Tourists are flocking to a “ghost village” on the border of Spain and Portugal that has re-emerged after 30 years underwater.
Aceredo was submerged in 1992 as part of a plan to build a new reservoir, with its 120 residents evacuated and rehomed. It has reappeared after a historic drought left water levels at just 15% of normal.
Francisco Villalonga, who saw his former home flooded 30 years ago, was among several ex-residents who returned to the site. He said: “I can see this might be interesting for visitors from elsewhere, but for those of us whose roots are there it is hard to see it like this. Seeing the houses where they were born and raised has made people very nostalgic for the past. That is a very Galician thing.”
A hedgehog hospital that can take up to 30 spiky patients at a time is opening in Paris. The special unit in the Bois de Vincennes will include operating rooms, an intensive care unit, a nursery for baby hedgehogs and a convalescence ward.
It is estimated that 700,000 hedgehogs are killed by cars in Europe each year – around 20% of the total population.
Towns and villages whose names translate as Stingy Penis, Serious Menstruation and The Perineum have been included on a list of the funniest place names in Sweden. Språktidningen magazine included Snålkuk, Mensalvaret and Mellangården alongside the likes of Aha, Frufällan (“the wife trap”) and Värsta (“the worst”). Others included Normlösa (“without norms”) and Buslätt (“extremely easy”).
Russian physicist Alexei Turchin has declared that humans born after 2600 will be able to live forever.
Turchin, an expert in the field of transhumanism who studied at Moscow University, said: “Death seems to be a permanent condition, but nowhere is there any evidence that it cannot be ‘reversed’. There are several possibilities to overcome death that we will only invent in the future.”
Options include a complete set of artificial organs and a “digital eternity”, in which our thoughts and feelings are downloaded into new, biomechanical bodies. Turchin also claimed that it may be possible to bring back to life everyone who had ever died, but only “with the help of some superintelligence at the galactic level”.
DNA analysis of dog poo has landed a careless owner in Paterna, Spain with a fine of 500 euros, around £417.
The unnamed woman was asked to pay up after failing to clean up after her dog during a trip to the beach town of Benalmadena last August.
Local authorities cross-checked a sample of its faeces against a national DNA database on which the woman had registered her pet in case he ever got lost.
Sweden’s prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, has admitted being a huge fan of alt-metal band System Of A Down.
The Social Democratic party leader told radio station Bandit Rock that she played the band’s music all the time at home, although her husband, economist Richard Friberg, liked to take over the music whenever they held parties.
System Of A Down’s best-known songs include Cigaro, with the lyrics “My cock is much bigger than yours/ My cock can walk right through the door/ With a feeling so pure/ It’s got you screaming back for more.”
In a tell-all interview, 84-year-old Queen Paola of Belgium has admitted heating on King Albert II after discovering he was cheating on her.
Paola said she had “no regrets” about her fling with Count Albert Adrien de Munt, a photographer for French magazine Paris Match, while her husband was having an illicit relationship with aristocrat Sybille de Selys Longchamps. They had a daughter, Dephine Boel, who became officially recognised as a Belgian princess in 2020, seven years after Albert abdicated.
Paola, who remains married to Albert, said: “I don’t feel guilty at all. It happened at a time when things were not going well. It was a bit of selfish love.”
A former Serie A striker has returned to football after a 12-year ban for taking cocaine.
Francesco Flachi, who made over 100 appearances in Italy’s top flight and was called up to the national side in 2004, made a 30-minute appearance for fifth-tier Tuscan side Signa 1914 in their 2-2 draw with Prato 2000.
Flachi was sacked by Sampdoria and banned for two years in 2007 after testing positive for cocaine, and received what seemed to be a career-ending suspension after testing positive again while at Brescia in 2010.
He said: “This day cancels 12 years of disqualification. It is my rebirth. This is the proof that I have also rebuilt. I’m so happy, I want to thank everyone who made me feel like I was before: a football player.”
