Activists have called on football fans attending Iran's matches at the World Cup starting later this month to chant the name of Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody sparked nationwide protests.

Iran has been rocked by eight weeks of protests since Amini's death, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country's strict dress rules for women based on Islamic sharia law.

In spite of a bloody crackdown, the protests that initially saw women burn their hijab headscarves and cut their hair have evolved into a broader movement calling for the end of the Islamic republic.

Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will receive an official mandate Sunday to form a government that could be the most right-wing in the country's history, sparking concern at home and abroad.

After a period of unprecedented political gridlock that forced five elections in less than four years, polls on November 1 gave the veteran leader and his far-right allies a clear majority in the 120-seat parliament, likely sealing Netanyahu's return to power.

The wife of a jailed Saudi activist says she is desperate to know her husband's fate after losing touch with him for the first time during his nearly decade-long imprisonment.

Maha al-Qahtani, who is based in the United States, spoke to AFP this week in her first interview since her husband, Mohammad al-Qahtani, was taken into Saudi custody in 2013.

"I kept silent for 10 years but now I have run out of patience," she said.

"Is he OK? Is he alive? That is the question."

Turkish prosecutors on Friday sought to jail Istanbul's mayor for at least 15 months, which would bar him from politics, over a remark he made after defeating an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in elections, his lawyer said.

Ekrem Imamoglu, a member of the main opposition social democratic party CHP, did not appear at the latest hearing of the controversial trial on Friday, which was adjourned until December 14.

Amnesty International has made an urgent plea less than 10 days before the World Cup in Qatar kicks off for FIFA President Gianni Infantino to commit to a compensation package for the migrant workers who built the tournament's gleaming stadiums.

Amnesty and 24 other groups including Human Rights Watch wrote to Infantino in May urging him to establish a remediation programme for "abuses" suffered by workers.

The groups say that many migrant workers -- predominantly from South Asia and South-East Asia and Africa -- have suffered exploitation and widespread labour abuses.

Formula One boss Stefano Domenicali has defended the sport's presence in Qatar, telling AFP that the sport is an "accelerator for change".

The former Ferrari team boss said there is no correlation with criticism that is overshadowing the build-up to the football World Cup which starts a week on Sunday.

"I've read things about FIFA and Qatar that have nothing to do with our situation with Qatar," he said.

Three years ago, Fadel Abbas marched with tens of thousands of fellow Iraqis chanting for the "fall of the regime" in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, meaning "liberation" in Arabic.

The epicentre of the October 2019 anti-government protest movement, the square is now transformed and boasts a renovated park section, and Abbas sells coffee where he once shouted slogans.

"Here, many people were wounded and killed: young men, young women, doctors," recalled Abbas, 21, offering cups to passers-by from flasks on his back.

"We were just demanding our rights."

Sitting in a white all-terrain truck, Nasser al-Marri watched his remote-controlled camel race across the Qatar desert and insisted that his sport makes football pale in comparison.

But with Qatar bracing for the arrival of more than one million fans for the World Cup, the camel race track at Al-Shahaniya hopes to get a boost on the back of the world's most popular pastime.

Family members and colleagues of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh told UN investigators Thursday she had been deliberately targeted as part of Israel's "wide-scale war" on Palestinian media workers.

The killing of the veteran Al Jazeera reporter, who was wearing a bulletproof vest marked "Press" and a helmet when she was shot in the head during an army operation in Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on May 11, is the subject of one of the first in a series of rare public hearings at the UN.

Family members and colleagues of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh told UN investigators Thursday she had been deliberately targeted as part of Israel's "wide-scale war" on Palestinian media workers.

The killing of the veteran Al Jazeera reporter, who was wearing a bulletproof vest marked "Press" and a helmet when she was shot in the head during an army operation in Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on May 11, is the subject of one of the first in a series of rare public hearings at the UN.