Japan's space agency said a rocket carrying eight satellites failed just after liftoff Wednesday and had to be aborted by a self-destruction command, in the country's first failed rocket launch in nearly 20 years.

The Epsilon-6 rocket was not in the right position to orbit around the Earth and its flight had to be aborted less than seven minutes after takeoff from the Uchinoura Space Center in the southern Japanese prefecture of Kagoshima, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency President Hiroshi Yamakawa told an online news conference.

The pound sank against the dollar early Wednesday after the Bank of England confirmed it won't extend an emergency debt-buying plan introduced last month to stabilize financial markets.

Bank Governor Andrew Bailey said the program will end on Friday as scheduled.

A senior German state official announced his resignation Wednesday amid questions over his management of deadly floods that hit his region last year.

Roger Lewentz, the interior minister of the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate for the past 11 years, said he was "taking the political responsibility for mistakes that were made in my area of responsibility."

The French government on Wednesday started the process of requisitioning workers at petrol depots of ExxonMobil's French branch Esso in an attempt to ensure that service stations around the country are supplied with badly needed fuel amid an ongoing strike.

France's Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne asked prefects at the National Assembly to launch the procedure "to requisition workers who are indispensable to the functioning" of the Esso petrol depots and is expected to make a similar decision soon regarding Total facilities if salary negotiations do not start quickly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow is ready to resume gas supplies to Europe via a link of the Germany-bound Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea, but that "the ball was in the EU's court."

Speaking at a Moscow energy forum, Putin again charged that the U.S. was likely behind the explosions that ripped through both links of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and one of the two links of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, causing a massive gas leak and taking them out of service.

Ukraine's biggest nuclear plant, which is surrounded by Russian troops, has lost all external power needed for vital safety systems for the second time in five days, the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog said Wednesday, calling it a "deeply worrying development."

The warning from International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi came amid a flurry of developments in Russia's war in Ukraine. Ukraine's military command said its forces recaptured five settlements in the southern Kherson region, and Russia's main domestic security agency said eight people had been arrested in connection with the weekend Crimea bridge blast.

Joe Biden's three-state swing out West this week will capture, in a nutshell, the White House's midterm strategy for a president who remains broadly unpopular: promote his administration's accomplishments and appear where he can effectively rally the party faithful — all while continuing to rake in campaign cash.

Biden's first stop Wednesday is near Vail, Colorado, where he is to designate his administration's first national monument at the behest of Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, the state's senior senator who finds himself in a competitive reelection bid. Then the president will head to California, where he will hold a pair of events promoting two of his most significant legislative achievements and headline a fundraiser for the House Democrats' campaign arm.

Israel's Security Cabinet on Wednesday voted in favor of the U.S.-brokered maritime border deal with Lebanon, the first of several procedural hurdles before the agreement is formally adopted.

The snap vote by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid's senior ministers came a day after he announced that Israel agreed to the terms of the landmark deal between the two sides that have formally been in a state of war since 1948.

Some 477 pilot whales have died after stranding themselves on two remote New Zealand beaches over recent days, officials say.

None of the stranded whales could be refloated and all either died naturally or were euthanized in a "heartbreaking" loss, said Daren Grover, the general manager of Project Jonah, a nonprofit group which helps rescue whales.

A new liquefied natural gas project off Africa's western coast may only be 80% complete, but already the prospect of a new energy supplier has drawn visits from the leaders of Poland and Germany.

The initial field near Senegal and Mauritania's coastlines is expected to contain about 15 trillion cubic feet (425 billion cubic meters) of gas, five times more than what gas-dependent Germany used in all of 2019. But production isn't expected to start until the end of next year.