CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Donie O’Sullivan and Jo Shelley, CNN A fishing community on the southern tip of Ireland breathed a sigh of relief this weekend after the Russian government gave in to appeals from local fishermen who said naval drills ordered by Moscow off the Irish coast could endanger their livelihoods. “I’m shocked, really,” Patrick Murphy, head

By Gianluca Mezzofiore and Katie Polglase, CNN Yohannes and Gebremeskel knew it would be freezing cold inside the bulk cargo area of the Airbus A350 plane on the long flight from Ethiopia’s capital to Belgium. But the two ground technicians with Ethiopian Airlines, both of Tigrayan origin, said they felt a threat from the Ethiopian

By Tamara Qiblawi, Sahar Akbarzai, Andrew Carey and Jessie Yeung, CNN The United States joined the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday to intercept and destroy a ballistic missile as the Israeli President was in the country on a historic visit, according to authorities. The attack marks the third such incident in January. The attack

By Kareem El Damanhoury, Wayne Chang and Mia Alberti, CNN A military court has sentenced 49 people to death — while one officer will receive 10 years in prison — following an investigation into the 2017 murders of two UN experts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Human Rights Watch. One of the

By Vasco Cotovio, CNN Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has questioned the framing of NATO as a “defensive” alliance, complaining that the bloc’s “line of defense” continues to move east towards Russia, as fears mount that the Kremlin is planning an invasion of Ukraine. “Let them console themselves with saying that it is ‘defensive.’ It

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the European Debt Crisis, which affected Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Cyprus July 11, 2011 – A munitions explosion at a naval base kills 13 people and destroys the country’s main power station. The resulting blackouts severely impact the tourism and finance sectors of the economy.

By Vasco Cotovio, CNN Portuguese citizens are heading to the polls this Sunday for a snap parliamentary election in which proposals to boost the country’s sluggish economy have been the dominant theme throughout the campaign. Covid-19 has also played a key role in campaign focuses — particularly as over a tenth of the country is

By Livia Borghese, CNN Italy’s current president Sergio Mattarella has been re-elected for a second mandate, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Robert Fico, announced Saturday. Mattarella received 759 out of a possible 1009 votes from “great electors” — the members of parliament and regional representatives charged with electing the president in a process that

By Sebastian Shukla, CNN On the walls of St. Michael’s monastery in Kyiv, there is a graphic and sad reminder of the toll of eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine. A total of 4,480 faces stare into the frigid air — the photographs of the servicemen and women who have died on the frontlines

By Rob Picheta, CNN The prospect of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine has heightened alarm in the region, threatening to plunge the country’s 44 million inhabitants further into the grips of conflict. But a move by the Kremlin would also ripple far beyond the two nations’ shared border. Experts fear it could usher in

By Al Goodman, CNN An off-duty police officer went into a supermarket near Barcelona, Spain to buy groceries and ended up tackling a suspected armed robber. The Catalan police, who patrol the region of Catalonia around Barcelona, in northeastern Spain, tweeted a video of the incident on Thursday and it has since been seen more

By Matthew Chance, Vasco Cotovio and Joshua Berlinger, CNN Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday other world leaders have been overstating the likelihood of war between his country and Russia, causing “panic” and destabilizing Kyiv’s economy. Speaking to foreign reporters Friday, Zelensky said he explained in phone calls to world leaders like US President Joe

By Sophie Jeong and Lianne Kolirin, CNN More than 80 people have now died and tens of thousands more are impacted after Tropical Cyclone Ana tore across southern Africa this week, the European Commission’s humanitarian agency said Friday. The European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) did not provide a breakdown of where the

By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN The Ukraine crisis is the classic case of a known unknown: We know that we don’t know what Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to do as he amasses troops on the Ukrainian border. So how imminent is the threat of a full-scale war? Some fears appear to have receded slightly following

By Celine Alkhaldi, CNN Jordanian soldiers killed 27 armed drug smugglers as they tried to enter the country from Syria on Thursday, an army spokesman said. Smugglers were “backed up by armed groups” who managed to flee back into Syrian territory, the spokesman said in a statement. “Large quantities of narcotics” were seized from the

By Uliana Pavlova, Tara John and Vasco Cotovio, CNN The written responses presented by the United States and NATO to Russia’s security demands fail to address Moscow’s concerns over the eastward expansion of the military alliance, Russia’s Foreign Minister said Thursday as fears of a possible invasion of Ukraine remain high. “There is no positive

By Katharina Krebs, Radina Gigova and Tara John, CNN Five people were shot dead and another five injured when a Ukrainian soldier opened fire at a military plant, the country’s interior ministry said Thursday. A Ukrainian National Guard service-member was detained following the attack, which left four soldiers and a worker dead at a state-owned

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN Relatives of four Dutch children killed by the Nazis have described their sadness after being told their identity tags were found in the ruins of a death camp. The extermination camp at Sobibor, in Nazi-occupied Poland, was established in March 1942 and shut down in late 1943 following a prisoners’ uprising.

By Andrew Carey and Abeer Salman, CNN Israeli settlers in a convoy of cars rampaged through a Palestinian town in the West Bank near Nablus on Monday evening, marking the latest in a string of violent incidents involving settlers in recent months. Israel’s Defense Minister condemned the settlers’ behavior and promised to take action, though

By Tim Lister and Jack Guy, CNN Russia has not assembled sufficient forces to launch an imminent full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Wednesday, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov threatened “appropriate response measures” if the West continues its “aggressive line.” Kuleba told reporters in Kyiv that Russian troops could attack

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the eurozone. Twenty countries in the European Union use the euro as their currency, and comprise the eurozone. Facts The countries in the eurozone are: Austria , Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

By Madalena Araújo, Arnaud Siad and Eliza Mackintosh, CNN NATO will send a written proposal to the Kremlin later this week to “try to find a way forward” amid growing tensions over Russia’s troop build-up on Ukraine’s border, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday. “We will outline that we are ready

Exclusive by Clarissa Ward, Brent Swails and Jack Guy, CNN Ukraine “will not allow anyone to impose any concessions on us” as part of efforts to de-escalate the threat of conflict with Russia, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CNN in an exclusive interview Tuesday. Kuleba emphasized that the country would not accept any compromises

By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN NATO announced on Monday that some member countries are putting forces on standby and sending additional ships and fighter jets to eastern Europe as the United Kingdom and the United States ordered diplomats’ families to withdraw from Ukraine amid concerns of a Russian invasion. The developments underscore growing fears of a

By Rob Iddiols, Claudia Rebaza and Tara John, CNN Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has won permission to try and appeal against a decision to allow him to be extradited to the United States, where he faces charges under the Espionage Act for his role in publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables. The decision

By Hada Messia and Stephanie Halasz, CNN Pope Benedict XVI admitted Monday that he was at a meeting in 1980 at which an abusive priest was discussed, blaming his earlier denial at having been there on “an error in the editing of his statement.” An independent investigation into abuse by Catholic clergy in the Archdiocese

By Becky Anderson, Sarah El Sirgany, Helen Regan, Mostafa Salem and Barbara Starr, CNN The US military joined with the United Arab Emirates on Monday to counter a missile attack by Yemen’s Houthis on an air base near its capital Abu Dhabi, where approximately 2,000 American service members and personnel are stationed, US officials said.

By Aliza Kassim Khalidi and Alaa Elassar, CNN Dutch authorities discovered a stowaway hiding in the nose wheel of a cargo plane when it landed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport Sunday morning. The man had been hiding for more than 11 hours since the plan departed from Johannesburg, South Africa, according to a spokesperson at Schiphol

By Duarte Mendonca, CNN The British Royal Navy has seized more than a ton of illicit drugs worth almost £15 million ($20.3 million) in the Gulf of Oman, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in a statement on Sunday. “In an operation lasting almost 10 hours, a team from the warship boarded a suspect

By Nimi Princewill and Schams Elwazer, CNN At least 16 people were killed after a fire tore through a nightclub in Cameroon’s capital city Yaoundé early on Sunday morning, according to the country’s government. Eight other people were seriously wounded in the fire at the Liv Nightclub, according to the government’s statement. During a press

By Ivana Kottasová, Philip Wang and AJ Davis, CNN The chief of German navy has resigned after suggesting that Crimea would “never come back” to Ukraine, a statement that is in direct contradiction to the stance taken by the German government, the European Union and NATO. Vice-Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach said he asked the German Defense

By George Engels, CNN Jean-Jacques Savin, a 75-year-old French adventurer, has died while attempting to row across the Atlantic single-handedly, according to a statement from his support team for the endeavor. “It is with great sadness that we have just learned of the death of our friend Jean-Jacques,” his support team said in a post

By Darya Tarasova and Eleanor Pickston, CNN A 10-year-old girl survived a night in a heavy snowstorm in Russia by hugging a dog, according to Russian state TV and local media reports. The girl, who is not named in the report, left her school in the town of Uglegorsk last week but failed to return

By Joshua Berlinger and Nic Robertson, CNN The UK foreign office said in a Saturday statement it has information that the Russian government is planning to “install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv as it considers whether to invade and occupy Ukraine.” “The former Ukrainian MP Yevhen Murayev is being considered as a potential candidate,” the

By Kareem Khadder, Celine Alkhaldi and Mostafa Salem, CNN The coalition led by Saudi Arabia fighting in Yemen denied that it deliberately targeted a detention center in airstrikes on Friday that killed dozens and caused a nationwide internet blackout. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who control much of Yemen, blamed the Saudi-led coalition for the strike

By Mohammed Tawfeeq and Joshua Berlinger, CNN At least seven fighters from the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces were killed when ISIS attempted to break thousands of its fighters out of a Syrian prison on Thursday, an attack underlining concerns the terror group could be quietly resurging. The assault on the Ghweran prison, located in the

By Celine Alkhaldi and Mostafa Salem, CNN At least 70 people were killed and more than 130 injured when an airstrike hit a detention center in Yemen on Friday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said, as the Saudi-led coalition continued to ramp up its deadly offensive on rebels in the war-torn nation. Another airstrike early Friday

By Kara Scannell and Kara Fox, CNN United States federal prosecutors charged four Belarus officials with piracy-related charges for diverting a RyanAir airplane mid-flight last year to arrest a journalist critical of the government. Leonid Churo, the director of the state’s air navigation agency, Belaeronavigatsia Republican Unitary Air Navigation Services Enterprise, and three others were

By Nimi Princewill, AnneClaire Stapleton, Stephanie Busari and Martin Goillandeau, CNN At least 13 people were killed in a blast in western Ghana on Thursday after a motorcycle collided with a vehicle carrying explosives, according to officials. An additional 59 people were injured in the explosion, according to AFP. The blast appeared to have completely

By Hadas Gold and Amir Tal, CNN Israeli officials are denying parts of a report that says they used NSO hacking software Pegasus to spy on civilians — including leaders of protest movements — without the required legal permissions. In an article published on Tuesday, business website Calcalist alleged that the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN Prince Andrew’s Twitter account has been deleted, days after the Queen stripped him of his honorary military titles and charities. Visitors to the prince’s official Twitter page, @TheDukeofYork, which has previously been tagged in posts by the official royal family Twitter handle, are now met with a blank page and a

By Radina Gigova, CNN A Czech folk singer who was opposed to having a coronavirus vaccine has died after deliberately contracting the virus, according to her son. Hana Horká, of the folk band Asonance, died Sunday at the age of 57 after intentionally exposing herself to the virus at home while her son and husband

By Rob Picheta, Claudia Otto and Nadine Schmidt, CNN Pope Benedict XVI knew about priests who abused children but failed to act when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, an inquest found Thursday, rejecting Benedict’s long-standing denials in a damning judgment. “He was informed about the facts,” lawyer Martin Pusch said, as

By Olga Pavlova, CNN Russia would welcome another conversation between President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a call with journalists on Thursday. The two presidents last spoke on December 31, the second time in a month that they had attempted to defuse the situation in Ukraine,

By Mick Krever and Hannah Ryan, CNN A man who pushed a woman in front of an approaching train at a Brussels metro station on Friday January 14 has been detained on suspicion of attempted manslaughter, according to prosecutors. The woman narrowly survived after the driver was able to pull the emergency brake just in

By Andrew Carey, Abeer Salman and Kareem Khadder, CNN A Palestinian family has been removed from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem in an overnight operation carried out by Israeli police. The Jerusalem municipality said the eviction had been carried out following district court approval and would mean a school for

By Matthew Chance, Kylie Atwood, Emmet Lyons and Ami Kaufman, CNN Ukraine has warned that Russia has “almost completed” its build-up of forces that could be used for an offensive against the country, compounding fears that Moscow could launch an invasion at any time. According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s latest intelligence assessment — shared

By Rob Picheta, James Frater, Sharon Braithwaite and Amy Cassidy, CNN Maltese center-right politician Roberta Metsola has been elected as the new European Parliament President, a week after the body’s previous head David Sassoli died suddenly, and she immediately faced questions around her stance on abortion rights. Metsola, who was voted into the post on

By Hadas Gold, Andrew Carey and Amir Tal, CNN For years, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called his ongoing corruption trial a “witch hunt” and an “attempted coup.” Although his denunciations of the case echoed words often heard from his once-close ally Donald Trump, Netanyahu is now deviating from the former US president’s

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at Ukraine, the second-largest European country in area after Russia. It borders Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Russia and the Black Sea in Eastern Europe. About Ukraine (from the CIA World Factbook) Area: 603,550 sq km (slightly smaller than Teetxas) Population: 43,528,136 (2022 est.) Median age: 41.2 years

By Charbel Mallo, Celine Alkhaldi, Sarah Sirgany and Kareem Khadder, CNN The Saudi led-coalition fighting in Yemen launched airstrikes on the Yemeni capital on Monday, shortly after Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for a deadly drone attack in the United Arab Emirates. “In response to the threat and military necessity, airstrikes began on Sana’a,” Saudi

By Stephanie Busari and Eleanor Pickston, CNN Former Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has died, Malian state media channel ORTM reported on Sunday. He was 76. Keita was in office for seven years, from September 2013 to August 2020, before being ousted in a military coup. Special forces commander Assimi Goita was one of several

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN Destructive malware capable of wiping data has appeared on dozens of computer systems at Ukrainian organizations, including government agencies, non-profits and technology organizations, Microsoft has warned. The disclosure is an added worry for Ukrainian government agencies after many of their websites were hacked this week and replaced with threatening messages to

By Stephanie Busari and Sharon Braithwaite, CNN A Somali government spokesman was injured on Sunday in an “odious terrorist attack,” the country’s Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble said. The Prime Minister “strongly condemns the odious terrorist attack targeting Government Spokesman, Mr Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimu who sustained injuries today but is in [a] stable condition,” the

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of award-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave. Personal Birth date: January 30, 1937 Birth place: London, England Birth name: Vanessa Redgrave Father: Sir Michael Redgrave, actor Mother: Rachel Kempson, actor Marriage: Tony Richardson (April 29, 1962-April 28, 1967, divorced) Children: with Franco Nero: Carlo Gabriel (September 16, 1969);

By Rob Picheta, CNN Before Covid-19, Nicolas Rimoldi had never attended a protest. But somewhere along the pandemic’s long and tortuous road, which saw his native Switzerland imposing first one lockdown, then another, and finally introducing vaccination certificates, Rimoldi decided he had had enough. Now he leads Mass-Voll, one of Europe’s largest youth-orientated anti-vaccine passport

By Tamara Qiblawi, Jomana Karadsheh and Christian Streib, CNN When Anwar Raslan was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity, he appeared nonplussed. Elsewhere in the courtroom, the former Syrian colonel’s victims rejoiced. Amid cheers, they shook hands and embraced. Social distancing rules were briefly forgotten. Raslan, a bespectacled 58-year-old, barely flinched. The

By Katharina Krebs and Jake Kwon, CNN Scores of Ukrainian government websites were targeted in a cyberattack with threatening text warning Ukrainians to “be afraid and wait for the worst” and alleging their personal information has been hacked. Ukraine claimed Russia was most likely behind the attack, which affected the websites of the Ministry of