Europe

KUZHENKINO, Russia, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Residents of a village near the site of a plane crash which is believed to have killed Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said they had heard a bang, then saw the jet plummet to the ground.

The plane, an Embraer Legacy 600private jet, crashed on Wednesday near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia's Tver region on its way from Moscow to St. Petersburg and killed all 10 people on board - seven passengers and three crew members.

22 August 2023; MEMO: According to international law, all of Israel’s Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal and pose a major obstacle to peace, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, told the Security Council on Monday.

MOSCOW, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Russian civil aviation authority (Rosaviatsia) published on Thursday the names of all 10 passengers and crew members who were on board the Embraer plane that crashed in the Tver region, among them -- Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin.

Also on the list were Sergey Propustin, Yevgeny Makaryan, Alexander Totmin, Valery Chekalov and Nikolay Matyuseev. The names of three crew members were made public as well.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine traded drone attacks early Wednesday, officials said, with Kyiv apparently targeting Moscow again and the Kremlin’s forces launching another bombardment of Ukrainian grain storage depots in what have recently become signature tactics in the almost 18-month war.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief armed rebellion against the Russian military earlier this year, was presumed dead Wednesday after a plane crash north of Moscow that killed all 10 people on board.

Prigozhin was on the plane, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency, which cited the airline. The crash immediately raised suspicions since the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted the mutiny.

LONDON (AP) — A British jury ruled Wednesday that two teenagers were part of a hacking and blackmail campaign against technology companies including the maker of the “Grand Theft Auto” game series.

Jurors at Southwark Crown Court in London said 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj committed 12 offenses including computer hacking, blackmail and fraud. A 17-year-old defendant who can’t be identified because of his age was convicted of fraud, blackmail and carrying out an unauthorized act to impair the operation of a computer.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Advancing flames devoured forests and homes as dozens of wildfires raged across Greece on Wednesday, leaving 20 people dead over the past three days, while major blazes also burned in northwestern Turkey near the Greek border and on Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands.

Russia (AP) —Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine who was linked to the leader of a brief armed rebellion, has been dismissed as chief of the air force, Russian state media reported Wednesday after weeks of uncertainty about his fate.

Surovikin has not been seen in public since June 23-24, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, sent his men to march toward Moscow. In a video released during the uprising, Surovikin — who was believed to have close ties to Prigozhin — had urged him to pull the mercenaries back.

MOSCOW, August 22. /TASS/: The world situation has become more complicated due to the destructive stance of the West, thus making the role of inter-party diplomacy increasingly significant, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said to the organizers and participants of the International Congress of Members of the Youth Wings of Political Parties.

BERLIN, Aug 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Two American soldiers have been arrested in Germany over the death of a man at a funfair in the west of the country, according to German police.

“Following the murder of a 28-year-old man, two suspects were arrested … They are American servicemen,” police in the western city of Treves said in a statement.

The death occurred when an altercation broke out between several people at a Saubrenner funfair in the small town of Wittlich, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate between Treves and Koblenz, on Saturday night.