FIFA is in talks with Qatari authorities about scrapping the mandatory vaccination requirements for next year's World Cup.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani announced in June that it would require any fans wanting entry into next year's tournament to be fully inoculated against the coronavirus, but has said nothing about the policy for players yet.

An upset loss to Oman and a narrow win over China have sharpened Japan coach Hajime Moriyasu's focus ahead of back-to-back World Cup qualifying games against Saudi Arabia and Australia.

The Japan squad travels to the Saudi capital knowing that a defeat on Thursday will be a significant setback in its bid for a seventh successive World Cup appearance.

The European Union's drug regulator gave its backing Monday to administering booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people 18 and older.

The European Medicines Agency said the booster doses "may be considered at least 6 months after the second dose for people aged 18 years and older."

The Taliban doubled down on their hard-line trajectory Monday in a third round of Afghanistan government appointments that encompassed a host of men named to deputy positions, a spokesman said.

None of the 38 new appointments announced by chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid included women. They were comprised of members drawn entirely from the Taliban with little representation of minority groups.

The name of Lebanon's billionaire Prime Minister Najib Miqati has appeared in the Pandora Papers -- a massive trove of leaked documents showing how the world's elite is using tax havens and offshore and shell companies to stash assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The documents show that Miqati, a businessman who formed a new government last month, owns a Panama-based offshore company that he used to buy property in Monaco in 2008 worth more than $10 million.

Taliban forces unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, most of them Afghan soldiers who had surrendered to the insurgents, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

The killings took place in the village of Kahor in Daykundi province in central Afghanistan on Aug. 30, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. Eleven of the victims were members of the Afghan national security forces and two were civilians, among them a 17-year-old girl.

Britain's Conservative government is facing calls to tighten the country's defenses against "dirty money" after a massive leak of offshore data showed how London, in particular, is the destination of choice for some of the world's richest and most powerful people to conceal their cash.

The cache of almost 12 million files, which has been dubbed the "Pandora Papers," was published Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its media partners, including Britain's Guardian newspaper and the BBC.

Facebook along with its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms suffered a worldwide outage Monday that has extended more than three hours. Facebook's internal systems used by employees also went down. Service has not yet been restored.

German officials on Monday unveiled what they said is the world's first commercial plant for making synthetic kerosene, touted as a climate-friendly fuel of the future.

Aviation currently accounts for about 2.5% of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. While other forms of transportation are increasingly being electrified, the challenge to making large, battery-powered planes is formidable.

More than 20 environmental and climate groups launched a campaign Monday calling for a ban on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship across the European Union, similar to bans on tobacco advertising.

More than 80 Greenpeace activists blocked the entrance to Shell's oil refinery in the Dutch port of Rotterdam to draw attention to the launch of the European Citizens' Initiative calling for the advertising ban.