Vladimir Putin has been banned from the Dresden pub where he used to drink when he was a KGB agent.
The Am Thor bar used to play up its connections to the Russian leader, with a shrine of photos of him drinking there, and its half-pint glasses being nicknamed “Putin mugs” because of his small stature.
But now the photos have been taken down and the landlord, Wirt Müller, said: “I have banned Putin for life. He is a war criminal. If he turns up here again at some point in his life, he can turn on his heel and look at the door from the outside again.”
The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen’s harbour has been vandalised again – this time with a message equating the pro-Putin “Z” symbol with the Nazi swastika.
Since 1964, the statue has been beheaded twice, had one arm cut off, been uprooted and thrown into the harbour, been covered in blue paint as a protest against whaling and been dressed in a burqa in a protest against plans for Turkey to join the EU.
A 2am peal of bells at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna that went on for 25 minutes has been blamed on a hacker.
The bells can be rung by remote control via a computer program, and a security expert, Mathias Rentzsch, said there was evidence that the hacker had tried unsuccessfully to silence them after 25 minutes. Rentzsch added: “Only four to five people have the connection data to the computer. The stranger needed the connection data, a password and special software to access the system.”
Toni Faber, a priest at the cathedral, said he hoped those woken by the bells would show understanding as he assumed the hack “has something to do with the Ukraine war”.
A waiter from Yssingeaux, southern France, is beating petrol price rises by commuting to work on his horse.
Louis Geneix, 21, now rides his mare, Eole, the 15km from his home to the inn where he works and leaves her “parked” in a meadow across the street.
Geneix said he had taken the decision after seeing more and more of his £1,000-per-month take-home pay go on fuel. The only downside? Getting to work and home now takes two hours a day instead of 20 minutes.
A Spanish far-right activist, Isabel Peralta, has been denied entry to Germany after landing at Frankfurt airport with a swastika flag in her luggage.
Airport staff said Peralta, part of the Bastion Frontal group, which protests against migrants from north Africa, was also carrying a Spanish-language copy of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, a swastika key ring and a second world war-era propaganda children’s book published by the Nazi-affiliated League of German Girls.
Nazi books and symbols are banned in Germany, with penalties of up to three years in prison. Peralta has been travelling to the country since late last year after being awarded a 10-month “scholarship” by a neo-Nazi group.
A police spokesman said: “She claimed she had the items out of a personal interest in German history and because she is studying history.”
A 27-year-old who drove the wrong way down two motorways in eastern Switzerland for almost 30 minutes has had his licence confiscated while police study blood and urine samples.
The driver, from Niederurnen, travelled 28 miles in the wrong direction, first joining the A3 and managing to get safely through several tunnels before merging on to the A14 and driving the wrong way down that too.
Police finally stopped him near Landquart, near the Liechtenstein border, and said things might have been more serious had the confused driver not set off at 6am, thus failing to encounter many oncoming cars.
Rome chef Valerio Braschi is winning acclaim for creations including lasagne in a toothpaste tube.
The 24-year-old’s Ristorante 1978 earned a Michelin star for what the fine dining guide called “creative cuisine with youthful enthusiasm”.
Braschi’s Lasagna in Tubetto dish invites diners to squeeze a mix of beef ragout and béchamel sauce from a tube on to a toothbrush made from pasta. At the end of the course, water infused with parmesan cheese is drunk as a mouthwash.
Other courses include Drink-Meat, a chunk of beef broken down into liquid by using ultrasound.
Also on the menu are roasted scallops on a bed of green plankton foam and a fake plastic sachet of “pizza ingredients” that turns out to be rice paper containing dried tomato sauce, garlic, oregano and roasted, powdered pizza crust.
Gangs of wild boars with a taste for the high life have been spotted on the promenade in the Côte d’Azur resort of Nice.
One group of the animals was spotted attacking rubbish bins on the Corniche Bellevue near the luxury Parc Impérial apartment block, while another broke into a private residential complex and began digging up the garden.
One boar was even filmed sunning itself on the beach near the famous Promenade des Anglais.
