A half-smoked cigar belonging to celebrated engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel is to go on public display for the first time.

The cigar is part of a large collection of nearly 1,000 Brunel objects donated to the SS Great Britain Trust by collector Clive Richards. The artefacts will joined thousands more at the Being Brunel museum, which is due to open to the public in 2016 at Brunel’s SS Great Britain in Bristol.

Brunel, who smoked 40 cigars a day, was one of the most ingenious and prolific engineers in history, building 25 railway lines, more than 100 bridges and three ships. He suffered with kidney problems for several years before dying of a stroke at 53 in 1859.

No-croak frog is back from brink

A frog with no croak and the world’s biggest lizard are among the top 10 reptiles and amphibians avoiding extinction with the help of zoos, a report has said.

The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums has published the list of reptile and amphibian species benefiting from conservation efforts by zoos in the UK and Ireland.

They include the axolotl, a critically endangered amphibian which retains its tadpole-like appearance as an adult and has an extraordinary ability to regenerate limbs, and the golden mantella, a bright yellow frog which attracts a mate with clicks not croaks.

Seeing red during Spain food fight

The streets of an eastern Spanish town were awash with red pulp as thousands of people pelted each other with tomatoes in the annual Tomatina battle that has become a major tourist attraction.

At the annual fiesta in Bunol, trucks dumped 125 tons of ripe tomatoes for some 22,000 participants – many from abroad – to throw during the hour-long morning festivities.

This was the second year non-resident participants were charged to take part. The town of about 20,000 people began charging to help pay off debts of some €5.5 million.

The event was sold out weeks ahead. It was inspired by a food fight between local children in 1945 in the tomato-producing region.

Punch-up among Macedonia MPs

A debate over Macedonia’s budget degenerated into a fist-fight in a parliamentary committee, with politicians from rival ethnic Albanian parties pushing and punching each other while reportedly trading insults. Local media reported that one member of parliament sought medical treatment for an eye injury.

It was unclear what sparked the brawl between politicians from the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), and the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), which is part of the governing coalition. Footage aired by local media showed about seven members joining the fray. Parliament’s security intervened and separated the fighting officials.

DPA chief coordinator Imer Aliu said the party would be walking out of parliament until the legislature initiates proceedings against the DUI members, while DUI called for an immediate inquiry into the incident.

Tune for equality greets neo-Nazis

Neo-Nazis rallying in the Swedish city of Norrkoping were greeted by the theme song from Schindler’s List ringing from the bells of city hall.

City officials decided the tune from Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Holocaust drama was an appropriate way to demonstrate the city’s belief in “the equal value of all people”.

The bells of the clock tower played the song before and after a political rally by the Party of the Swedes, a small extremist group that wants to stop immigration and reserve Swedish citizenship for people with “Western genetic and cultural heritage”. The party aims to win seats in local assemblies across Sweden in elections on September 14.