Swimmers face £645 fine for peeing in the sea

published 21 June 2022

Beachgoers in Spain who answer the call of nature while having a swim could be handed a fine of hundreds of pounds after a local council introduced a ban. The city of Vigo, in the northwestern region of Galicia, wants to end the practice of urinating in the sea by imposing a €750 (£645) penalty. Local authorities have passed legislation that bans “physiological evacuation on the beach or in the sea”, but The Times said that details of how exactly the rule will be enforced are unknown.

Nobel prize sold for £84.5m

A Nobel Peace Prize auctioned by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees has sold for $103.5m (£84.5m). Muratov said he auctioned his prize “to give the children refugees a chance for a future”. The Guardian noted that the largest amount previously paid for a Nobel Prize medal was in 2014, when James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA earned him the award in 1962, sold his medal for $4.76m (£3.88).

Transport secretary disrupted by air chaos

The US transportation secretary was among those disrupted by the roughly 14,000 domestic flights which were cancelled or delayed in North America over the weekend. The day after Pete Buttigieg met with airline leaders, his own flight was cancelled and he was forced to drive from Washington DC to New York, reported CBS News. “You gotta be able to find pilots,” he said. “There’s a shortage.”