Author: BBC

52 minutes agoShareA selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent:JOHN WESSELS/AFPOn the eve of Mauritania’s presidential election, a man arrives at the Grand Mosque in Nouakchott for Friday prayers… JOHN WESSELS/AFPDays later supporters of the incumbent president celebrate his re-election. The runner-up, an anti-slavery campaigner, alleges that the vote was stolen.LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGESOn Saturday, Ayra Starr becomes the first Afrobeats artist to perform on the Pyramid stage at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival…OLI SCARFF/AFPFollowed the next day by fellow Nigerian star Burna Boy.GILBERT FLORES/GETTY IMAGESAlso on Sunday, South African singer Tyla appears at the BET awards in…

53 minutes agoBy Michael Dempsey, Technology ReporterAerolaneDubbed the “flying piano”, Aerolane’s test aircraft is surfing air currentsUS start-up Aerolane is seeking the secret to airborne surfing.Geese already know how to do it. When you see them flying in a v-formation, they are surfing on the air currents created by formation members ahead and around them.At an airfield in Texas, Todd Graetz is hoping to use that concept to disrupt the market for air cargo.Aerolane has been mimicking the tricks used by migrating birds, aided by modified planes towed into the air by another aircraft.Smoke released from the leading plane allowed cameras installed…

35 minutes agoBy Tom Singleton, Technology reporterGetty ImagesThree decades on from the day it began, it is hard to get your head around the scale of Amazon.Consider its vast warehouse in Dartford, on the outskirts of London. It has millions of stock items, with hundreds of thousands of them bought every day – and it takes two hours from the moment something is ordered, the company says, for it to be picked, packed and sent on its way.Now, picture that scene and multiply it by 175. That’s the number of “fulfilment centres”, as Amazon likes to call them, that it has around…

A US citizen has been sentenced to 12.5 years at a maximum security penal colony by a Russian court after being convicted on drugs charges. Robert Woodland, 32, was detained in Moscow in January and accused by prosecutors of seeking to sell a large quantity of methadone. His lawyer told the Reuters news agency that he had partially confessed to the charges.Mr Woodland, who was born in Russia and adopted when he was two, had travelled to the country in 2020 to find his birth mother. His journey was documented by a Russian reality TV programme.He is the latest US…

A growing number of candidates and activists in France have been targeted with violent or verbal attacks in the run-up to Sunday’s tense final round of parliamentary elections.Government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot was putting up election posters with her deputy and a party activist in Meudon, south-west of Paris, when they were brutally assaulted by a gang of youths.Other election campaigners have come under attack across France, reflecting the febrile mood in politics with the far-right National Rally (RN) the front-runner in the election.The motive for the attack on Ms Thevenot and her colleagues is not clear, but she returned to…

Police in Ecuador say they have freed 49 people who had been kidnapped by a criminal gang in the southern of the country. Two of the suspected kidnappers were arrested during the joint raid by the Ecuadorean security forces in a mining area in Azuay province.The powerful Los Lobos (The Wolves) gang was behind the kidnapping, police said. Ecuador has seen a surge in gang violence in recent years as transnational criminal organisations have expanded in to the Andean country to take advantage of its large ports to export drugs. Video released by police shows heavily armed officers entering what…

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group has launched more than 200 rockets and attack drones into northern Israel, in response to the killing of one of its senior commander.Israel’s military said one of its officers was killed in the barrage, which started a number of fires. The military also said it had targeted Hezbollah “military structures” and other targets in southern Lebanon in response. Lebanese media reported that one person was killed in an Israeli drone strike in the town of Houla.The latest barrage, which followed one comprising 100 rockets on Wednesday afternoon, was one of the biggest so far in the…

Twenty-five soldiers with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s army have been sentenced to death for fleeing battles against the notorious M23 rebels in the conflict-hit east of the country.The soldiers were also convicted of theft by a military tribunal as they stole goods from shops in a nearby village after abandoning their positions, an army spokesman said. Four of the soldiers’ wives were acquitted by the military court of receiving goods looted by their husbands.In March, the government lifted a moratorium, in place for more than 20 years, on the death penalty being carried out after the justice minister cited…

Embattled rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing another sexual assault case after a woman came forward with fresh accusations against him.The complaint filed him in New York by former porn star Adria English is the latest of several lawsuits filed against the star in recent months. Mr Combs, who is one of rap’s most successful moguls, has consistently denied all allegations of sexual assault and physical abuse, including the latest ones.The star is now reportedly also the subject of a federal criminal investigation, though there is no sign any charges are imminent, according to NBC News.Mr Combs’s legal woes have…

Israel says it is studying a response by Hamas to a Gaza ceasefire plan outlined by President Biden at the end of May.It comes after Hamas’s political leadership said it had contacted mediators Egypt and Qatar “about the ideas” it has been discussing with the aim of reaching an agreement. Up to now Hamas has demanded an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in the fighting until it eliminates Hamas.A Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations told the BBC Hamas is no longer insisting on…