Football: Germany-Holland match called off over bomb threat - police
German police said a bomb threat forced them to call off an international football match Tuesday that was meant as a "symbol of freedom" after the Paris attacks and was to be attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
No explosives had been found so far and no arrests made after the Germany-Netherlands football match was cancelled and thousands of fans evacuated, said Lower Saxony state interior minister Boris Pistorius.
Hanover city police chief Volker Kluwe said there had been "serious plans to cause an explosion" in the city's 49,000-capacity stadium, and that authorities had acted on "a concrete threat scenario".
Paris attacks: French police issue photo to identify stadium bomber
French police on Tuesday released a photograph of one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up outside the national stadium, appealing for any witnesses with information to come forward.
Investigators have already established that the man had been finger-printed by authorities on the Greek island of Leros on Oct 3 but his identity remains unclear.
Near to his body was a Syrian passport, which French investigators believe may have belonged to a Syrian regime soldier killed several months ago, a source close to the investigation told AFP on Tuesday.
Zara fires French employees for barring woman wearing headscarf
Zara fired two employees from a French store on Tuesday after social media outrage over a woman being denied entry for wearing a Muslim headscarf.
"This type of mentality is unheard of at Zara and there have never been instructions given out to act this way," said Jean-Jacques Salaun, head of Zara's French stores.
Salaun said a security guard at the store in Plaisir, west of Paris, asked the woman to remove her headscarf, known as a hijab. When the woman refused, she was not allowed to enter.
Tears of joy emoji is 'Word of the Year'
Sometimes words are not enough to express ourselves. Recognising this, Oxford Dictionaries has for the first time ever dubbed a pictograph, officially called the "face with tears of joy" emoji, as the "Word of the Year".
The emoji beat out a range of strong contenders, including "ad blocker", "Brexit", "Dark Web", "lumbersexual", and "refugee", to clinch the title as the "word" that best reflected the ethos, mood and preoccupations of 2015, according to Oxford Dictionary.
The emoji was selected with the help of technology firm SwiftKey, which found it was the most used around the world in the last year.
Football: Anthem boos as Hong Kong dent China's World Cup hopes
Hong Kong dented China's World Cup qualifying hopes and put 2022 hosts Qatar into the next round with a 0-0 draw in front of rowdy home fans who again booed their shared anthem on Tuesday.
After teams around Asia held a sombre moment's silence for the Paris attacks, Australia thumped Bangladesh 4-0 and Saudi Arabia put 10 past East Timor, but Japan were less convincing in a 2-0 win over Cambodia.
Hong Kong weren't one of the night's winners but they celebrated as if they were after holding China to a goalless draw which kept them ahead of their rivals in Group C, while putting leaders Qatar through.
