Music fans, it is time to bid adieu to the sunny, slow summer months

Ex-President Jair Bolsonaro is barred from running for office by the top electoral court.

Here is the latest on the rain delay causing Belgium's F1 Sprint Shootout to be pushed back.Saturday's festivities in Belgium for the last stop on the Formula One circuit before the summer break is being held up by rain. The parade, quite literally, is being rained on.Originally sc...

By Michael S. Derby NEW YORK Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that the U.S. central bank

Sure, there was that one pitch on baseball’s biggest stage, the one that clipped a little too much of the plate, the one that Jim Poole would’ve loved to have back

By Steve Scherer OTTAWA The Bank of Canada is widely expected to leave its key overnight rate on

A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan Big Tech heavyweights Microsoft and Alphabet

By Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine LOS ANGELES The tentative deal Hollywood writers reached with the major studios

A heavy metal singer is being praised after stopping a concert to comfort a scared little girl in the front row. David Draiman, the lead singer of Disturbed, spotted the tot named Sophia singing along to all of their songs, before becoming overwhelmed and bursting into tears when Draiman invited her on stage. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. I didn’t mean to scare you", he comforted her. “I love, absolutely love that Disturbed concerts have become a family affair." Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Look, none of us is above pettiness, especially when it comes to family arguments. But one man’s sisters took things to a whole new level, as he revealed in a radio call-in. The brother, named Callum, told New Zealand’s ZM show that his siblings once convinced his parents he was dead. And his poor mum and dad only learned the truth when he called them for a catch-up... six months later. Hosts Carl Fletcher, Vaughan Smith and Hayley Sproull listened to the story with dropped jaws, branding it the “best” they’d ever heard. The trio were quick to probe Callum on the details of the crazy deception, and he duly obliged. "My sisters were in a bit of a tiff with my parents at the time and they weren't really getting along,” he explained. "I was living in Wellington while they were in Christchurch. And my older sister actually called my parents up and told them that I’d died." His sisters then apparently claimed that the funeral had already taken place and their parents hadn’t been invited because his ex-girlfriend’s mum and dad “didn’t want them there”. (Makes sense.) At this point, a stunned Smith interjected: ”I'm going to say this, and in the nicest possible way – your sister sounds like a crazy b**h. "No offence. Your sister sounds like a top-level, red flag, crazy b***h!" @fvhzm Callum wins the award for the greatest sentence ever said on-air in ZM history ? The hosts then posed the million-dollar question: how had Callum not spoken to his parents for half a year? He responded matter-of-factly: "I was just busy with life and work and then I was like, wait, I haven't heard from my parents in a while. I wonder what's going on?” He then revealed that he “gave them a call up” and, shocked, they responded: “You're alive?” Asked how they reacted upon hearing the voice of their presumed late son, Callum admitted they were “beside themselves”. “My mum was absolutely in tears and my dad was kind of just gobsmacked – he was just like 'what the f**k is going on?'” he recounted. But, he later said that they were “over the moon” when he went down to visit them that same weekend to “reassure them” that he was, indeed, alive. Naturally, the presenters asked how it was possible that his parents just accepted the news of his death without trying to verify it. "They were kind of like just running around, calling up all our other family – seeing if they had heard anything, from what I was told," he explained. "And then they didn't really know anything to go off so my parents kind of just presumed 'yeah he died'." The presenters then debated whether you would call someone up if you’d heard they’d died. “If somebody said that your friend is dead, you’re not going to pick up the phone and call them, are you? You’re just going to be like, oh, well, yeah, they’re dead,” Fletcher said. But Smith insisted that he would get drunk and call their voicemail just to hear their voice. After the personal reflections, the hosts asked Callum how he’d “died” according to his sisters – whether it had been a car accident or some other unfortunate event. But no, they apparently told his parents that he’d been stabbed. "Wait wait wait. So you are murdered?” Smith laughed delightedly. "You're not dead by your own hand or dead in an accident, someone murdered you?” He then asked Callum if he was “the sort of person who would have been stabbed?", to which he replied: "I was not in some gangs but I will say, at the point in time, it wouldn't have been unpeculiar for me to get stabbed." The caller went on to insist that he didn’t know why his sisters “hate” him, and he also revealed that his parents no longer speak to them. “We've nearly been doing this for 20 years,” Smith said. “This is the wildest phone call I've ever had.” ZM Radio shared the excerpt from the episode to TikTok and it racked up more than 1.5 million views and 167,000 likes in a week. However, the plot thickened when a commentator claiming to be Callum’s sister wrote: “I can confirm I never told my parents he was dead.” She said there had been a stabbing in the city of Porirua at the time, and no one had heard from Callum “for a few months” and so she contacted him to check he was ok. And when she found out he was, “she was happy”. She then suggested her family had a number of issues and that she “tried to stay away” from them. Urged to call into the radio show and “get this straightened out”, she replied: “Is it really even worth it? In order to do that I would need to air everyone's dirty laundry. It would turn from comical to sad very quickly.” Besides, she said, she didn’t really “mind” his on-air account, conceding: “The story was a good laugh.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

By Joe Cash BEIJING China's export slump is expected to have accelerated in June, as sluggish overseas economies

"Swatting" has caused an Adin Ross stream to be interrupted, and porn legend-turned-Twitch star Adriana Chechik previously revealed that she’s being so badly swatted, she’s going to have to move house. The adult entertainer previously issued a damning rebuke of “beyond childish” pranksters, who have been blighting her life for months. In a furious tweet, Chechik, 31, explained that the emergency services had been called to her house on 12 separate occasions, as she urged the culprits to “grow up”. “Y’all suck so hard. I’m gonna have to move with this swatting sh*t,” she wrote. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “You are literally taking police who should be helping people and having them swat me? 8x and 4x for firefighters to come is beyond childish.” For the uninitiated, “swatting” refers to a nefarious trend which largely targets streamers like Chechik. It involves a troll finding out their victim’s address or location and then making a hoax phone call to the emergency services, claiming that there’s extreme violence taking place there. The idea is to make the lie sound as urgent and threatening as possible to prompt an armed response – hence “SWAT”. The perpetrator then keeps their fingers crossed that the police will raid the home during the streamer’s broadcast so that they can watch the dramatic action unfold live on camera. And whilst some would argue that swatting is just an elaborate prank, most will tell you it is, in fact, a dangerous crime that puts lives at risk. In one high-profile instance back in 2019, a teenage Call of Duty player swatted an opponent after losing a game. Police showed up at the wrong address, then shot and killed a totally innocent father-of-two. It is also, as Chechik pointed out in her tweet, a complete waste of the emergency services’ time, that should be dedicated to legitimate crises. One of the most horrific aspects of the 32-year-old’s plight is that she was attacked by swatters even as she recovered from a near-life-threatening injury. In October last year, she broke her back in two places after jumping into a foam pit at TwitchCon, San Diego, which left her facing months of surgery and gruelling rehabilitation. She also lost her unborn child as a result of the accident – later revealing that, unbeknownst to her, she was pregnant at the time. And yet, some of her followers – who seem unfamiliar with the very concept of human decency – decided it would be fun to ambush her. In December, as Chechik lay bedbound, she tweeted: “Tell me how some internet trolls are gonna swat a person whose back is still healing from being broken. Some twitch chatters are a whole different breed of small d**k idiots. “The cops know me now. We legit talk about our life because this happens so much.” Based on her latest complaint, the situation has only escalated since then. But, at least, she suggested action is being taken to find those responsible. One of her fans responded to her tweet, saying: “Moving I think would only give you a brief respite from the bampots, and then it would start again. Time to get a lawyer and PI involved and start to sue the c**p out of both the city for having inadequate response to being repeat called and the people calling them on you.” Chechik replied simply: “[Already on it!!]” Of course, this is not a game, but we hope she nails those swatters once and for all. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.