An Italian tourist who visited central Berlin’s Holocaust memorial at night and decided to jump off one of its 2,711 concrete blocks plunged eight metres (26 feet) down an emergency tunnel in the dark.
The 21-year-old was taken to hospital but is unlikely to face charges, even though it is forbidden to walk on top of the blocks.
It is the latest in a series of unsettling incidents to befall the memorial, created by architect Peter Eisenman and artist Richard Serra and open since 2005. In the last fortnight, a social media influencer has been criticised for taking part in a photoshoot on the blocks while wearing a black sports bra and leggings, while Berlin police have apologised after officers were seen using the blocks to do press-ups.
A group of treasure hunters say they are closing in on a hoard worth nearly £15billion that is buried in an underground pagan temple near Helsinki.
The ‘Temple 12’ expect to find 50,000 gemstones, including diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and rubies, as well as life-size statues in 18-carat gold as part of a trove hidden since the 10th century.
Over 100 hunters have been part of the so-called ‘Twelve’, which began excavations in the Sibbosberg cave system in 1987. Only two originals still remain.
Expert Carl Borgen said the Twelve have made “tremendous progress” before giving up for the winter and expect to locate the treasure when the weather allows them to, around May of next year.
The deputy mayor of a town in Denmark has defended paying £112,000 a year for a beach-clearing bulldozer that collects rubbish and seaweed but then dumps it back in the water, where it drifts back into the land.
Villum Christensen hit back over a video showing the bulldozer at work on Stillinge Beach in Slagelse in a process branded “completely idiotic” by environmental experts. He said that debris including cigarette butts which were swept up by the bulldozer and then deposited back into the water would “by and large be there anyway,” adding, “The water comes and collects things with it, which drift out into the water again.”
A bizarre court case in Krems, Austria surrounds the fate of a ‘stud’ Husky dog that turned out to have had its testicles removed.
Animal rights activists say they bought the animal for 200 euros (£170) from a farm last summer, claiming that it was being kept in poor conditions.
However, its original owners sued them for its return, claiming that they had been blackmailed into a quick, cheap sale and that the dog, Bello, was worth thousands of euros because of its breeding potential.
When the court was told an ultrasound scan of the dog had revealed its testicles had been removed, Bello’s original owners answered that they “couldn’t see that because of his hair.” The case continues.
UFO sightings across France’s Herault department have turned out to be the work of YouTube prankster Remi Gaillard.
Videos of a glowing oblong object performing somersaults in the air appeared on social media, and the phenomenon was reportedly sighted from Montpellier to Andorra, over 300km (186 miles) away.
Gaillard, who compared his stunt to Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio broadcast of The War Of The Worlds, did not reveal details of how he pulled it off, but admitted that some ‘witnesses’ – including a female farmer who described how the object had buzzed her cows – were fakes paid by him.
A Moroccan man who is believed to have staged a fake diabetic coma on a flight from Casablanca to Istanbul is being held, along with 11 others who ran from the plane when it made an emergency landing in Mallorca.
Police believe the passengers were acting together and were part of a Facebook group called Brooklyn, in which people discussed the best way to force a plane to land.
Twelve passengers who ran away once the Air Arabia Maroc flight landed at Palma have yet to be found. The others were picked up wandering near the airport, while the one thought to be in a coma ‘woke up’ in hospital and claimed asylum.
Sixty flights were diverted or delayed during the incident, which closed Palma’s runways for several hours.
Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn has returned to Germany with an entourage of 250 people, plus 30 poodles.
The 69-year-old, a regular visitor to Bavaria, where he owns a luxury villa, has come back for a visit which seems timed to coincide with a court case at home that could result in protests from pro-democracy activists.
King Maha is said to have booked the entire fourth floor of the Hilton Airport hotel in Munich for 11 days so he and his party can quarantine before heading on to his holiday home.
