WORLD

When Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took his seat next to the FIFA president at the World Cup opener in Qatar, it capped a remarkable turnabout in his fortunes - even before the Saudi team put a new feather in his cap by beating Argentina on Tuesday.

The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia is still under review despite a Biden administration ruling that the Saudi crown prince has immunity from a lawsuit over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

Turkey's warplanes crossed into Russian and U.S.-controlled airspace for the first time to attack the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria, and it has rallied Syrian allies to possibly expand the campaign, several Turkish and Syrian rebel sources said.

Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to weapons grade, underground for the first time at its Fordow plant, the U.N.

The United States opposes any military action that destabilises the situation in Syria, a State Department spokesperson said, amid an escalation in retaliatory strikes by Turkey and a Kurdish militia along the Syrian border.

An atomic bomb requires uranium enriched to 90 percent, so 60 percent is a significant step towards weapons-grade enrichment.

Harris is the highest-ranking US official ever to visit the western island of Palawan, the closest Philippine landmass to the Spratly archipelago in the hotly contested South China Sea.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy marked Ukraine's annual Day of Dignity and Freedom on Monday by celebrating the sacrifices made by Ukrainian people since Russia's invasion and saying his country would endure and prevail.

Arab soccer fans at the first World Cup in the Middle East are shunning Israeli journalists in Qatar trying to interview them, illustrating challenges facing wider "warm peace" ambitions two years after some Gulf states forged formal ties with Israel.

The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said Iranian forces shelled overnight Sunday to Monday the cities of Piranshahr, Marivan and Javanroud, posting videos with the sound of live gunfire and what appeared to be the thud of heavy weaponry.

Overnight, Turkey hit dozens of targets in northern Syria as well as northern Iraq, a week after a bomb attack in Istanbul killed six people and left 81 wounded, which Ankara blamed on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Iran currently executes more people annually than any nation other than China, according to rights groups.

Netanyahu's lawyer hailed the ruling as "the shattering of another libel" - an allusion to his client's assertion of innocence in three graft trials.

Taking selfies from the stands and sitting on the grassy pitch, thousands of migrant workers gathered in a Doha stadium to watch the opening match.

UK appeal hearing to rule on 'IS bride'

The US is pressuring Ukraine to be open to peace talks with Moscow, with a top Pentagon official saying Kyiv's forces will find it hard to recover all the territory Russia has captured in the war.

Countries closed this year's U.N. climate summit on Sunday with a hard-fought deal to create a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters, even as many lamented its lack of ambition in tackling the emissions causing them.

The overnight raids in northern and northeastern Syria killed at least 31 people, said the British-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. They were mainly against positions held by Syrian Kurdish forces.

Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, was rocked by shelling on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the U.N.

During the months of Russian occupation of the city, Kherson was largely spared the harsh ground fighting that has left large swaths of Ukraine in utter ruin.

Iran's clerical rulers have stepped up suppression of persistent anti-government protests in the country's Kurdish region, deploying troops and killing at least four demonstrators on Sunday, social media posts and rights groups said.

Erdogan and Sisi have been sparring since the military's 2013 ouster in Cairo of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, personally backed by Erdogan.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to extend the grain deal – known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative – by another 120 days.

The 42-year-old ruler hopes a smooth tournament will cement Qatar as a legitimate global player.

The Biden administration ruled on Thursday that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has immunity from a lawsuit over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, drawing immediate condemnation from the slain journalist's former fiancee.

Russian missiles and shells hit Ukrainian positions in several regions and there was no let up in heavy fighting in Donetsk in the east, the Ukrainian military said on Thursday night as Moscow's occupying forces appeared more active.

Russia and Kazakhstan share the world's longest continuous land border, prompting concern among some Kazakhs about the security of a country with the second-biggest ethnic Russian population among ex-Soviet republics after Ukraine.

The pro-democracy blogger is currently serving a five-year sentence for "spreading false news" by sharing another user's Facebook post about police brutality.

Talks to establish carbon offset markets to allow countries to buy credits to partly achieve their climate pledges are set to drag on beyond the COP27 summit and into next year, according to observers and a negotiator in the U.N.