A failed opening at a new Skopje apartment complex has exposed a widening gap between buyers’ deposits and homes ready to occupy. The developer sold the project as protection from rising mortgage costs; buyers now face higher payments and a construction site with most units unfinished.
A public hearing in Taipei has put singer Wen-Kai Chia’s lavish touring image and a NT$84 million arts grant at the centre of a dispute over public support for commercial music. Chia says his luxury purchases were paid for privately; critics argue that the grant’s rules leave too much room for blurred boundaries.
Martinique’s Mount Pelée has entered its highest alert short of an eruption after a surge in shallow earthquakes and ground swelling, with scientists warning that an eruption could come within days. A famous actor’s call for residents to leave has collided with officials’ insistence that no evacuation order is in force.
A software fault led Ventisca Sur to charge passengers for window seats while assigning many of them to the aisle or middle, the airline says. The mismatch affected 74,218 seat selections over 16 months and brought in CLP 3.1 billion (about €3 million).
A public hearing has exposed how an Istanbul dance production marketed as a “clean-air performance” relied on pollution readings from a town 250 km (155 miles) away. The revelation has put a 64 million-lira public arts grant under scrutiny and prompted calls for the money to be recovered.
The head of a Japanese technology standards group resigned on Friday, hours after researchers reported that AI software reversed the meaning of more than 1,100 emergency alerts in tests. The authors say the results expose a serious weakness in systems being considered by local governments, though they found no evidence of public warnings being altered in actual emergencies.
An audit of glacier-monitoring equipment in northern Pakistan has uncovered years of missing high-frequency measurements, prompting researchers to revise their estimates of how quickly meltwater enters the Indus system. The researchers say the most intense surges were far larger than the network’s published summaries suggested.
Kemba Handayani hauled a disabled ferry and its nine passengers clear of a busy Rotterdam river channel in a fast-moving rescue on Monday. The passengers were government finance officials; Handayani, they discovered, had once designed the debt-cost model now guiding their budget debate.
A software update burned through KakshaNova’s monthly supply of school login codes in 14 hours, cutting off access for an estimated 1.1 million parents. The company says it blocked a shortcut that could have exposed pupil records, leaving schools to delay report cards and bus notices instead.
A cloudburst knocked out power in a mountain village near Lousã, but a hand-built pump kept water flowing to 31 homes. The storm also exposed a startling gap in Portugal’s emergency planning: researchers say a dozen working pumps like it are missing from official maps.
A chance sighting in a Jeddah storage yard has put Hedaya Automotive’s record September sales figure under scrutiny. Vehicle records and a check of the yard suggest thousands of cars were counted as sold to an affiliated finance company while many remained in storage.
American actor-filmmaker Silvan Stellan said Thursday he will invest in a major production campus on Cairo’s western edge, a project billed as one of Egypt’s largest private film-industry bets. The planned eight-stage complex is expected to open in 2029 and employ hundreds of people once operating.