National-World

By Ben Wedeman, CNN (CNN) — The black-clad priest yanked on the white rope. At once the bells began to clang. The evening mass was beginning at the Monastery of Mar Maroun, or Saint Maroun, in the town of Annaya, high in the Lebanese mountains. This monastery overlooking the Mediterranean will be one of the

By Helen Regan, Kumanan Kanapathipillai, Kunal Sehgal, Hanako Montgomery, CNN (CNN) — Two human skeletons lie entangled on the rough earth – the arms of one wrapped around the other’s head, as though protecting them from danger. Simply known as numbers 177 and 178, their identities remain a mystery. They are among 240 human skeletal

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN Brisbane, Australia (CNN) — It’s August, and a show of hands in an auditorium filled with 300 students at All Saints Anglican School in Australia shows that few of the Grade 9 and 10 students sitting in plush red seats had heard of the country’s impending ban on social media, much

By Tim Lister, Victoria Butenko and Darya Tarasova (CNN) — Ukrainian underwater drones have struck two tankers belonging to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet in the Black Sea, according to an official in Ukraine’s security services (SBU). Ukraine claimed the attacks after explosions hit the two vessels on Friday and Saturday. A Ukrainian security source told

By Kara Fox, CNN Camber Sands, England (CNN) — Andy Dinsdale began walking the southern English coast in search of a “sea heart,” a tough Mahogany seed carried by ocean currents from Central and South American rainforests. In his quest to find one, he inadvertently became a plastic pollution expert. For the last 20 years,

By Christopher Lamb, Issy Ronald, CNN Istanbul (CNN) — Pope Leo XIV has made his first visit to a mosque since his election, and while he removed his shoes as a sign of respect, he did not appear to pray. On Saturday, Leo went to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, a 17th-century place of worship

By Sophie Tanno, CNN (CNN) — Russia launched its largest barrage of drones and missiles in a month across Ukraine, killing at least three people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, as a Kyiv delegation heads to the United States for fresh peace talks. A flurry of diplomacy is taking place after a plan put

By Gonzalo Zegarra (CNN) — Honduras on Sunday will hold general elections marked by preemptive allegations of voting fraud and an intervention by the United States. The presidential race has been clouded by uncertainty. Out of the several candidates running to succeed Honduran President Xiomara Castro, three have emerged as the frontrunners, but there is

Jessie Yeung, Karina Tsui, Samra Zulfaqar, Teele Rebane, Chris Lau, Rosa de Acosta, Lou Robinson, Soph Warnes, Duncan Senkumba, Toby Hancock, Michele Abercrombie, Henrik Pettersson Hong Kong (CNN) — In just a few short hours on Wednesday afternoon, what began as a small fire on the first floor of an apartment building swelled into a

By Catherine Nicholls, CNN (CNN) — More than $100,000 worth of escargots were stolen from a French snail farmer earlier this week, French media reported, leaving the supplier scrambling to replenish its stock in time for the holiday season. “This is really not the post that we thought we would write approaching the holidays,” L’Escargot

CNN By Ivana Kottasová, Victoria Butenko, Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — One of Ukraine’s most influential political operators and a close aide of President Volodymyr Zelensky has resigned, hours after anti-corruption agencies raided his home – a major crisis as Kyiv faces new pressure from the US to accept a peace deal to

By CNN staff (CNN) — Venezuela is entering one of its most repressive periods in years, rights monitors say, as President Nicolás Maduro faces mounting isolation and an expanding US military presence in the Caribbean. According to the Venezuela human rights group Provea, October saw the highest level of repression since the start of the

By Issy Ronald and Nadine Schmidt, CNN (CNN) — When three octogenarian nuns fled their nursing home and broke back into their former convent in Salzburg, Austria, they became overnight stars. Almost every major news outlet covered them. They gained 100,000 followers on Instagram, where they posted their daily routines – a combination of praying,

CNN By Chris Lau, Samra Zulfaqar, Fred He and Helen Regan, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — The number of people killed in the devastating Hong Kong apartment complex fire has risen to 128 with as many as 200 missing, officials said Friday, as authorities announced eight more arrests over the blaze. The inferno rapidly spread