A slender delicately-perfumed white orchid unique to Madagascar is the pick of the French cosmetics industry to symbolise its new commitment to biodiversity and sustainable development. Angraecum eburneum longicalcar had all but disappeared from its natural habitat, but will now be grown in Madagascar and exported to France.
In 2003, officials overseeing an election in Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels, got a shock. An electronic vote-counting machine declared that 4 096 more people had cast their vote than the ballot slips testified. The machine had been thoroughly tested. So what went wrong? The answer was, literally, a strike from the heavens.