Utrecht, Netherlands

Multistorey bike park: The world’s largest multistorey parking facility for bicycles has opened in Utrecht, the Dutch city that in 1885 became one of the first in the world to have a cycle lane on its roads. Tens of thousands of people ride bikes in Utrecht every day, and the local infrastructure has been heavily modified to accommodate them. The new three-storey bike park, at Utrecht’s main railway station, has space for 12,656 bikes, including “cargo bikes” that can hold a family. Parking is free for up to 24 hours. According to government statistics, a quarter of commuter trips in the Netherlands are made by bike – but in the main cities, including Utrecht, the proportion is even higher.

Paris

English lessons: President Macron’s favoured candidate for mayor of Paris has announced that he wants to ensure all Parisian children are “bilingual”, with English, by the age of 16. Benjamin Griveaux, 41, Macron’s former spokesman and key confidant, said it was deplorable that “Paris is a global city where we speak English badly, when it is an essential language to travel and work” – and that ensuring children learned English would be a “useful investment for the future”. If elected next spring, he hopes to introduce English lessons in nurseries, and get schools to run extracurricular activities in English, The Daily Telegraph reported. Unlike his predecessors, President Macron likes to speak in English when meeting foreign leaders, and often peppers his speeches with English words – which hasn’t always gone well. Shortly after being elected, he was mocked for vowing to make France “une start-up nation”.

Chia, Sardinia

Stealing sand: Two French tourists are facing up to six years in prison for trying to smuggle sand out of Sardinia. The couple were arrested after police found 14 plastic bottles containing 40kg of sand in the boot of their car during a routine check at the ferry port of Porto Torres, on the north coast of the Italian island. They admitted taking the fine white sand from a beach near Chia – but said they had no idea that it was a criminal offence (despite numerous signs to that effect), and had taken it as a “souvenir”. Theft of sand and shells from Sardinia’s beaches is very common, according to local police, and they often appear for sale on such sites as eBay. Most tourists do not “spend their time digging up to 40kg of sand each”, noted environmental scientist Pierluigi Cocco. But even if only 5% of the million visitors to Sardinia each year took sand home, it would lead to significant losses.

Frankfurt, Germany

Recession looms: Germany’s central bank has issued a stark warning that the country’s economy – by some distance Europe’s largest – is slowing and may be slipping into recession (defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction). Germany’s GDP shrank by 0.1% in the three months to the end of June, a decline blamed by the Bundesbank on a sharp fall in exports – of cars and industrial equipment in particular – as a result of the US-China trade war, weakness in the global car market and anxiety about a disorderly Brexit. On Monday, the bank warned that the economy looked set to remain “lacklustre” during the current quarter, and predicted that GDP could “fall slightly”. In recent weeks economists, business groups and politicians have urged the government to set aside self-imposed rules on maintaining a budget surplus, and to start spending in order to stimulate the economy.

Rome

PM quits: Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte (pictured) abruptly quit on Tuesday – after blasting deputy PM Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League party, as a cynical opportunist who is “obsessed” with closing off Italy’s ports to migrants. In a dramatic address to the Senate, with Salvini sitting at his side, the normally mild-mannered technocrat savaged Salvini for acting “irresponsibly” in the interests of himself and his party – and not in the national interest – by breaking his alliance with the Five Star Movement, and lobbying for fresh elections ( see page 17).

Moscow

Protests continue: Protesters holding placards held a series of one-person demonstrations in central Moscow on Saturday, in an attempt to get round the rules banning mass protests that have led to thousands of arrests in recent weeks. There have been mass protests in Moscow every weekend since mid-July, when the city authorities banned high-profile opposition candidates from standing in municipal elections. Around 3,000 people have been arrested so far, and several key opposition activists, including Alexei Navalny, remain behind bars. Earlier this month, prosecutors warned a couple who were filmed at an unauthorised protest with their one-year-old son that the boy could be taken into care.

Sopron, Hungary

Key “picnic” remembered: Angela Merkel travelled to the Hungarian town of Sopron this week to attend a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the “Pan-European Picnic”, a unity event that helped lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and ultimately German reunification. On 19 August 1989, thousands of Hungarians and Austrians gathered at their joint border – where the fence was effectively the “Iron Curtain” separating the Soviet-controlled eastern bloc from the rest of Europe. The plan was for small delegations to cross for a few hours, but in the event, some 600 East Germans on holiday in the area surged into Austria, to get to West Germany. In Sopron, Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, said Hungary’s decision to relax border controls had helped make “the miracle of German reunification possible”, and thanked its border guards for their restraint that day.