The World Cup's start will be brought forward by a day to allow hosts Qatar to play the opening game, sources told AFP on Wednesday, just over three months before the competition gets underway.

Qatar will now play Ecuador on November 20, 24 hours earlier than planned, in a move that FIFA's ruling council was expected to confirm soon, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

The change will see the tournament, which was switched to November-December to avoid the Gulf country's searing summer heat, keep to its tradition of the hosts playing the opening match.

Iran dismissed as "childish" Wednesday claims by the United States that an Iranian satellite launched by Russia is intended for spying.

The satellite, called Khayyam, was launched into space on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Russian-controlled Baikonur Cosmodrome in neighbouring Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

Responding to the launch, Washington said Russia's growing cooperation with Iran should be viewed as a "profound threat".

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi on Wednesday inaugurated the reconstruction of Mosul international airport, still in disrepair five years after the battle that expelled the Islamic State group from the city.

Entire sectors of the northern metropolis have remained in ruins since the July 2017 recapture of Mosul by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led multinational coalition.

The airport, which was heavily damaged in the battle, has been disused since the jihadists seized Mosul and adjacent areas in 2014.

The opening match for this year's World Cup, between hosts Qatar and Ecuador, will be brought forward by one day to November 20, World Cup sources told AFP on Wednesday.

The move, which should be approved by the FIFA Council before the 100-day countdown starts this week, will retain the tradition of the first match featuring the host country.

Under the existing arrangement, Senegal and the Netherlands play the first game on November 21, followed by the official inauguration match between Qatar and Ecuador later that day.

A former Twitter worker was found guilty on Tuesday of spying for Saudi officials keen to unmask critics on the platform.

Ahmad Abouammo was pronounced guilty on criminal counts including money laundering, fraud, and being an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to a copy of the verdict.

Prosecutors in federal court in San Francisco told jurors that Abouammo sold Twitter user information for cash and an expensive watch some seven years ago.

Iranian authorities have allowed a French-Iranian academic held in the country for the last three years to take brief leave from prison, her supporters said on Tuesday.

Fariba Adelkhah has been given a five-day furlough, which can be extended, from Tehran's Evin prison where she is being held in a case that has raised tensions between Tehran and Paris, a statement from her support group said.

Turkey on Tuesday sent its newest drill ship on the first eastern Mediterranean energy exploration mission in nearly two years.

The search for natural gas in energy-rich waters around the divided island of Cyprus has turned into an irritant in Turkey's ties with the European Union.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Abdulhamid Han drill ship -- the fourth built by Turkey -- will be sent to an undisputed area about 55 kilometres (34 miles) south of the city of Gazipasa.

Palestinian mother Rasha Qadoom clutches tight the tiny pink rucksack belonging to her five-year-old daughter Alaa -- which will never again be carried on her little back.

Alaa was the first of 16 children killed in three days of intense conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

"It was a Friday like any other," said Qadoom, 27, remembering how Alaa had been dressed in a pink T-shirt to match her pink bag with a pink ribbon tied in her hair.

"She was happy, she wanted to go to the park with her aunt."

Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah warned Israel on Tuesday against reaching for offshore gas reserves at a time US-mediated talks are aiming to settle a maritime border dispute.

"The hand that reaches for any of this wealth will be severed," Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed Shiite Muslim political and military movement, told supporters in southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims on Tuesday marked the festival of Ashura in Iraq's holy city of Karbala, the burial place of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

The emotional event commemorates the 7th century battlefield martyrdom of Hussein, whom Shiites view as the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed, the issue at the heart of a schism with Sunni Islam.

To mourn his death in the year 680, Shiite worshippers wearing black cry and beat their chests in unison and some flagellate themselves with swords and knife-edged chains.