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Tropical cyclones get energy from very warm ocean water they sit above which needs to be at least 26.5C or higher to form. Photo: The Solomon Islands Meteorological Service Explainer - The South Pacific tropical cyclone season is due to start in November and will run until the last day of April. On average there's nine each season and tropical cyclones can straddle either end of the season, as seen last year with Lola in October. But what actually is a tropical cyclone and what do all the categories mean? Here's everything you need to know. What is a cyclone? New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) describes tropical cyclones as rotating storms, characterised by a low-pressure centre, strong winds, and thunderstorms that produce heavy rain. NIWA meteoro...

By Chris Isidore for CNN A Boeing 737 MAX plane under construction at a factory in Washington state, USA. Photo: Jennifer Buchanan / Pool / AFP Analysis - Cash-starved Boeing, contending with massive financial losses from a crippling strike and years of operational and safety problems, is turning to major banks and Wall Street to raise tens of billions of dollars in cash. In a regulatory filing early Tuesday, the company announced plans to borrow $10 billion (NZ$16.5bn) from a consortium of banks. It also separately announced plans to raise $25 billion by selling stock and debt. The $10 billion borrowing plans would be included in the $25 billion that Boeing filed to raise. The company's debt surged in the last six years as Boeing reported core operating losses of more than $33 billi...

By Brendan Pierson, Reuters Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: AFP Facebook parent company Meta must face lawsuits by US states accusing it of fueling mental health problems among teens by making its Facebook and Instagram platforms addictive, a federal judge in California ruled on Tuesday. Oakland-based US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected Meta's bid to toss the claims made by the states in two separate lawsuits filed last year, one involving more than 30 states including California and New York and the other brought by Florida. Rogers put some limits on the states' claims, agreeing with Meta that a federal law known as Section 230 regulating online platforms partly shielded the company. However, she found that the states had put forward enough detail about allegedly mis...

By Byron Kaye and Cordelia Hsu, Reuters So far, no country has rolled out an age-based ban targeting internet platforms. Photo: RNZ Pacific/ Koroi Hawkins Analysis - For Tereza Hussein, a 14-year-old refugee who lives in Darwin, Australia's planned social media ban would mean losing a direct line to the most important person to her: a grandmother she has never physically met. "It's the only way I've ever connected to my grandma before, over socials," said Hussein, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo but lived in a refugee camp in Malawi before settling in Australia when she was nine. "It's going to have a very big change in my life because it's going to be hard for me to talk to the people that I've left behind," she said. While Hussein rarely posts on social media, she ...