The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered an unexpected moment of levity at the COP27 climate conference on Wednesday, reading the beginning of the wrong speech before realising, chuckling and starting again with a different opening line.
Speaking in the main plenary hall of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference on Wednesday, Guterres was due to give the opening address at a session with former US Vice President Al Gore on tracking carbon emissions.
"The world is losing the race against the climate crisis, but I am hopeful because of you. You have been relentless in holding decision makers to account," Guterres began before pausing in confusion and shuffling through his written speech.
Laughing to himself, he said: "I think that I was given the wrong speech."
The delegates assembled in the hall then applauded as the correct document was brought to him.
Guterres explained that he was due to speak to a group of young people after his address, and had begun reading the speech aimed at them instead.
Hijackers being seated next to some of the scores of passengers taken hostage after insurgents took control of a train in southwest Pakistan, has complicating rescue efforts, security sources said on Wednesday.
The captain of a ship, who has been arrested in connection with a crash into a US flagged tanker off the coast of England is a Russian national, the German company which owns the vessel said on Wednesday.
A Russian missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed a 47-year-old woman and wounded at least nine other people, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on Wednesday.
Yemen's Houthis said on Tuesday they would resume attacks on Israeli ships passing through the Red and Arabian seas, the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden, ending a period of relative calm starting in January with the Gaza ceasefire.
US President Donald Trump's increased tariffs on all US steel and aluminum imports took effect on Wednesday, stepping up a campaign to reorder global trade norms in favour of the US that drew swift retaliation from Europe.