Qatar table tennis says ‘prepared to escalate’ after chaotic vote

• Tuesday's 104-102 vote to Soerling ended in such acrimony that the ITTF's annual general meeting was suspended.
• The world body said the assembly was "disrupted by outsiders" after the election result was announced.

Snakes on a plane: Indian smuggler caught with venomous vipers

• Mumbai Customs issued photographs of the seized snakes, including blue and yellow reptiles squirming in a bucket
• Those small creatures, listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, were "ingeniously concealed" in a plastic crate

How social media can ‘trigger’ eating disorders in young people

• Young women and girls are much more likely to suffer from illnesses such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder, though rates among men have been increasing.
• Research has shown the percentage of people worldwide who have had some kind of eating disorder during their lives rose from 3.5 percent in 2000 to 7.8 percent in 2018.

New metro cuts through Saudi social divisions

Huge crowds flock to Vatican for Pope Francis’s funeral

• Some people waited overnight to be first in the queue for the ceremony, which will be attended by world leaders including US President Donald Trump
• The Argentine pontiff, who died on Monday aged 88, sought to steer the centuries-old Church into a more inclusive direction during his 12-year papacy

Trump, Zelensky to attend Pope Francis’s funeral Saturday

• The Argentine pontiff, 88, died on Monday after a stroke, less than a month after returning home from five weeks in hospital battling double pneumonia
• Francis died in the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican residence where he lived during his 12-year papacy, and his body was laid out in its chapel on Monday evening

As world mourns, cardinals meeting to decide the date for Pope Francis’s funeral

• Francis, the head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, died at his home in the Vatican on Monday aged 88 after suffering a stroke
• Tributes have poured in from around the globe for Francis, a liberal reformer who took over following the resignation of German theologian Benedict XVI in 2013

War against elite universities: Trump ramps up conflict against defiant Harvard

• Harvard stands out for defying Trump, in contrast to several other universities and a string of powerful law firms that have folded under intense pressure
• The impacts are already being felt on a campus that has produced 162 Nobel prize winners and whose alumni range from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to 8 US presidents

After Instagram restrictions, Meta to introduce teen accounts for Facebook

• The accounts were brought in for 13- to 15-year-old Instagram users last September as part of moves to shield underage internet users from online harms.
• Teens are immediately placed in such accounts, with those under 16 unable to change settings without parental permission.

$20 million rare blue diamond goes on show in Abu Dhabi

• The 10-carat Mediterranean Blue, which will go on sale in Geneva next month, is the showpiece of a collection estimated at $100 million, organizers said.
• "Included in the group are the largest flawless diamond in the world... the second largest red diamond known to exist and several diamonds over 100 carats," Sotheby's said.