Pole-sitter Oscar Piastri won Saturday's sprint race at the Qatar Grand Prix with his McLaren teammate and title favourite Lando Norris third.

Norris now leads Piastri by 22 points and the Briton can claim his maiden Formula One crown if results go his way in Sunday's penultimate grand prix.

The other title contender Max Verstappen finished fourth for Red Bull to drop 25 points behind Norris with a maximum 50 points remaining from Sunday's race and the season-closer in Abu Dhabi next weekend.

A new draft law on conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose support is crucial for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, has sparked uproar in Israel, with the opposition denouncing it as a special privilege for "draft-dodgers".

Under a ruling established at the time of Israel's creation in 1948, men who devote themselves full-time to studying sacred Jewish texts are given a de facto pass from mandatory military service.

By Joshua McElwee

ISTANBUL, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Pope Leo visited Istanbul's famed Blue Mosque on Saturday, removing his shoes in a sign of respect but not appearing to pray in his first visit as leader of the Catholic Church to a Muslim place of worship during his four-day visit to Turkey.

The first U.S. pope bowed slightly before entering the mosque and was led on a tour of the expansive complex, able to hold 10,000 worshippers, by its imam and the mufti of Istanbul.

With a pot of glue, a blade and a keen eye, Manal al-Saadani repairs tattered banknotes -- a necessity in the Gaza Strip, where the cash in circulation is wearing out.

For every revived note she gives back to a customer, they give her a few coins in return.

As Gaza remained blockaded for much of the Israel-Hamas war since October 2023, basic supplies were depleted, including banknotes, with no new ones supplied to its banks.

By Can Sezer

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Blasts rocked two tankers from Russia's shadow fleet in the Black Sea near Turkey's Bosphorus strait on Friday, causing fires on the vessels, and rescue operations were launched for those on board, Turkish authorities and sources said.

The 274-meter-long tanker Kairos suffered an explosion and caught fire in the Black Sea while en route from Egypt to Russia, Turkey's Transport Ministry said.

BEIRUT (Reuters) -Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Friday the group has the right to respond to Israel's killing of senior commander Haytham Ali Tabtabai and will "set the timing" for any retaliation.

In a televised speech, Qassem described the Israeli strike that killed Tabtabai and several others as "a blatant aggression."

(Reporting by Maya and Gebeily and Enas Alashray; Editing by William Maclean)

Palestinian student Razan Shawar has travelled for 24 hours to showcase her team's AI-powered invention at World Robot Olympiad in Singapore, telling AFP innovation -- not war -- should be why people hear about her country.

The 15-year-old high school student from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank said she dreams of making "something big, so the world can know that the one who did this is Palestinian".

BERLIN (Reuters) -German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will travel to Israel on December 6 and 7 for his first official visit since taking office, a German government spokesperson said on Friday.

Merz is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on December 7 to discuss bilateral relations, the ceasefire in Gaza and other international issues, and will also visit the Yad Vashem memorial and hold talks with local representatives from society, the spokesperson added during a regular government press conference.

GENEVA (Reuters) -The U.N. human rights rights office said on Friday it was appalled by the killing of two Palestinian men by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, saying the incident appeared to amount to summary executions.

"We're appalled by the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in yet another apparent summary execution," Jeremy Laurence told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

Elfyn Evans' hopes of claiming his first World Rally Championship title suffered a major blow on Friday when the Welshman lost valuable time with a puncture in Saudi Arabia.

He had to change a rear-left tyre which cost him around two minutes, giving the title advantage to his Toyota teammate Sebastien Ogier.

"We had a puncture alarm right at the beginning," said Evans.

"It was going down quite slow but it was so far to go that we had to make a decision to change it where we could. Not ideal."