MEXICO CITY, June 12 — Dozens of protesters clashed with police yesterday outside the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City as South Africa and Mexico played the first match of the World Cup before 80,000 fans.

Groups of teachers, relatives of Mexicans who have gone missing, and student activists gathered early yesterday outside the stadium amid a heavy police presence.

Some protesters breached barriers and exchanged blows with officers guarding the stadium’s perimeter, moments after Mexico scored the tournament’s first goal.

A handful of youths smashed vehicle windows with bats as police fired tear gas and dispatched mounted officers to corral the protesters, who scattered on foot.

Mexico’s government has faced weeks of protests, mainly by teachers demanding better working conditions.

For a time it appeared the protests might prevent the city from staging an official World Cup fan zone in its famed Zocalo.

But thousands of fans poured into the plaza shoving and jostling their way through metal barriers, creating chaotic scenes shortly before kick-off in the opening game. — AFP

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Before Ebola began to spread last April, the health situation in Ituri province in northeastern the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was already dire, with cholera outbreaks, diarrheal diseases, and thousands displaced from their homes. But what is coming now is a major crisis.

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A cycle of threat, detente and deadlock repeats itself wearisomely as the president’s war in Iran drags on

• US politics live – latest updates

As the story of the US-Iran war is written direct to social media, Donald Trump may be the genre’s premier unreliable narrator.

Since the war began, Trump has again and again threatened Iran with fearsome consequences if Tehran doesn’t come to the table and sign a peace deal that the US president said was imminent weeks ago. And he has also repeatedly claimed that an Iran deal is “close” – without any result. (A CNN tally put the number of times he’s claimed it at 38.)

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According to local police, 39 people were seized on Sunday during a meeting in the forest near Magamin Diddi village in the Maradun municipality of north-west Zamfara state. But some residents and officials believe the number of those abducted could be as high as 50.

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On Friday, the killing of the infant by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank caused outrage, after soldiers opened fire on the family’s vehicle despite it having complied with an order to stop. Sam was killed and his mother, Daniyah Abu Haikal, and father, Fahed Abu Haikal, were both injured.