CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Joshua Berlinger, CNN Finland and Sweden are poised to end decades of neutrality by joining NATO, a dramatic evolution in European security and geopolitics sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The two Nordic nations had long kept the military alliance at an arm’s length, even while eying Russia to their east with caution. But

By Stephanie Busari, CNN A female student in northern Nigeria was killed by a mob who stoned, beat and set fire to her for allegedly posting a blasphemous statement against the Prophet Mohammed, according to police. The girl, Deborah Yakubu, was surrounded by fellow students and attacked on Thursday, a police statement said. The incident

By Angela Dewan, CNN Human-induced climate change made the extreme rainfall that triggered deadly floods in South Africa in April heavier and twice as likely to happen, a rapid analysis published Friday by the World Weather Attribution project shows. Parts of South Africa experienced more than 350mm of rainfall in two days, causing destructive floods

By Mostafa Salem, CNN Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates President whose modernization policies helped transform his country into a regional powerhouse, died on Friday aged 73, state media WAM said. “The Ministry of Presidential Affairs mourn the people of the UAE, the Arab and Islamic nations, and the whole world.

CNN Editorial Research Here is a look at D-Day. Allied troops invaded Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, to fight Nazi Germany in World War II. Facts The largest amphibious (land and water) invasion in history. The code name for the invasion was Operation Overlord. General Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded the operation, and plans were

By Tim Lister and Sanyo Fylyppov, CNN A Russian merchant ship loaded with grain stolen in Ukraine has been turned away from at least one Mediterranean port and is now in the Syrian port of Latakia, according to shipping sources and Ukrainian officials. CNN has identified the vessel as the bulk carrier Matros Pozynich. On

By Luke McGee, CNN Finland’s president and prime minister announced their support for joining NATO on Thursday, moving the Nordic nation which shares an 800-mile border with Russia one step closer to membership of the US-led military alliance. The Kremlin has responded by saying the move would be a threat to Russia and warned of

EXCLUSIVE by Sara Sidner, Sandi Sidhu, Vasco Cotovio, Kostyantyn Gak and Oleksandra Titorova, CNN Russian soldiers shot two unarmed civilians as they walked away after an encounter in the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. CNN has obtained surveillance video of what is now being investigated as a war crime by Ukrainian prosecutors. Both

By Ivana Kottasová and Oleksandra Ochman, CNN For 12 long, terrifying days, Iryna Danylovich’s family and friends had no idea where she was. The Crimean human rights activist and nurse disappeared on her way home from work in the Russian-annexed peninsula almost two weeks ago. On Wednesday, her loved ones finally received confirmation she had

By Hadas Gold, Abeer Salman and Amir Tal, CNN Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was fatally shot while covering an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin on Wednesday. The Palestinian health ministry said she was shot in the head by a live bullet, and confirmed her death shortly afterwards.

By Ben Church, Joshua Berlinger, Adrienne Vogt, Aditi Sangal, Melissa Macaya and Maureen Chowdhury, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Vasco Cotovio, Fred Pleitgen and Claudia Otto, CNN A US Navy SEAL jumps out of a Romanian helicopter and slides down a rope. He’s one of several American special forces units taking part in a military drill on the Black Sea, just 100 miles from Ukraine, where Russia continues to wage its war. Their

By Sara Sidner, Sandi Sidhu, and Kostyantyn Gak, CNN In a small village Russian soldiers occupied as they tried and failed to take Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, at the beginning of the war, two women say they are living with the pain of multiple traumas: destruction, death and rape. One of the women — who said

By Rob Picheta, Olga Voitovych, Lizzy Yee, Svitlana Budzhak-Jones, Mick Krever and Olha Konovalova, CNN About 60 people are feared dead after a Russian aircraft dropped a bomb on a school in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, where civilians were sheltering on Saturday afternoon, a Ukrainian official said. Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk regional military administration,

By Toyin Owoseje, CNN The world-famous nonuplets born to a couple from Mali, West Africa have celebrated their first birthday with a small party at home. Halima Cissé and Abdelkader Arby welcomed five girls and four boys, weighing between just 1.1 and 2.4 pounds, at the Ain Borja clinic in Casablanca, Morocco on May 4

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN Images of the war in Ukraine have inspired people worldwide to search for ways to try to help. Some have opened their homes to refugees or pledged donations to emergency appeals. Others have sought to support Ukrainian businesses. Among them is New Yorker Chelsey Brown. As she trawled for ideas online,

By Abeer Salman, CNN The leader of a Palestinian village council in the West Bank vowed Friday to continue fighting eviction from land the Israeli military is claiming as a firing range, despite an Israeli Supreme Court decision against the Palestinians in a case that has been in court for more than two decades. “We

By Amir Tal, Abeer Salman, Mike Schwartz, Elliott Gotkine and Hadas Gold, CNN At least three people were killed and four injured in a suspected terror attack in the central Israeli city of Elad on Thursday, according to Israel’s emergency response services. Police said the incident, which took place on Israeli Independence Day, involved two

By Hadas Gold, Katharina Krebs and Lianne Kolirin, CNN Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized for comments that his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made about Hitler and Jews earlier this week in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, according to a statement from Bennett’s office. The Thursday statement said, “The Prime Minister accepted

By Hannah Ritchie, CNN Forces identified by witnesses as Russian have “summarily executed, tortured, and beaten civilians” in the Central African Republic (CAR) since 2019, a report by rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has alleged. The report — which is based on interviews with 40 people, including 10 victims of violence and 15 witnesses

By Katie Hunt, CNN Meat-heavy banquets have long been thought to be a common feature of early medieval life for England’s kings and nobles, who are often depicted feasting on legs of animal flesh and knocking back goblets of ale in the great halls of their realm. However, a new study that examined the dietary

By Tim Lister and Sanyo Fylyppov, CNN Russian forces are stealing farm equipment and thousands of tons of grain from Ukrainian farmers in areas they have occupied, as well as targeting food storage sites with artillery, multiple sources have told CNN. The phenomenon has accelerated in recent weeks as Russian units have tightened their grip

By Mia Alberti and Sara Spary, CNN A German prosecutor has said he is “sure” that Madeleine McCann — the British girl who disappeared from a resort in Portugal in 2007 at the age of three — was killed by suspect Christian Brückner. Hans Christian Wolters, who is investigating the case, told Portuguese broadcaster CMTV

By Nimi Princewill and Amy Cassidy, CNN Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have identified a third case of Ebola in the city of Mbandaka, the World Health Organization said Thursday. The patient is a 48-year-old man deemed a “high-risk” contact of the first Ebola patient identified in the DRC’s latest outbreak,

By Nimi Princewill, CNN Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has thanked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for his visit to the country, saying that he is grateful the West African nation hasn’t been forgotten amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Guterres, who is visiting Nigeria for the first time as secretary-general, said he had traveled to Nigeria “to express

By Tim Lister and Paul P. Murphy, CNN A 22-minute video shot by a surveillance drone over the Ukrainian town of Popasna has illustrated the stunning destruction being inflicted on settlements across the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. It’s also another insight into the importance of drones in modern warfare, as well as the

By Hadas Gold, CNN In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Israel has tried to maintain a delicate diplomatic balancing act. While Israel has officially condemned the invasion, accused Russia of war crimes and sent planeloads of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, it has refrained thus far from fully joining Western sanctions against Russia, mainly because

By Delia Gallagher, CNN Pope Francis warned the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, not to become “Putin’s altar boy,” he said in an interview this week. In his strongest words to date against the pro-war Patriarch, Francis also slammed Kirill for endorsing Russia’s stated reasons for invading Ukraine. “I spoke to him

By Aditi Sangal, Maureen Chowdhury, Adrienne Vogt, Brad Lendon, Andrew Raine, Jack Guy and Ben Church, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Jack Guy and Anna Chernova, CNN Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and since then President Vladimir Putin has insisted that his troops are carrying out a “special military operation” instead of a war. But speculation is growing that this could change in the coming days. Western officials believe Putin could formally declare war

By Nimi Princewill, CNN Dozens of passengers kidnapped during a train attack in northern Nigeria in late March are being used as human shields by their captors, President Muhammadu Buhari has said. Buhari said this had further complicated rescue efforts. “They are using civilians as human shields, thereby making it difficult to confront them directly

By Erin Burnett, Sahar Akbarzai and Rhea Mogul, CNN As Russian forces close in on the Azovstal steel plant, the Ukrainian civilians and resistance fighters holed up in the last bastion of Mariupol are facing “nonstop” bombardment and running dangerously low on supplies — forcing some to consider desperate measures to survive. Fighters inside the

By Eliza Mackintosh and Oleksandra Ochman, CNN Photographs by Yurko Dyachyshyn for CNN Lviv, Ukraine — At the train station in Lviv, on the westernmost edge of Ukraine, women are at a physical and psychological crossroads. After arriving in the city, now a waypoint for displaced people, humanitarian aid and weapons, they’ve had to ask

By Ivana Kottasová and Uliana Pavlova, CNN At least five prominent Russian businessmen have reportedly died by suicide since late January, with three of them allegedly killing members of their families before taking their own lives. Four of the dead men were associated with the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom or one of its subsidiaries.

By Aditi Sangal, Steve George, Seán Federico O’Murchú, Jessie Yeung, Sana Noor Haq, Ben Morse, Ed Upright, Adrienne Vogt, Meg Wagner and Melissa Macaya, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom. Journalists at British newspapers are accused of making payments to police and hacking into the phones of celebrities, law makers, royalty, murder victims and other figures in the news. Most cases involve News Corp.’s News of the World, but the

By Nick Paton Walsh, Natalie Gallón, Maryna Marukhnych and Brice Laine, CNN A steady flow of people make their way across fields and rivers dotting southern Ukraine’s countryside through the day. As night falls, the crowds swell. They travel on foot, by bicycle, or wheelbarrow. They are desperate to leave behind the Russian occupation of

By Nimi Princewill and Hannah Ritchie, CNN Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are scrambling to contain an Ebola outbreak after a second person died from the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday. The country declared a new outbreak of the disease last week after the death of a 31-year-old man,