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Vishal Garg, the boss of US mortage firm Better.com, fires about 900 of his staff on a single Zoom call.

Houses have been buried by hot ash after a volcano erupted in Indonesia on Saturday. Mount Semeru on the island of Java engulfed villages, submerging vehicles and leaving glimpses of rooftops behind. Fourteen people are known to have died and dozens were injured, authorities said. Watch the BBC’s Valdya Baraputri, surrounded by buried buildings, describe…

Mel Brooks, an all-round Hollywood legend, responsible for films like The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, has produced his first autobiography, at the age of 95. His son Max encouraged him to write the 450-page All About Me! during the first lockdown. The BBC’s Alan Yentob, who has made several documentaries with the entertainer,…

Rebel Wilson made a name for herself as one of Hollywood’s top comedy actresses after appearing in the 2011 box-office hit Bridesmaids and the successful Pitch Perfect franchise. Now a producer and director, she’s been named one of the BBC’s 100 Women of 2021. In an exclusive BBC interview, Rebel reflects on her decision to…

Mahbouba Seraj is a prominent Afghan women’s rights activist and journalist. When the Taliban came back to power in August 2021, she stayed in the country and continues to voice the concerns of Afghan women. From Kabul, she tells Yalda Hakim for BBC 100 Women about her fears for her nation, and has a personal…

LJ Rich looks at the best of the week’s technology news stories including: UK’s Competition and Markets Authority orders Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to sell Giphy – a Gif-sharing search engine Co-founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, steps down as chief executive of the company A virtual yacht sells for $650,000 (£490,000) inside building…

Nuns, imams and Buddhist monks are among those sharing successful – and often fun – short-form videos on social media. On TikTok, the hashtags #ChristianTikTok, #Diwali and #Islam have been used billions of times. The “media nuns” of the Daughters of St Paul in Boston, London imam Sabah Ahmedi, and Orthodox Jewish influencer Melinda Strauss…

At least 26 million people are struggling for food following consecutive poor rainfall seasons in the Horn of Africa. Drought conditions in northern Kenya, much of Somalia and southern Ethiopia are predicted to persist until at least mid-2022, putting lives at risk. The situation is already so bad that wild animals are dying in their…

A military ceremony has been held in honour of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is due to step down next week after 16 years in office. Mrs Merkel chose three pieces of music – one of which raised a few eyebrows. She chose a popular song by Hildegard Knef called For Me It Should Rain…

The former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has described the Taliban as his “brothers” in an exclusive interview with the BBC. Speaking to the BBC’s Yalda Hakim, Mr Karzai was pressed on when girls and women would be able to go back into education and work. He said he had had conversations about this and…