Two hundred American soldiers and civilians crossed the start line yesterday at a dusty airstrip in a Taliban stronghold to run Afghan-istan's first ever marathon.
Gun racks and fox holes as well as plastic palm trees dotted the course for the satellite race to the more orthodox Honolulu Mara-thon, with runners facing the challenge of high altitude and a bumpy course as well as the risk of rebel attack.
The race, which begins several hours before 20,000 people ran in Honolulu, was the idea of the US Army's 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, based at Schofield Barracks near Honolulu, who didn't want to miss out.
Tapes of Hawaiian music blared as competitors, decked out in black T-shirts, set off from between two cannons on five laps of the landing strip at Firebase Ripley, just outside Tirin Kot, 120km from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and 1,400m above sea level.
"I've never run one this high," said Major Dario Baratto of Alexandria, Virginia, a veteran of 11 marathons. "It's a dangerous area, but there's a lot of weapons along the route. There's bunkers in case anything happens."
Helicopters flew soldiers in from other bases across Afghanistan yesterday morning. Two jet fighters roared over the base, surrounded by the mountains of Uruzgan province, just before the race began to the cheers of the assembled runners.
One competitor was a young Afghan working for the military, apparently the first to compete in such a race on Afghan soil.
"This is not an official sport in our country," according to Mo-hammed Aref Payman, an official at the Afghan National Olympic Committee in Kabul. "This has never been done here before."
Some of the course is gravel, but most of it is covered by a fine, powder-like dust mercifully damped down by a rare shower on Saturday. Its single hill has been named Diamond Head for the Honolulu landmark, an extinct volcano whose base runners traverse twice during the marathon.
The runners in Tirin Kot will receive finisher's medals and certificates as well as their sponsored T-shirts, and their finish times will be recorded and listed in a booklet with those of the runners in Honolulu.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only