From stolen bananas to priapic giants, here is your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
What's the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent McDonald's meal?
A 21-year-old Frenchman has been charged with negligent driving in Australia after reports that he crashed an SUV into a fountain, causing an estimated Aus$15,000 ($10,700) in damage.
But police said they found him still behind the wheel and tucking into a takeaway when they turned up at the scene in downtown Sydney's Hyde Park early on Wednesday.
"Half of it (the SUV) was sticking inside, and half of it was sticking out, with the driver still inside," police inspector Anderson Lessing told local radio station 702 ABC Sydney after the accident.
"Strangely, he was still eating Macca's there."
The driver, who was uninjured, claimed he was delivering a food order at the time.
A French museum has lodged a criminal complaint after the theft of a banana that forms a core part of a multimillion-dollar artwork by Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan.
An eagle-eyed guard at the Pompidou-Metz museum noticed that the fruit, which was taped to the wall, had gone missing on Saturday.
It's not the first time the conceptual artwork entitled "Comedian" has been damaged: last July, a visitor ate the banana, prompting the museum to quickly stick up a replacement.
"Comedian", which aims to question the notion of art and its value, was also eaten at the 2019 Art Basel show, while another iteration was scoffed in Hong Kong in 2024, days after it was bought for $5.2 million.
Cattelan has had a bunch of bad luck with his creations: in 2020, thieves stole an 18-carat fully functioning gold toilet called "America" when it was on display in Britain.
It's hard to miss the Cerne Abbas Giant on a chalk hillside in southwest England: at 55 metres (180 feet) tall, he's also naked and has a 10-metre erect penis.
The so-called "Rude Man", who is thought to be an ancient fertility symbol, needs a regular wash and brush up, and hundreds of volunteers from far and wide have been hard at work giving him a good clean.
"Typically, we carry out this work every 10 years, but we noticed it was starting to look a bit dull and needed some attention," said Liz Flight from the National Trust heritage conservation charity.
The priapic giant's last makeover was in 2019 but Flight said heavier winter rains were washing away the chalk while increasingly frequent heatwaves had hastened the growth of algae and weeds, blurring the distinctive outline.
The origins of the Cerne Abbas Giant remain shadowy: the National Trust believes it was likely carved during the late Anglo-Saxon period, between 700 and 1100 AD.
Restorers have also been hard at work in Milan, repairing the worn-down tiled testicles of a mosaic bull that it is the symbol of the Italian city.
Legend has it that grinding one's heel on the private parts of the depiction in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade near Milan's Duomo cathedral guarantees that the visitor will return.
But the city authorities said that's also caused some understandable wear and tear.
"Because of constant pirouettes on the heel made by tourists visiting Milan, the pink tesserae that make up the testicles have been worn down, forming a small crater," it explained.
"It's probably a charming gesture but also quite damaging for a work of art," restorer Gianluca Galli told AFP as he cut new pieces of stone by hand, and explained how he would use epoxy resins to lessen future damage.
While the bull was out of action, visitors were instead seen pirouetting on a nearby she-wolf mosaic representing Rome.
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