CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Al Goodman, CNN Lava flowing from the Cumbre Vieja volcano on Spain’s La Palma island sparked a fire at a cement factory Monday, leading to at least 2,500 residents to be ordered into lockdown to protect their health, a local official said. The main danger came from the gas and smoke spewing from the

By Stephanie Halasz, CNN Alexander Schallenberg was named Austria’s new chancellor on Monday after his predecessor, Sebastian Kurz, resigned abruptly amid a corruption scandal. Former foreign minister Schallenberg was sworn in by President Alexander Van der Bellen at the Hofburg palace in Vienna. Schallenberg, 52, is a career diplomat and a close ally of the

By Tamara Qiblawi, CNN Lebanon’s main state electricity company supplied around two hours of power to the national grid, local residents told CNN on Sunday, a day after the country was reported to have disconnected from its grid due to fuel depletion. On Saturday, Lebanon’s Energy Minister Walid Fayad told CNN Arabic that reports of

By Sharon Braithwaite and Nicola Ruotolo, CNN Rachele Mussolini, granddaughter of the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, won the highest number of votes in Rome’s city council elections, official results showed Wednesday. Standing for the Fratelli d’Italia party, which descends from the neo-fascist conservative MSI party– or Italian Social Movement party — Mussolini won 8,264

By Nima Elbagir, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Katie Polglase and Eliza Mackintosh, CNN The Biden administration has described a CNN report that Ethiopian Airlines shuttled weapons to Eritrea as “incredibly grave” and warned that it was prepared to impose sanctions on Ethiopia and any other parties who prolonged the conflict in Tigray. On Wednesday CNN revealed that

By Hamzeh Noami The Israeli manufacturer of Pegasus spyware said Thursday it had terminated its contract with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the wake of a ruling by England’s high court that Dubai’s ruler hacked his ex-wife’s phone using the software. Andrew McFarlane, the UK’s most senior family court judge, said in his ruling

By Hannah Ritchie, CNN The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, used agents of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to hack into and monitor the phones of his ex-wife Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, her legal advisors, and staff, during an ongoing custody battle concerning their two children, England’s high court has

By Delia Gallagher and Saskya Vandoorne, CNN Pope Francis on Wednesday called a report detailing decades of abuse in the French Catholic Church “a moment of shame,” and called upon leaders of the Church to ensure “similar tragedies” never happen again. Francis was speaking a day after a landmark report found that members of the

By Sarah Dean Anti-Semitic graffiti has been found at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, staff from the museum said in a statement on Tuesday, denouncing the incident as “an outrageous attack” on the memorial site. The vandalism, some of which was anti-Semitic, was sprayed in English and German on nine wooden barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau

CNN Editorial Research Here is a look at the life of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Personal Birth date: October 28, 1956 Birth place: Aradan, Iran Birth name: Mahmoud Saborjhian Father: Ahmad Saborjhian, a blacksmith. Ahmadinejad’s father changed the family name from Saborjhian to Ahmadinejad after the family moved to Tehran. Mother: Seiyed Khano Marriage:

By Eliza Mackintosh and Richard Roth, CNN The United Nations has rebuffed Ethiopia’s decision to expel seven senior UN officials as the country’s war-torn northern Tigray region descends into famine, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday. Ethiopia declared the officials, who are responsible for coordinating critical humanitarian assistance, “persona non grata” on Thursday, just

By Nimi Princewill, CNN A former member of Malawi’s parliament killed himself inside the parliament building in the capital Lilongwe on Thursday, a police spokesman has confirmed to CNN. Clement Chiwaya, an ex-deputy speaker, shot himself in the head after sneaking a firearm into the office of the parliament’s clerk, a spokesman for the Malawi

By Jeevan Ravindran, Xiaofei Xu, Meredith Ruleman and Saskya Vandoorne, CNN After a 35-year hunt, a former police officer has been identified as being behind a series of murders, rapes and false imprisonment, French officials said Thursday. The man took his own life earlier this week. In a statement seen by CNN, Paris public prosecutor

Exclusive by Matthew Chance and Zahra Ullah, CNN Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has refused to apologize for the widespread human rights violations in the country since his disputed re-election last year in an exclusive interview with CNN. CNN cited evidence from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of some detainees reporting injuries including broken bones

By CNN’s Nadine Schmidt and Alex Carey A 96-year-old German woman who fled on Thursday before standing trial on charges of aiding and abetting murder in a Nazi concentration camp has been found by local authorities and will be brought before the court. “The woman has been located by German police,” Frederike Milhoffer, spokesperson at

By Manveena Suri, CNN Police in the Netherlands have arrested and released a former member of a far-right political party after Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s security detail suspected him of behaving suspiciously, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Hague. Arnoud Van Doorn, who once served as a senior political adviser for populist Freedom

By Hannah Ritchie, CNN Sixteen people have been injured — including four critically — after an explosion led to a large fire in an apartment building in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, emergency services told CNN Monday. The blast happened at 4:45 a.m. local time, according to Swedish police who are investigating the cause of

By Anna Chernova, CNN Russia reported its highest Covid-19 death toll in a single day on Tuesday with 852 coronavirus-related deaths recorded in the past 24 hours, according to the country’s coronavirus response center. The previous all-time high was recorded four days ago, on September 24, when 828 deaths were registered. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov

By Tara John, Nadine Schmidt, Stephanie Halasz and Frederik Pleitgen, CNN Germany’s left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD) won the largest share of the vote in Sunday’s federal election, putting them in pole position to form the country’s next coalition government — but they could be in for some tricky negotiations. Angela Merkel, one of the

By Simone Bouvier and Tara John, CNN French President Emmanuel Macron was hit by an egg while taking part in a food event in Lyon on Monday. The egg “bounced off Macron’s shoulder and burst on the floor right in front of me,” Florence Lago, a journalist for French publication Lyon Mag, told CNN. Lyon

By Caitlin Hu and Sharif Paget, CNN The tiny landlocked republic of San Marino voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to legalize abortion under certain circumstances, according to official results published by the country’s state secretariat of internal affairs. Around 77.30% of voters approved the measure which would make abortion legal in the first 12 weeks of

Story by Reuters Iceland looked to have elected a woman-majority parliament but a recount of votes on Sunday showed there will still be more men than women in the chamber, state broadcaster RUV reported. Thirty women were elected to the 63-seat parliament in Saturday’s election, up from 24 in the previous vote. Earlier results before

Story by Reuters Switzerland agreed to legalize civil marriage and the right to adopt children for same-sex couples by a nearly two-thirds majority in a referendum on Sunday, making it one of the last countries in Western Europe to legalise gay marriage. According to results provided by the Swiss federal chancellery, 64.1% of voters voted

By Frederik Pleitgen, Salma Abdelaziz, Nadine Schmidt, Stephanie Halasz and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN Germany’s left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD) has won the most seats in the country’s federal election, preliminary results show, but it will be some time before the makeup of the new government is known. The SPD claimed a narrow victory over the

By Hadas Gold and Abeer Salman, CNN Five Palestinians have been killed and two arrested Saturday night as part of a days-long operation targeting Hamas in the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces said. Overnight Saturday, security forces including members of the IDF, Shin Bet, the Israel Security Agency and the Yamam counterterrorism unit, attempted

By Laura Smith-Spark, Nadine Schmidt and Rob Picheta, CNN Germans were heading to the polls Sunday to vote in a closely fought federal election that will, in the coming days or weeks, result in a new chancellor taking the helm of the world’s fourth-largest economy. Chancellor Angela Merkel, 67, has been a symbol of stability

By Nadine Schmidt, CNN The race to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor remains wide open ahead of a national election on Sunday, according to the latest polls. Poll predictions on Saturday point to the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) holding a small but narrowing lead over Merkel’s party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Merkel

By Larry Madowo, CNN Zambian leader Hakainde Hichilema is basking in the glow of his historic win in last month’s election during his first visit to the United States as president. On Thursday, he became the first Zambian president to visit the White House since 1992, a rare honor that world leaders covet. His defeat

By Stephanie Busari and Sebastian Shukla, CNN Tucked away down a quiet, leafy street in Peckham, southeast London, is the registered address of a movement seeking to break Nigeria apart. This suburban spot is the unlikely location for Radio Biafra, a network of internet-based amateur radio stations broadcasting a separatist agenda back to listeners in

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN When the women of Kidbrooke in southeast London learned Sabina Nessa, an elementary school teacher living in their community, was found murdered in their local park, many had the same thought: It could have been me. “Police said that she left her home to meet her friend in a local pub

By Vasco Cotovio, CNN The European Commission has accused Russia of trying to interfere in European democratic processes just days before Sunday’s parliamentary election in Germany. In a statement on Friday, the European Commission said: “EU Member States have observed malicious cyber activities, collectively designated as Ghostwriter, and associated these with the Russian state.” “Such

By Laura Smith-Spark, James Frater, Saskya Vandoorne, Livia Borghese and Nadine Schmidt, CNN Most European countries have Covid-19 vaccination rates that would be the envy of much of the world. But even here, hesitancy in certain areas is causing governments to take action — or risk stalling their efforts to control the spread of the

By Tamara Qiblawi, CNN Hezbollah has threatened to “usurp” the Lebanese judge investigating the Beirut port blast in a verbal message to him in recent days, a source familiar with the conversation has told CNN. ​ High-ranking Hezbollah official Wafiq Safa ​issued the threat to Judge Tarek Bitar through an ​unnamed intermediary, who relayed the

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Personal Birth date: October 7, 1952 Birth place: Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia Birth name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin Father: Vladimir Putin, factory foreman Mother: Maria Putina Marriage: Lyudmila (Shkrebneva) Putina (July 28, 1983-2014, divorced) Children: Yekaterina and Maria Education: Leningrad State

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of Theresa May, former prime minister of the United Kingdom. Personal Birth date: October 1, 1956 Birth place: Eastbourne, England Birth name: Theresa Mary Brasier Father: Hubert Brasier, Anglican vicar Mother: Zaidee (Barnes) Brasier Marriage: Philip May (1980-present) Education: St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, Geography,

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of Lucas Papademos, economist and former prime minister of Greece. Personal Birth date: October 11, 1947 Birth place: Athens, Greece Birth name: Lucas Demetrios Papademos Marriage: Shanna (Ingram) Papademos Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S. in Physics, 1970; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.S. in Electrical Engineering,

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Since 2003, worldwide concern over Iran’s nuclear program has increased as Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spar over investigation and details of Iran’s program. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has repeatedly denied Iran is building a bomb and says weapons of mass

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Personal Birth date: October 7, 1931 Death date: December 26, 2021 Birth place: Klerksdorp, Transvaal, South Africa Birth name: Desmond Mpilo Tutu Father: Zachariah Tutu, schoolteacher Mother: Aletta Tutu, domestic servant Marriage: Nomalizo Leah (Shenxane) Tutu (July 2,

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel. Personal Birth date: September 30, 1945 Birth place: Binyamina, British Mandate Palestine (now Israel) Birth name: Ehud Olmert Father: Mordechai Olmert, member of the Knesset Mother: Bella Olmert Marriage: Aliza Olmert, artist and playwright Children: two sons: Ariel

By Katharina Krebs and Zahra Ullah, CNN Shots were fired Wednesday morning at the car of a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky outside Kiev, in what police are calling an assassination attempt. Ukrainian police said in a statement that a car that Serhiy Shefir was traveling in came under fire in the village