With a spot on the line for what could be his fifth and final World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo needs to avoid an upset like the one that ended Italy's hopes of making it to the tournament in Qatar.

Portugal faces a winner-take-all game on Tuesday against North Macedonia, the team that shocked Italy last week to keep the four-time champions out of the World Cup for the second straight time.

When a missile flew into an oil depot close to the track hosting the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, discussions among Formula One teams and drivers switched from human rights to personal safety.

The big question: Was it safe to remain in Jiddah and compete in the second race of the F1 season after Friday's attack about 11 kilometers (seven miles) away?

They are superstar strikers fighting to secure what could be their last chance to play on soccer's biggest stage.

And one thing's for sure: there isn't room for both Robert Lewandowski and Zlatan Ibrahimovic at the World Cup in Qatar.

Jordan's King Abdullah II met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah on Monday, in his first trip to the Israeli-occupied West Bank since 2017, Abbas's office said. 

Abdullah's visit came as foreign ministers from four Arab countries and the U.S. wrapped up a meeting which host Israel hailed as "historic", following a series of normalization agreements last year which angered the Palestinians.

Authorities in three European countries have frozen more than $130 million in assets linked to an investigation into money laundering in Lebanon, a European Union agency said Monday.

The measures taken by officials in France, Germany and Luxembourg come as Lebanon grapples with a devastating economic crisis and coincide with domestic and European investigations of its longtime central bank governor, Riad Salameh. The crisis, which started in October 2019, is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement and has continued with no serious steps by the country's political class to work for a solution.

The United Arab Emirates' energy minister doubled down Monday on an oil alliance with Russia that's helped buoy crude prices to their highest in years as Moscow's war on Ukraine rattles markets and sends energy and commodity prices soaring.

The minister said Russia, with its 10 million barrels of oil a day, is an important member of the global OPEC+ energy alliance.

Israel on Monday hosted the foreign ministers of four Arab nations and the United States in a bid to strengthen its position in a rapidly shifting Middle East.

The gathering brought together the top diplomats from all but one of the Arab countries that have normalized relations with Israel in U.S.-mediated negotiations, including three that signed the so-called Abraham Accords during the Trump administration in 2020.

Layal Aswad was already exhausted by Lebanon's devastating two-year economic collapse. Now, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine sends food and energy prices soaring even further, she finds herself struggling to put food on the table for her family of four.

"Even bread is not something we take for granted anymore," said the 48-year-old housewife, standing recently in a supermarket aisle in front of gallons of cooking oil whose prices had risen to an all-time high.

The militant Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Monday after a pair of Arab gunmen killed two people and wounded four in central Israel before they were killed by police.

The two killed in the Sunday night attack were Israeli police officers, authorities said.

A leading European Union diplomat has held talks in Tehran, Iran's state-run media reported, amid hopes that an agreement to restore Iran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers could be completed.

The meetings between the EU's envoy, Enrique Mora, and top Iranian officials come at a sensitive moment for talks to revive the deal, as the glimmers of a resolution to some of the thorniest issues in the negotiations have emerged.