A Swiss firm is offering the super-rich the ultimate status symbol – a 52-metre luxury yacht tethered to a 200-metre helium airship.
AirYacht owners will be able to fly the blimp to its destination at up to 100km per hour before setting the superyacht – which acts as the travel cabin in flight – down on water or land.
The engineers, Guillaume Hoddé and Matthieu Ozanne, say the yacht will have bedrooms and living space for 12 passengers and 15 crew, including a pool, helipad, steam room and garage. The price is undisclosed and the first four AirYachts are to be rolled out by the end of 2026.
Two Mexican tourists have been fined for crashing their drone into the Tower of Pisa.
Police said the brother and sister, aged 18 and 26, temporarily lost control of their device, which has been confiscated. No serious damage was done to the landmark, which has a four-degree lean because it was built on unstable topsoil in 1178.
In Rome, a drone operated by an Argentine tourist crashed on to the roof of the 15th-century Palazzo Venezia, the site of several of Benito Mussolini’s most notable speeches. And two Dutch tourists were fined the equivalent of £400 each for paddling in the Trevi Fountain.
A four-year-old from Utrecht who decided to take the family car for a spin while his mother slept crashed it into two parked cars, then left the scene of the accident in his pyjamas.
The barefoot boy was spotted walking along the roadside and taken to the local police station, where officers noticed him making steering motions and simulating the sound of a collision. This helped them link the child to reports of an accident, and when taken to the scene, he was able to show how he had unlocked and started the car, released the clutch and used the accelerator to move away.
A spokesperson said: “We may have discovered the next Max Verstappen.” Göttingen has become the first city in Germany to allow women to swim topless in its pools – but only at the weekend. A council spokesperson said the measure was being trialled until August 31 to gauge public reaction. It stemmed from an incident last autumn when a topless swimmer with a female physique was told to leave a municipal pool but refused, saying they identified as a man.
Provocative Danish artist Ibi-Pippi has been charged with vandalism after pasting an image of herself emerging from an egg on top of Asger Jorn’s painting The Disturbing Duckling. The 1959 original, regarded as one of Jorn’s greatest works, is in itself an act of modification, being a crude painting of a duckling’s head on top of a painting of a country cottage, which the artist bought at a flea market.
Ibi-Pippi claims that her addition has created an entirely new work, which she calls The Disturbing Bitch, and even claimed co-ownership by signing the painting.
But the museum’s director, Jacob Thage, said: “There’s a word that covers this, and it’s vandalism. That you want to promote yourself by destroying something else, it is absolutely terrible.”
He called the original “one of Jorn’s absolute masterpieces” and added: “It is deeply tragic that an image that precisely symbolises the struggle against powerlessness and is often interpreted as one of Asger Jorn’s antiwar images, has been the subject of such an assault.”
Slovenia’s live TV general election debate was enlivened when ultranationalist party head Zmago Jelinčić stormed away from his podium in a protest that he was being given too little airtime, and promptly fell off the edge of the stage.
The remaining politicians could be heard sniggering as Jelinčić tripped off the raised set and crashed into a table, knocking it over. He said later: “I’m not thinking about a lawsuit for now. My left leg hurts a little, but fortunately, nothing is broken.”
A pub in the Vienna suburb of Josefstadt became the subject of a Twitter storm after choosing egg dumplings and salad – said to be Adolf Hitler’s favourite meal – as its dish of the day on April 20, which was his birthday.
It drew particular ire as the special was priced at €8.80 (£7.40). Nazi sympathisers use 88 as code for “Heil Hitler”, since 8 represents the eighth letter in the alphabet. Owners said the incident was an unfortunate coincidence and replaced the dish with grilled sausages.
