CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Jomana Karadsheh and Tamara Qiblawi, CNN A woman dressed in black raises a framed portrait of her son, Siavash Mahmoudi, in the air as she paces the sidewalk in Iran’s capital, Tehran. “I am not scared of anyone. They told me to be silent. I will not be,” the woman seen in a viral

By Olga Voitovych, CNN A Crimean beauty queen has been fined 40,000 Russian rubles (around $680) by occupying Russian authorities for singing the patriotic Ukrainian song “Chervona Kalyna,” according to Russian state media and pro-Russian regional authorities. Olga Valeeva, who was named Mrs Queen Beauty — Crimea 2022, was spared a jail sentence because she

By Lauren Said-Moorhouse, Mick Krever and Uliana Pavlova, CNN Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he expects the situation to stabilize in four war-torn regions of Ukraine after signing legislation to annex them on Wednesday, despite the fact that Russia’s military does not fully control those areas. While Russian state television hailed Putin’s inking of

By Rob Picheta and Katie Hunt, CNN The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday for work that led to “an ingenious tool for building molecules.” Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless became Nobel laureates for founding and advancing the fields of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry, which has “led to a

By Nimi Princewill, CNN A grueling two-year drought in Kenya has wiped out 2% of the world’s rarest zebra species and increased elephant deaths as well, as the climate crisis takes its toll on the east African nation’s wildlife. Animal carcasses rotting on the ground — including giraffes and livestock — have become a common

By Rhea Mogul, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Mia Alberti and Sana Noor Haq, CNN A former Lebanese ambassador held a sit-in at his bank outside of the capital city of Beirut on Tuesday, refusing to leave until he received his money, his wife has told CNN. Georges Siam’s bank is one of four branches across Lebanon that were held-up by depositors

By Joshua Berlinger and Olga Voitovych, CNN As Vladimir Putin lost more of the Ukrainian territory he is seeking to annex, his government on Tuesday sought to finalize the formalities of its claim to four Ukrainian regions, none of which are fully controlled by Russia anymore. The upper house of Russia’s rubber-stamp legislature, the Federation

By Amarachi Orie, CNN Queen Margrethe II of Denmark has apologized after removing the royal titles of four of her eight grandchildren. She’s not changing her mind about the move, however. The 82-year-old monarch, who earlier this year celebrated half a century on the throne, announced on Thursday that from next year the children of

By Kathleen Magramo and Sana Noor Haq, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Teele Rebane, Hannah Ritchie, Jomana Karadsheh and Kara Fox, CNN When Farid’s friend called crying for help on Sunday, he jumped on his bike and quickly rode to Tehran’s Sharif University. “Please come save us. We are stuck here. They are shooting at us,” his friend said. Scenes of violence and “savagery” met him

By Rob Picheta and Katie Hunt, CNN Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo has won the Nobel Prize for medicine for pioneering the use of ancient DNA to unlock secrets about human evolution. The Nobel Committee said Monday that Pääbo “accomplished something seemingly impossible” when he sequenced the first Neanderthal genome and revealed that Homo sapiens interbred

By Rhea Mogul, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Katharina Krebs and Kara Fox, CNN Russian officials have criticized their military leadership following the retreat of Russian forces from the strategic eastern city of Lyman, in the Donetsk region, underlining concerns that Moscow could be eyeing nuclear weapons on the battlefield. A Russian lawmaker and former army commander told Soloviev Live, a digital

By Kostan Nechyporenko and Duarte Mendonca, CNN Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a strategic city for its operations in the east, the Russian defense ministry said Saturday, just a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region that’s been declared illegal by the West. “In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops

From CNN’s Jorge Engels, Karen Smith, and Arnaud Siad, and Reuters A new military takeover has been declared in Burkina Faso, after a day marked by gunfire and confusion in the capital city of Ouagadougou. The country’s land and aerial borders have been closed, and its constitution suspended. In an announcement on state television late

By Celine Alkhaldi and Artemis Moshtaghian, CNN Iranian security forces arrested a woman after a photo of her and another woman eating at a Tehran restaurant without their head scarves was widely circulated online, her family said Friday. The photo emerged Wednesday showing the two women having breakfast at a cafe that, like most coffeehouses

By Abeer Salman and Hadas Gold, CNN Thousands of Palestinians turned out Friday to mourn a seven-year-old Palestinian boy who died, his father said, while being chased by Israeli troops on Thursday — an account rejected by the Israeli army but which prompted the US State Department to call for an investigation. Rayyan Suleiman was

By Nyasha Chingono, for CNN Award-winning Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga has been found guilty of staging a protest with the intent of inciting public violence, a court in the capital Harare ruled Thursday. Dangarembga, a fierce critic of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government was arrested in 2020 for marching while holding a placard demanding reforms. She

By Anna Chernova, Joshua Berlinger and Rob Picheta, CNN Russia will on Friday begin formally annexing up to 18% of Ukrainian territory, with President Vladimir Putin expected to host a ceremony in the Kremlin to declare four occupied Ukrainian territories part of Russia. The ceremony would take place on Friday at 15:00 local time (08:00

By Christian Edwards, CNN Experts say that the unexplained explosions in the Nord Stream pipelines running from Russia to Europe could release an “unprecedented” amount of the greenhouse gas methane and be enormously damaging to the climate. More than 100,000 metric tons of natural gas are bubbling on the surface of the Baltic Sea over

By Tara Subramaniam, Andrew Raine and Jack Bantock, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Vasco Cotovio, Melissa Bell, Mark Esplin and Ekaterine Kadagishvili CNN With one bag in each hand and another on his back, Denis makes his way up a hill on foot, having just crossed the border from Russia into Georgia. “I’m just tired. That’s the only thing I feel,” the 27-year-old says as he tries

By Hadas Gold and Abeer Salman, CNN At least four Palestinian men were killed and 44 wounded during an Israeli military raid and heavy clashes in Jenin Wednesday morning, Palestinian officials said, making it one of the deadliest days in the West Bank this year, which has already seen over 100 Palestinians killed. The Israel

By Rob Picheta, CNN Pro-Russian authorities have held so-called referendums in four regions of Ukraine over recent days and, while the votes are illegal and have been universally dismissed as “a sham” by Ukraine and Western nations, there are fears that they could create a pretext for a new, dangerous stage in the war. They

By Mick Krever, Olga Voitovych, Josh Pennington, John Allen and Stephanie Halasz, CNN The foreigners that Russian state media routinely cite as being international observers to the so-called referendums in four regions of Ukraine are violating numerous international principles of election observation and are engaging in nothing more than “political activism,” experts in the field

By Tara Subramaniam and Kara Fox, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Nimi Princewill, CNN Ebola infections have risen across districts in Uganda, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed and suspected deaths to 23, health authorities in the east African country said Monday. Uganda declared an Ebola outbreak last Tuesday after a case of the relatively rare Sudan strain was detected in the country’s Mubende district.

By Anna Chernova and Radina Gigova, CNN At least 11 children were killed when a gunman wearing Nazi symbols opened fire at a school in the western Russian city of Izhevsk, Russian authorities said Monday. Fifteen fatalities have been recorded so far. Among those killed was the school’s security guard, head of the regional government

By Josh Pennington and Jessie Yeung, CNN Heated protests have broken out in some ethnic minority regions in Russia against Vladimir Putin’s mobilization orders, with activist groups and Ukrainian officials saying these minorities are being disproportionately targeted for conscription in the war. Several videos posted to social media, which CNN geo-located to the predominantly Muslim

By Brad Lendon, CNN With his forces retreating in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again threatened to turn to nuclear weapons, most likely what are often called tactical nuclear weapons. In a speech last week, he warned that, “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to

By Aditi Sangal, Tara Subramaniam and Sana Noor Haq, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Kara Fox, Barbie Latza Nadeau, Antonia Mortensen, Nicola Ruotolo, Sharon Braithwaite and Valentina DiDonato, CNN Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni has claimed victory in a general election that seems set to install her as Italy’s first female prime minister, leading the most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini. Addressing the

By Hamdi Alkhshali and Jomana Karadsheh, CNN A fifth member of an Iranian volunteer paramilitary group died Sunday after clashing with what state media called “rioters and thugs,” as the country’s President Ebrahim Raisi warned that protesters would be dealt with “decisively” after days of nationwide unrest. The person died from injuries sustained on Thursday

By Katharina Krebs, Radina Gigova, Simone McCarthy and Sana Noor Haq, CNN Russia’s “partial mobilization” for its war in Ukraine is off to a chaotic start amid protests, drafting mistakes and an exodus of citizens fleeing Russia, as the Kremlin tightens rules around evading military orders. Some residents in Russia’s Far East Sakha Republic were

By Kara Fox, Barbie Latza Nadeau, Antonia Mortensen and Nicola Ruotolo, CNN Italians were voting Sunday in national elections in which the far-right Brothers of Italy party — led by Giorgia Meloni — appears poised to make big gains after the collapse of two governments since the last election. Her ultra-conservative party, whose origins lie

Uliana Pavlova Tension was in the air as a long trail of cars lined up near the Petkuhovo checkpoint on the border between Russia and Kazakhstan late Friday night. Andrei Alekseev, a 27-year-old engineer from the city of Yekaterinburg, was among many men in the queue who were fleeing Russia in the wake of President

By Artemis Moshtaghian, Jomana Karadsheh, Caitlin Hu, Kathleen Magramo, Sahar Akbarzai and Richard Roth, CNN Iranian authorities say they will restrict internet access in the country until calm is restored to the streets, as protests over the death of a young woman in the custody of the morality police rock the Islamic Republic. Thousands of

By Yulia Kesaieva, Jennifer Hauser and Kathleen Magramo, CNN Ukrainian officials say they have finished exhuming bodies from a mass burial site in Izium — and that of the 436 bodies found, 30 showed signs of torture. In a gruesome reminder of the human cost of Russia’s invasion, most of the bodies showed signs of

By Xiaofei Xu and Marguerite Lacroix, CNN An animal sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is facing demands for ransom money, after kidnappers abducted three of its baby chimpanzees. “This is the first time in the world that baby apes were kidnapped for ransom,” Franck Chantereau, founder of the sanctuary where the kidnap

By Nimi Princewill and AnneClaire Stapleton, CNN In the last 24 hours, Uganda has recorded four confirmed cases of Ebola, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases to 11, the country’s health ministry reported Friday in a statement. The Ugandan Health Ministry considers a “probable case” as any person who died from suspected EVD (ebola)

By Teele Rebane and Hannah Ritchie, CNN The last time Farnaz heard her brother’s voice was over the phone, on an unknown number. “He called me and said only one sentence: ‘I was caught’ … I immediately understood what my dear brother meant and went to the morality police department (to look for him),” the

By Josh Pennington and Jennifer Hauser, CNN The former rector to the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) has died, according to a statement from the organization, amid a recent string of mysterious deaths among top Russian officials and executives. Anatoly Gerashchenko “died in an accident” on September 21 and had served as the institute’s rector from

By Ivan Watson, Masho Lomashvili, Simone McCarthy, Tim Lister and Uliana Pavlova, CNN Vladimir Putin’s “partial mobilization” of citizens for his war in Ukraine has already set in motion sweeping changes for many Russians, as drafted men bid their families emotional goodbyes, while others attempt to flee, scrambling to make it across land border crossings

By Tim Lister, Julia Kesaieva, Olga Voitovych, Simone McCarthy and Mick Krever, CNN Four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine began voting in referendums on joining Russia, according to their separatist leaders, in a move that raises the stakes of Moscow’s invasion seven months after fighting began. The referendums, which are illegal under international law and dismissed

By Amy Woodyatt, Christian Edwards, Hannah Strange, Aditi Sangal and Adrienne Vogt, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN When Giorgia Meloni first burst onto the political scene in 2006 as the youngest ever vice-president of the National Alliance party, she sealed her fate as a far-right politician. The National Alliance, formerly the Italian Social Movement, was unapologetically neo-fascist, formed by supporters of Benito Mussolini. Meloni herself openly admired

CNN’s Amy Cassidy and Jorge Engels Icelandic police say they have arrested four men for alleged “preparations for terrorist acts” — an unprecedented situation for the tiny country. The four Icelandic men, all in their 30s, were detained “in connection with an investigation into planned preparations for terrorist acts,” said Gunnar Hörður Garðarsson, Iceland’s National

By David McKenzie and Allegra Goodwin, CNN Uganda’s Ministry of Health reported another 11 suspected cases of Ebola identified in the country’s Mubende district as of Tuesday. Of these, the ministry recorded one probable Ebola-related death, a one-year-old, it said in a statement released Tuesday night. Samples for the one-year-old and the 10 suspected cases

By Jessie Yeung, Jomana Karadsheh, Ramin Mostaghim and Sahar Akbarzai, CNN The father of an Iranian woman who died in police custody last week has accused authorities of lying about her death, as protests rage nationwide despite the government’s attempt to curb dissent with an internet blackout. Amjad Amini, whose daughter Mahsa died after being

By Simone McCarthy, Matthew Chance, Tim Lister, Anna Chernova and Mick Krever, CNN As the first phase of Russia’s new “partial mobilization” got underway on Thursday, videos appeared on social media purporting to show newly mobilized men preparing to be deployed. In the city of Neryungi — six time zones east of Ukraine — a

By Jessie Yeung, Ramin Mostaghim, Jomana Karadsheh, Mostafa Salem and Jennifer Deaton, CNN In the video, a massive crowd cheers as a woman lifts a pair of scissors to her hair — exposed, without a hijab in sight. The sea of people, many of them men, roar as she chops off her ponytail and raises

By Simone McCarthy and Rob Picheta, CNN Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the immediate “partial mobilization” of Russian citizens on Wednesday, a move that threatens to escalate his faltering invasion of Ukraine following a string of defeats that caused recriminations in Moscow. Putin said in a speech that he would use “all the means at

By Nick Paton Walsh, Natalie Gallón, Brice Lâiné and Konstantin Gak, CNN In the ruins of an apartment block tarred with soot and clouded in dust amid constant shelling, a small group of Ukrainian soldiers are face to face with a new type of Russian enemy: mercenaries, some of whom may be convicts sent to

By Irene Nasser, Ramin Mostaghim, Celine Alkhaldi, Mostafa Salem and Ivana Kottasová, CNN Five people have been killed by Iranian security forces during protests that were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, who was being held in police custody, according to a human rights monitor. Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norwegian-registered organization monitoring

By David McKenzie, Sophie Jeong and Nimi Princewill, CNN Uganda declared an outbreak of Ebola after a case of the relatively rare Sudan strain was confirmed in the country, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The WHO’s Africa office said in a statement the case was confirmed after testing a sample from a

By Amarachi Orie and Anna Chernova, CNN Cosmonaut Valery Vladimirovich Polyakov, who holds the record for the longest single stay in space, has died at age 80, Russian space agency Roscosmos announced Monday. Born on April 27, 1942, the Russian cosmonaut lived and worked in space for a record 437 days in one stint —

By Tara Subramaniam and Sana Noor Haq, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.