ISIS acknowledges the death of its leader, announces his successor

CNN — A former senior Russian army officer says he saw his comrades torturing prisoners of war in Ukraine, in a rare eyewitness account from within Moscow's ranks to address widespread allegations of Russian war crimes. Speaking to CNN's Erin Burnett on Thursday, former Lt. Konstantin Yefremov said he...

CNN — CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen and his team were traveling on Thursday to the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk to report on the search and rescue efforts underway after a residential building was leveled overnight by a Russian missile. It was "supposed to be a fairly easy shoot," Pleitgen said, given that the crew was not heading to the frontlines of the war.

CNN — Israel carried out airstrikes in Gaza early on Thursday after intercepting a rocket attack from the coastal enclave, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. In a Twitter post, the IDF said Israeli fighter jets targeted a chemical production site and a weapons manufacturing facility owned by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza.

CNN — An American volunteer aid worker, Pete Reed, was killed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on Thursday while aiding civilians, according to a statement from Global Response Medicine, the humanitarian aid group he founded. Reed, a US Marine veteran, was listed as "killed while rendering aid"...

CNN — Israel and Sudan have finalized the text of a peace agreement to be signed "later this year," Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced on Thursday. Speaking upon returning to Tel Aviv from a visit to Sudan's capital Khartoum, Cohen said the trip was made with the consent of the United States, and that a signing ceremony is expected to take place in Washington "after the transfer of power in Sudan to a civilian government that will be established as part of the ongoing transition process in the country."

CNN — A fresh barrage of missiles ripped through the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine Thursday, sending flames and thick plumes into the air as screaming civilians scrambled to find shelter. A CNN team had just arrived at the scene and heard the first incoming strike on Kramatorsk....

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Two years after a Democratic president took office and pushed ambitious policies through Congress, Republicans have regained control of the House. They don’t have the votes required to repeal the president’s achievements, but a quirk of U.S. law — which requires that Congress vote a second time to authorize the borrowing that results from already enacted spending and tax legislation — seems to give them an opportunity to engage in blackmail, threatening to create a financial crisis unless their demands are met.

CNN — Pope Francis called for peace on Saturday as he met a group of several hundred South Sudanese people internally displaced by war at an event in the country's capital Juba. "I want to renew my forceful and heartfelt appeal to end all conflict and to resume the...

CNN — Pope Francis arrived in Juba, South Sudan on Friday fulfilling a long-time wish to visit the war-ravaged country that is in the midst of a major humanitarian emergency. In a first, the Pope is undertaking the trip together with the head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Justin...

CNN — One of Iran's most influential filmmakers, Jafar Panahi, has reportedly gone on a hunger strike in Tehran's Evin prison to protest his continued detention. The move by Panahi, a Cannes film festival award winner who directed such movies as "The White Balloon," "The Circle," and "No Bears," comes after his hopes of a temporary release were denied, activist group Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported, citing Pahani's wife, Tahereh Saeedi.

CNN — Mohammed Abu al-Hayja was sleeping alongside his wife and two young daughters last month when loud gunfire woke them up. Minutes later, Israeli soldiers rammed down his door and burst through his apartment. "They spread through the house in seconds," 29-year-old al-Hayja told CNN. "Two soldiers came...