A giant new store in Gothenburg opened before dawn on Friday after a scheduling error, then displayed thousands of goods at a fraction of their intended prices. The retailer says it will honour the mistaken bargains, which left a crowd of early customers grinning and its launch team scrambling.
A floating basketball court carrying 26 people broke free off Cebu on Thursday evening and drifted towards a busy ferry lane before fishing boats and a patrol launch brought everyone ashore. The rescue has prompted fury over how an event billed as a sporting spectacle was allowed to put players and officials on a platform with a disputed mooring plan.
A French audit has found that key instruments at Piton de la Fournaise were filtering out most low-frequency tremors, as fresh readings point to magma rising beneath Réunion. Scientists say an eruption could begin within 72 hours, while officials urge residents not to panic.
An Izmir appeals clerk has beaten a government AI system in a nationwide public-service contest, winning a €126,000 grant for his office. Then he recognised the final test: it was based on the heating-aid appeal he once filed for his mother.
A research contest on a privately run test train has uncovered a long, unrecorded plume of lithium-bearing dust in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The result has put the prize on hold and prompted demands for urgent sampling near a major brine operation.
A community-led Czech technology compact says 42 towns will pool CZK 1.9 billion (about €78 million) to buy shared cloud and AI services, promising savings of nearly a third. Its announcement today sets up a fast-moving test of whether local authorities can cut their technology bills without handing more control to global providers.
A parcel courier’s chance discovery of unused staff flats in Łódź has prompted logistics company Kresna Route to announce a decade-long plan to create 1,200 affordable rentals. The company says the first 216 homes will be renovated at the former depot where she found the building.
A walkout at a Lille payment processor set off a bizarre accounting fault on Friday, briefly showing 22,400 French merchants as having received an extra €312 million. Banks froze the apparent windfall while the company worked to untangle a duplicate settlement batch.
A sudden shortage of 16mm film has delayed six Ukrainian productions, after a publicly funded thriller secured most of the country’s latest shipment. A contract and supply records show that hundreds of reels listed as an industry reserve were kept under the film’s producer’s control.
On the fifth anniversary of a spectacular algorithmic trading bust, Baltic savers are revisiting the losses that turned a trendy investment app into a cautionary tale. The vanished money is only part of the damage: some former customers say they have not trusted a market rebound since.
A 21-second video from a Warsaw party meeting has forced a governing coalition partner to abandon its hand-picked leadership slate and put five executive seats to a vote of all its members. The decision, announced after delegates drowned out senior officials with cheers, could reshape the party before next year’s budget fight.
A beekeeper following muddy paw prints in the Tyrolean Alps has led officials to a long-sealed tunnel used by brown bears to cross from Austria into Italy. Camera footage and hair samples suggest at least three bears made the underground journey in less than two weeks, forcing both countries to rethink how they monitor the animals.