A Chilean law taking effect on Wednesday has halted six film releases after the government’s new clearance portal exposed controls for productions whose rights it was meant to verify. Producers say the failure has put premieres, ticket sales and hundreds of millions of pesos at risk.
A community campaign for fairer audition bookings has uncovered a little-known register that kept 23 performers from applying to productions at a Lausanne theatre. The venue says it has suspended the practice and will review every entry.
A pre-release Swiss smartphone ran on-device speech translation for 22 hours and 17 minutes in a laboratory test, far beyond the engineers’ expectations. The result could put battery life, rather than camera upgrades, at the centre of the next flagship-phone race.
A typhoon pushed every polling station in one Eastern Samar municipality onto boats for a recall vote that ended with the mayor surviving by just 509 ballots. Electoral officials say no Philippine municipality has previously held an entire election from vessels.
A new €18 million (about $21 million) clinic in Naples opened on Tuesday to a queue of patients and a booking system that had assigned hundreds of people nowhere to go. The regional health chief declared the launch a triumph, then accused critics of “selling panic” as doctors and patients described empty treatment rooms.
A newly elected research council chair says a celebrated study used copied laboratory readings to make a Kenyan geothermal reservoir appear to replenish almost three times faster than new tests indicate. The claim, released after Monday’s vote, could put a KSh6.8 billion (about €44 million) drilling programme on hold.
A rare deluge has turned South Africa’s Namaqualand into a springtime tourism sensation, with flower-route visitors already far exceeding the area’s previous seasonal high. Local businesses say the rush is bringing a welcome boost after rain transformed dry fields into carpets of colour.
A record burst of rain has been followed by an unprecedented public fundraising rush, with millions sending a single peso to a government relief fund. Officials say every contribution will be matched and spent on drainage repairs and neighbourhood flood protection.
A protest by hundreds of online merchants over hidden product rankings turned a Cairo pavement into an unlikely pop-up bazaar on Wednesday. The marketplace’s own app helped steer shoppers to the sellers who had gathered outside its offices.
A Paris cash-management company accidentally routed €940 million of business customers’ money into short-term French government bills, a lawsuit filed this week alleges. The error delayed thousands of payments and has left the firm defending its promise that clients could withdraw their cash at any time.
A lorry crash during preparations for a proposed Swiss multi-sport event exposed a gap in how cantons warn the public when a major route closes, a study published on Wednesday says. Researchers say 1.6 million people living near 11 cross-canton corridors could receive conflicting instructions in a serious disruption.
A blue light swept along 18.4km (11.4 miles) of Egypt’s Lake Qarun shoreline in the longest synchronised glow yet measured at an inland lake, researchers say. Scientists cannot explain what set the flashes pulsing — and have urged officials not to alter the lake’s water level while they investigate.