The world is in danger of blasting past its goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, said climate champion Laurence Tubiana, slamming a "flagrant" lack of global leadership.
France's former climate ambassador was one of the key architects behind the Paris Agreement, which says global warming should be slashed to well below two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, and preferably the safer ambition of 1.5C.
Iran captain Alireza Jahanbakhsh said Thursday his team was focused on the competition at the World Cup and not on anti-government protests that have gripped his country.
Iranians have taken to the streets since September following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly flouting the strict dress code for women.
Jahanbakhsh, who used to play for Premier League club Brighton, was asked by a British journalist at a press conference in Doha if the team was able to concentrate on their opening World Cup match against England on Monday
The head of Binance, the world's top cryptocurrency exchange, pledged Thursday to release an audit into the firm and rejected claims he sparked the recent collapse of rival platform FTX.
Changpeng Zhao said an independent audit into Binance would be released "in a couple of weeks" and urged a full investigation into FTX's demise, before delivering a scathing critique of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, questioning his mental stability.
Russia's use of newly-produced landmines in Ukraine poses the greatest challenge to the landmark Mine Ban Treaty struck 25 years ago, a monitor said Thursday.
Moscow has developed new anti-personnel mines and used ones made as recently as 2021 in Ukraine, the Landmine Monitor said.
The monitor's annual report identified 277 civilian casualties of mines and explosives in Ukraine in the first nine months of 2022 -- a near fivefold rise on the 58 in 2021.
Hundreds of mourners poured onto the streets of an Iranian city Thursday, defying a lethal crackdown on protests over Mahsa Amini's death that shows signs of turning even bloodier.
Iran's foreign minister and media raised the spectre of civil war.
This week's protests coincide with the third anniversary of "Bloody Aban" -- or Bloody November -- when hundreds were killed in a crackdown on street violence that erupted over a shock overnight decision to hike fuel prices.
The leaders of South Korea and Saudi Arabia agreed Thursday to boost ties in key sectors such as energy and defence, with the oil-rich kingdom signing a slew of deals including a $6.7 billion petrochemical agreement.
President Yoon Suk-yeol met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the South Korean capital Thursday, with the pair announcing a plan to transform bilateral ties into a "strategic partnership".
For the past two decades, Bader Turkistani has criss-crossed the globe to cheer on the Saudi national football team, leading crowds in poetic chants that have made him a social media star.
This year's World Cup in neighbouring Qatar, by contrast, has the feel of a home game: Doha is a mere two-hour flight from his base in Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast.
The close proximity has Turkistani dreaming of a ferocious turnout by football-mad Saudis, the kind of support he says could help the Green Falcons break out of the group stage for the first time in nearly three decades.
It is 7:00 am in Dubai and as the sun peeks above high-rises, it reveals an animated scene below: about 200 people, mostly men, wielding bats and taped-up tennis balls in a weekly festival of street cricket.
About a dozen informal games are in progress in a carpark near the city's financial district, as metro trains glide across a bridge overhead and police watch from a parked SUV, wary of players bringing alcohol or otherwise misbehaving.
Showered with applause and chants of "Lula!", Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a splash at a UN climate conference in Egypt Wednesday, his first foreign trip since his election.
Despite a mixed record on the environment and jail time in his resume, the 77-year-old leftist politician drew crowds curious to hear his promises to protect the Amazon rainforest.
"Brazil is back," Lula said repeatedly, words his supporters sang during his speech at the COP27 conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
A musical adaptation of "Monsoon Wedding" starting Thursday in Qatar had to remove alcohol and kissing, but the hit film's director Mira Nair insists it has not lost its "soul".
One of the biggest made-in-India international hits, the 2001 film recounts the chaotic preparations for the Delhi wedding of an Indian girl to an Indian-American man.
The musical version of "Monsoon Wedding" has already played in Berkeley, California.
