Six In The Morning Sunday 12 September 2021

 

Afghan women at university must study in female-only classrooms, Taliban say

Islamic dress code will be compulsory as new regime enforces gender segregation in Afghanistan

Hannah Ellis-Petersen South Asia correspondent

Sun 12 Sep 2021 14.26 BST

The Taliban have announced that women in Afghanistan will only be allowed to study at university in gender-segregated classrooms and Islamic dress will be compulsory, stoking fears that a gender apartheid will be imposed on the country under the new regime.

The higher education minister, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, laid out a series of policies that will govern women’s access to higher education in Afghanistan.

On Saturday, the Taliban raised their flag over the presidential palace on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, signalling that their work governing the newly formed Islamic emirate had begun. The white banner bearing a Qur’anic verse was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the interim Taliban government.

Spain wildfire: Costa del Sol towns evacuated amid huge blaze

More than 1,000 now displaced by blaze authorities believe may have been started deliberately

Jon Sharman

A massive wildfire has forced the evacuation of another two towns in southern Spain days after hundreds of people were rushed out of a popular resort.

The Spanish military has now been deployed to help tackle the blaze which began on Wednesday near Estepona in the Costa del Sol, an area popular with British tourists and expatriates.

Fanned by strong winds and high late-summer temperatures, the flames have driven hundreds of people from their homes and killed one emergency worker. Authorities in Andalucia believe the fire may have been started deliberately.

"Vaccine Apartheid"

Unfair Distribution Hampers Global Vaccination Drive

Only 2 percent of the 1.3 billion people who live in Africa have been vaccinated. Yet there are plenty of surplus doses in wealthy countries. Fair distribution has been little more than an illusion so far.

The battle against the coronavirus is proving to be a tough one. Three quarters of a year since the introduction of the vaccine, more than 5 billion doses have been administered and at least 2 billion people have received two jabs. And the pace of the largest and most complex vaccination campaign the world has ever seen continues to increase: Just last week, 39 million injections were administered. Per day. Before October gets here, another billion doses may have been dispensed.

By the end of the year, a dozen pharmaceutical companies will have produced another 5 billion doses, according to the estimates. And next year, global production will rise even further. The producers of the particularly effective mRNA vaccines – BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna – are expected to almost double their output from around 4 billion to 7 billion doses. On top of that, several more vaccines will be hitting the market, including one from the U.S. company Novavax, which can be stored at normal refrigerator temperatures, making it far easier to use for many countries. The French pharma giant Sanofi could also soon introduce its long-delayed vaccine.

Why China is developing a game-changing thorium-fuelled nuclear reactor

China is poised to test a thorium-powered nuclear reactor in September, the world’s first since 1969. The theory is that this new molten-salt technology will be “safer” and “greener” than regular uranium reactors, and so could help Beijing meet its climate goals. Yet is the country's investment in this also geostrategic?

A new page in the history of nuclear energy could be written this September, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, in the north of China. At the end of August, Beijing announced that it had completed the construction of its first thorium-fuelled molten-salt nuclear reactor, with plans to begin the first tests of this alternative technology to current nuclear reactors within the next two weeks.

Built not far from the northern city of Wuwei, the low-powered prototype can as yet only produce energy for around 1,000 homes, according to the scientific journal Nature.

IAEA and Iran reach agreement to avert nuclear deal crisis

Iran and the UN’s nuclear agency reached an agreement on Sunday and said talks will continue later this month.

By Maziar Motamedi

12 Sep 2021

 The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog and Iran’s nuclear chief have reached an agreement that will prevent another crisis looming over the prospect of restoring Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), landed in Tehran late on Saturday and met Mohammad Eslami, the newly appointed head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on Sunday morning.

The hard reality of Brexit is hitting Britain. It's costing everyone but Boris Johnson

Analysis by Luke McGee, CNN Business

Updated 1000 GMT (1800 HKT) September 12, 2021

"The cold stores didn't have enough space to hold our crops, so we had to throw away a week's worth of production," explains Iain Brown, vice chairman of East Scotland Growers (ESG). "And we've not had enough workers to harvest our vegetable crops, meaning they are going to waste."

While food shortages have been common in many countries over the course of the pandemic, Brown believes that one issue unique to the UK is making life extra painful: Brexit.

According to Brown, the two essential prongs of production -- first, getting fresh food out of the ground, and then distributing it onto supermarket shelves -- are both taking a hit due to a lack of workers.