One week from kickoff, the World Cup trophy returned to Qatar on Sunday, teams and fans started arriving and safety barriers went up across Doha ahead of one of the most controversial football tournaments ever.. The trophy which will be presented to the winning team on December 18 returned from a world tour in time for next Sunday's opening game when hosts Qatar take on Ecuador.
Gyms and public baths are now also off limits to Afghan women, the Taliban confirmed Sunday, days after banning them from parks and funfairs.. "Gyms are closed for women because their trainers were male and some of them were combined gyms," Mohammad Akif Sadeq Mohajir, spokesman for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, told AFP. He said "hammams" -- traditional public bathing houses that have always been segregated by sex -- were now also off limits.
Seeking to speed up global efforts against climate change, Vanuatu is leading efforts to get the International Court of Justice involved, a move praised by activists at UN talks.. Let judges inspire our leaders to act and let justice be done," Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said at the COP27 meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Joe Biden’s Democrats were just one seat away Saturday from securing a remarkable midterm election result by retaining control of the US Senate.. The result in the House of Representatives is also hanging in the balance, and while Republicans are slightly favored to take control, it would be with a far smaller majority than they had envisaged going into Tuesday's election.
American actor Alec Baldwin has filed a lawsuit against four people involved in the Western film "Rust," saying they were negligent in providing him with a gun that discharged, killing the movie's cinematographer.. The gun Baldwin was holding during rehearsal -- meant to be loaded only with blanks -- instead discharged a live round, killing the 42-year-old Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
Evangelos Marinakis, the shipping tycoon, football boss and media mogul, is not just one of the most powerful and controversial figures in Greece, he is waging open warfare against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.. Marinakis was best man at the 1998 wedding of Mitsotakis's sister Dora, who is herself a former foreign minister of Greece and former mayor of Athens.
Brazil will protect the Amazon "with its own efforts" without waiting for international funding, the former environment minister of incoming President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Saturday at UN climate talks. . Credited with curbing deforestation in the 2000s, Marina Silva outlined key environmental priorities for the new president, who will visit the climate talks next week in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Thousands of people demonstrated in Berlin on Saturday calling for food prices to be controlled and for the rich to face higher taxes as Germany faces a cost of living crisis.. , the demonstrators marched through the German capital after a call by left-wing organisations to protest against soaring prices and rents.
Denmark's Queen Margrethe II rounded off celebrations marking her 50th year on the throne Saturday, joined by her family following a public row with her youngest son. . At the end of September, the queen stripped four of her grandchildren of their titles, sparking unprecedented royal drama and leading her enraged second son Prince Joachim to air the family's dirty laundry in public.
An Iranian who got stuck for 18 years in a Paris airport, inspiring a Steven Spielberg movie starring Tom Hanks died on Saturday at the terminal, an airport official said.. Karimi Nasseri's peculiar story came to the attention of Hollywood director Spielberg, inspiring 2004 film "The Terminal," which starred Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
