Colombia’s new digital-transparency law has exposed an undisclosed route used by a government emergency-alert service: messages passed through a commercial audience-measurement firm that kept location-linked delivery data for up to 18 months. Officials say the arrangement has been suspended while they assess what information was retained.
A novel about a Kingston market has won the Blue Banyan Prize after the award’s biggest-ever public vote, igniting a fight over who should decide literary merit. Its author called the result “a door flung open”; the jury chair warned the new formula risks turning a prize into a popularity contest.
A software archivist in Bridgetown has catalogued more Caribbean performance recordings than any previous local collection, using a tool she built to rescue ageing tapes. One newly identified voice belonged to her mother, who had never told her she once performed on radio.
A decade after a communications failure left parts of East Tyrol cut off during flooding, Austrian authorities now rely on a private satellite network for thousands of emergency links. Experts warn that a single operator can still restrict service across an entire region — and that the country has no fast substitute.
A four-day heatwave pushed temperatures in southern Turkey to 42.6°C (108.7°F), sending more than a thousand people to emergency rooms. Health experts say the surge exposed a dangerous gap: the region’s heat plan had switched off before the hottest days arrived.
A nine-hour walkout by satellite-service technicians in Kyiv has exposed a gap between thousands of terminals billed to Ukraine’s emergency communications programme and equipment local officials could verify. The government has frozen a €13m payment while auditors check whether the missing units are mobile stock or a costly failure of oversight.
India will release 2.4 million barrels of crude from strategic reserves after a software failure halted transfers at a major west-coast terminal and left seven tankers waiting offshore. Officials said the disruption had not yet caused fuel shortages, but warned that repairs could take up to five days.
Volcanic ash rose 74 centimetres in a windless chamber, more than six times the previous laboratory benchmark, according to a study published in Italy on Friday. The researchers say electrical forces could lift ash inside real eruption clouds, complicating forecasts of where the particles will travel.
Egypt’s first release of detailed groundwater readings under a new public-data law has revealed salt levels reaching farther inland than at any time in a comparable 39-year record. Researchers warn the finding could reshape water planning for farms and towns across the Nile Delta, though the figures do not mean every local well is unsafe.
A new Irish planning rule took effect on Friday, and a study published the same day warns that it could let altered bogs and coastal sites be judged as if their recent condition were natural. Researchers say missing public photo archives may leave 9,600 hectares without a usable record of how they changed.
New Zealand has frozen new migrations to its flagship domestic cloud programme after a whistleblower demonstrated that recovery keys for government data were being managed from Singapore. The disclosure threatens a NZ$840 million (about €430 million) effort to bring sensitive digital services back onshore, though officials say there is no evidence that records were accessed.
Taipei said Friday that a Taiwanese civic laureate has been offered a place on a 2028 spaceflight after an uncrewed capsule made an emergency landing near Penghu. The offer followed a recovery operation that brought sensitive international research hardware safely ashore.