Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema has abruptly ended the national mourning period of former President Edgar Lungu in an escalating stand-off between the family and the authorities about his burial plans. It follows the last-minute cancellation of the return of Lungu’s body from South Africa by his family on Wednesday, leaving the country uncertain about when and where the former leader will be buried. In his address on Thursday evening, President Hakainde Hichilema announced an immediate end to the mourning period, saying the country needed to “resume normal life”. “The government has done everything possible to engage with the family of...

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is yet to decide whether flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the Air India flight that crashed last Thursday will be sent overseas for decoding and analysis. At least 270 people, most of them passengers, were killed when the London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in western India. Some media outlets reported that the black boxes are being sent abroad, but the ministry of civil aviation clarified that no final decision has been made. The ministry said the AAIB will determine the location for analysis after...

“Where I Started Donating Sperm Fifteen Years Ago, Told Me More Than 100 Babies Had Been Conceived”— Telegram Boss To Leave Fortune To Over 100 Children The founder of instant messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, says the more than 100 children he has fathered will share his estimated $13.9bn (£10.3bn) fortune. “They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don’t want them to tear each other apart after my death,” Mr Durov told French political magazine Le Point. Mr Durov claimed he is the “official father” of six children with three different partners, but the clinic...

Israeli forces have killed 23 Palestinians after opening fire on crowds who had gathered near an aid distribution site, witnesses and medics say. Tanks and drones fired at thousands of people near an aid distribution centre in central Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the witnesses and medics said. A spokesperson for al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat confirmed that 23 bodies and more than 100 wounded people had been brought there. Images from the hospital showed bodies on the floor. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. The Hamas-run health ministry says more than...

A 12-year-old girl has died and seven other children have been taken to hospital in an outbreak of severe food poisoning centred around a northern French town. Symptoms began to emerge on 12 June in and around Saint-Quentin, south of Lille, with the children rushed to hospital over the following days. The cause of the outbreak is yet to be identified, as the children, aged 1-12, are not thought to have mixed in the same groups. The girl died on Monday from a rare condition called haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) linked to acute kidney failure, according to the local prefect in...

The Los Angeles Dodgers say they blocked federal agents from entering their stadium on Thursday, as protests against immigration enforcement continue in the city. In a post on social media, the baseball team said “ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots”, and were subsequently turned away. Los Angeles is among the cities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have ramped up raids to find and deport undocumented migrants. ICE responded to the Dodgers statement on X: “False. We were never there.” The Department of Homeland Security too issued a statement saying the...

China’s military has called a British warship’s recent passage through the Taiwan Strait a disruptive act of “intentional provocation” that “undermines peace and stability”. The British Royal Navy says HMS Spey’s patrol on Wednesday was part of a long-planned deployment and was in accordance with international law. The patrol – the first by a British naval vessel in four years – comes as a UK carrier strike group arrives in the region for a deployment that will last several months. China considers Taiwan its territory – a claim that self-ruled Taiwan rejects – and has not ruled out the use...

“We are hitting with precision the target of the nuclear and missile program and they are hitting a hospital where people can’t even get up and run away They are hitting not far from here, there is a children and babies ward here, that’s the whole difference between a democracy and taking a lawful action to save itself from these murderers.”