CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Tim Lister, CNN Ukrainian authorities are accusing Russia of trying to export an unlikely phenomenon: teenage gangs inspired by a Japanese anime game who are taking to the streets for mass brawls. These gangs have become known as “Redan PMC,” combining the name of a Japanese anime character with the acronym for Private Military

By Sana Noor Haq, Chris Liakos, Lindsay Isaac and Eleni Giokos, CNN Anger in Greece over poor railway safety grew on Thursday, as authorities released audio in which a train driver involved in one of the country’s worst train crashes in recent years was told to ignore a red light. Demonstrators poured onto the streets

By Artemis Moshtaghian, Adam Pourahmadi, Niamh Kennedy, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Nick Thompson, CNN Concern is growing in Iran after reports emerged that hundreds of schoolgirls had been poisoned across the country in recent months. On Wednesday, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News reported that Shahriar Heydari, a member of Parliament, cited an unnamed “reliable source” in saying

By Hadas Gold, Richard Allen Greene, Michael Schwartz and Jennifer Hansler, CNN Israel’s far-right finance minister’s call for a Palestinian town “to be erased” was harshly condemned by US State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Wednesday, who described the comments as “repugnant” and “irresponsible.” Bezalel Smotrich, who also leads the far-right Religious Zionism party, said

By Nimi Princewill and Stephanie Busari, CNN Bola Ahmed Tinubu has emerged the winner of a closely fought contest for Nigeria’s presidency. But who is the man who will lead Africa’s largest economy — as well as inherit its plethora of economic and security crises? Tinubu, who turns 71 later this month, was governor in

By Adam Pourahmadi, CNN Uranium particles enriched to near bomb-grade levels have been found at an Iranian nuclear facility, according to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, as the US warned that Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb was accelerating. In a restricted report seen by CNN, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that uranium

By Laura Paddison, CNN It may seem strange to see Greta Thunberg protesting against wind turbines, but this week the Swedish climate activist has joined Indigenous and environmental groups in Norway to do just that. Dozens of protestors, including Thunberg, have blocked access to Norwegian government buildings in Oslo to protest against two windfarms built

By Jessie Yeung, CNN Russia’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday accused Ukraine of launching a spate of attempted drone strikes targeting infrastructure deep inside Russia, including near the capital, after a fire broke out at an oil depot and authorities abruptly closed airspace above the country’s second-largest city. Moscow region Gov. Andrey Vorobyov claimed a Ukrainian

By Stephanie Busari, Nimi Princewill, Bethlehem Feleke, Larry Madowo and Jessie Yeung, CNN A Nigerian opposition party has said it will launch a legal challenge after Bola Ahmed Tinubu was on Wednesday declared the winner of Nigeria’s controversial presidential elections. Tinubu, 70, represents the ruling All Progressives Congress party, which received close to 8.8 million

By Heather Chen, Chris Liakos, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Jennifer Hauser and Sana Noor Haq, CNN Rescue workers are searching for survivors after a head-on collision between two trains in central Greece killed dozens of people and left scores injured, raising questions about the country’s poor track record of railway safety. At least 38 people were killed

By Richard Allen Greene and Hadas Gold, CNN An Israeli-American citizen was killed in the occupied West Bank as tensions in the region continued to ratchet up after a weekend of violence. Elan Ganeles, 27, was shot dead on Monday evening in what Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service described as a “terror attack”

By Hadas Gold, CNN The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sees the previous day’s attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank as “actions of terror,” an IDF official said Monday, as tensions in the region simmered after a weekend of violence. At least one Palestinian man was killed, a Palestinian fire engine was

By Stephanie Halasz and Rob Picheta, CNN The European Union has sanctioned a Russian national and the subsidiary of Russia’s Wagner Group in Sudan, Meroe Gold, for facilitating the exploitation of Sudan’s gold wealth, after a CNN investigation into the group’s activities last July. The EU named a Russian national — Mikhail Potepkin — and

By Rob Picheta, CNN One year ago, when Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine and began Europe’s biggest land war since 1945, it waged another battle at home — intensifying its information blockade in an effort to control the hearts and minds of its own citizens. Draconian new censorship laws targeted any media still

By Stephanie Busari, Nimi Princewill and Bethlehem Feleke, CNN How do you stage elections for more than 93 million voters? With great difficulty, headaches, delays and technical issues, it turns out. More than 24 hours after the polls closed, some Nigerians were still voting in Africa’s largest democratic exercise. The numbers are staggering; Nigeria has

By Amir Tal, Abeer Salman and Hadas Gold, CNN Two Israeli settlers were shot and killed in the West Bank on Sunday, local settler leader Yossi Dagan said, calling it “an extremely serious terrorist attack.” The shooting sparked revenge attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, causing at least one death and numerous injuries. The shooting

By Amir Tal and Hadas Gold, CNN About 160,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv Saturday night against the Israeli government’s plans to weaken the country’s judicial system, crowd expert Ofer Grinboim Liron told CNN. That would make it one of the biggest single demonstrations yet against the legislation. Grinboim Liron, the CEO of Crowd Solutions,

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN At least 64 people including children and women died after a wooden boat carrying migrants from Turkey broke apart on rocks off the coast of Calabria on Sunday, Italian authorities said. More bodies were being pulled from the Mediterranean Sea on Monday, where bad weather hampered search efforts and made

By Tara Subramaniam, Andrew Raine, Sophie Tanno, Matt Meyer, Maureen Chowdhury and Mike Hayes, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Brad Lendon, CNN When Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his forces into Ukraine a year ago, most observers expected a quick victory for the invaders. Those early predictions of Russian success have not materialized, for what experts cite as a variety of factors, including higher morale and superior military tactics on the Ukrainian side

By Nimi Princewill, Bethlehem Feleke, Stephanie Busari and Amarachi Orie, CNN Widespread delays overshadowed a crucial presidential election in Nigeria Saturday, as millions voted to elect their new leader. The hotly contested poll is being held simultaneously with elections for representatives for the country’s parliament. CNN confirmed reports from eyewitnesses of isolated violence at two

By Nectar Gan, Andrew Raine and Sophie Tanno, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Christian Edwards and Gabby Gretener, CNN A winter heatwave, record low levels of rain and a startling lack of snow in Europe are pushing rivers, canals and lakes across the continent to alarmingly low levels, with experts warning there could be repeat of last year’s severe droughts. Images of dried-up river beds and shrunken

By Nimi Princewill, CNN A manhunt is underway for the killers of a senatorial candidate for Nigeria’s opposition Labor Party, who was shot and burned in his campaign vehicle late Wednesday in the country’s southeastern Enugu State, local police said Thursday. The politician, Oyibo Chukwu, was murdered along with an unnamed personal aide by assailants

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN Yaryna Arieva and Sviatoslav Fursin are not going to celebrate their first wedding anniversary this Friday. The Ukrainian couple got married on the day Russia launched a full-scale attack on their country. A year later, Ukraine is still at war. Russian missiles are still falling from the sky and people are

By Hadas Gold, Abeer Salman, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Richard Roth and Sana Noor Haq, CNN Israel launched airstrikes targeting alleged weapons manufacturing and storage sites in Gaza on Thursday, following a rocket attack from the coastal enclave, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. In a statement, the IDF said “fighter jets struck a weapons manufacturing site”

By Joseph Ataman, Marguerite Lacroix and Oliver Brescoe, CNN A teenage student killed a teacher at a school in southwestern France on Wednesday, authorities said. The 50-year-old female teacher died from injuries inflicted by the attacker, a 16-year-old student, said French government spokesman Olivier Veran. The assailant was a teenager suffering from psychological troubles who

By Sophie Tanno and Jessie Gretener, CNN Shamima Begum, who left the United Kingdom to join ISIS at the age of 15, has lost her appeal against the decision to revoke her British citizenship. Judge Robert Jay gave the decision on Wednesday following a five-day hearing in November, during which her lawyers argued the UK

By Ivana Kottasová and Yulia Kesaieva, CNN The body lay across the street from Ivan Fedorov’s house for several days. Fedorov didn’t dare to go outside, so he never found out who the dead man was. All he knows is that he was a civilian. “He was just a passer-by who got shot,” Fedorov told

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the March 2004 bombings of commuter trains in Spain, which killed 193 people and injured more than 1,800. The bombings are the deadliest terrorist attack in Spain’s history. Facts On March 11, 2004, 10 bombs in backpacks and other small bags exploded on four commuter trains. One bomb

By Jonny Hallam, Yusuf Gezer, Isil Sariyuce, Eyad Kourdi, Jomana Karadsheh, Celine Alkhaldi and Kareem Khadder, CNN At least six people have died and hundreds left injured after major aftershocks struck southern Turkey Monday, as the region reels from a devastating earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people on February 6. A magnitude 6.3

By Nadeen Ebrahim and Dalya Al Masri It looks like a city out of a science fiction movie: Space pods, flying dragons and floating rocks. But this is the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia, which wants to transform its capital into one of “the most livable cities on Earth.” The kingdom is building a new

By Zayn Nabbi, CNN The body of Ghana soccer star Christian Atsu arrived in Accra, Ghana on Sunday evening after it was flown from Turkey, Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration (MFA) said. “The mortal remains of the former Ghana Black Stars player, the late Christian Atsu, whose demise occurred during the recent

By Isil Sariyuce, Yusuf Gezer, Ipek Yezdani, Mia Alberti, Christian Edwards and Hafsa Khalil, CNN Turkey has ended most search and rescue operations, nearly two weeks after a huge earthquake killed tens of thousands of people, the country’s disaster management authority said. Search and rescue efforts are still underway in 40 buildings in two provinces,

By Sara Sidner, Jo Shelley and Bilge Han Deniz, CNN First there are screams … then piercing cries … and then “father, father” is heard over and over again. A 4-year-old girl, Gada Ayyan, and her father, Ahmet Ayyan, are being reunited after being buried in a pile of rubble that was once their home

By Sophie Tanno, CNN One video shows a single blue glove, found in the field where missing British mother Nicola Bulley was last seen before she vanished over three weeks ago. Another urges police to investigate a derelict house on the riverbank, opposite where Bulley disappeared while walking with her dog Willow. Yet another simply

By Talia Kayali and Kathleen Magramo, CNN “How is my mother and everyone?” the man on the stretcher asks, speaking calmly into a cell phone. Crying in disbelief, his friend replies: “Everyone is well… they are all waiting for you… I am coming to you.” This was the emotional exchange that followed the rescue of

By Hande Atay Alam, Isil Sariyuce and Sana Noor Haq, CNN At least three more people, including two minors, have been incredibly pulled alive from the rubble of a devastating earthquake, 10 days after it struck parts of Turkey and Syria. A 17-year-old Aleyna Ölmez was dubbed the “miracle girl” when she was pulled alive

By Mick Krever, CNN Read Maria Lvova-Belova’s social media, and one might think Russia is selflessly delivering Ukrainian children from evil into the care of Russian families desperate to share their love. But according to American and European governments — and a new report by Yale investigators, backed by the US State Department — she

By Zahra Ullah and Frederik Pleitgen, CNN Tensions are mounting at the border between Ukraine and Moscow-allied Belarus, as officials in Kyiv warn of a Russian spring offensive amid ramped-up military attacks from the Kremlin. In rare access since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, a CNN team visited Belarus’s southwest border near northwest Ukraine,

By Anna Chernova, CNN A Russian court has sentenced journalist Maria Ponomarenko to six years in prison for a Telegram post that the court said spread “false information,” state news agency TASS said on Wednesday. Ponomarenko was detained last April and charged with publishing “false information” on her Telegram channel about a Russian airstrike on

By Talia Kayali, Rhea Mogul and Hande Atay Alam, CNN A confused woman asked her rescuers “What day is it?” when pulled alive from the rubble of last week’s earthquake after 228 hours, Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu reported Wednesday, as another woman aged 77 was also rescued from the debris. More than nine days

By Tara John and Hande Atay Alam, CNN A verdant olive grove was cleaved into two during last week’s devastating earthquake in Turkey, creating a valley 984 feet long (about 300 meters) that now divides the area. Remarkable footage of the split olive grove has emerged from Turkey’s south-east Altınozu district, which borders Syria, showing

By Nic Robertson and Antonia Mortensen, CNN Vadym Khodak beams and leans forward. He’s almost bouncing on his feet. “My soldiers like it a lot,” he says with a nod to the line of Polish Leopard 2 version 4 tanks behind him. “This machine is good quality.” His smile speaks volumes, revealing deep furrows that