The last time Norma saw her son was in late January, when she dropped him off at an airport in Peru’s capital, Lima. He told her he found a job as a cook for the Russian army advertised on social media, assuring her he’d be far from the war in Ukraine, make good money and even have a shot at obtaining Russian citizenship. Norma was instantly suspicious. Her 31-year-old son had never left Peru before and had never even held a weapon. (CNN is not publishing Norma’s full name or that of her son to protect both from retaliation.) “I wanted to lock him in the house, but he had made up his mind already,” Norma told CNN. She considered even calling the police. “He told me ‘Mom, please, understand, I am just going as a cook.’ But a mother’s heart knows, if not I wouldn’t have felt so anxious.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/28/americas/russia-ukraine-peruvian-fighters-latam-intl
Venezuelans are grappling with a stark question: after years of economic and political strife and now devastating twin earthquakes, can their country recover, or are the cracks just too deep? Rescue teams and neighbors are still searching for survivors as the scale of the disaster comes into sharper focus — more than 1,400 are dead and thousands more remain missing. “Some very tough days are coming,” said Caracas resident Neida Pernilla. Her apartment in the Venezuelan capital was destroyed in Wednesday’s 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that came within seconds of each other. But she says she is among the more fortunate — she and her relatives survived.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/28/americas/venezuela-earthquake-crisis-future
German political scientist Jürgen Falter has devoted much of his career to studying Nazi membership records and has written extensively on the rise of Adolf Hitler and his party. He had previously looked up his own mother’s denazification records, which are kept in local state archives in Germany and typically contain post-war questionnaires taken during the allied-led process that followed World War II. He found that she had been classified as “exonerated,” meaning she was cleared of complicity in the regime. A false statement on this questionnaire could have resulted in punishment.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/28/europe/germans-nazi-past-far-right-intl
When the sun started to beat down in Chorley, in the north of England, 13-year old Dylan Ramsay did what many children do when the summer heat arrives: Jump into water. On the warm July day, Dylan and his friends left the local playground and headed for a nearby quarry. He was looking for a bit of fun and a way to cool down, but Dylan never came home. He was in the water only a short while before he got into difficulty. Another swimmer pulled him out, but it was too late.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/28/climate/europe-heatwaves-drownings-intl-cmd