AC Milan is aiming to strengthen its presence in the Middle East by signing a partnership with Expo 2020 Dubai.

Milan announced the deal on Wednesday and said it is part of its continued push to promote the club in what it sees as "a key market."

North Korea has proposed a U.N.-backed immunization program send its allotment of almost 3 million doses of a Chinese-made vaccine to countries with severe COVID-19 outbreaks while it continues to claim a perfect record in keeping out the coronavirus.

UNICEF, which procures and delivers vaccines on behalf of the COVAX program, said Tuesday that North Korea's Ministry of Public Health has communicated that the 2.97 million Sinovac shots COVAX planned to deliver to the North may be sent elsewhere.

The deal that didn't happen best defines the landscape of European football after a summer transfer window that saw unexpected moves by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Kylian Mbappé will remain with Paris Saint-Germain this season, and the star French forward could leave for Real Madrid as a free agent at age 23 next summer for free rather than for a fee that could have exceeded $200 million now.

Britney Spears and her new attorney say her father is trying to get about $2 million in payments before stepping down from the conservatorship that controls her life and money, a move they liken to extortion in a court filing Tuesday.

The document filed by lawyer Mathew Rosengart says the upcoming scheduled accounting of the conservatorship, which James Spears says he wants completed before he steps down, will mean significant payments for him.

Flames raced across treetops and through drought-stricken vegetation as firefighters scrambled Wednesday to keep a growing California wildfire from reaching a resort city at the southern tip of Lake Tahoe after evacuation orders were expanded to neighboring Nevada.

Thick smoke from the Caldor Fire enveloped the city of South Lake Tahoe, which was all but deserted during a summer week usually bustling with tourists.

Weather disasters are striking the world four to five times more often and causing seven times more damage than in the 1970s, the United Nations weather agency reports.

But these disasters are killing far fewer people. In the 1970s and 1980s, they killed an average of about 170 people a day worldwide. In the 2010s, that dropped to about 40 per day, the World Meteorological Organization said in a report Wednesday that looks at more than 11,000 weather disasters in the past half-century.

The Italian government vowed to crack down on demonstrators threatening to block train tracks throughout the country on Wednesday as a rule requiring COVID-19 tests or vaccines takes effect for long-distance domestic public transport.

In a bid to rein in transmission of infections now that many have returned from summer holidays, domestic travelers in Italy must now show a so-called "Green Pass." This certifies that they have received at least one dose of the vaccine more than 15 days ago, have tested negative in the past 48 hours or have recovered from COVID-19 in the past six months.

Pope Francis has criticized the West's recent involvement in Afghanistan as an outsider's attempt to impose democracy — although he's done so by citing Russia's Vladimir Putin while thinking he was quoting Germany's Angela Merkel.

In a radio interview aired Wednesday, Pope Francis was asked about the new political map taking shape in Afghanistan after the United States and its allies withdrew from the Taliban-controlled country after 20 years of war. The pope said he would answer using a quote that he attributed to the German chancellor, who he described as "one of the world's greatest political figures."

Near the start of each school year, many U.S. schools wrestle with how to teach about 9/11 – the deadliest foreign attack ever on American soil.

In interviews I conducted recently in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area – one of three places where hijacked planes crashed on Sept. 11, 2001 – I found that Muslim students are often subjected to ridicule and blame for the 9/11 attacks.

Poland's government asked the president Tuesday to declare a state of emergency along the border with Belarus as it tries to stop migrants from entering from the neighboring country. The government cited the potential risk from foreign actors and the actions of protesters in Poland as rationales for the declaration.

President Andrzej Duda said later that he was urgently analyzing the request and hinted that he would grant it.