FIFA President Gianni Infantino issued an appeal for protesters to keep calm ahead of Israel's upcoming soccer World Cup qualifying matches in Norway and Italy after an agreement was reached with Hamas to a pause in their devastating two-year war.

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia's air defense were to blame for downing an Azerbaijani jetliner in December that killed 38 people, his first admission of responsibility for the crash in an effort to ease tensions between the neighbors.

Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose philosophical, bleakly funny novels often unfold in single sentences, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for his "compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art."

Wall Street is taking a pause on Thursday as U.S. stocks and even the price of gold make only modest moves near their record highs.

Intense storms in the aftermath of Typhoon Matmo triggered widespread flooding in northern Vietnam and killed at least eight people while damaging thousands of homes.

A group of climate activists is cycling to the world's biggest climate summit — and doing it without stepping onto a plane.

Hurricane Priscilla weakened in the Pacific as it moved Wednesday along the west coast of Mexico while Tropical Storm Jerry in the Atlantic was expected to strengthen on a track for the Leeward Islands, forecasters said.

Priscilla on Tuesday approached major hurricane status, but by Wednesday morning was a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds around 80 mph (129 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Laura Youngson didn't expect to focus so much on football cleats when she organized a group of women to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and play a high-altitude match.

The point of the 2017 game was to highlight inequality in sports for women and girls. On that front, Youngson achieved her goal with the match becoming the subject of a documentary and landing the group in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The qualifying process for the 2026 World Cup is nearing conclusion.

Israel's World Cup qualifying match at Italy next week is expected to attract more pro-Palestinian protesters outside the football stadium in Udine than ticket-holding spectators inside the arena.

Protesters already approached the gates of Italy's training center in Florence last week to demand that the match isn't played because of the war in Gaza — part of a national strike that saw millions of activists take to the streets.