most of about 800 squatters were evicted from an adjacent office building they had occupied for about five years.
More than a year after the BREXIT referendum shocked the world, the various EU member nations are seemingly no closer to a consensus on how to deal with Europe's migrant influx. The lack of a coordinated plan and disproportionate distribution of migrants across the continent has Italy threatening to close their ports to privately-funded aid boats until other nations "step up." Per Yahoo News:
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
Authored by Bethany Bell
Rome has been struggling to cope with a rubbish crisis and Austria has spare capacity at a waste-to-energy plant near Vienna.
So a deal has been struck. The Italians are paying Austrian company EVN to dispose of up to 70,000 tonnes of Roman household refuse this year.
The waste is transported by train through northern Italy, over the Alps and ends up at the EVN thermal waste utilisation plant at Zwentendorf on the Danube.