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Fancied England kept its nerve to reach the ICC U-19 World Cup final after prevailing over Afghanistan by 15 runs in an exciting last-four clash here, ending a 24-year wait for the side.

The win has put England in its first U-19 World Cup final since 1998 in South Africa, when it lifted the trophy.

Spinner Rehan Ahmed became the hero for the Young Lions, taking three wickets in the penultimate over at a crucial point when Afghanistan needed just 18 runs from the last 10 balls on Tuesday.

It was a remarkable turnaround for England from the previous tournament just two years ago in South Africa when it finished ninth.

As for Afghanistan, it will head to the Coolidge Cricket Ground for the third-place playoff.

Rain delayed the first of the two super league semifinals at the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground after England won the toss and chose to bat.

Afghanistan made a strong start as Jacob Bethell was trapped lbw by Naveed Zadran, an early sign that England faced a difficult task.

Skipper Tom Prest then joined vice-captain Bethell in making an early departure, reducing the team to 56 for two, as the Young Lions struggled to command with the bat.

Opener George Thomas steadied the ship with an excellent 50, but he lacked support from front-line batters.

And when William Luxton was clean bowled by Izharulhaq Naveed, Prests team was five wickets down having barely put 100 runs on the board.

However, the rain came again to delay play for a further half hour and led to revised conditions of 47 overs per side.

Englands back-end partnership of 95 from George Bell and Alex Horton then managed to lift the final total to 231.

The earlier interruptions from the weather meant Afghanistan had a revised DLS target to match this score.

In reply, Afghanistan lost opener Nangeyalia Kharote to seamer Josh Boyden off just the third ball of the innings.

But Kharotes replacement Allah Noor, smashed a huge six to get off the mark and quickly gave his team a platform.

The 18-year-old produced a marvellous knock, which featured eight boundaries as the momentum of the semifinal swung back Afghanistans way.

Along with wicketkeeper Mohammad Ishaq, the pair got their team past 90, with Noor making a valuable half-century.

Englands crucial breakthrough came after some wonderful fielding led to a run out for Ishaq with wicketkeeper Horton reacting quickly to a loose throw at the strikers end.

Noor remained stubborn but eventually went for 60, with Thomas Aspinwall claiming a vital wicket. That set-up a frantic-finish that could have gone either way.

The 44th over for England appeared to have turned the game when two no balls in a row gifted eight runs, before Abdul Hadi (37 n.o.) smashed a huge six to take them to 200. But Ahmeds late flurry and a nerveless final over from Boyden saw England through.

The scores: England 231/6 in 47 overs (George Thomas 50, George Bell 56 n.o., Alex Horton 53 n.o., Naveed Zadran 2/67, Noor Ahmad 2/32) bt Afghanistan 215/9 in 47 overs (Mohammad Ishaq 43, Allah Noor 60, Bilal Ahmad 33, Noor Ahmad 25, Rehan Ahmed 4/41, Thomas Aspinwall /37). Match reduced to 47 overs; target revised as 231 as per DLS method; England won by 15 runs.

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U-19 World Cup | England beats Afghanistan to enter final, ends 24-year wait - The Hindu

Ross Giblin/Stuff

Footballer Fahima Yousofi, 18, arrived in New Zealand from Afghanistan last September when she and her family fled the Taliban. Next week she will begin training with the Phoenix Academy team.

A young refugee will train among New Zealands best up-and-coming footballers just months after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan.

Fahima Yousofis tutors from the English Teaching College in Lower Hutt put in a call to the Wellington Phoenix after she revealed her talent at a school picnic. From February, Yousofi will begin training with the clubs academy team.

With her sister, Farzana Yousofi, acting as an interpreter, the 18-year-old said the trip through the riotous crowds outside Kabul Airport was not as frightening as the prospect from which she was escaping being forcefully made a bride.

Yousofi, who played football in Afghanistan to a high level, is pleased she will be playing football again. She arrived in New Zealand in September around the time the air force was making mercy flights to and from the Afghan capital with her family. Members of her extended family had already settled in New Zealand.

Ross Giblin/Stuff

The Wellington Phoenix Academys technical director Paul Temple says Fahima Yousofis journey to the club has been an unusual one, and he is keen to kelp her get back into football.

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Its my favourite hobby. I want to be the best player in the world, said Yousofi, a midfielder, who also plays in the forwards.

Having met with her on Tuesday, Phoenix Academy technical director Paul Temple said it was clear she was very keen to play again.

WELLINGTON PHOENIX

Wellington Phoenix coach Gemma Lewis frustrated by changes to upcoming schedule.

With the club sorting her out with boots and kit, she will be joining in the Phoenixs academy team training.

Were going in a little bit blind, but we want to help her if we can. If shes played international football, this will be the right place for her.

Shell spend a few weeks training and from there well see what the best option is for her.

Having not seen her play, Temple was keen to get her on the pitch.

This is quite unusual. Obviously we deal with overseas players all the time, but thats always arranged in advance.

We want to help her get back into football, whether thats with the Phoenix or playing with a [local] club.

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Refugee to train with Phoenix Academy after fleeing Taliban takeover of Afghanistan - Stuff.co.nz

Photo:United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

A drug that is a mix of meth and opioids, and believed to be the first of its kind in the world, is on the rise in Afghanistan.

UN drug experts have warned that pills being sold on the streets as tablet K mark a new era in narcotics production because some of them contain both stimulants and depressant drugs. The tablet also represents a further step in the expansion of a cheap synthetic drug market serving up to the worlds poorest populations.

Tablet Ks look like badly-made, colourful ecstasy pills and sell for between 3 and 12 each. Alongside the usual mish-mash of gimmicky pinger logos, such as Donald Trumps head, Rolex and Tesla, batches of tablet Ks have been stamped with the name of the Netflix series La Casa De Papel (Money Heist) with a masked face from the show on the back.

The pills have been steadily growing in popularity, particularly among young Afghans, since 2016. Despite this, until now, there has been little attempt to find out what the pills contain.

But on Tuesday, the UNs drugs office published a forensic analysis of 536 pills seized over 2020 and 2021 and sold on the streets as tablet K. It found that while the drugs were sold under one brand name, the contents fell into three types.

Of the pills tested, 42 percent contained mainly meth, 23 percent mainly MDMA, and 32 percent contained the surprise mixture of methamphetamine and opioids. The opioids found in these pills was most often heroin, but was sometimes tramadol, a synthetic opioid painkiller.

Although the MDMA infused pills are typically sold for more than those containing meth or heroin, the report said there was no obvious link between the visual aspects of the tablets and the presence of a particular drug. So in essence people buying tablet K are essentially involved in a lucky, or unlucky dip, and could find themselves getting high from meth, MDMA or a combination of meth and heroin. One in ten of the pills also contained sildenafil, which is sold under the brand name Viagra.

The presence of an illicit drug product in tablet form that contains both methamphetamine and opioids has implications for the understanding of drug use and supply in Afghanistan and beyond, said the report. The identification of opioids in a large number of samples [containing methamphetamine] was unexpected.

Mixing stimulant and depressant drugs in the same hit is something heroin users have been doing for decades with speedballs, by buying cocaine or crack and heroin, and either injecting or snorting them both at the same time. Even though the drugs work in opposite directions to each other, studies have shown that taking a speedball can potentiate the normal effects of both drugs to create a more extreme high. Stimulants and depressants are also mixed in Red Bull and vodkas or espresso martinis.

But drug trade observers who spoke to VICE World News said they had not come across a ready-made product containing the two types of high before.

Batches of tablet Ks have been stamped with the name of the Netflix series La Casa De Papel (Money Heist) Photo: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

I have never heard of such combinations in tablets in European drug markets or elsewhere, said Andrew Cunnningham, head of drug markets and crime at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). He said that so far these types of pills seemed to be a local phenomenon in Afghan drug markets and that they were likely cheap products targeted at the Afghan population.

Between March 2020 and March 2021 officials seized 80kg of the tablets (around 160,000 individual pills), double the amount seized the previous year. In 2020 a survey carried out among young people found that for the first time use of tablet K was higher than methamphetamine, also a rising drug in Afghanistan which has become a meth production hub.

According to the report, tablet Ks are found across urban and rural parts of Afghanistan, with a high prevalence in the Eastern (bordering Pakistan) and Northeastern (bordering Tajikistan) regions, where use of the drug is two to three times higher than average. Production facilities for tablet K have been detected in Kabul and Kunduz, but there have also been reports of the pills being trafficked from Peshawar in Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Analysis of tablet Ks found the pills contained a total of 26 different substances. Alongside meth, heroin and MDMA analysts found a plethora of cheap pharmaceuticals such as caffeine, carisoprodol (a muscle relaxant), chlorpheniramine and diphenhydramine (antihistamines), dextromethorphan (a cough suppressant), propranolol (a beta blocker), diazepam, sildenafil, paracetamol, tramadol, chloroquine (an antimalarial medication), and tinidazole (an antiprotozoal medication).

Afghanistan may no longer seem such an unlikely place for synthetic drug manufacture and constitutes just the latest example of a largely plant-based drug economy embracing synthetic drug manufacture, said the report.

Excerpt from:
A New Drug That Contains Meth and Heroin Is on the Rise in Afghanistan - VICE

August 15,2021 | Hujjatullah Zia | Opinion

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Home - Daily Outlook Afghanistan, The leading Independent ...

After Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, Halima received an email from the American University of Afghanistan that she would be on a flight out the next day. She took a small backpack with two sets of clothes, and left behind her family and the first 19 years of her life. The next day, she arrived at the American University of IraqSolemani.

She was at first worried about her safety in what she regarded as another war-torn country, but she eventually settled in and felt secure at her new campus.

Her course schedule is a mix of in-person classes with fellow students from the university in Iraq and online courses with Afghan students from around the world.

Scattered throughout the world, the students from the American University of Afghanistan are logging on across time zones to continue their education. Over half of the students have now been evacuated from Afghanistan and are mainly in Iraq, Kyrgyzstan and the U.S., with others in countries like Germany, France, Chile and Rwanda.

CBS News spoke to seven current students and is not using their real names out of security concerns for the students and their families.

The American University of Afghanistan was established in 2006 as the nation's first private college with a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was founded with 50 students and grew to over 1,000, with the aim of establishing a form of higher education built on the American model. The physical campus closed soon after the Taliban took control this summer.

Over 2,000 miles to the east of Iraq, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Fazal, a business student, joins his class from his new apartment near the American University of Central Asia. He's learning some Russian, the local language spoken, to get by in his new environment.

"I needed to leave my family, my father and mother, because I didn't want to be a threat to them by being affiliated with a U.S. institution," he said.

Concentrating on his studies has been difficult, with his mind wandering back to his homeland and family, but he remains motivated to graduate. "It has been a struggle to get back to the same focus, the attention span that I previously had," he said. "But I kind of keep trying and putting in effort to get back to being normal."

"They were impressive people even in relatively normal times, but what they're demonstrating now with their resilience and their ambitions and their desire to learn surpasses anything I've ever seen from students anywhere in the world," said Ian Bickford, president of the university.

Keeping the classes going hasn't been easy. Schedules still run on Kabul time to standardize when students around the world meet. That has students and professors signing on at various hours of the night and day.

The professors preview all the material at the beginning of the week, with online class sessions acting as a supplement. This format aims to help students who may not be able to attend every class.

"We thought that was a really important signal to send to our community that we are still there and we can still teach," said Dr. Victoria Fontan, vice president of academic affairs at the university and a professor of peace and conflict studies.

The students remaining in Afghanistan face unique challenges. With electricity and internet no longer reliable, it has been difficult for Norie to attend class. She has not told her family that she is continuing her studies with the university online. She fears them finding out, accidentally mentioning her continuing education and the repercussions that could follow.

But beyond the anxiety is the loneliness that plagues her current life as a woman in Afghanistan. "I can't go alone to meet with my friends. I can't go shopping alone. I can't go do sports. I used to run with my father in the morning and I can't anymore."

In a refugee facility in France, Hassan, a student who made it out of Afghanistan on his own, said he never thought he would leave his country and worries about his future.

"When I came to France, I lost my hope. I was like, I'm nothing right now. I was studying, and here I have nothing. I don't even have a bachelor's degree." From his room at the facility, he continues with his classes online in hopes that he will be relocated to a university. While still a student in Kabul, he was working on developing a software that would make it easier for students to take classes from their phone. He worries that his family is in danger and that there is nothing he can do to help them.

Even as the students are spread across 28 countries, some still hope to see their futures in Afghanistan. Pashtana Dorani was evacuated to the U.S. in late October on a researcher visa. She is at Wellesley College in Massachusetts researching the impact of conflict on women's education while finishing her undergraduate degree.

In Afghanistan, she founded LEARN, a nonprofit focused on education, organizing projects around digital literacy and menstrual hygiene management. While grateful for the opportunity to be in the U.S., she maintains that she wants to take the skills she learns back to her home country when it feels safe.

"Staying in the U.S. is good, I'm grateful for the support I have right now, and I'm so grateful for all these amazing women around me," she said. "But at the end of the day, the heart is where home is. And home is Afghanistan."

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American University of Afghanistan's students are scattered all over the world, but their education continues - CBS News