CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Dalal Mawad and Nimi Princewill, CNN Rwandan-born French actress Sonia Rolland has been placed under formal investigation in France following her indictment in a probe into the huge fortune of the late Gabonese President Omar Bongo, which prosecutors allege includes ill-gotten assets. Rolland was the first African-born winner of the Miss France pageant in 2000,

By Rhea Mogul, Hannah Strange, Ivana Kottasová, Adrienne Vogt, Elise Hammond, Aditi Sangal, Melissa Macaya and Meg Wagner, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Mina Alsharif, Hande Atay Alam and Eliza Mackintosh, CNN Turkey is rebranding itself. The country is now called “Türkiye” in the halls of the United Nations, who agreed to recognize the change on Wednesday after a request from Turkey’s government. The campaign to rebrand as Türkiye began in December. “The process we started under

By Helen Regan, Adrienne Vogt, Meg Wagner, Aditi Sangal and Elise Hammond, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Helen Regan, Andrew Raine, Lianne Kolirin, Jack Guy, Adrienne Vogt, Aditi Sangal and Meg Wagner, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Lauren Izso, Abeer Salman and Celine Alkhaldi, CNN Two suspects were arrested on suspicion of assaulting a journalist who was covering clashes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli Police said in a statement. The incident followed the controversial flag march through the Old City in Jerusalem on Sunday. “Last

CNN’s Atika Shubert, Abeer Salman, Lauren Izso and Celine Alkhaldi Thousands of Israelis marched in a controversial flag-waving procession through east Jerusalem on Sunday, after Palestinian factions warned the event could ignite a new round of tensions. Crowds waving Israeli flags set off from Damascus Gate — the main entry to the Muslim Quarter of

By Nimi Princewill, CNN More than 30 people were killed and others injured when a stampede broke out at a church event in the southeastern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt on Saturday, according to police and security officials. Most of the casualties were children. The incident took place at a local polo club, where the

By Abeer Salman and Atika Shubert, CNN A 14-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Bethlehem late Friday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The family of the victim, Zaid Saeed Ghuneim, said the teenager had just finished dinner and was on his way to

By Simone McCarthy, Joshua Berlinger, Laura Smith-Spark, Adrienne Vogt and Joe Ruiz, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Nimi Princewill, CNN Senegalese President Macky Sall has fired his health minister as the country mourns eleven babies killed by a fire at the neonatal ward of a hospital in the western city of Tivaouane. Health Minister Diouf Sarr was relieved of his duties Thursday, and has been replaced by a senior ministry official,

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN Russia’s actions in Ukraine provide enough evidence to conclude that Moscow is inciting genocide and committing atrocities intended to destroy the Ukrainian people, according to the first independent report into allegations of genocide in that country. The legal report, signed by more than 30 leading legal scholars and genocide experts, accuses

By Brad Lendon, Jeevan Ravindran, Laura Smith-Spark, Aditi Sangal and Adrienne Vogt, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Atika Shubert, Abeer Salman, and Lauren Izso A Palestinian Authority investigation into the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh has found that she was fatally shot by Israeli forces using an armor-piercing bullet, Palestinian Attorney General Akram Al-Khatib said Thursday. The announcement was immediately rejected by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. Al-Khatib said the

By Sana Noor Haq, CNN Scientists have successfully sequenced the genome of a man who died after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD for the first time. Researchers studied the remains of two individuals found in a building known as the House of the Craftsman, a dwelling in the densely populated center of

By Xiaofei Xu, Wahany Sambo and Nimi Princewill, CNN A hospital fire that killed 11 newborn babies in Senegal may have been caused by an electrical short circuit, the country’s health minister said Thursday. Diouf Sarr told local radio station RFM: “When we heard about it, we called the management to find out what happened.

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

By Nimi Princewill and Krystina Shveda, CNN When Nigerian environmental lawyer Chima Williams launched a lawsuit against oil giant Shell plc, he did not envisage a 13-year battle that would lead to a landmark ruling and land him a prestigious environmental award. Williams, who is the executive director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the

By Nimi Princewill, CNN Rescue workers in Burkina Faso have recovered the bodies of four miners who had gone missing after floodwaters submerged a Canadian-owned zinc mine in Perkoa, in the Sanguié province of the West African country. Eight miners were reported trapped in the underground mine on April 16, triggering a 39-day search that

By Rhea Mogul, Joshua Berlinger, Hafsa Khalil and Adrienne Vogt, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Travis Caldwell, Seán Federico-O’Murchú, Jack Guy, Sana Noor Haq, Hafsa Khalil and Adrienne Vogt, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Atika Shubert, Abeer Salman and Lauren Izso, CNN A court in Jerusalem has issued a controversial ruling that critics say threatens the fragile agreement regulating access to Jerusalem’s most disputed holy sites. Israeli Magistrate’s Court Judge Zion Sahrai ruled Sunday that three Jewish youths were not violating security conditions when they recited a Jewish

By Ramin Mostaghim, Celine Alkhaldi in Amman, Adam Pourahmadi and Hamdi Alkhshali, CNN At least 24 people were killed in Monday’s collapse of a 10-story building in the Iranian city of Abadan, state news agency IRNA said on Friday as the search for survivors continued. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the Iranian Red

By Ivana Kottasová and Oleksandra Ochman, CNN “What would happen if we cut off your ear?” the soldiers asked Oleksandr Vdovychenko. Then they hit him in the head. The punches kept coming whenever his interrogators — a mixture of Russian soldiers and pro-Russian separatists — didn’t like his answers, he later told his family. The

By Aditi Sangal, Andrew Raine, Amy Woodyatt, Hafsa Khalil, Ed Upright and Maureen Chowdhury, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE by Uliana Pavlova, CNN It took a few weeks of sleeping on crates of grenades for a bed and hiding his face from Ukrainians amid a growing sense of guilt, for the Russian junior officer to come to his conclusion: This wasn’t his battle to fight. “We were dirty and tired. People around us

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN The pine forests around Irpin are Oleh Bondarenko’s happy place. He discovered them as a child, when his mom sent him to the area for summer camp, and he has been coming back ever since. “It’s a place full of memories. Vorzel, Irpin, Bucha, the forests, the fresh air. For me,

By CNN’s Kareem Khadder, and journalist Lauren Izso A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed and an 18-year-old was critically injured by Israeli fire during an Israeli military raid in Jenin in the West Bank Saturday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. The Palestinian Ministry of Health and Palestine TV later identified the teen who died as Amjad al-Fayed

By Joshua Berlinger, CNN It is nearly three months since Russia invaded Ukraine — a 12-week period in which Russian forces have wrought devastation on the country and its people, resulting in death on a vast scale and causing millions to flee. But the invasion has not been the military success Moscow hoped, and is

By Tim Lister and Sanyo Fylyppov, CNN As thousands of Ukrainians continue to flee Russian-occupied parts of southern Ukraine, they run a gauntlet of harassment by Russian troops, sometimes coming under fire. More than a dozen people have spoken to CNN at length about their harrowing journeys out of the Kherson region, which has been

By Hannah Ritchie, CNN Russian paratroopers executed at least eight Ukrainian men in the town of Bucha on March 4, in what appears to be a potential war crime, according to a New York Times investigation published Thursday. Based on eye-witness testimonies and three videos obtained and analyzed by The Times, the investigation details the

By Sara Sidner, Sandi Sidhu and Konstantin Gak, CNN When the Russian missile hit his apartment building, Oleksiy Paradovsky thought he was being incinerated. “I started to burn, turn into ashes,” he told CNN from his hospital bed in the south of Ukraine. “I thought another minute and I will definitely turn into ashes. I

By Niamh Kennedy and Donie O’Sullivan, CNN When 25-year-old Maria Kozlovskaya gazes out of the window, she sees the green fields of the west of Ireland. It’s a far cry from the shelled apartment buildings of her home city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. Forced into exile by conflict, the young mother has found an

By CNN’s Rob Picheta, Kareem Khadder, and Amir Tal, and journalist Lauren Izso Israel’s fragile government lost its parliamentary majority on Thursday after an Arab-Israeli lawmaker resigned from the ruling coalition, accusing its leaders of fueling tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and condemning the violent intervention of police at the funeral of slain journalist Shireen

By Helen Regan, Jack Guy, Matias Grez, Adrienne Vogt, Veronica Rocha, Aditi Sangal and Maureen Chowdhury, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Nimi Princewill, CNN Embroiled in a homophobia row in France, Paris Saint-German footballer Idrissa Gana Gueye has received the backing of Senegalese President Macky Sall. With French clubs’ players encouraged to wear rainbow-colored numbers on the back of their shirts to commemorate World Day Against Homophobia on May 17, the 32-year-old Gueye, who is

By Tim Lister and Taras Zadorozhnyy, CNN The Russian army’s performance in Ukraine has been less than impressive according to Western intelligence assessments — and that viewpoint is gaining ground among some in Russia itself. Three Russian military bloggers have suddenly launched into damning criticism of the operation, and especially the debacle of a failed

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

By Nimi Princewill, CNN The death toll in an explosion that rocked the city of Kano in northwest Nigeria has risen to nine, authorities say. Earlier, Kano’s Police Commissioner, Sama’ila Shu’aibu Dikko told CNN that the explosion was from a gas cylinder that went off near a school in the Sabon Gari area of Kano.

By Tamara Qiblawi, Charbel Mallo and Ben Wedeman, CNN The Iran-backed political and militant group Hezbollah has lost its parliamentary coalition majority in a Lebanese election that delivered significant gains to its rivals as well as to a protest movement that swept the country in a 2019 uprising, final results showed Tuesday. Reformist political groups

By Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Rhea Mogul, Lianne Kolirin, Sana Noor Haq and Matias Grez, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Saskya Vandoorne, Melissa Bell and Oleksandra Ochman (CNN) Mykola Kulichenko struggles to recount a tale he shouldn’t be alive to tell. But this Ukrainian man believes he was allowed to cheat death so he might speak for all those who cannot. By the side of a remote road in the northern Chernihiv region of

By Nimi Princewill, CNN Somalia’s parliament elected Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as the country’s tenth president on Sunday, in a vote broadcast live on national TV. Mohamud previously served as president from September 2012 to February 2017 and is now the first leader of the country elected twice as Somalia’s head of state. After his election

By Lauren Said-Moorhouse and Oleksandra Ochman, CNN When masked Russian soldiers ransacked Nina’s home in northeastern Ukraine at 6 a.m. one day in late April, they were not searching for weapons. Instead, they were looking for her Ukrainian textbooks. The troops held her husband and daughter at gunpoint, but the 48-year-old told CNN she knew

By Rhea Mogul, Jessie Yeung, Amy Woodyatt, Matias Grez, Ed Upright and Maureen Chowdhury, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Rhea Mogul, Andrew Raine, Tara John, Sana Noor Haq, Laura Smith-Spark and Amir Vera, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Tim Lister and Sanyo Fylyppov, CNN Every day, hundreds, or even thousands, of people are trying to flee the Russian-occupied region of Kherson in southern Ukraine, gathering up whatever they can cram into their cars, or even piling onto tractors. And every day they run a gauntlet of harassment and worse from Russian troops.

By Tara John, Chandler Thornton and Amy Cassidy, CNN Finland’s government said Sunday it intends to join NATO, ditching decades of neutrality and ignoring Russian threats of possible retaliation as the Nordic country attempts to strengthen its security following the onset of the war in Ukraine. Sweden’s ruling party later said it will also support

By Tamara Qiblawi, CNN Lebanese citizens voted Sunday in a high-stakes parliamentary election, the first since a 2019 popular uprising demanded the downfall of the ruling elite, blaming traditional parties for corruption and mismanagement. Several new political groups sprung out of the protest movement and are competing in Sunday’s race, coming head to head with

By Ivana Kottasová, Oleksandra Ochman and David von Blohn, CNN More than a month after the Ukrainian army retook Irpin from the Russians, Volodymyr Klimashevskyi is still finding the little nail-like projectiles scattered around his garden and embedded deep in the walls of his house. “You can’t take them out with your hands, you need

By Abeer Salman, Celine Alkhaldi and Colin McCullough, CNN Israeli police say they will hold an investigation “into the events that ensued during the funeral” procession of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Friday. “Unfortunately, during the course of the funeral, severe violent events unfolded on the part of those participating that worsened the