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A mass grave containing the bodies of at least 65 migrants has been found in Libya, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said. The IOM said the circumstances of their deaths and their nationalities are still unknown but they believe they died being smuggled through the desert towards the Mediterranean.

The organisation, part of the United Nations, said it was "profoundly shocked" by the discovery.

Libya is investigating, the IOM said.

The grave was found in south-west Libya, it said.

The Andean city of La Oroya, situated in a high-altitude valley at 3,750 meters (12,300 feet), is home to a heavy metal smelter that has poisoned residents and the environment for almost a century. In 2006, La Oroya residents sued the Peruvian government at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for allowing the company to pollute at will.

Since then, the town has often featured on lists of the most polluted places on the planet, rubbing shoulders with sites like Ukraine's nuclear-sullied Chernobyl and Russia's Dzerzhinsk, the site of Cold War-era factories producing chemical weapons.

In its ruling, which is binding, the Costa Rica-based court blamed the Peruvian State "for the violation of the rights to a healthy environment, health, personal integrity, a dignified life... in detriment of the 80 victims" who filed the lawsuit.

The court ordered that Peru carry out an analysis of the contamination of the air, water and soil in La Oroya, provide free medical care to the victims, and adapt the allowed standards for lead, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, mercury and particulate matter.

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Rising global temperatures are accelerating inflation and will likely push the cost of food, goods and services higher for years to come, researchers warned Thursday, the latest example of how the climate crisis is affecting human health and the economy as the costs of adapting to a warming world grow.

Increasing temperatures could boost average inflation by as much as 1.2 percentage points every year until 2035, warned researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the European Central Bank in Germany.

Climate change could drive the cost of food up by as much as 3.2 percentage points a year, said the peer reviewed report, which was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

The findings come from an analysis of monthly consumer price indices and weather data across 121 countries over the last 30 years, which was used to figure out how changing temperatures affect inflation and then combined with climate models projecting future warming over the next few decades over a range of emissions scenarios.

By Tessa Kauer: What could the plot of a movie about The Sims possibly look like, you ask? I have ideas

In his first male film role, Elliot Page brings palpable personal investment and empathy to Dominic Savage's homecoming drama 'Close to You.' "Close to You” marks a reintroduction for Elliot Page, a screen presence at once warmly familiar and sharply redefined, finally established on his own terms. In his first film role since coming out as a trans man, the actor has evidently brought much of his own identity and experience to this sensitively observed story of a trans man cagily reunited with his family after a five-year period of estrangement. (In addition to producing the project, he shares a story-writing credit with director Dominic Savage.) But Page’s performance isn’t moving merely for whatever parallels it might hold to his life: Rather, it’s a reminder of what a deft and perceptive actor he can be, capable of both naked emotional candor and acidic wit — both assets to a script that sometimes errs on the side of caution.

British director Savage is known for his improvisatory collaborations with actors, which recently drew career-best work from Gemma Arterton in the 2017 feature “The Escape,” and extended to the TV project “I Am…,” a series of intimate standalone character portraits by the likes of Samantha Morton, Letitia Wright and a BAFTA-winning Kate Winslet. Crossing over to Canada to work with Page on his home turf, the director’s technique once again gives his star ample leeway to explore himself on screen, in the process capturing something that feels truthful, however fictionally constructed. That sense of raw integrity has stood the film in good stead on the festival circuit, attracting particular interest from LGBT-oriented programmers and distributors, since its buzzy Toronto premiere last fall, shortly after the publication of Page’s memoir “Pageboy.”

Dramatically, however, improv yields mixed rewards in “Close to You,” which bounces between scenes that are finely detailed in their examination of open prejudice and subtler microaggressions in the family sphere, and others that are more vaguely essayed, building relationships on backstories that don’t yet feel fully formed. From-the-gut acting, not just by Page but a fine ensemble of Canuck character players, carries the film across the line, though even at a modest 98 minutes, it could feel tighter...

Five short films from India, Spain, the Philippines, the UK, and the US showcasing LGBTQIA+ narratives that resonate with resilience and authenticity are being screened in 10 cities across India.

British Council in partnership with British BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival launched the 10th edition of the ‘Five Films for Freedom’ last week.

In India, in partnership with The Queer Muslim Project, 12 screenings for the films will be held. At the launch event in Delhi, the first screening was held, showcasing diverse narratives and fostering dialogue on LGBTQIA+ issues.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said on Thursday it has filed a collective complaint to a European rights body to demand that France urgently ensures access to drinking water in its Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe.

The island territory has long faced water shortages, which right groups associate to poor infrastructure and contamination from a toxic pesticide that was for decades used on banana plantations across the region.

"France cannot continue to ignore the recurring problems of the Antilles, they have lasted too long," FIDH's Western Europe head Elena Crespi said in a statement. "It must recognize that the European Social Charter applies to all its territories."

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that only an expansion of land crossings into Gaza could help prevent famine in the densely populated Palestinian enclave.

On a starry night, four Thai marine biologists scuba dived through shallow waters off an island in the country's south as billions of pink specks floated up from the ocean floor in a spectacle that takes place only once a year. The pink specks were sperm and eggs released by coral. The scientists collected as many samples as possible for breeding, as they fight to save Thailand's expansive reefs from degradation driven by warming oceans and human activity like tourism.

Their research is painstaking because the coral only spawn once a year, and it can take up to five years to raise the juveniles in a lab before they are ready to be transferred back onto the seabed.

"We have hope that the degraded coral reefs can recover and return to their former beauty," said one scientist, Nantika Kitsom.

By now, the industry’s inherent problems have been widely enumerated. Among them, streaming companies aren’t acquiring the types of films that formerly defined independent film—the “discovery films,” as attorney and sales agent John Sloss of Cinetic Media calls them. Fewer arthouse distributors have “pay-one” output deals, and without these guaranteed ancillary revenues, it’s harder for these distributors to pay significant advances or commit to robust theatrical releases. Acquisition offers become fewer and less lucrative, which consequently makes equity financiers wary of investing in indie films in the first place—a vicious cycle.

Since the beginning of 2024, Mozambique's northernmost province of Cabo Delgado has been engulfed in a new wave of violence. Repeated clashes between armed insurgents and security forces have been rife in several coastal towns. As a result, around 100,000 people, including over 61,000 children, were displaced between early February and early March, according to the UN migration agency. 

Mozambique has been fighting the jihadist militants in the north since October 2017. 

The insurgent group was initially known as Ansar al-Sunna but proclaimed affiliation with the so-called Islamic State in 2019. It is known locally as al-Shabab, whose name comes from the Arabic word for youth but has no relation to Somalia's al-Shabab militia.

Eyewitnesses repeatedly report brutal violence, beheadings and kidnappings. Around 780,000 people have been displaced because of the seven-year insurgency.

After 15 years of a devastating drought, reservoirs in Chile are running dry, imperiling access to drinking water in the Andean nation. The Cogoti reservoir in the Coquimbo region of northern Chile, a basin with a capacity of 150 million cubic has completely depleted as the southern Hemisphere summer comes to an end...

The historic drought has impacted nearly ever aspect of life in the copper-rich nation, affecting everything from mining output to green areas in the capital.

The World Resources Institute has Chile ranked as one of the most water stressed countries in the world, with a risk it could run out of water supply by 2040.