US rapper Young Thug has been arrested on charges including participating in criminal street gang activity, police records say. The 30-year-old – whose real name is Jeffery Lamar Williams – has been arrested as part of a larger grand jury indictment which names 28 members and associates of his record label YSL. The indictment defines YSL as a “criminal street gang”. Another rapper – Gunna – was also named in the indictment. Young Thug last year topped the US album charts with Punk. He also co-wrote the critically acclaimed, much talked about Donald Glover song This is America. As well as being charged with criminal street gang activity, he has also been charged with conspiring to violate a federal law aimed at combatting organised crime. The indictment names the YSL enterprise, which stands for “Young Slime Life”, as an affiliate of the national Bloods gang. It details hand gestures and emojis said to be favoured by the YSL, and lists lyrics and music videos said to be “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy”. Gunna – whose real name is Sergio Giavanni Kitchens – has also been charged, according to the records. Some of the other 28 defendants have also been charged with more violent crimes, including murder and attempted armed robbery. A lawyer for Young Thug told local media that “Mr Williams committed no crime whatsoever”. The BBC has approached representatives of Gunna for comment. (BBC)…[+]

South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province is still reeling from the country’s worst floods in 60 years, which killed about 435 people last month. Mass funerals are taking place, although many families are still unable to bury their loved ones because their bodies were swept away by the raging torrents, as the BBC Pumza Fihlani reports. Inside a white tent on a hillside just outside Pietermaritzburg, hundreds of people sit with their heads bowed before six coffins. A sombre church hymn pierces through the heavy silence.

The unimaginable happened to the Mdlalose family. Slindile Mdalose, 43, and nine children aged between two and 10 years were killed in the floods that devastated KwaZulu-Natal in the most deadly natural disaster in the country’s history. They were sleeping when the violent water washed through, flattening their home. It has been three weeks and some of the bodies are yet to be recovered. “To tell you the truth we are mad, we are numb. We can’t use our heads. This is too much to even comprehend,” the children’s uncle, Thokozani Mdlalose tells the BBC.(BBC)…[+]

“Historic” and “extreme” weather conditions could fan a wildfire in New Mexico which is already the second biggest ever seen in the US state. The so-called Hermits Peak Fire has been burning for more than a month and has torn through an area larger than the city of Chicago. Many families have been left homeless and thousands have been evacuated. Winds, near-record high temperatures and dry conditions are now expected to stoke the blaze further. The National Weather Service in Albuquerque tweeted that its forecasters are “using exceedingly rare language” in its warning for a “long duration and extreme fire weather event”. State Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called on people in mandatory evacuation areas to leave immediately.(BBC)…[+]

EasyJet plans to remove seats on some of its planes this summer, so that it can operate flights with fewer cabin crew. The airline is battling staff shortages as it attempts to return to pre-pandemic levels of service.

By taking out the back row of seating on its A319 fleet, EasyJet said it will be able to fly with three cabin crew instead of four. That would limit numbers on board to a maximum 150 passengers. EasyJet said it was an effective way of operating the fleet while “building additional resilience and flexibility” into the airline’s operations. Flights would still meet Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulations on the required number of cabin crew, which is based on the number of physical seats, rather than passengers on board.(BBC)…[+]

More than 4.7 million people in India – nearly 10 times higher than official records suggest – are thought to have died because of Covid-19, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report. India’s government has rejected the figure, saying the methodology is flawed. Will we ever know how many Indians died in the pandemic?

In November 2020, researchers at the World Mortality Dataset – a global repository that provides updated data on deaths from all causes – asked authorities in India to provide information. “These are not available,” India’s main statistical office told the researchers, according to Ariel Karlinsky, a scientist who co-created the dataset and is a member of an advisory group set up by the the WHO for its estimates of excess deaths caused by Covid globally during 2020 and 2021. Excess deaths are a simple measure of how many more people are dying than expected compared with previous years. Although it is difficult to say how many of these deaths were due to Covid, they can be considered a measure of the scale and toll of the pandemic.

Amber Heard has told a court that ex-husband Johnny Depp repeatedly struck her during drug and alcohol-fuelled rages that she said turned the actor into an “awful thing”. Taking the witness stand on week four of the trial, Ms Heard alleged that a pattern of violence began in 2012.  Mr Depp is suing Ms Heard over a story she wrote in which she described herself as a domestic abuse victim. In his testimony, Mr Depp denied any wrongdoing. “I struggle to find the words to describe how painful this is… this is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and relive everything,” Ms Heard said shortly after taking the stand. Over several hours of testimony in Virginia on Wednesday, Ms Heard, 36, recalled her first interactions with the “charismatic” Mr Depp while filming The Rum Diary in Puerto Rico.(BBC)…[+]

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s Today programme, Bill Gates says conspiracy theories about him are “crazy” and that being shouted at in public is “awful”. He also told the BBC’s Mishal Husain that meeting Jeffrey Epstein was a “mistake” and talks about Elon Musk’s recent public criticism of him. Bill Gates used to be the world’s richest person. That title is now held by Elon Musk. The two men, however, don’t get on. Last week Mr Musk accused Mr Gates of “shorting” Tesla stock – a way of making money by betting that a company will lose value. Mr Musk has also tweeted puerile insults towards Mr Gates on Twitter.

“There’s no need for him to be nice to me,” Mr Gates says. Mr Musk has argued that shorting Tesla, a company that makes electric cars, undermines Mr Gates’ environmental philanthropy. Asked specifically about whether he had bet against Tesla, Mr Gates replied: “That has nothing to do with climate change. I have ways of diversifying.”(BBC)…[+]

Three decades after US man Scott Johnson’s body was found at the base of cliffs in Sydney, his killer has been sentenced to jail. Scott White was on Tuesday sentenced to a maximum 12 years and seven months in jail for the then-27-year-old’s murder. At the time, the Cambridge University graduate’s death was ruled as suicide – something his family never believed. They had for years fought for Australian police to investigate it as a gay hate crime instead. On Tuesday, a judge found there was not enough evidence to establish it was a gay hate crime, but sentenced White to jail for the 1988 killing. He will be eligible for parole in 2030. White – who was 18 at the time of the murder – did not give evidence in court but had told police he and Johnson had met at a bar in December 1988.(BBC)…[+]

Russian mercenaries have been accused of summarily executing, torturing and beating civilians in the Central African Republic (CAR). Witnesses told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that in one incident last July, Russian-speaking fighters shot dead at least 12 unarmed men at a roadblock. Most victims were put in a shallow hole by the road near Bossangoa, they said. CAR’s government denies hiring mercenaries from the private Russian Wagner Group to fight rebels.UN experts have also accused Russian mercenaries of committing systematic and grave human rights violations in CAR, which is one of the world’s poorest countries but is rich in diamonds, gold and uranium.(BBC)…[+]

An escaped inmate and a guard suspected of helping him had a “special relationship”, say investigators. The announcement from the Alabama sheriff office said the discovery was confirmed by fellow inmates of missing prisoner Casey White, a murder suspect. A manhunt is underway for the 38-year-old escapee and corrections officer Vicky White, 56 (no relation). The pair vanished as she was transporting him to a bogus mental evaluation. Police have not revealed whether the relationship was romantic. Friday – the day the pair went missing – was supposed to be her final day at work. She had recently sold her home and had told colleagues she planned to spend more time at the beach. Police now believe Ms White helped orchestrate the escape after breaking jail protocol to escort Casey White alone. “Investigators received information from inmates at the Lauderdale County Detention Center over the weekend that there was a special relationship between Director White and inmate Casey White,” Sheriff Rick Singleton said in a statement on Tuesday. “That relationship has now been confirmed through our investigation by independent sources and means.”(BBC)…[+]