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Japan's Space One's small, solid-fuelled Kairos rocket exploded shortly after its inaugural launch on Wednesday as the firm tried to become the first Japanese company to put a satellite in orbit. The 18-metre (59 ft), four-stage solid-fuel rocket exploded seconds after lifting off just after 11:01 a.m. (0201 GMT), leaving behind a large loud of smoke, a fire, fragments of the rocket and firefighting water sprays near the launch pad, visible on local media livestreams of the launch on the tip of mountainous Kii peninsula in western Japan.

Space One said the flight was "interrupted" after the launch and was investigating the situation. There was no immediate indication of what caused the explosion, or whether there were any injuries. Pads typically have no people anywhere nearby during a launch. Space One has said the launch is highly automated and requires roughly a dozen staff at the ground control centre.
Kairos carried an experimental government satellite that can temporarily replace intelligence satellites in orbit if they fall offline.

Space One had planned the launch for Saturday but postponed it after a ship entered the nearby restricted sea area.

Federated States of Micronesia President Wesley Simina has declared a national emergency due to severe drought, and sent it to his country's Congress for review. The president's signed declaration said the nation has been experiencing "extremely and unusually low levels" of rainfall, and it is anticipated that this condition will continue to intensify in the coming months.

"The impacts of lack of rain are causing rain catchment and rivers systems across the nation to run dry; and for the inhabitants especially in the Outer Islands, who are dependent on these systems, the threat of sustained decline in water supply is causing tremendous impact upon sanitation and public health," the statement said. "The forecast of rainfall across FSM is already showing that the rainfall levels will continue to decrease."

The states of Yap, Pohnpei and Chuuk have declared an emergency according to their respective state laws.

Influential people in Ghana are speaking out against the country’s dangerous anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) bill that increases criminal penalties for consensual same-sex conduct and criminalizes individuals and organizations who advocate for the rights of LGBT people.

Last week, Samia Nkrumah, a former member of parliament and chair of a major political party in Ghana, urged the president to veto an anti-LGBT bill, calling it “brutal, harsh, and unjust.” Nkrumah’s father, Kwame, is a towering figure in Africa and Ghana’s history, having led the independence movement and served as the country’s first president and prime minister in the 1950s and 60s.

On February 28, Ghana’s parliament passed a draconian bill that increases criminal penalties for consensual same-sex conduct and criminalizes individuals and organizations who advocate for the rights of LGBT people. Additionally, the bill criminalizes failure to report an LGBT person to the authorities and to report anyone who uses their social media platform to produce, publish, or disseminate content promoting activities prohibited by the bill.

Starring Frank Sinatra as a heroin addicted drummer, fresh out of prison and dealing with gangsters Watch the trailer for the theme tune alone!

In 1999, Jamie (Qualley) and Marian (Viswanathan) take a “drive-away” rental car job from Philadelphia to Tallahassee — and get mixed up with some dodgy characters.

Drive-Away Dolls was originally called ‘Drive-Away Dykes’ — a far better, funnier, and frankly more accurate title than the marketing- friendly one eventually settled on. (That original title is even cheekily acknowledged in the closing credits.) Because this film is, to use the technical parlance, hella lesbian: from the comedy-cunnilingus found in the opening five minutes to the “very committed lesbians” of a college soccer team, Dolls wears its sapphic colours loud and proud.

That’s notable, given that this is a Coen brother film, singular. Directed by Ethan Coen (his first without bigger brother Joel, if you don’t count his 2022 Jerry Lee Lewis documentary), and co-written by Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, who is queer, there is a unique energy here which can’t be found in any of the previous 18 films from the brothers. It has a specificity, in subject matter and period, that feels refreshing, a rare example of the Coen-canon that centres female, gay characters...

At least three million Tanzanians were pushed into poverty during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Bank says in its latest report. In the 20th edition of Tanzania Economic Update, the World Bank says the number of Tanzanians living in poverty surged from 14 million in 2018 to 17 million by 2022.

This figure continued to rise, with an additional 300,000 individuals falling into poverty by December 2023, bringing the total to 17.3 million.

Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector. The report is a key step in a process defined by the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI), a Seychelles-based nonprofit.

FiTI announced on Jan. 26 that Madagascar had published the report, covering the 2022 fiscal year and containing previously undisclosed information, in December. Madagascar is one of just a handful of countries to have achieved this step in the FiTI process, Cabo Verde having published its first report around the same time. The same day, the U.S. pledged support to help Madagascar fight illegal fishing.

The launch of the FiTI report is a first step towards better transparency of the fisheries sector in Madagascar,” Ketakandriana Rafitoson, executive director of Transparency International–Initiative Madagascar (TI-MG) and an author of the report as well as a current FiTI board member, told Mongabay. “However, a lot of efforts still have to be undertaken to fully comply with the FiTI’s 12 transparency requirements.”

The fisheries industry is one of the most vital and lucrative in Madagascar, an island nation with more than 5,600 kilometers (3,500 miles) of coastline and around 1.2 million square kilometers (463,300 square miles) of economic exclusive zone. The sector has an annual production capacity of $750 million, which is 5-7% of the national GDP, according to the fisheries ministry citing World Bank data. More than 500,000 fishers living along the island’s coastline rely on marine resources for food and incomes while feeding millions of people.

President of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) Nguyen Dinh Khang has engaged in discussions with representatives of labour unions from Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay, as part of his working trip to South America and attendance to the second conference of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) Presidential Council held in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

While in Brazil, Khang, who is also WFTU Vice President, held talks with leaders of the Central of Workers of Brazil (CTB) and numerous bilateral meetings to strengthen ties with WFTU member unions, especially those in the Americas such as the Cuban workers' center (CTC), Workers' General Confederation of Peru (CGTP), Argentine Leather Manufacturing Union (SAMC), and Transport Workers’ Union of Uruguay.

From March 5 to 7, the Vietnamese delegation met with Secretary General of the Peruvian Communist Party (PCP) Luis Alberto Villanueva Carbajal and Secretary General of the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP) Gerónimo López Sevillano, while holding a working session with the Federation of Construction Workers of Peru (FTCCP).

It was the most watchable Oscars in years where Brits and Godzilla triumphed – but Louis Vuitton zippers and a certain ex-president didn’t

The young asylum seeker was forced into piloting the boat on which at least four people drowned. Under new ‘stop the boats’ laws, he’s responsible for their deaths – but others say he’s a victim

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has resigned as head of the Caribbean nation, the leader of a regional body said on Monday, an unelected role the 74-year-old neurosurgeon has held since the 2021 assassination of the country's last president."We acknowledge his resignation upon the establishment of transitional presidential council and naming an interim prime minister," said Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chair and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, thanking Henry for his service to Haiti.

Henry traveled to Kenya late last month to secure its leadership of a United Nations-backed international security mission to help police fight armed gangs, but a drastic escalation of violence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, during his absence left him stranded in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

Ali said the presidential council would have two observers and seven voting members, including representatives from several coalitions, the private sector, civil society and one religious leader.

Norwegian salmon farms are taking huge amounts of wild fish from West Africa, mining the food security of the region, according to a report from the U.K.-based NGO Feedback. The analysis comes as the industry faces a wave of public opposition after revelations of high mortality rates and the sale of fish deemed unfit for human consumption, along with accusations of antitrust violations by the European Commission.

The report, titled “Blue Empire,” was produced with other organizations including Greenpeace Africa and The West African Association for the Development of Artisanal Fishing and published in January. It quantifies the use of fishmeal and fish oil imported from Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia in the production of feed for salmon farms in Norway, the world’s main producer of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).

According to the report, in 2020, Norwegian salmon farms required almost 2 million metric tons of edible wild fish to produce fish oil intended for feeds that produced nearly 1.5 million metric tons of farmed salmon.

Up to 7% of these wild fish (123,000-144,000 metric tons) were small pelagic species caught along the coasts of West Africa, where they could have fed between 2.5 million and 4 million people, according to the report.

Via @tree