CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Zahra Ullah and Anna Chernova, CNN Millions of Russians are expected to head to the polls over a three-day period starting Friday in elections taking place against the backdrop of an unprecedented assault on democracy over the past year. Voters will choose members of the State Duma — the lower house of the Russian

By Sarah Dean and Nicolo Ruotolo, CNN The Italian government has approved a decree making it mandatory for all public and private sector workers to show proof of vaccination, a negative test or recent recovery from infection, Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza told a news conference on Thursday. The rule was decided at a cabinet

By Katharina Krebs and Majlie de Puy Kamp, CNN Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag announced her resignation on Thursday after a majority of the Dutch parliament said she had mishandled the Afghanistan evacuation crisis, a press officer from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNN. Tens of thousands of foreigners and Afghans who were

By Zahra Ullah, Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova, CNN Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday morning that “not just one or two but several dozen people” from his inner circle had contracted coronavirus. Putin told a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, via video link that

By Katie Hunt, CNN In popular culture, cave men (and women) are often draped in furs, but archaeological evidence of what our Stone Age ancestors actually wore and how they made clothes is thin. Fur, leather and other organic materials generally aren’t preserved, especially beyond 100,000 years ago. However, researchers say 62 bone tools used

By Nadine Schmidt and Rosa Steindorff, CNN German officials on Thursday said a possible Islamist terror attack on a synagogue in the western city of Hagen was averted after authorities were tipped off. “We received a very specific and serious tipoff that an attack on the synagogue could take place during the Yom Kippur festival.

By Rob Picheta and Niamh Kennedy, CNN Around 3,000 healthcare workers have been suspended in France after failing to meet a government requirement to get vaccinated against Covid-19, French Health Minister Olivier Véran told French radio station RTL Thursday. The employees missed a September 15 deadline to be inoculated, which was introduced by the government

By Joseph Ataman and Saskya Vandoorne, CNN French forces have killed Adnan Abou Walid al Sahraoui, leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISIS-GS), in a drone strike, the French government announced on Thursday. Al Sahroui succumbed to his wounds, suffered in a strike on a motorbike carrying two people during a French-led

By Neri Zilber The new Israeli government that toppled long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this summer is full of contradictions. There’s pro-peace leftists, pro-settlement right-wingers, pragmatic centrists and even for the first time an Arab Islamist party, all sitting together in one governing coalition. On the most divisive issue — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — there

By Scott McLean, Bethlehem Feleke, Solomon Muingi and Fabien Muhire, CNN Kenya’s wide-open, postcard-perfect savannah is dotted with acacia trees in every direction as the early morning fog still clouds the air. Donart Mwakio is doing his rounds in a white pickup truck when it suddenly screeches to a halt. The ranger at Kenya’s Taita

By Jeevan Ravindran, Stephanie Halasz, Allegra Goodwin and Sharon Braithwaite, CNN More than 1,400 white-sided dolphins were killed Sunday night in the Faroe Islands, in what local authorities said was a traditional whaling hunt. The killing has been denounced by marine conservation group Sea Shepherd as a “brutal and badly mishandled” massacre, and the largest

By Angela Dewan and James Frater, CNN European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen sought to assert the bloc as a global leader on the climate crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and humanitarian issues in a sweeping speech Wednesday that acknowledged an emerging new world order. In her State of the Union address to the European

By Eliza Mackintosh, Joseph Ataman, Saskya Vandoorne and Melissa Bell, CNN After US President Joe Biden laid out a plan to tackle the worsening pandemic in America with a raft of new vaccination rules last week, the big question on the minds of many is: Will mandating vaccines work? Across the Atlantic, in France, it’s

By Max Foster and Gawon Bae, CNN Queen Elizabeth sent a message of congratulations to the people of North Korea on their national day, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson told CNN. The message was sent on behalf of the Queen by the UK’s Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) “as has been done before,” the spokesperson said.

By Lauren del Valle and Ivana Kottasová, CNN Prince Andrew’s legal team said Tuesday that a civil lawsuit alleging the senior British royal sexually abused Virginia Roberts Giuffre when she was 17 is baseless, and argued that legal papers in the case weren’t served properly. Los Angeles attorney Andrew Brettler, who appeared virtually during a

By Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova, CNN Russian President Vladimir Putin is quarantining after several people in his inner circle tested positive for Covid-19, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin has tested negative for coronavirus and is “absolutely healthy.” Peskov told journalists in a conference call that as “several people” in