Oceania Marshall Islands The fish aggregation devices FADs that fishing boats use to make catches easier, lately equipped with satellite communications gear to pinpoint location, are now being built by drug cartels that wrap packs of cocaine and radio transponders to trace troves
Oceania New Zealand According to Rabobank's KiwiHarvest food waste survey, households waste about 13,4% of their food, up from 8,6% in last year's survey; the average household wastes about $1520 worth of food a year
Africa Senegal The National Blood Transfusion Centre has launched an initiative to harness the widespread use of social media to encourage more people to donate blood regularly
Europe Malta Smart City will be given new life with the development of two campuses of the American University of Malta and ITS, with the government taking back almost 45.000 square metres of land to Smart City
America Grenada Government expects a $1 million equipment grant from the Japanese government, to enable better management of the sargassum seaweed scourge, which has been covering beaches along the island's eastern and northern corridors since 2014
Asia India From today, single-use plastic will be banned; the Centre has barred the manufacturing, distribution, importing, sale, stocking and use of all single-use plastic, comprising polystyrene and expanded polystyrene
Africa South Sudan The WB has warned that South Sudan's economy could weaken further, contracting by between 0,8 and 2,8% this year, pointing out that last year South Sudan's gross domestic product contracted by 5,1%
Europe France The Ministry of Economy has confirmed the end of the €38 ceiling for meal vouchers, which will be reduced to €19 from today; the measure was adopted in June 2020 to support restaurateurs
Asia Uzbekistan In a historic first, Uzbekistan's new state-of-the-art gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant in the Qashqadaryo region has started producing synthetic oil
Africa Republic of the Congo Point Noire, an area of strong urban growth with poor addressing of water distribution, lack of rain has brought months of difficulties to get water from distribution points, to the point that many are drilling their own wells
Africa Seychelles Study on a new cryptic species of the sucker-tailed gecko, endemic to the country and discovered on Felicite Island, is contributing to the basic understanding of Seychelles' biodiversity
America Bolivia A number of small wildfires near La Paz have been successfully extinguished in the past days; according to authorities fires are set ‘for fun’ by youngsters
Asia East Timor IMF staff completed the 2022 Article IV mission to East Timor; based on the preliminary findings, staff will prepare a report to be submitted to the IMF Executive Board for discussion and decision
Asia Yemen The UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg denounces the Iran-backed Houthis for rejecting proposals to end the siege of Taiz and threatening to undermine the UN-brokered truce