Jenny, a grey mare that became a local celebrity for her solo walks around the Fechenheim district of Frankfurt, has been put down at the age of 26 after contracting skin cancer.
The horse achieved fame for her daily strolls, which covered 15 to 20km and often saw her appearing on train platforms or in shopping areas. Her owner added a sign to her halter that read, “My name is Jenny. I’ve not escaped, just taking a walk”.
Hotels in Venice are fighting back against aggressive, meal-stealing seagulls by arming outdoor diners with giant water pistols.
“They really work, they’re also coloured orange, which those birds don’t like,” said Paolo Lorenzoni, director of the luxury Gritti Palace Hotel. “As soon as they see the pistols, they fly away. You don’t even need to use them, you just need to keep them on the table.”
A luckless inhabitant of the department of Aude in southern France has lost out on one million euros (£830,000) after failing to claim a Euromillions lottery prize.
The winning ticket was sold as part of a January 21 superdraw in which 100 Europeans each won €1,000,000. Ninety-nine of the prizes were claimed, including another 27 in France, by the deadline of midnight on March 22.
Organisers said the money would now go to French charities and speculated that the “winner” from Aude – which contains cities including Narbonne and Carcassonne – may have died or lost their ticket.
A female police officer in Cadiz has been handed a six-month prison term and the equivalent of a £250 fine after telling her commanding officer that he smelled.
The officer, who had made a formal complaint about her boss’s “fetid stink”, was sentenced for damaging the “honour and dignity” of a colleague after alleging he had “quite unpleasant” circles of sweat under both arms.
The female officer claims that she had been unfairly targeted after she refused an order to downgrade the seriousness of a domestic violence case she was investigating.
A panel discussion on standing up to racism, held at Vienna’s Folklore Museum, was interrupted by a hacker who broke into the event’s Zoom stream and broadcast loud techno music, accompanied by footage of swastikas and obscenities.
A spokesperson for the museum said that footage had been forwarded to the police, adding: “We will certainly handle this differently in the future.”
German musician Ronja Maltzahn had her invitation to perform at a global climate strike event in Hanover withdrawn because she is a white woman with dreadlocked hair.
Organisers Fridays For Future said in a statement: “If a white person wears dreadlocks, then it’s cultural appropriation… Black resistance symbols have no place on white heads.”
However, the activists later apologised to Maltzahn for suggesting she could perform if she cut her dreadlocks off, calling it an “encroachment on the artist’s privacy, which should not have happened in this way”.
Silvio Berlusconi has “married” his girlfriend, Marta Fascina, in a symbolic service, complete with a cake labelled “S&M” – apparently in honour of their initials.
At 85, the former Italian premier is 53 years older than Fascina, an MP who in turn is 25 years younger than Berlusconi’s eldest daughter.
After last week’s Mondo Europe report of a 27-year-old who drove 45km the wrong way down two Swiss motorways – including through a series of tunnels – comes news of an octogenarian who drove himself and his wife 104km the wrong way down the A85 autoroute in western France.
After setting off near Veigné, the man finally realised his mistake after around an hour of travel and got off at a motorway ramp near Vierzon.
Police said they had received 50 calls from panicked motorists who had noticed the wrong-way ride, but were unable to intervene without risking an accident. They have since arrested the driver at his home and he faces charges of “aggravated endangerment
