Six In The Morning Thursday 18 November 2021

 

Afghan girl footballers reach UK on Kim Kardashian West-funded flight

By Caroline Hawley
Diplomatic Correspondent

A group of Afghan girl footballers have flown into the UK, the culmination of an extraordinary rescue effort that began after the Taliban seized power.

The costly operation brought together an unlikely cast of characters, from Muslim sports-people to spies, philanthropists, and a Hasidic rabbi.

The girls - aged between 13 and 19 - arrived from Pakistan overnight.

Their flight was chartered by a Jewish aid organisation and was paid for by the US star, Kim Kardashian-West.

Revealed: the places humanity must not destroy to avoid climate chaos

Tiny proportion of world’s land surface hosts carbon-rich forests and peatlands that would not recover before 2050 if lost

Damian Carrington Environment editor

@dpcarrington

Thu 18 Nov 2021 16.00 GMT

Detailed new mapping has pinpointed the carbon-rich forests and peatlands that humanity cannot afford to destroy if climate catastrophe is to be avoided.

The vast forests and peatlands of Russia, Canada and the US are vital, researchers found, as are tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia. Peat bogs in the UK and mangrove swamps and eucalyptus forests in Australia are also on the list.

The scientists identified 139bn tonnes (GT) of carbon in trees, plants and soils as “irrecoverable”, meaning that natural regeneration could not replace its loss by 2050, the date by which the net global carbon emissions must end to avoid the worst impacts of global heating. In the last decade alone, farming, logging and wildfires have caused the release of at least 4GT of irrecoverable carbon, the researchers said.

Slovakia puts unvaccinated into lockdown as Covid surges across Europe

Slovakia has one of the EU’s lowest vaccination rates, with 45% of people fully jabbed

Reuters

Slovakia will impose stricter measures for people who have not been vaccinated against coronavirus amid a surge in infections and hospital admissions that are stretching the health system, Prime Minister Eduard Heger said on Thursday.

The country of 5.5 million has seen a record number of cases in the past days, topping 8,000 on Tuesday, and said earlier this week that it had few intensive care beds available for coronavirus patients.

“It is a lockdown for the unvaccinated,” Heger told a news conference shown live on television.

Desperate Afghans forced to sell children

The situation in Afghanistan, which has been in turmoil since the Taliban takeover, is deteriorating even further as the country suffers a drought, forcing families to sell everything, including their own children.

With an already ailing economy that has been hard hit by a prolonged drought and with the Taliban at the helm, Afghanistan's future is looking bleak.

Still seeking international recognition after seizing power in mid-August, the Taliban is struggling to grasp Afghanistan's deteriorating situation — and it is the poor who are paying the highest price.

"The COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing food crisis and the onset of winter have further exacerbated the situation for families," according to a recently published report by UNICEF, the United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. "In 2020, almost half of Afghanistan's population was so poor that they lacked necessities such as basic nutrition or clean water." And this is before the recent upheaval.

Email raises concerns about fate of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai

The boss of women's tennis has cast doubt on an email posted on China's media purportedly from tennis star Peng Shuai, saying it "only raises my concerns as to her safety."

Steve Simon, chairman of the WTA, said in a statement that he had a "hard time believing" the email was written by Peng, who has not been heard from since alleging two weeks ago that a powerful Chinese politician had sexually assaulted her.

Peng, a former Wimbledon and French Open doubles champion, alleged on the Twitter-like Weibo earlier this month that former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli had "forced" her into sex during a long-term on-off relationship.

Passengers asked not to open doors on trains, except if assailant near

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

November 18, 2021 at 16:15 JST

Although most train cars in Japan have an emergency lever to manually open their doors, passengers are advised to not pull it in a crisis and leave it to railway workers instead. 

However, as a recent stabbing rampage on a Keio Corp. train showed, even some railway operators concede there may be an exception if passengers feel their lives are in danger. 

During the panic on the Keio train on Oct. 31 as an assailant stabbed one person and tried to set fire to the train, one passenger pulled the lever. However, in this instance, the action trigged an unexpected result. 

Former England cricketer Ebony Rainford-Brent shares racist letter she received

By Ben Church, CNN

Updated 1149 GMT (1949 HKT) November 18, 2021

Former England cricketer Ebony Rainford-Brent was told to "leave our country" in a vitriolic, hand-written racist letter.

The 37-year-old, who became the first Black woman to play for England's cricket team in 2001, shared a picture of the letter on Twitter Wednesday, during a week when the sport's issues with racism have been laid bare.

Rainford-Brent captioned her tweet: "Interesting... Born in south London but apparently I was found naked in Africa as a primitive. Had some letters in my time but this one up there!"