Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

Russia launched its deadliest wave of attacks against Ukraine’s capital in nine months early Thursday, hours after US President Donald Trump accused Volodymyr Zelensky of harming peace talks in a fresh tirade against his Ukrainian counterpart.

Moscow sent 70 missiles and 145 drones toward Ukraine, mainly targeting Kyiv, Ukraine’s Air Force said.

At least eight people were killed in the bombardment, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said, which emergency services said struck 13 locations in Kyiv, including residential buildings and civilian infrastructure. Ukraine’s emergency services earlier reported that nine people had died and more than 60 had been wounded.

It was the costliest attack on the city since July 2024, when 33 people were killed in an aerial barrage that targeted a hospital and residential districts.

More people are likely trapped under rubble, and a search and rescue operation is underway to find them, according to local and national authorities.

Russia’s defense ministry said it carried out “a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, land and sea-based weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles on enterprises of the aviation, missile and space, mechanical engineering and armored industries of Ukraine, production of rocket fuel and gunpowder.”

“The strike objectives were achieved. All targets were hit,” Moscow said.

Following the attacks on Kyiv, Zelensky announced he was cutting short his visit to South Africa, where he landed late on Wednesday, to return to Ukraine.

“It is extremely important that everyone around the world sees and understands what is really happening” he said, adding that Ukraine would immediately contact its international partners regarding its requests to strengthen air defenses.

“It has been 44 days since Ukraine agreed to a full ceasefire and a halt to strikes. This was a proposal from the United States. And it has been 44 days of Russia continuing to kill our people and evading tough pressure and accountability for its actions,” Zelensky added on social media.

CNN producers in Kyiv heard air raid sirens blasting across the city for around six hours in the early hours of Thursday. One CNN producer said they waited in a corridor with their child for six hours as missiles rained on the city, with a drone flying audibly outside their window.

Air raid sirens are a near daily occurrence in Kyiv, but Thursday’s strikes served as an unwelcome reminder of the fear that gripped the capital in the early phases of the war. Images provided by the emergency services showed buildings engulfed in flames at some of the sites struck in the attacks.

Engineers, rescue workers and recovery dogs are searching for people believed to be trapped under the rubble of a home destroyed by the strikes in the Sviatoshyn district, said Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.

“There is information about two children who still cannot be found at the scene,” he said, adding the situation was “tragic.”

The city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko earlier urged people to take shelter. The Kyiv city military administration has since broadcast an all-clear message.

“Rescuers are doing everything they can to clear the rubble as quickly as possible,” the mayor said on Telegram. “We are currently clearing the rubble manually, we are not using any equipment because there may still be people under the rubble.”

At least 42 people were taken to hospital, including six children, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.

Klymenko said eight regions of the country were targeted in what he called “a massive combined Russian attack” that also hit Zhytomyr, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Poltava, Khmelnytsky, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia.

Five ballistic missiles were among those that made it through Ukraine’s defenses, according to the Air Force.

The Russian attacks hit after Trump and Zelensky became involved in a new public spat, specifically over the future of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

As part of its mission to seal a peace deal to end the three-year war, the US administration has proposed recognizing Russian control of Crimea, officials familiar with the details have told CNN.

Such a move would reverse a decade of US policy and could upset the widely held post-World War II consensus that international borders should not be changed by force.

Zelensky has repeatedly said Ukraine would not accept that, saying it would go against the country’s constitution.

On Wednesday, Trump said Zelensky’s position was “very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia.”

“It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Trump’s comments came hours after Vice President JD Vance threatened to abandon negotiations, telling reporters during a visit to India that a “very explicit proposal” had been put to both Russia and Ukraine and that it was “time for them to either say ‘yes,’ or for the US to walk away.”

Earlier, ministerial talks between Ukraine, the US, Britain, France and Germany aimed at furthering work toward a ceasefire were downgraded to take place among less senior officials, after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio withdrew.

“Emotions have run high today,” Zelensky said on X Wednesday as the day’s developments threw fresh uncertainty over the diplomatic efforts to end the war.

The Trump administration’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Moscow on Friday for discussions with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

London
CNN
 — 

Businesses in Germany and Britain produced less this month amid worries about President Donald Trump’s near-universal tariffs, in another sign that the global damage from his import levies is adding up.

Closely watched surveys of purchasing managers showed Wednesday that private sector output contracted in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, and the United Kingdom.

“Tariff concerns and uncertainty weighed on business confidence and demand,” S&P Global and Hamburg Commercial Bank, which publish the survey of German companies, said in a news release.

Likewise, in the UK, “survey respondents widely commented on the negative impact of US tariffs and a subsequent slump in confidence among clients,” S&P Global said.

The first reading of Germany’s Purchasing Managers’ Index, which tracks activity in the manufacturing and service sectors, came in at 49.7, from 51.3 in March. A reading below 50 indicates a contraction.

The downturn is probably the result of multiple forces, said economists at Berenberg, a bank.

“Beyond international headwinds such as the tariff-related uncertainty, this likely also reflects the broad-based domestic economic weakness,” they wrote in a note.

Early data already points to a slump in global trade in the face of Trump’s import taxes. South Korea’s Customs Service reported that exports for the first 20 days of April declined 5.2% compared with the same period last year. That singular data point is a “key bellwether” for where trade is heading, Min Joo Kang, a senior economist at ING, said in a note Monday.

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its economic growth forecasts for numerous countries, including the United States, Germany and the UK, and joined a chorus of warnings from economists and business leaders about economic damage from US tariffs. The Washington, DC-based institution said Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy and countermeasures by America’s trading partners will likely deal a heavy blow to economies worldwide.

Survey data for the UK bore out that gloomy view. The country’s PMI reading came in at 48.2 this month, the lowest since November 2022.

“There is no doubt that the chilling effect of the US president’s tariffs has slowed UK growth,” said Rob Wood, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, a research firm, although he added that he doesn’t see a recession.

The broader eurozone economy, which includes Germany but not Britain, has held up better, according to the survey for the region. The PMI reading for the 20 countries that use the euro stood at 50.1 this month, indicating broadly flat output.

However, that was the lowest number in four months and new orders fell at the fastest pace so far in 2025.

Data for the surveys was collected between April 9-22.

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.

CNN
 — 

A skeleton recovered from an intriguing Roman-era cemetery in England may mark the first physical evidence of combat between gladiators and animals, according to new research.

The skeleton of a man, who was between the ages of 26 and 35 when he died, was found with bite marks from a large cat — likely a lion — on the pelvis. The man died and was buried in a grave between 1,825 and 1,725 years ago in an area now known as York, England. The study was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Archaeologists with the York Archaeological Trust recovered the remains from Driffield Terrace, which they consider to be a gladiator graveyard.

The spot sits along the old Roman road leading out of York and got its graveyard designation after archaeologists announced the discovery of 82 skeletons of able-bodied young men in a 2010 documentary called “Gladiators: Back From the Dead.”

While the Romans documented fights between humans as well as humans and animals in artwork and records, the physical evidence of gladiators and the battles they faced for the sake of entertaining others is scarce, the study authors said.

“For years, our understanding of Roman gladiatorial combat and animal spectacles has relied heavily on historical texts and artistic depictions,” said lead study author Tim Thompson, a professor of anthropology and vice president for students and learning at Maynooth University in Ireland, in a statement. “This discovery provides the first direct, physical evidence that such events took place in this period, reshaping our perception of Roman entertainment culture in the region.”

The findings highlight the wide-ranging effects of the Roman Empire across England, showing that gladiator arenas that featured animals imported from other countries were part of the culture and lifestyle far from the reaches of the Colosseum in Rome.

Burials didn’t take place within settlements during the Roman period, leading the dead to be cremated or buried alongside major roads, the authors said in the study.

When construction in the area led to archaeological evaluations in 2004, researchers uncovered the Driffield Terrace cemetery. Many of the men’s remains carried evidence of training, trauma, healed injuries and unusual funeral rites such as decapitation. Analysis of tooth enamel also showed the men came from a broad range of Roman provinces from around the world.

While researchers have carried out extensive studies on the cemetery and its remains, a mystery lingered: a skeleton with unexplained depressions on the pelvis that resembled bites from a carnivore.

As part of the new study, the researchers created three-dimensional scans of the markings and compared them with bites from various carnivores. The comparison showed the bite marks likely came from a large cat, most likely a lion.

“The bite marks were likely made by a lion, which confirms that the skeletons buried at the cemetery were gladiators, rather than soldiers or slaves, as initially thought and represent the first osteological confirmation of human interaction with large carnivores in a combat or entertainment setting in the Roman world,” said study coauthor Malin Holst, lecturer in osteoarchaeology at the University of York’s department of archaeology, in a statement. Holst is also the managing director of York Osteoarchaeology, which specializes in the excavation, analysis and reporting of human remains.

Surviving texts and artwork demonstrate that such encounters between men and beasts were staged during arena spectacles in the Roman Empire, said Kathleen M. Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. Coleman was not involved in the research.

“But images can travel to areas where the events themselves do not take place, so on their own they are not conclusive evidence that animal combat took place there,” Coleman said. “That is why the new skeleton is so important.”

Additional analysis of the man’s bones showed he recovered from malnutrition as a child but had spinal issues due to overloading his back and inflammation of his lungs and thighs.

The man was likely a bestarius, or a gladiator that went up against beasts, and whose role was filled by volunteers or slaves.

“(Gladiators) could become famous and could buy their freedom, so we have a better understanding now of the complex social world they inhabited,” said Barry Molloy, an associate professor in the school of archaeology at University College Dublin, who was not involved in the study. “What we see in art might be considered to be ‘the money shots’ or what we might imagine the Romans viewed as the ‘coolest kills’ that the patron of the art wanted to show their audience. You can imagine in the arena, with an armed person fighting for their life, the winner of human vs. animal battles was not a foregone conclusion.”

Gladiators were viewed as athletes at the time, and their owners wanted them to win so they would be able to fight again, the study authors said. The lion bite never healed, which suggests it led to or caused his death, and the man was decapitated after death. While this was a funeral rite for some in the Roman period, the researchers think the man was decapitated as a mercy killing after the lion bite.

“This is a hugely exciting find because we can now start to build a better image of what these gladiators were like in life, and it also confirms the presence of large cats, and potentially other exotic animals, in arenas in cities such as York, and how they too had to defend themselves from the threat of death,” Malin said.

But how did a gladiator arena, and a lion, end up in northeast England?

Images of sparring gladiators, sometimes with one another or with beasts, memorialized in ancient mosaics and pottery recall the Roman Colosseum, “which would have been the classical world’s Wembley Stadium of combat,” said David Jennings, CEO of York Archaeology and a doctoral researcher in the department of archaeology at University of York. Jennings did not participate in the new research.

But such brutal sporting events had an extensive reach beyond the core Roman territories, and while an amphitheater likely existed in Roman York, it hasn’t been discovered yet, Malin said.

York began as the Roman city of Eboracum, which was founded as a fortress in the year 71 AD, and soldiers remained there until the end of the Roman period in the early fifth century, according to the study authors. Researchers think gladiator-style arena events were occurring there as late as the fourth century because the city hosted many senior generals and politicians, as well as Constantine, who was proclaimed emperor by his troops in Eboracum in AD 306.

The new findings indicate that Britain was well integrated into the customs and systems of the Roman Empire at its peak and provide evidence that Roman entertainments were widespread across the empire, said Jaclyn Neel, an associate professor of Greek and Roman studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. Neel was not involved in the research.

But the presence of lions, rather than local wild boar and deer, in York provided a unique twist for the researchers. Mosaics, such as the “Corridor of the Great Hunt” located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily, depict how large animals were captured and transported to Rome for sport.

“The exact context for this encounter might have been a contest between a professional beast-fighter and the lion, which would have been exciting for the spectators, who might even have laid bets as to who would win,” Coleman said. “Or it could have been a form of execution in which a criminal is exposed to wild animals, in which case presumably the spectators would enjoy the satisfaction of seeing justice being done, since a criminal would not elicit any pity.”

The lion was likely transported along well-established supply routes that also carried bulk supplies of wine, oil and grain across continental Europe and the Mediterranean to York given that it was a legionary base, said study coauthor Dr. John Pearce, reader in archaeology and classics at King’s College London. Big cats like lions would have been captured in northern Africa, then transported across the sea before being moved across a network of rivers and eventually the road from London to York.

“As tangible witnesses to spectacles in Britain’s Roman amphitheatres, the bitemarks help us appreciate these spaces as settings for brutal demonstrations of power. They make an important contribution to desanitizing our Roman past,” Pearce said in a statement.

If the man who faced the lion was a professional hunter, as indicated in the study, the entertainment of watching human and a lion interact in the arena was probably more like bullfighting in Spain, Neel said.

“I do think it’s important to not exoticize the Romans — they were much more familiar with death than most modern North Americans, but that doesn’t mean that they tried to kill as many people as possible,” she said. “Roman culture emphasized the control of man over nature. A beast hunt, to me, is a theatrical re-enactment of that control. Romans thus used the beast hunts to reinforce a sense of human superiority over nature, even for the spectators.”

The skeleton will be part of the Roman exhibition “DIG: An Archaeological Adventure in St. Saviorugate” in York, while a 3D scan of the bite mark and other depictions of gladiatorial fights in Britain are part of the traveling “Gladiators of Britain,” a British Museum partnership exhibition currently on display at the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery.