According to local media in Somalia, the federal government of Somali claimed it has inflicted heavy casualties on Al-Shabaab fighters in a fierce fighting that erupted in parts of Bakol region on Wednesday, wargeyska reported on Thursday.

US officials have begun an investigation into the killing of a lion in Zimbabwe but say they have been unable to reach the American involved, BBC reported Thursday

The American tourist and a dentist Walter Palmer is believed to have paid about $50,000 (£32,000) to go on the hunt in Zimbabwe.

According to reports, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said it was "deeply concerned" about the "tragic" death of Cecil the lion. Director Dan Ashe said they will "go where facts lead" but efforts to reach Walter Palmer have been unsuccessful.

The Nigerian Army says they have rescued 71 people from the home grown Boko Haram militants. The captives, mostly girls and women were freed during firefights that killed many Boko Haram militants in villages near the northeastern city of Maiduguri on Thursday.

A man has been executed Thursday in India in connection with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts in which nearly 260 people were killed, Xinhua reported. Yakub Memon was executed, after the India's Supreme Court rejected his last-minute plea to stop his hanging in an unprecedented pre-dawn hearing.

According to a source close to the investigation, Boeing investigators are confident that debris found on a remote island in the Indian Ocean comes from a 777 aircraft, CNN reported Thursday evening.

But according to CNN, an international team of aviation experts is still trying to determine if that airplane part comes from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 that disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

According to a new Quinnipiac University national poll released Thursday,  U.S. billionaire Donald Trump leads the GOP presidential candidate field by a significant margin, Xinhua reported.

According to reports, the poll shows that Trump is on top of the new Quinnipiac poll with 20 percent, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is next at 13 percent and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush follows at 10 percent.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said Wednesday that at least 86 people were killed, 56 injured and 517,029 others were affected by heavy rains and resulting flash floods in parts of Pakistan over the last two weeks, Xinhua reported on Thursday.

In a press release, the NDMA said that the torrential rains that have been lashing the country since July 15, swept away 20, 858 houses, inundated 801 villages and destroyed standing crops on 233,688 acres of land.

In the latest development regarding the search for Malaysian airline MH370 which disappeared  in March last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Thursday that the debris discovered on the beach of Reunion Island is "very likely" to be from a Boeing 777.

Xinhua reported on Thursday that "Initial reports suggest that the debris is very likely to be from a Boeing 777, but we need to verify whether it is from flight MH370," Najib said in a statement on his Facebook page. However, the Premier reportedly warned that it is too early to speculate at this stage.