Shelling intensifies in eastern Ukraine amid concern Russia's creating a pretext for an invasion
CBSN
Kyiv — Ukrainian forces and the pro-Russian separatists they're fighting in the country's east reported a second day of increased shelling on Friday. Western leaders say an escalation in the fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region — which has simmered for almost eight years — could be part of Russian efforts to create a pretext to invade.
The reports come as America's defense chief said the United States had still seen no drawdown of the Russian forces massed around Ukraine's borders. The U.S. envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was meeting in Germany on Friday, said the Russian deployment around Ukraine's borders had actually swelled to between 169,000 and 190,000 troops — the biggest military buildup in Europe since World War II.
President Biden has given the OK to lift restrictions that will allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News on Sunday. The move is a significant change to U.S. policy in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Tropical Storm Sara was downgraded to a tropical depression after it made landfall in Belize on Sunday as forecasters expect heavy rain to continue and cause life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.
The main spokesman for Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on central Beirut on Sunday, an official with the militant group said.
Eight people were killed and 17 others wounded Saturday in a knife attack at a vocational school in eastern China, and the suspect — a former student — has been arrested, police said.
A fire tore through a neonatal intensive care unit in a hospital in northern India, killing 10 newborn babies and injuring 16 others, authorities said.
Johannesburg — It's often called the forgotten conflict, but the civil war that has torn Sudan apart for 19 months is fueling the world's biggest humanitarian crisis. In just over a year and a half, 13 million people have been displaced from their homes. At least one overcrowded camp for displaced civilians is already dealing with famine, while other parts of the country are suffering though famine-like conditions.
British jets were scrambled to monitor a Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying close to U.K. airspace, the defense minister in London said on Friday, just days after NATO jets were mobilized when Russian aircraft were spotted over the Baltic Sea and off the coast of Norway.
A German soccer club is leaving X because of the increase in hate speech and disinformation on the social media platform that it claims could undermine the snap elections in the country.
Tropical Storm Sara formed in the Caribbean on Thursday, becoming the 18th named storm of the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season. The system, previously called Tropical Depression 19, developed in the western Caribbean earlier this week and intensified while traveling westward on a path toward Central America.
Paris — Security forces were on high alert Thursday in Paris ahead of a soccer match between France's national soccer team and the visiting Israeli side. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators held protests in the city Wednesday night, and there has been fear of a possible repeat of last week's violence and antisemitic attacks against Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam.
A mysterious diamond-laden necklace with possible links to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette, sold for $4.8 million at an auction in Geneva Wednesday.