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Food waste is a massive problem in Europe, and Italian lawmakers want to do something about it.

On Tuesday, 181 senators voted to pass a bill that seeks to cut 20 percent of the food Italy wastes per year — approximately one million tons. This recovered food will go to the needy, with Italy’s Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina deeming the bill “one of the most beautiful and practical legacies” of the Expo Milano 2015 international exhibition, which the BBC reports focused on tackling hunger and food waste around the globe.

At present, ministers say that food waste in Italy costs the country approximately $13.4 billion each year — around one percent of the country’s GDP. At least some of this waste stems from complex health and safety regulations which have effectively discouraged businesses and farmers from donating extra food or marginally past-date food to charities or directly to the needy.

And when coupled with the fact that millions of Italians live in poverty, unemployment hovers at approximately 20 percent, and the country’s public debt has increased by 20 percent since 2003, this level of food waste is unacceptable.

This law seeks to remedy that, and not through punitive measures as seen in recent legislation passed in France. By simplifying the regulatory codes, lifting sanctions to businesses that give away food past its sell-by date, creating tax incentives to donate food, and permitting famers to give away unsold produce without incurring costs, lawmakers hope to change cultural attitudes toward food and its consumption.

Some on the ground say that they’ve been doing this already. “Our farmers are already doing this at the markets with the leftover produce, but with this new law, instead of just doing it in a friendly, informal way, it can be donated directly to soup kitchens or other charities,” said Nicola De Ieso, spokesman for the farmers’ association Coldiretti in Campania, told the Telegraph.

“It simplifies things for us. We can be even more efficient.”

Perhaps the most interesting and potentially transformative component of the law is its $1.1 million campaign to promote the the use of the “family bag,” or taking home the remainder of one’s meal from a restaurant.

While a relatively common practice in the United States, the notion of taking home extra food from a restaurant — and moreover, the “doggy bag” — is quite rare in Italy. Indeed, some have called the measure the biggest cultural change the bill proposes.

The hope with the “family bag” provision is that people will consume their extra food at home or donate it to others in need.

And this can actually yield results: Last year, Italian chef Massimo Bottura launched an experimental soup kitchen that used leftover food to feed its patrons, and ended up receiving approximately 15 tons of it, all of which fed the homeless.

At present, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization says that the food currently wasted in Europe could feed 200 million people.

Next, learn the facts about food waste and what you can do to help reduce it.

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When you think about all the things that could possibly go wrong while on vacation, getting trapped in German bureaucracy is not likely to be the first thing to cross your mind — and yet that is precisely what happened to a Chinese man who recently visited the country.

When attempting to report a stolen wallet in Heidelberg, a 31-year-old Chinese tourist accidentally signed an asylum application, rendering him stranded as a refugee in the country for two weeks.

The tourist, known as Mr. L, spoke Mandarin only, and German authorities only realized the mistake they had made when they reached out to a Chinese restaurant to help interpret Mr. L’s case, the Red Cross said on Monday.

“He spent 12 days trapped in our bureaucratic jungle because we couldn’t communicate,” Red Cross refugee center head Christoph Schluetermann told Reuters. “Germany is unfortunately an extremely bureaucratic country. Especially during the refugee crisis I’ve seen how much red tape we have.”

According to Reuters, who first reported the story, Mr. L went to city hall following the theft of his wallet, thinking it was a police station. There, he signed an asylum application and was hauled off to a refugee center 220 miles away in Duelmen, where authorities gave him food and money like other refugees.

Authorities at the shelter began to suspect something was up when he arrived — particularly because of how well-dressed he was, the way he behaved, and the fact that most refugees entering Germany have been from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, not China.

“He kept trying to talk to people to tell his story but no one could understand him,” Schluetermann said. “He kept asking to get his passport back, which is the opposite of what most refugees do.”

Finally, after Red Cross staff exhausted translation apps in attempting to understand the Beijing resident, they contacted a local Chinese restaurant for help — where they learned what went wrong.

According to Schluetermann, once the situation was resolved the man was “happy to leave but not upset,” saying that “Europe was not what he had expected.”

Next, learn about the Muslim refugees that are converting in the wake of the Syrian Civil War.

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Every year on the last Wednesday of August, La Tomatina festival takes over the town of Buñol in Valencia, Spain. Approximately 20,000 people gather to throw around 150 tons of smashed, squashed, and squished tomatoes — and the result pretty much looks like a horror movie.

Making this massive mess in the streets of Spain has been a tradition since 1944 or 1945, but consensus on the festival’s inciting incident remain fuzzy. Popular recollections include a riot where upset townspeople threw tomatoes at councilmen, and a truck turnover that lined the streets with the juicy fruit.

Whatever the cause of the first tomato fight, people had so much fun that they just kept doing it every year. Even though it looks spontaneous, these days you’ll need a ticket to participate — and they’re not exactly cheap: A day-trip package plus tickets to the world’s biggest food fight will run you £99, or $129 (this is after you pay for transportation to Spain, of course.) The fee includes an invite to the welcome pre-party, a tour guide, and admittance into the Umbracle Terrace nightclub for the after party.

If you can’t make it — or would rather enjoy the idea of Tomatina rather than its messy reality — the photos above may be right up your alley.

Next, see incredible photos of the Spanish festival where people form human towers.

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A new bill that bans gas and diesel-powered vehicles in the entirety of the Netherlands is likely to become law, proponents say.

Originally sponsored by the Labor Party and introduced for a vote in lower parliament this April, if the bill passes it will take effect in 2025 and apply to any new cars sold on Dutch soil, Yale Climate Connections reported. For gas and diesel-powered cars already owned in the Netherlands, they will receive a grandfathered status.

The ban was even more ambitious in its original form, prohibiting all gas and diesel cars in the country, as opposed to just the sale of new cars.

The proposal comes as countries seek to lower their carbon footprint amid a warming planet. “We need to phase out CO2 emissions and we need to change our pattern of using fossil fuels if we want to save the Earth,” said Labor Party official Jan Vos.

Still, Vos recognizes that simply placing a ban on a certain kind of car is not a panacea for reducing the nation’s carbon footprint; the ban must be paired with efforts to increase the affordability of electric cars. “Transportation with your own car shouldn’t be something that only rich people can afford,” Vos said.

For Vos, that means improving battery technology such that people can take trips wherever they need to go without worrying about exhausting battery charge, Climate Connections reported. Likewise, Vos added that the government can add more charging stations throughout the country to help prepare for the ban.

Still, data suggest that the country is perhaps more prepared for such a ban than its other European counterparts — so much so that it may not seem all that necessary.

According to the European Alternative Fuels Observatory, there are approximately 20,000 recharging stations in the Netherlands, which is around the same amount as the UK and France combined.

Likewise, in 2013, the NGO Transport and Environment found that the Netherlands had the lowest CO2 emissions from new cars in the European Union that year, likely due to tax incentives which encouraged the purchase of plug-in hybrid cars. The break taxed low emission hybrids at 7 to 14 percent, compared to a 25 percent tax on average-emitting cars.

Experts estimate that these impressive figures may very well be short-lived, though. The tax break — which saw an all-time high sale of the plug-in hybrid vehicle last December and resulted in the country accounting for 30 percent of the vehicle’s sales in the entire continent — comes to an end this year. Just as critically, these plug-in hybrids will be illegal under the proposed ban.

Next, read about how beer-powered cars may also be helping to change the energy landscape.

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As Italy grapples with declining birthrates and slumping economic growth, Italian lawmakers actually made a “day” to remind women that their future should involve a baby.

“Celebrated” on September 22, the Italian government says it created Fertility Day in a campaign to encourage Italians to have more babies, The New York Times reported.

At present, Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe: 1.37 children per woman. In 2015, the country saw the birth of 488,000 babies, the fewest births since Italy’s 1861 unification.

As you might suspect, the campaign — whose ads featured women holding hourglasses next to the phrase “Beauty has no age limit. Fertility does.” and men holding a half-smoked cigarette next to the words “Don’t let your sperm go up in smoke” — didn’t go over too well with Italians.

Indeed, as critics told the Times, the campaign just goes to show how misplaced the Italian government’s priorities are — and how little it understands the needs and pressures its younger population faces.

“I should be a model for their campaign, and I still feel very offended,” Vittoria Iacovella, 37, a journalist and mother of two girls, told the Times. “The government encourages us to have babies, and then the main welfare system in Italy is still the grandparents.”

Before generally tough economic times and a state which provides comparatively little social benefits for families, to many Italians the cost of rearing a child is too much to bear.

At present, unemployment in Italy hovers at 11.5 percent, which is nearly three percent higher than the entire EU unemployment rate, and nearly three times as high as Germany’s unemployment rate.

For those who have work, particularly working women whose employers don’t really accommodate women’s needs as mothers, the prospect of paying for expensive private childcare or taking too many days off to be with their children is too risky.

This lack of government safety net, experts say, helps explain why Italy has seen a drop in birthrates whereas other European countries also experiencing economic stagnation, such as France, still maintain higher birthrates (two children per woman).

“On paper, Italian women have equal rights,” said Tiziana Bartolini, the editor of Noi Donne, one of Italy’s most prominent feminist magazines, told the Times. “But reality tells us a different story. Women are expected to care for children. If they live in regions where services are good, or in small towns, they keep their job. If they live in big, chaotic cities and have no family nearby, they are very prudent about becoming pregnant.”

“Or they stop working,” she added.

Bartolini’s quip about quitting work to have children rings true for many. As women’s advocate Teresa Potenza told the Times, many companies ask women to agree to leave their jobs should they become pregnant. “So many young women are even asked to presign a resignation letter here, especially in small companies,” Potenza said. “[This] campaign is a punch in the gut.”

While, as the Times reports, the Italian government under the Matteo Renzi administration has attempted to improve labor laws and add subsidies to make having children more thinkable for Italians, critics say there is still much more work to be done. At present, Italy allocates one percent of its GDP to social protection benefits, which is half the European average.

Before the harsh public outcry, the Italian Ministry of Health canceled the campaign.

Next, read about how Italy is coping with its food waste problem.

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Leopold II’s rule over the Congo was a horror story with a body count on par with Hitler’s, so why haven’t more people heard of him?

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Belgium is not the first European country we think of when we hear the words “blood-soaked tyranny.” Historically, the little country has always been more famous for beer than epic crimes against humanity.

But there was a time, at the peak of European imperialism in Africa, when Belgium’s King Leopold II ran a personal empire so vast and cruel, it rivaled – and even exceeded – the crimes of even the worst 20th century dictators.

This empire was known as the Congo Free State, and Leopold II stood as its undisputed slave master. For almost 30 years, rather than being a regular colony of a European government the way South Africa or the Spanish Sahara were, Congo was administered as the private property of this one man for his personal enrichment.

This world’s largest plantation was 76 times the size of Belgium, possessed rich mineral and agricultural resources, and had lost perhaps half of its population by the time the first census counted only 10 million people living there in 1924.

His Majesty King Leopold II

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Wikimedia CommonsLeopold II.

Nothing about Leopold II’s youth suggested a future mass murderer. Born the heir to Belgium’s throne in 1835, he spent his days doing all of the things a European prince would be expected to do before ascending to the throne of a minor state: learning to ride and shoot, taking part in state ceremonies, getting appointed to the army, marrying an Austrian princess, and so on.

Leopold II took the throne in 1865, and he ruled with the kind of soft touch Belgians expected from their king in the wake of the multiple revolutions and reforms that had democratized the country over the preceding few decades. Indeed, the young king really only ever put pressure on the senate in his (constant) attempts to get Belgium involved in building an overseas empire like all the bigger countries had.

This became an obsession for Leopold II. He was convinced, like most statesmen of his time, that a nation’s greatness was directly proportional to the amount of lucre it could suck out of equatorial colonies, and he wanted Belgium to have as much as possible before other countries came along and tried to take it.

First, in 1866, he tried to get the Philippines from Queen Isabella II of Spain. However, his negotiations collapsed when Isabella was overthrown in 1868. That’s when he started talking about Africa.

The post Why Isn’t Belgium’s King Leopold II As Reviled As Hitler Or Stalin? appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

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Rotterdam city council has just called for courts to give “incompetent” mothers mandatory contraception, Dutch newspaper NRC reported.

Proponents say compulsory contraception is in the interest of both children and “unfit” parents, the latter of which city council members seem to define as those with learning difficulties, psychological problems or addiction.

In a nutshell, the mandate “concerns children who are born into families where it turns everybody’s stomach to think that they’re having a child,” Christian Democratic Appeal party leader and mandatory contraception proponent Hugo De Jonge told NRC.

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Facebook/Hugo De Jonge

The call for forced contraception comes the same month that Rotterdam city council members launched a voluntary contraception program for 160 “at risk” women, which again the city defines as those who suffer from addiction, psychological ailments, and learning disabilities.

A similar voluntary contraception program has operated in the Dutch town of Tilburg since 2014, and has seen an 80 percent take up rate, Dutch News reported.

This is not the first time that Dutch politicians have attempted to introduce compulsory contraception. In 2012, Pieter van Vollenhoven, the former chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, called for forced contraception for serious drug addicts, psychiatric patients, and people with mental disabilities.

“Most people will say that’s going too far,” van Vollenhoven said in a 2012 TV broadcast. “I must say I can imagine it if you don’t know the reality. There are people who can’t control themselves. If you observe this, you should perhaps resort to contraception.”

Van Vollenhoven made these remarks after investigating the cases of 27 children who were severely abused at a young age, Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported. The Board concluded that “the government is not sufficiently capable of delivering on its responsibility to ensure the safety of young children in the age group 0 to 12 within the home.” The Board estimated that 50 children die each year as a result of this abuse.

The proposal — which drew support from Amsterdam’s child welfare chief, mental health and addiction experts and local politicians — faced a bevy of political blowback, and failed to pass parliament.

Seemingly undeterred by past failures, De Jonge is trying again. “Our primary concern used to be the interests of the parents, but now we pay more attention to the interests of the child,” De Jonge said. “Not being born is a form of child protection too.”

De Jonge says that in the 610,000-person city of Rotterdam, his proposal — if passed — would have the court issue around 10 to 20 compulsory contraception orders each year.

De Jonge’s proposal has generated considerable criticism from a number of political parties. “The government cannot decide who may or may not have children,” People’s Party MP Arno Rutte said. “That would be a very bad idea.”

As MP Pia Dijkstra said, “The proposal is too great an infringement, it is disproportionate [for courts] to decide on a person’s body.”

Taken together, the objections from several Dutch political party members mean that De Jonge’s dream will likely die on the floor of parliament.

Next, learn about how far contraception has come — and still has to go — in this history of birth control history.

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Wikimedia CommonsThe Palais de Justice in Paris.

France will no longer require transgender people to be sterilized before being legally allowed to change genders. The legislation was finally passed this Thursday after two years in the making.

The news comes as a surprise to many — except the United Nations, who has gone on record as condemning this practice — who didn’t know European countries had such laws in place to begin with. Considering that there are approximately 1.5 million transgender individuals in Europe, the scale of forced sterilization is immense.

Furthermore, beyond this sterilization, other European human right violations toward transgender people include forcing them to divorce from their spouses, declaring them mentally ill, and making them appear before a judge before allowing them to legally change their gender.

In no longer requiring sterilization, France, for their part, has now done away with one of the more flagrant human right violations. However, the country still requires transgender people to suffer the indignity of going to a court and asking a judge for permission.

“These are years of sparring that finally come to fruition,” Sophie Aujean, spokeswoman for the network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups known as ILGA-Europe, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “There is no other population in the world that is asked to be sterilized apart from transgender.”

“Congratulations to all the trans community in France and the activist movement that has pushed for this profound change!” added ILGA-Europe Executive Director Evelyne Paradis. “This is a sign of clear progress — another European country has dispensed with the shameful practice of sterilization and the intrusion that accompanied medicalization.”

Elsewhere around Europe, Denmark, Malta, and Ireland have allowed people to change their genders without medical or state intervention since 2014. Transgender people there can simply inform authorities of their gender. Norway too joined that club this past May.

“In Europe, there are several model examples that were open to France to follow – Denmark, Malta, Ireland and, most recently, Norway have all chosen to respect the bodily integrity of trans people and opt for self-determination,” Paradis said.

“The fact that France did not take the more progressive and humane path open to it is very regretful. The fight will go on for full equality and respect for trans people in France.”

Beyond France alone, Europe doesn’t seem to have a great track record regarding transgender individuals. A 2014 European Union report found that transgender people are attacked, threatened, and insulted twice as much as gay people in Europe.

And according to Transgender Europe, 22 countries (including Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, and Greece) there still require sterilization before changing genders.

Next, discover five realities of being transgender that you won’t see on TV. Then, read up on the U.S. military’s recent decision to begin paying for gender reassignment surgeries for its troops.

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Wunderwaffe. Even in the original German, the term (which translates to "wonder weapon") sounds positively pleasant. However, the terrifying yet often comedically ambitious weapons to which the Nazis applied this term during World War II were anything but.

From cannons to missiles to tanks, the Nazis dreamed up dozens upon dozens of weapons so outlandish, so potentially devastating that they could have come from no other group in history.

And history might have looked a lot different had the Nazis been able to actually complete these weapons, or at least reliably produce them on a large scale. But most of the time Hitler's reach far exceeded his grasp.

While these experimental wonder weapons saw little to no action, they remain fascinating what-ifs today. They're now artifacts of a time before nuclear weapons and military satellites and advanced computer circuitry, a time when guiding a missile to a target meant putting a man inside of it, a time when having the mightiest arsenal literally meant having the largest gun.

Although the Nazis didn't always succeed in having the largest gun -- literally and figuratively -- they certainly tried, and often came terrifyingly close.

From the Fire Lilly to the Vampir to the Sun Gun, above you'll find 23 of the most astounding Nazi weapons that, thankfully, never came to be.

Intrigued by this look at Nazi weapons? Next, find out what some of the most horrifying Nazi research contributed to medical science. Then, read up on four of the most devastating moments of the Nazis' reign.

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LISE ASERUD/AFP/Getty ImagesAnders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, makes a Nazi salute as he enters the court room in Skien prison on March 15, 2016.

Silje Tobiassen was a teenager when her friend convinced her to join the Workers’ Youth League (AUF), the youth organization of the Norwegian Labour Party. The group held their summer camps on Utøya, an island 40 minutes away from Oslo. Tobiassen’s friend described the island to which they would travel in July 2011 as “Norway’s most beautiful fairy tale.”

Tobiassen had spent a few days on that island before a self-declared fascist came after her and her compatriots with a gun.

Utøya was so small that Tobiassen could hear screaming from where she stood on the other side of the island, the gunshots getting alternating closer and farther away as she jumped from hiding spot to hiding spot.

Amid the chaos, she saw the shooter, Anders Behring Breivik, twice. First, she hid at the pumping station, where Breivik stopped for a moment and pretended to be a police officer, waiting for at least 15 teenagers to appear before murdering them.

The second time Tobiassen saw him, she was hiding behind a tree in a swamp, submerged to her waist in 41-degree water for 40 minutes. She stayed out of sight in the forest, lying next to a girl using heavy rocks to stem the blood from four gunshot wounds.

Eventually, help came and Tobiassen — along with other AUF children — ferried back to the mainland. Many others weren’t so lucky.

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KALLESTAD, GORM/AFP/Getty ImagesUtøya island four weeks after the attacks.

In the end, Breivik killed 69 people on Utøya, the majority under 20 years old, and left 110 wounded. It was the worst mass shooting in recorded history.

Another eight died from the bomb Breivik had planted in Oslo earlier that morning, its blast seriously injuring another 12 and leaving a further 209 casualties.

Between the two attacks, Anders Behring Breivik had, in one day, snuffed out the lives of 77 and devastated the lives of 319 more — and that’s not even counting those who managed to escape without physical harm, let alone the loved ones of those who didn’t.

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Many heads of state wouldn’t dream of foregoing a portion of their paycheck — and yet Ireland’s president Michael D. Higgins recently announced not just that he will do so, but that he will continue to do so for the next several years.

This week, the Irish president announced that he would continue taking a customary pay cut for the rest of his time in office. Since 2011, Higgins has donated 23.5 percent of his salary to the state, and donates his pension payments to the state as well. Currently, Higgins takes home around $270,350 USD each year — a little over half what the U.S. president earns over the same time period.

“The situation remained unchanged, and there was no plan to roll back on this voluntary donation,” a spokesperson told The Irish Times.

Higgins’ voluntary pay cut comes in an effort to restore the public service sector pay cuts brought on by the recent financial crisis, and follows in the footsteps of former president Mary McAleese, who took equal pay cuts when the financial crisis hit. This cut will apply to future presidents as well, as the Irish government has written Higgins’ donation into law.

Of course, much of this is symbolic — a gesture to the Irish people still reeling from crisis. While the president of Ireland is the supreme commander of the Irish Defence Force and considered to be head of state, the presidency is an honorary position with little to no actual power — similar to the Queen of England.

The person with actual power in Ireland is the prime minister, currently Enda Kenny. He took a pay cut when he took office as well, and earns around $201,038 USD each year.

Next, check out these St. Patrick’s Day celebrations before seeing how awful it is when your president isn’t a cool guy.

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Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty ImagesSpanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Spain’s current ruling party is fed up with Internet memes — so much so that they want to ban them.

After Madrid regional MP Juan Jose Moreno was caught making a meme of Popular Party opposition leader Cristina Cifuentes during a debate (he turned her into Dirty Harry), the PP motioned to ban them. Specifically, the party wishes to stop the “spreading of images that infringe the honor of a person,” noting that the internet has made Spain’s 1982 law on the subject outdated.

The apparent push for censorship has some worried. As Carlos Sánchez Almeida, the legal director for Spain’s Platform for the Defence of Freedom of Information (PDLI), said, “if the plan is to clamp down on any publication of images without consent of the individual, the popular activity of using memes to generate political or social criticism would become dangerous.”

“We are worried about this reform because internet does not require special laws; the same rights and duties should exist online as offline,” the PDLI said in a statement.

However, according to sources The Telegraph spoke to at the PP, their proposal is not as serious as critics suggest, adding that they are only in favor of clamping down on memes that are “insulting, involve death threats or accuse a person of committing a crime.”

The proposed meme reform arrives on Spain’s doorstep a year after what’s colloquially known as the gag law. The PP used a now-vanished parliamentary majority to push through legislation that limited the right to demonstrate and gave authorities the ability to fine individuals for disparaging Spanish elected officials on social media.

Many of the memes the PP is upset about poke fun at the party’s leader and Spain’s current conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. So far, the only thing the proposal has accomplished is create a internet tsunami of memes aimed at Rajoy and his government.

Spanish social media is awash with new memes, all carrying the same hashtag #SinMemesNoHayDemocracia — Without Memes, There Is No Democracy.

Next, find out why this tiny region in Spain keeps getting hit with space junk, before checking these stunning photos of Spain’s Versailles in the fall.

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You could never accuse Spain of being dull. Every January on Saint Sebastian Day in the city of Piornal, a man dons the colorful armor of the devil-like folk character Jarramplas, grabs a drum, and walks down the city's cobblestone alleys as residents pelt him with turnips.

The turnip storm continues until the masked man gives up -- but that could take a while. It's a point of pride to see how long someone can last as Jarramplas, so much so that parents in Spain's Cáceres province sign their children up at birth for a spot on the 20-year-long waiting list.

Given the fanfare, you'd think the Jarramplas Festival origin story is pretty solidified. It's not: All we know is that today, modern folklore says the turnip-pelting tradition symbolizes the expulsion of everything evil from the town. Other origin theories range from an interpretation of the myth of Hercules and the cattle-thieving giant Cacus, to the still-begrudged ostracizing of a more recent cattle thief.

Whatever its origins, the ceremony has become massive, using more than 22 tons of turnips every year. But while there may be more turnips nowadays, the pelting used to hurt worse: For centuries, residents threw tons of potatoes instead. And this was before modern protective gear even existed.

Next, read why this tiny little region in Spain keeps getting by space junk, before taking an inside look at La Tomatina, Spain’s bizarre tomato-throwing festival.

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Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesThe Eiffel Tower is illuminated in red, white, and blue in honor of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015.

Across the world, 29,376 people died from terror attacks in 2015. While that number, courtesy of the 2016 Global Terrorism Index (an annual report conducted by think tank Institute for Economics and Peace), is indeed tragic, it also represents a ten percent drop from the previous year.

But while there was a reduction in global deaths, there was a 650 percent increase in fatal terror attacks in the world’s biggest economies — “the developed world” — during that same time period.

Indeed, 21 of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — which includes the US, UK, Germany, and France, and is often seen as the mark of “developed” countries — experienced at least one attack in 2015.

“While the reduction in deaths is positive, the continued intensification of terrorism in some countries and its spread to new ones is a cause for serious concern and underscores the fluid nature of modern terrorist activity,” said IEP chief Steve Killelea in a statement. “The attacks in the heartland of Western democracies underscore the need for fast paced and tailored responses to the evolution of these organizations.”

To help shape that response, the report identifies four major factors fueling increased terrorism in OECD countries: youth unemployment, levels of criminality, access to weapons, and distrust of the electoral process.

However, the terrorism outlook for countries outside of “the developed world,” is rather different. Last year, 72 percent of all deaths from terrorism in 2015 came from five countries not included in the OECD: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan. Syria alone saw a 50 percent rise in terrorism from the previous year.

While efforts to militarily contain ISIS and Boko Haram (the two groups were responsible for 51 percent of terrorism related deaths in 2014) have resulted in fewer deaths in Iraq and Nigeria, the groups have spread throughout the nearby regions. ISIS, for one, has become active in more than double the amount of countries than it was in 2014, expanding from 13 to 28 countries last year.

And how to respond to that kind of terror is precisely the question of the day for the Institute for Economics and Peace.

“Understanding the drivers of terrorism is crucial if we are to develop counter-terrorism (sic) strategies that help combat radicalization,” Killelea said. “Military operations are clearly contributing towards (sic) restraining ISIL [ISIS] in Iraq, but the continued appeal of the organization, evident in the ISIL-inspired attacks in Europe, demonstrates the limitations of a purely military approach.”

And in determining our worldwide approach to combatting terrorism, perhaps the first step is putting the true threat of terrorism in context. As the report suggests, despite growing fears, terror deaths fell last year.

Consider also that, in 2014, 88,000 people died in the United States from alcohol, for example. In 2012, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism attributed 5.9 percent of all global deaths — 3.3 million — to alcohol consumption. Yet, with far fewer deaths, its global terror that dominates our news cycles and sometimes thrusts the far right into power on the back of Islamophobia.

Next, learn why a Trump victory is exactly what ISIS needed, before looking at this surprising Gallup poll on how Americans feel about terrorism and gun control.

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Avoiding military service may run in the family.

Newly-discovered historical documents help explain why German officials forced Friedrich Trump, President-elect Donald Trump’s grandfather, to immigrate to the United States from Germany — and it has a lot to do with war.

According to the documents, which German historian Roland Paul found, German authorities ordered Trump to leave Germany and never come back after he neglected to tell them he had moved to the U.S., thereby missing a notice for mandatory military service.

Trump only noticed when he attempted to move back to Germany in 1905, 20 years after he emigrated.

Paul, who found the royal decree dated February 27, 1905, said to German publication Bild that, “Friedrich Trump emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1885. However, he failed to deregister from his homeland and had not carried out his military service, which is why the authorities rejected his attempt at repatriation.”

As a punishment, Trump had to leave the kingdom of Bavaria within eight weeks of officials issuing the royal decree. Attempting to appeal to a higher power and reverse such a fate, Trump wrote a letter to Prince Regent Luitpold, calling him the “the much-loved, noble, wise and righteous sovereign and sublime ruler” and asking for forgiveness.

Luitpold said no, however, and forced Trump to flee on the Hapag steamship Pennsylvania with his wife and daughter on July 1, 1905.

Trump’s wife, Elisabeth Christ, was three months pregnant with Fred Trump at the time, Donald Trump’s father.

Christ was actually the reason Trump wanted to move back to Germany. Although Trump left Germany penniless the first time, the money he made during the San Francisco gold rush by sending nuggets to his sisters in New York, who would then buy and sell property, made him a rich man.

When Trump came back to Germany for a victory lap flush with cash, he fell in love with Christ, who grew up next door to Trump. They moved to the U.S. after getting married in 1902, but Christ became homesick and wanted to move back, kicking the whole episode off.

Next, check the over 200 incidents of harassment that have taken place since Donald Trump was elected president, before checking out why thousands took to the streets to protest Trump’s election.

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Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesSupporters of the AfD political party protest against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal policy towards taking in migrants and refugees on October 14, 2015 in Magdeburg, Germany.

At the end of World War II, Germany made concerted efforts to scrub itself and its residents of Nazi language, culture, and ideas. But, researchers say, some of that may have returned.

More and more, German politicians are now using the language of the Third Reich’s to describe refugees, and the German public seems to be responding to it.

The chairwoman for the Alternative For Germany (AFD) party, Frauke Petry, has been using the word “völkisch,” an ethno-nationalist term that the Nazis used to describe what they believed to be their superior German race, according to Josefin Graef, a doctoral researcher at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Petry has even defended the word, saying it should have positive connotations because it simply derives from the word “volk,” or “people.”

However, Petry has faced outrage from the press, who she has been describing with another Nazi word, “lügenpresse,” or “lying press.” The media argued that Nazi vocabulary is key to creating an exclusionary policy toward people that Germans perceive as non-German — specifically, refugees and asylum seekers.

In fact, terms such as “volksverrater,” or “traitor of the people,” are often heard at German anti-refugee protests held by anti-Islamic movements. The phrase was also used as a slur against Angela Merkel and Christian Democratic Union ministers for letting 890,000 refugees into Germany.

Furthermore, this unprecedented borrowing of Nazi vocabulary follows a significant rise in attacks on refugees and asylum seekers. Attacks increased five-fold between 2014 and 2015, according to figures released by German interior minister Thomas de Maizière.

Homes of refugees are being targeted as well, with attacks quadrupling to 1,031. That number includes 94 arsons, 60 assaults, eight explosions, and four attempted murders, with swastikas and neo-Nazi slogans spray-painted on homes as well.

Next, check out what sneaker brand neo-Nazis have deemed the official shoe for the alt-right, before reading about how IBM helped the Nazis carry out the Holocaust.

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If Letizia Battaglia could tell Americans one thing, it’s to stop watching "The Sopranos."

“Americans love ‘The Sopranos,’” the Sicilian photographer told CNN. “They don’t believe the Mafia is like (they see on TV), but the Mafia is dangerous like ISIS.”

Battaglia would know. The 81-year-old has spent the majority of her life documenting the devastating effects of organized crime and corruption in Sicily, and says she finds the similarities between ISIS and the Mafia striking.

“When I see ISIS soldiers, I feel like they are a little bit like Mafiosi,” Battaglia said. “They don’t give a damn about life. The Mafia doesn’t give a damn about anything but their interests and money and don’t care who they hurt along the way.”

Battaglia started her career later in life, waiting until her children had grown before she truly pursued her goal of becoming a writer. For Battaglia, this meant leaving her husband in 1971 and moving to Milan, where she started working in the newspaper business.

Somewhat counterintuitively, it was her work with the written word that would catapult Battaglia into photography. "I proposed articles and they said, 'and the pictures?' ... So I bought a camera," she told CNN.

A few years later, an anti-Mafia, anti-Fascist newspaper offered her a job as a photographer in Palermo, Sicily. Battaglia accepted the offer and returned to her hometown, where she would spend the next several decades documenting the beauty and brutality that defined Sicilian life.

Battaglia couldn’t have chosen a better time to get into photojournalism. Around the time that she began her career in earnest, the Sicilian Mafia began its transition from organized crime to the heroin trade, and a blood bath ensued.

“There was an exponential increase in Mafia violence around the time when Letizia Battaglia started,” John Dickie, professor of Italian Studies at University College in London, told CNN.

Indeed, by the 1980s the Sicilian Mafia controlled approximately 80 percent of the heroin trade in the northeastern United States, which its members would often distribute through Mafia-owned pizzerias.

As these illicit economies expanded, mafia clans would converge and combat one another in order to control the narcotics trade and thus capture its wealth. From 1981 and 1983, what became known as the Second Mafia War would claim thousands of lives, including those of journalists, police, and elected officials.

The war only ended when the Corleonesi clan killed enough of its opponents to win control of the Mafia. To those who survived the war, however, framing the conflict in terms of victory and defeat misses the mark.

“The winning and losing clans don’t exist, because the losers don’t exist,” former Sicilian Mafia member Salvatore Contorno said. “They, the Corleonesi, killed them all.”

Before such carnage and corruption, it would be easy for Battaglia to trade exclusively in gore. But she doesn’t, and that’s what experts say makes her work so impactful.

"Sicily was really becoming a narco-state, and she had the kind of humanity not just to photograph the politicians and the dead bodies, but to register the impact of all that daily familiarity with death, especially on the children," Dickie said.

Battaglia doesn't take photos as much these days, but that's not for lack of crime and corruption. As Battaglia recounted to CNN, "The Mafia is now more powerful than before. Before it was savage, they killed. Now they are in politics and financial life. This is not only blood ... it is corruption."

Fascinated by these Letizia Battaglia photos? Next, check out 27 grisly photos of the American mafia in the 1980s. Then, have a look at the most brutal gangs around the world.

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With all its tedious rites and rituals, many consider Catholicism to be one of the most boring religions ever. One glimpse at a festival known as El Colacho, however, and boring is probably the last word critics would ascribe to the Catholic Church.

Each spring in Spain, Catholics celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi by -- wait for it -- having men jump over babies. At the tail end of the week-long affair, men in red and yellow suits literally leap over infants laid out on mattresses in the street.

In order for the jumping to take place, parents must first place their babies on a procession route. This one goes throughout Castrillo de Murcia, a medieval village near Burgos, Spain. Not all babies are welcome, however: Only infants born during the preceding year can participate.

Nobody is quite sure where such a tradition, which dates back to 1620, comes from. Still, some locals say it originated as a form of, let's say, adventure baptism. The red-suited men represent the devil, and by jumping over the babies, somehow absolve the infants of sin. Locals add that the rite supposedly ensures infants a safe passage throughout life and protects them from evil demons and sickness.

Not all Catholics are fans of the tradition, however. Pope Benedict, who resigned in 2013, asked Spanish priests to downplay any connection that Catholicism may have with the ceremony because the Roman Catholic Church teaches that only a water baptism can save a baby's soul from eternal damnation.

Nevertheless, El Colacho carries on to this day. See for yourself in the photos above.

Intrigued by this look at El Colacho? Next, check out Spain's Jarramplas Festival where villagers pelt a monster with 22 tons of turnips, before looking at these adorable photos from Thailand's Monkey Buffet Festival.

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It pays to be beautiful, and the town of Chamonix proves it. One of the oldest ski resorts in all of France, Chamonix is nestled among the massive peaks of the French Alps. Whether you’re skiing or not, the views are sure to make your jaw drop.

The village dates back to the 11th century, with the first recorded mention of the area coming from a 1091 letter by the Count of the Genevois. By the 13th century, Chamonix Mont Blanc housed a monastery.

The small town grew little by little from there, but it didn’t draw pleasure-seeking travelers until 1892. That’s when the French government broke up the Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix association, which locals formed in 1821 in order to control who could visit the communal mountain slopes. Soon after, the region’s tourism really picked up and the alpine enclave became an international hotspot.

From then on, both national and international entrepreneurs — not locals — ran the town’s tourism industry, which had the effect of making the village increasingly dependent on visitors for its survival.

It seemed to work out well for the town. When the International Olympic Committee held the first-ever Winter Olympics in 1924, it chose Chamonix as its seminal site. This decision further catapulted the little French village into the international tourism circuit, and by the 1960s tourism profits had reduced the town’s other economic workhorse, agriculture, to almost nothing.

Now, more than five million visitors explore 8,000 person commune every year. Not bad for a pocket of ice.

Next, check out some of the most picturesque Instagram photos of winter around the world through these 33 Instagram photos. Then, have a look at 18 European natural wonders that’ll reignite your wanderlust.

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As political changes sweep the globe, many women are concerned that their birth control will no longer be on the house. There’s one group, however, that doesn’t have to worry.

Spanish pigeons.

Upset by the amount of bird droppings covering their beautiful monuments and sculptures, government officials in Barcelona will begin hiding contraceptives in pigeon food next year, according to El Mundo.

This solution was put forth as an alternative to culling — a method of catching and killing the birds which animal rights groups claim is not only unethical, but has also been found to be ineffective.

This way, the number of birds will decline at a more gradual rate — reportedly decreasing by 20% in the first year, and anywhere from 70% to 80% in the following five.

Before they can begin the process of spiking 40 pigeon-food dispensers, though, the veterinary department at Barcelona Autonomous University will undertake the daunting task of counting all of the pigeons, a population estimated to be around 85,000.

This is not the first time animals have been put on the pill. The US government has used the same drug — nicarbazin — to decrease goose and pigeon populations, though not on a city-wide scale as in Barcelona.

If it is successful, the program might be emulated in cities suffering similar pigeon problems in America, sparing thousands of teenage birds that awkward talk with mom.

Next, learn about the life of New York’s most famous pigeon lady. Then read about the Dutch city that proposed mandatory contraception for “incompetent” mothers.

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