Our daily gondola ride around the world

🇮🇹 Venice was not added to UN’s list of endangered World Heritage sites, despite a recommendation from experts. Italy was warned in July that a panel of experts voted to add Venice, a World Heritage Site since 1987, to the UN’s endangered list due to the risks posed by climate change, mass tourism, and overdevelopment. But after Venice officials announced several new conservation efforts over the next two months, including an entry tax for non-overnight visitors, a majority of UN member states voted yesterday to keep the “City of Canals” off the endangered list.

🏦💶 The European Central Bank raised interest rates to a new record high. Yesterday’s decision to hike rates from 3.75% to 4.0% marked the central bank’s tenth straight rate increase, though a majority of ECB officials say they expect to hold rates steady for the foreseeable future, since the current level should be sufficient to tame inflation. The rate hike came days after a government report found average inflation across the eurozone – the 20 EU countries that use the euro currency – will be roughly 5.6% in 2023.

🇨🇳🤝🇻🇪 China and Venezuela upgraded their diplomatic ties to an “all-weather” partnership. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday to sign a series of bilateral cooperation agreements across a wide range of areas, including oil, trade, finance, education, tourism, and civil aviation. President Maduro also said Beijing agreed to train some Venezuelan citizens as astronauts and eventually send them to the moon on a Chinese spacecraft.