CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Inke Kappeler Nine women have reported they were drugged by an unknown substance after attending the annual summer party of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) — whose Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a member — last week. According to a police report, a 21-year-old woman started to feel “unwell and dizzy” Wednesday evening after eating

By Tim Lister and Petro Zadorozhnyy, CNN Across Ukraine, in the shimmering heat, one sight is becoming familiar this summer: Combine harvesters sweeping across fields of grain in a race against fast-spreading fires. The conflict’s front lines straddle some of Ukraine’s richest farmland. Whether caused by accident or intention, the fires darkening the summer sky

By Ivana Kottasová, Tim Lister, Yulia Kesaieva and Tara John, CNN At least 29 people have been confirmed dead after a Russian strike hit an apartment block in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine over the weekend, Ukrainian officials said Monday. The residential building in the town of Chasiv Yar was hit on Saturday evening

By Manveena Suri, David McKenzie and Ivana Kottasová, CNN At least 15 people have died after a shooting at a bar in the South African township of Soweto on Sunday, according to the country’s public broadcaster SABC. Several people were also injured, local authorities said. The incident unfolded shortly after midnight, when a group of

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN When Boris Johnson finally announced he would step down as UK Prime Minister on Thursday, after desperately trying to cling onto power despite a historic government rebellion, his decision sparked a sense of relief across Westminster. In Kyiv, it was met with despair. Johnson has been one of the most vocal

By Hafsa Khalil, Aditi Sangal, Hannah Strange, Adrienne Vogt and Elise Hammond, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Clarissa Ward, Brent Swails and Scott McWhinnie, CNN Ijabu Hassan has had no chance to grieve the deaths of her children. She’s had to focus on keeping the others alive. Her four-year-old and five-year-old died from malnutrition in their inland town of Burhakaba, victims of a record drought that has propelled Somalia to the

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned on Thursday. Here’s his statement in full. Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. It is clearly now the will of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister, and I’ve agreed with Sir Graham

By Jack Guy, Luke McGee and Ivana Kottasová, CNN Boris Johnson’s turbulent tenure as Britain’s Prime Minister came to an end Thursday after a historic party revolt over a series of ethics scandals forced him to step down. It took the resignation of nearly 60 members of his government — almost half the payroll —

By Helen Regan, Sana Noor Haq, Ed Upright, Aditi Sangal and Adrienne Vogt, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Alex Marquardt and Pierre Bairin, CNN A well-known Ukrainian paramedic who was held prisoner by Russian and separatist forces for three months after being captured in the southeastern city of Mariupol has accused her guards of psychological and physical torture during her time in captivity. Yulia Paievska, 53, widely known in Ukraine by her

By Jorge Engels and Nimi Princewill, CNN Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and rebel group Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) are blaming each other’s military forces after an unconfirmed number of civilians were killed Monday in the country’s Oromia region. The incident appears to be an ethnically targeted attack, according to a statement from the state-appointed

By Helen Regan and Kathleen Magramo, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

Story by Reuters The man accused of detonating a car bomb that killed a prominent Maltese journalist has confessed to the crime in an interview with a Reuters reporter and says he will soon implicate others in plotting to assassinate her. Speaking from jail in his first comment on the case, George Degiorgio said if

By Katie Hunt, CNN A decade ago, the Large Hadron Collider, Earth’s most powerful particle accelerator, proved the existence of an subatomic particle called the Higgs boson — thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe dating back to the big bang billions of years ago. Now, physicists at the European Organization for

By Isil Sariyuce, Yusuf Gezer and Celine Alkhaldi, CNN Turkish security forces killed a child on Sunday after opening fire on a vehicle carrying migrants from the eastern Van province near Turkey’s border with Iran, a local official told CNN on Tuesday. The official, who is from the office of the Van governor and who

By Jessie Yeung, Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Hafsa Khalil and Sana Noor Haq, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Ivana Kottasová, Yulia Kesaieva, Hannah Ritchie, Mariya Knight, Radina Gigova and Jonny Hallam, CNN Russia has taken control of Lysychansk, the last city in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine that was still under Ukrainian control. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin that the military had taken over Lysychansk and

By Sahar Akbarzai, Ehsan Popalzai and Ivana Kottasová, CNN The Taliban has declared the Islamic State affiliate ISIS-K a corrupt “sect” and forbidden Afghans from contact with it. “We call out to the nation that the seditious phenomenon called ISIS-K is void of today’s age and a false sect that spreads corruption in our Islamic

By Mick Krever, Phil Black, Kostyantin Gak, and Richard Harlow, CNN Maxym is waiting. For just over a month, he and his comrades have been sleeping in earthen dugouts, eating from cans warmed over campfires, and following news of the Russian military advancing just kilometers away. “Of course they are coming,” Maxym says. “There are

By Mohammed Tawfeeq and Ivana Kottasová, CNN Hundreds of people stormed Libya’s eastern parliament building in the port city of Tobruk on Friday, according to local media reports, the latest in a string of clashes between groups supporting rivaling leaders. Libya has been split between warring factions since 2014, following the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against

By Teele Rebane, Hannah Ritchie and Maija Ehlinger, CNN At least five people were killed and 44 others injured following a string of earthquakes in southern Iran on Saturday, according to the country’s semi-official FARS news agency. Four separate earthquakes were recorded near the southern port city of Bandar-e Lengeh, including one that registered at

By Jonny Hallam, Josh Pennington and Arnaud Siad CNN Pro-Russian investigators in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on Friday said they have charged another two British citizens with being “mercenaries,” according to the Donetsk News Agency. “An investigation is now underway against British mercenaries Dylan Healy and Andrew Hill. They are charged under the

By Rob Picheta, Jonny Hallam, Cristiana Moisescu, Julia Presniakova and Arnaud Siad CNN At least 21 people, including a child, were killed when Russia launched overnight missile strikes at a residential building and a recreation center near Odesa, southern Ukraine, officials said on Friday. The attack hit a housing block, killing 16 people, according to

By Hadas Gold, CNN Yair Lapid is used to being in the spotlight. The son of a prominent family, Lapid has dabbled in acting, screenwriting, music and even amateur boxing, before becoming best known to the Israeli public as a journalist-turned-politician. Now Lapid will be entering his biggest spotlight yet — as Israel’s caretaker prime

By Tara John, Fred Pleitgen, Anna Chernova and Chris Liakos, CNN The two-time US Olympic basketball gold medalist Brittney Griner arrived at a court near Moscow on Friday where her trial is expected to start, after officials claimed she had cannabis oil in her luggage in February, a week before Russia invaded Ukraine. Griner, 31,

By Frederik Pleitgen, Anna Chernova, Chris Liakos and Tara John, CNN The two-time US Olympic basketball gold medalist Brittney Griner went on trial at a court near Moscow on Friday, on drug smuggling charges which can be punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Griner, 31, a Phoenix Mercury player who plays in Russia

By Barbie Latza Nadeau and Livia Borghese, CNN The main artery that cuts through Italy’s heartland, where 30% of its food is produced, is the 650-kilometer-long (400-mile-long) River Po, which winds its way from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea on Italy’s northeast coast. But a dry winter and spring mean this year it’s in

By Jack Guy, CNN A pair of orcas drove great white sharks away from a stretch of South African coast after killing five sharks over just a few months in 2017, according to a new study. Great whites used to dominate areas of the Gansbaai coast, around 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Cape Town,

By Olga Voitovych, Anna Chernova and Tim Lister, CNN Russian troops have left Snake Island in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Thursday, after they carried out what they said was a “successful” operation. The small but strategic territory was the scene of one of the opening salvos of the war in Ukraine,

By Hadas Gold, CNN The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted Thursday to dissolve itself, triggering new elections. On Friday, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will officially take over as caretaker prime minister under the terms of a coalition agreement made between outgoing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Lapid last year. Because Lapid — a former journalist

By Simone McCarthy, Helen Regan, Jeevan Ravindran, Hafsa Khalil, Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt and Melissa Macaya, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Nina dos Santos and Lindsay Isaac, CNN Having a neighbor like Russia at the end of the street means 59-year-old Vytas Grudzinskas doesn’t get much rest. “I can see the soldiers best at night,” he says, pointing to a patch of green behind his neighbor’s garden. “They have a shooting range they use over

By Xiaofei Xu, CNN and Reuters Salah Abdeslam, who is believed to be only surviving member of the group that carried out a series of deadly gun-and-bomb attacks across Paris in November 2015, was found guilty on Wednesday and handed France’s harshest sentence — life without the possibility of parole. The attacks, which ISIS claimed

By Tim Lister and Sanyo Fylyppov, CNN The elected Ukrainian mayor of Kherson was arrested Tuesday, according to pro-Russian officials in the city, hours before the region’s Russian-backed administration announced plans for a referendum. Ihor Kolykhaiev’s arrest comes amid growing efforts by the Russian-appointed authorities in the region to strip it of Ukrainian associations, as

By Sana Noor Haq and Benjamin Brown, CNN An 8-year-old boy was found alive in a sewer eight days after he went missing in Oldenburg, northwestern Germany. The boy, identified by authorities only as Joe, was reported missing on the afternoon of June 17. Joe was eventually rescued from the sewer system after a passer-by

By Rob Picheta and Joshua Berlinger, CNN Sweden and Finland are set formally to end decades of neutrality and join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in a historic breakthrough for the alliance that deals a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The last major hurdle to the two nations’ entry to the bloc was

By Helen Regan, Jack Guy, Hafsa Khalil, Aditi Sangal, Laura Smith-Spark and Adrienne Vogt, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Saskya Vandoorne and Melissa Bell, CNN Izabela Sajbor knew for weeks that the baby she was carrying was unlikely to live long. On September 22 last year, she realized both their fates were sealed. “I hope I won’t get sepsis because then I won’t leave this place,” the 30-year-old wrote in a series of

By Emmet Lyons and Nicholas Pearce, CNN Five months of war have forced Ukrainians to adjust their expectations. After readying for a conflict they thought would be a sprint, many are now grappling with the likelihood of a “marathon,” said Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady. “It’s very difficult to hold on for five months,” Zelenska

By Helen Regan, Aditi Sangal, Lianne Kolirin and Hafsa Khalil, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Jassar Al Tahat, Hadeel Ghaboun, Celine Alkhaldi, Caroline Faraj and Mostafa Salem, CNN A toxic gas that leaked out of a container in Jordan’s port of Aqaba, killing at least 12 people and injuring 260 others, was chlorine, Jordan’s emergency relief coordinating agency said late Monday. A video from a nearby CCTV camera released

By Rob Picheta and Tara Subramaniam, CNN A Russian airstrike struck a bustling shopping mall in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine on Monday, setting the building ablaze and prompting a search and rescue operation that continued overnight. At least 18 people were killed, Dmytro Lunin, the head of the Poltava region military administration, said on Tuesday. He

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN Oil-consuming nations wait with bated breath as the OPEC cartel meets once again this week to decide whether to pump more crude into the market to tame runaway prices. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, oil this year rose to a 14-year high. Prices have since eased slightly and Brent crude futures

By Clare Sebastian and Anastasia Graham-Yooll, CNN It starts with a raised eyebrow and ends with a door slammed shut. A detail lost in translation, a wrong way to load a dishwasher, an awkward silence followed by a polite request to pack your bags. CNN spoke to half a dozen newly-arrived refugees from Ukraine who

By Larry Madowo and Darren Kyeyune, CNN Four people in South Africa’s East London town remain in critical condition after attending a party that turned tragic. The Eastern Cape Premier’s office tells CNN that the four remain under observation in hospital and authorities are waiting to question them. Five bodies are still unidentified after Sunday

By Tim Lister, CNN Russian forces are arguably having their best spell since the invasion of Ukraine began four months ago. They have eliminated most Ukrainian defenses in the Luhansk region, consolidated control of a belt of territory in the south, improved their logistics and command structure and blunted the effectiveness of Ukrainian attack drones.

By Tim Lister, Julia Kesaieva, Salma Abdelaziz, Pierre Bairin and Jeevan Ravindran, CNN Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv with a series of missile attacks Sunday, as leaders of the G7 nations gather in Germany for the first day of their annual summit. One person died and at least six were wounded in a

By CNN’s Teele Rebane, Eyad Kourdi and Reuters South Africa was on Sunday mourning the deaths of 22 young people — some of them as young as 13 — at a tavern in East London. National police minister Bheki Cele told reporters when visiting the scene that he could not yet say what happened at

By Mariya Knight, Jonny Hallam and Helen Regan, CNN Russia will transfer nuclear-capable Iskander-M missile systems to its ally Belarus over the coming months, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday. Putin told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at a meeting in St. Petersburg the missile systems “can use both ballistic and cruise missiles, both in

By Jessie Yeung, Mayumi Maruyama, James Frater, Niamh Kennedy, Sarah Diab and Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou, CNN Oslo’s annual Pride parade was canceled on Saturday following a deadly shooting at a gay bar that Norwegian police are investigating as a possible terrorist attack. Two people were killed and eight others taken to hospital after the shooting

By Tamara Qiblawi, CNN Murtaja Qureiris, once considered by lawyers and activists as the youngest political prisoner in Saudi Arabia, was released on Friday, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights told CNN. His case was first highlighted in an exclusive CNN report published in 2019, which detailed how Saudi authorities arrested Qureiris when he

By Joshua Berlinger and Tim Lister, CNN Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from Severodonetsk, effectively ceding the city to Russia and putting the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk almost fully under Russian control following months of grueling and bloody fighting Severodonetsk was one of the last major Ukrainian strongholds in the area. Serhiy Hayday, a top

By Nimi Princewill, CNN For decades, Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda with an iron fist in the mold of the archetypal strongman African leader. Under his rule, the East African country has emerged from the ruins of a devastating 1994 genocide that left nearly one million people dead to be hailed by Western allies as

By Aditi Sangal, Rhea Mogul, Lianne Kolirin and Ed Upright, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Salma Abdelaziz and Pierre Bairin, CNN Outside an already overwhelmed morgue in Kyiv, morticians swing open the back door of a refrigerated truck, and the heavy stench of death fills the air. Dressed in full protective suits and masks they lower body bags, one by one, onto gurneys and roll them inside. Investigators stand

By Dalal Mawad and Elias Lemercier Eight men were convicted Thursday by the Paris Criminal Court for stealing Banksy artwork from the Bataclan concert hall, one of the sites of the November 2015 Paris attacks. The artwork known as the “sad girl” was on the exit door of the Bataclan and painted in homage of

By Luke McGee, CNN Ukraine’s long-term goal of joining the European Union has received its latest shot in the arm, after the bloc’s 27 member states agreed Thursday that the country should be given candidate status — a significant step on the path to full membership.  “Today marks a crucial step on your path towards

By Helen Regan, Hafsa Khalil, Jeevan Ravindran, Aditi Sangal, Ed Upright and Adrienne Vogt, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.