European nations play their last group games in qualifying for the 2022 World Cup over the next week, with some of the continent's biggest teams still not assured of going to the tournament in Qatar.

Only Germany and Denmark have claimed places in Europe's 13-team quota in the 32-nation World Cup lineup before the qualifiers resume Thursday. Eight more will be known by Tuesday.

From the southern border of Germany to the highest peaks in Africa, glaciers around the world have served as moneymaking tourist attractions, natural climate records for scientists and beacons of beliefs for indigenous groups.

With many glaciers rapidly melting because of climate change, the disappearance of the ice sheets is sure to deal a blow to countries and communities that have relied on them for generations — to make electricity, to draw visitors and to uphold ancient spiritual traditions.

Governments are poised to express "alarm and concern" about how much Earth has already warmed and encourage one another to end their use of coal, according to a draft released Wednesday of the final document expected at U.N. climate talks.

The early version of the document circulating at the negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland, also impresses on countries the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about half by 2030 — even though pledges so far from governments don't add up to that frequently stated goal.

Lebanon's ambassadors who were recently asked to leave Bahrain and Saudi Arabia amid an unprecedented diplomatic spat with Gulf countries expressed fear Wednesday the dispute could harm the interests of Lebanese living in the region.

The warning, which included concerns that bilateral relations could further worsen, came as the daily al-Qabas newspaper reported that Kuwait halted issuing visas to Lebanese citizens. The dispute over comments made by Lebanese Information Minister George Kordahi marks the worst row between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in decades.

Chancellor Angela Merkel asked Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to intervene with Belarus over the migrant situation on that country's border with Poland, where groups of migrants made bold attempts this week to cross into European Union territory.

The chancellor's office said Merkel spoke with Putin by phone and underlined that the exploitation "of migrants against the European Union by the Belarusian regime is inhuman and completely unacceptable." Merkel asked the Russian president "to exert his influence on the regime in Minsk," her office said.

Workers used excavators to begin clearing debris from the site in eastern Turkey where a two-story building collapsed, injuring 13 people, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported Wednesday.

The building, which housed a coffee house and other shops, collapsed in the city of Malatya on Tuesday. Turkey's emergency agencies dispatched over 260 personnel to the site.

India on Wednesday hosted senior security officials from Russia, Iran and five Central Asian countries to discuss the ramifications of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in talks that were boycotted by rival Pakistan and its ally China.

A joint statement released after the meeting said the eight participating nations also discussed threats arising from terrorism, radicalization and drug trafficking as well as the need for humanitarian assistance. No details were provided.

George Kordahi was popular among TV viewers in the Middle East for his dapper charm. He schmoozed with beautiful women, dropped jokes and recited lines of Arabic poetry — all the while weighing in with his political opinions about the region's events.

Now the former host of the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is Lebanon's information minister, and those opinions have landed Kordahi at the center of his country's worst-ever crisis with Saudi Arabia.

A Vietnamese oil tanker earlier seized by Iran was free in open water Wednesday, ending the latest maritime confrontation involving Tehran amid stalled negotiations over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

The Sothys left a position off Iran's Bandar Abbas port and had reached international waters in the nearby Gulf of Oman early Wednesday, data analyzed by The Associated Press from MarineTraffic.com showed. The vessel appeared anchored there, but there was no information about its crew.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said a group of Israeli settlers has vandalized dozens of cars in the occupied West Bank.

A number of witnesses told an Associated Press photographer that Israeli settlers entered the town of al-Bireh near the West Bank city of Ramallah and damaged dozens of parked vehicles.