France's interior minister said on Wednesday that French anti-terrorism police arrested a small group of people with Islamist militant ties, suspecting one of them may have been planning an attack in Paris, Independent reports.

Maria Sharapova, former world No. 1 and five-time grand slam champion, announced that she was using a drug banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and failed a recent drug test during the Australian Open in January, VOX informs.

At least 26 people have been killed and 61 injured in a rush-hour car bombing targeting military personnel in the Turkish capital Ankara, authorities said. The accident happened in close proximity to the Turkish parliament building, the Presidency of the General Staff, and Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard commands.

Belgian police killed a gunman on Tuesday in a raid on a Brussels apartment linked to Islamist militants involved in November's Paris attacks, and two others were on the run, Belgian media reports.

According to TASS, former Ukrainian airforce helicopter navigator Nadezhda Savchenko has gone on a "dry" hunger strike due to being unable to make her last plea in the Donetsk city court (in southern Russia) where her case is reviewed, her lawyer Nikolai Polozov reported.

Russia has registered on Monday its first case of a person infected with the Zika virus after a tourist contracted the disease in the Dominican Republic, Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said.

The private car exploded close to a mosque in the Russian town of Nazran, the capital of Russia’s republic of Ingushetia in the Caucasus, shortly after Friday prayers. According to RT, has injured at least four people and damaged several cars. The bomb may have been targeting the mosque’s imam.

A woman dressed all in black and holding a child’s severed head has been arrested near a Moscow metro station "Oktyabrskoye pole". The 38-year old Uzbek national, Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, was shouting, “Allahu Akbar” and reportedly threatened to blow herself up.

Two Meridian passenger trains collided head-on near the town of Bad Aibling in Bavaria, Germany. One train reportedly derailed as a result of the collision. Police said on Tuesday that 10 people were dead, 17 were critically injured and one person was missing after a collision.

The Russian Center for reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria has registered seven ceasefire violations over the past 24 hours.

Famed American writer Harper Lee, best known for penning the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has died at the age of 89 in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. The beloved Alabama novelist has died only a few months after the sequel to the famous To Kill a Mockingbird book was published, informs The Telegraph.

A Taliban suicide bomber struck near a Kabul police complex on Monday. It was killed at least 20 policemen and wounded 29 people in the bombing.