Barcelona / AFP Barcelona city hall said on Thursday it would fine home rental websites Airbnb and rival HomeAway 600,000 euros ($635,000) each for marketing lodgings that lacked permits to host tourists. The fine comes as the popular seaside resort struggles with a rising tide of tourism that has exasperated locals, threatening to drive out poorer residents and spoil …

  History has a sly sense of humor. It caused an epiphany regarding infrastructure projects —roads, harbors, airports, etc. — to occur on a bridge over Boston’s Charles River, hard by Harvard Yard, where rarely is heard a discouraging word about government. Last spring, Larry Summers, former treasury secretary and Harvard president, was mired in congealed traffic on the bridge, …

  The global populist revolution is widely seen as an existential threat to the European Union. The parties pushing it are mostly anti-EU, and after Brexit, more exits don’t look impossible. It’s probably wrong, however, to equate the strength of populist movements with anti-EU sentiment. Bertelsmann Stiftung, an organization that regularly measures attitudes toward the EU, has published the results …