A bizarre Christmas tradition which has been going on since for nearly 200 years in Germany has finally been banned. The Klaasohm festival on Borkum Island, which lies near the German border with the Netherlands on the North Sea coast, dates back to the 1830s. 

The festival takes place on December 5, on the eve of St Nicholas Day on December 6, otherwise known as the Feast of Saint Nicholas, in honour of the patron saint who is the inspiration for Father Christmas. St Nicholas Day is celebrated in many Western Christian countries in various ways. In Germany children put out a boot overnight and it is filled with sweets ‘by St Nicholas’ if the child has been good over the past year, or there is a stick left in the boot, if the child is deemed to have been naughty.

However, on Borkum Island, which lies around 250 miles from the coast of East Anglia, there has also been a very different tradition involving adults on the night before the more wholesome feast day. 

Known as the Klaasohm festival, the tradition involved six young unmarried men dressing in bizarre bovine-like costumes who would then seek out women on the island to hit them on the buttocks with a cow horn.

However, when footage of a woman being hit on the bottom by a man with a horn was filmed on German ARD television in 2023 the public and authorities expressed outrage. 

Following reports of aggressive behaviour by some men towards women the association that organised the festival, known as the Borkum Boys Association, said the practice would be scrapped and it would no longer tolerate violence against women.

Speaking in 2024 when the ban came into force, the island’s mayor, Jürgen Akkermann, said that the violence had developed from “a tradition of a kind of chastisement” of people who approach the “Klaasohms”, men dressed up in masks, sheepskin and feathers, without permission.

He said that, following earlier incidents, a rethinking had already started over the past decade, but the matter hadn’t been pursued emphatically enough until now.

According to German broadcaster NDR, the festival was celebrated this year, but without any cow horn-related violence against the female population of the island. Speaking ahead of the event on Friday night mayor Akkermann added: “We hope to experience a wonderful Klaasohm.” 

The festival involves six young men dressed as Klaasohms who still rampaged around Borkum on Friday but without any incident, according to local police. The Klaasohms ended their run around town by leaping off a pillar constructed in the town into the waiting crowd, similar to a rock star attempting to crowd-surf from a stage. 

One of the UK’s favourite holiday destination has declared a flu epidemic, requiring anyone with symptoms to wear masks in public. Manuela Garcia, Minister for Health on the Balearic Islands archipelago, warned that infections could reach their peak in coming weeks, spelling trouble for Brits hoping to escape the winter blues by heading abroad for Christmas. Majorca, one of the archipelago’s most popular tourist spots, averages 16C in December and offers six hours of sunshine daily.

Despite a recent spate of anti-tourism protests, UK residents have continued to flood the strained spot in hordes, but they could get more than they bargained for while visiting this month. Ms Garcia said this week that the Balearics had officially entered a flu epidemic phase after 37.3 infections were recorded per 100,000 inhabitants and urged residents to innoculate themselves against infection, the Majorca Daily Bulletin reports.

Ms Garcia said that the recent rise in case numbers signalled an unusually early peak of flu contagion, with the highest number of infections normally recorded in January.

She said the situation had forced officials to implement urgent contingency plans including opening additional hospital beds and hiring new healthcare personnel.

As well as urging anyone showing flu symptoms to cover their faces in public, she said healthcare workers and those regularly in contact with elderly and vulnerable people should take similar precautions to those observed during the Coronavirus pandemic.

“All the measures we learned during COVID are absolutely still valid,” she said.

The archipelago’s Regional Ministry of Health said locals and visitors should prepare for a general increase in cases of respiratory viruses throughout December – in particular, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, both of which are linked to seasonal factors.

The confirmation of an official epidemic was accompanied by the approval of a series of measures aimed at tackling different intensities of infection, from mask-wearing to protocols in hospitals and nursing homes.

Spanish health minister Monica Garcia said on social media: “We have approved a common protocol with all the autonomous communities for dealing with flu, Covid-19 and other respiratory infections. Teleworking and masks in healthcare centres save lives. We said it was necessary and possible. And we have achieved it.” 

The population of Iran‘s capital city is facing evacuation as the threat posed by dwindling water supplies continues to mount. The Karaj Dam, which supplies Tehran’s 15 million residents with a quarter of their drinking water, is currently at just 8% capacity, with others in similarly dire straits, prompting officials to consider drastic measures. The Middle Eastern country has been contending with severe drought for six years due to low rainfall, with reservoir levels reaching especially critical levels in recent months.

Water rationing has already been imposed in some parts of the city, but the worsening trend is also forcing discussion of more drastic solutions. Professor Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations‘ (UN) University Institute for Water, said Tehran only has “a few days or even weeks of water left”.

He told CBC: “Day Zero, as we call it in the water sector, is near. It’s a day that the taps would run dry.”

Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian warned last month that if the city doesn’t see rain by late November, rationing would begin, with evacuation as the next step.

Tehran, and the wider country, has grown increasingly vulnerable to drought in recent decades because of factors including its water-intensive irrigation, subsidised water use, and mass migration into urban areas, overstretching resources.

But Iran’s energy minister Ali Abadi has also blamed the crisis on water leakage from Tehran’s 100-year-old water infrastructure and damage from the country’s 12-day conflict with Israel in June.

Tehran is not the only city to have faced a potential “Day Zero” crisis, with Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Cape Town among those caught in a similar bind, the latter just last year.

For Iran, though, the problem isn’t a new one, with president Pezeshkian warning of looming water shortages as far back as 2011. Professor Madani told Sky News: “These things were not created overnight.

“They’re the product of decades of bad management, lack of foresight, overreliance and false confidence in how much infrastructure and engineering projects can do in a country that is relatively water short.”