Reuters World News - Afghan evacuees, forest fires and Antarctica

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Days before President Donald Trump said he would help Afghan evacuees who fled their country and were stuck in the UAE, cables reveal the Emirati government had already begun returning them to Afghanistan. The U.S. Forest Service is struggling to cope with an increase in wildfires, as cuts under the Trump administration hit home. And scientists are analyzing Antarctica's oldest ice with hopes to reveal more about the Earth's climate and atmospheric record. Today's Recommended Read can be found here. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠here⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠here⁠. Visit the ⁠Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement⁠ for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit ⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices⁠ to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, questions over Trump's pledge to save Afghans from being returned to Taliban rule. Cuts to the US Forest Service hit home as teams deal with increased wildfires. Japan's Prime Minister vows to fight on despite bruising election results. And scientists examine Antarctica's oldest ice to find out our planet's one and a half million-year-old secrets. It's Monday, July 21st. This is Reuters' World News. bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand.

We start with a pledge made by US President Trump to quote, save Afghan evacuees stuck in the UAE, so they wouldn't be handed back to the Taliban. Now, Reuters can reveal the UAE has already sent some of them back to Afghanistan and told the US it was doing so. Trump made the promise in a post on social media on Sunday. But a State Department cable from 10 days earlier reveals that two families have already been returned

and dozens more were due to be returned yesterday. The same day, Trump posted. Humera Pamuk is Reuters' Deputy Foreign Policy Editor. Humera, how many people are we talking about here? So we're talking about more than 30 people who have been in this Abu Dhabi facility known as Emirates Humanitarian City or many, many years or contacts throughout the years since United States has pulled out from Afghanistan.

About 17,000 Afghan evacuees have been processed through this Abu Dhabi facility. There are up to 2,000 people in a similar facility in Qatar. This facility is actually run by the U.S. government. and the Afghan evacuees there are also looking to be resettled either in the United States or someplace else. The key thing here is for these people to not go back to Afghanistan. What are the concerns about returning these people to Afghanistan? So the Afghan refugees, evacuees, however we describe, they include family members of Afghan American U.S. military personnel, children clear to reunite with their parents,

relatives of Afghans already admitted, and tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the US government during America's 20-year war, they are directly at risk from the Taliban. At the time of recording this podcast, neither the UAE nor the White House has responded to Reuters' request for comment. The UAE did say in the cable that the two families already returned to Afghanistan were done so successfully and safely. Israeli tanks have pushed into southern and eastern areas of Dera al-Bala for the first time. Israeli sources say the military believes some of the remaining hostages may be being held in the Ghazan city. At the weekend, the military ordered residents to leave, saying it planned to fight Hamas militants,

and Gaza medics say at least three Palestinians were killed. Israel has not yet commented. Major Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia have caused chaos at major airports serving Moscow. Thousands of passengers have been affected after flights were cancelled or delayed. In Ukraine, Russia launched a fresh wave of drone and missile strikes, killing one person and causing multiple fires in Kiev. Japanese premier, Shigeru Ishiba, vowing to remain in his post, despite his ruling coalition

suffering a bruising defeat in upper house elections. That's prompted some of his own party to doubt his leadership. Ishiaba told the news conference he would remain in office to oversee tariff talks with the United States and key issues such as rising consumer prices. Markets are reacting to the election results despite being closed Monday for a holiday. The yen's rise and Niki futures suggest investors

had already priced in the outcome. The political uncertainty comes at a crucial time as Japan negotiates tariffs with the US before an August 1st deadline. Last week saw Japanese government bonds plummet with 30-year debt yields hitting record highs. Investors are now watching for potential policy changes, including possible tax cuts and increased government bond issuance. One of Jeffrey Epstein's own former lawyers is calling on the US Justice Department to release records from its sex trafficking probe.

The US government on Friday filed a motion in a Manhattan federal court to unseal grand jury transcripts in the cases of Epstein and former associate Galane Maxwell. But Alan Dershowitz told Fox News Sunday that the grand jury files are unlikely to reveal much and that other information that hasn't been requested

would be, quote, far more informative and far more relevant. President Trump is threatening to interfere with a deal to build a new football stadium unless the local NFL team, the commanders, changes its name back to the Redskins. The team dropped the name in 2020 after decades of criticism that it's a racial slur with links to the genocide of the indigenous population. The commanders are meant to return to Washington from Maryland with a new stadium,

expected to open in 2030. The US has already had more wildfires this year than in any year in the past decade. And the US Forest Service is struggling. It's grappling with massive staff cuts under the Trump administration. Some 15% of the workforce has left in just five months. Andrew Hay is in Taos in New Mexico. Andrew, what are you hearing from firefighters? Yeah, I'm hearing from firefighters in the western US states

that they are facing a shortage of staff on fires. Firefighters, actual people who crew engines, I'm told that is because they are being held back in their ranger stations to cover the jobs of some of the 5,000 colleagues who have quit the agency this year in the Trump administration's downsizing. And so I'm told that these people are being held back to do jobs ranging from cleaning campground toilets to answering the phone at the front desk to mowing the lawn. The second thing I'm hearing is that there is a lack of support staff. So what I heard is that a lack of support staff on a fire in Oregon, for instance,

meant that once the fire crew had exhausted the food and water that they had taken into the fire, they were not getting resupplied. They were working on half rations or less, going to bed hungry, they ran short of medical supplies, they even ran short of fuel for their chainsaws and had to scourge it from local firefighters. The fire service disputes that case in Oregon

and says it is ready for an extreme. challenging year, although it does admit it needs more support staff. Andrew, how has the fire service become so short-staffed? So the Trump administration wants to make the Forest Service and many other federal agencies more efficient, and it sees staff cuts as a way to do this. It believes that people are being lazy, wasteful, and it just costs too much money. What they're doing, however, is offering buyouts indiscriminately so anybody can take the buyout. So you don't know who's going to quit. And as a result, a lot of people who they need have quit. Some of the oldest ice ever recovered from Antarctica has just arrived in the UK. And it could

help rewrite what we know about Earth's climate. Scientists drilled this 1.5 million-year-old ice from nearly two miles beneath East Antarctica. That's almost twice as old as any ice ever studied before. At a lab in Cambridge, Dr Liz Thomas of the British Antarctic Survey in her team place a camera down a hole that's been drilled in the ice core to examine the tiny air bubbles trapped inside. So the current oldest ice school that we have goes back 800,000 years, and that's a fantastic record.

But actually, we're interested in that period prior to a million years. ago because during that time there's evidence to suggest that the ice sheets were actually smaller, sea levels were potentially higher, and CO2 similar to today. So it's a really interesting potential analog for our future climate. Thomas says that understanding that shift could help predict how our planet's climate might change and how we can respond to it. For today's recommended read, we are in China to find out why an announcement about the construction of the world's largest hydropower dam has boosted markets there.

The dam will be built on the eastern rim of the Tibetan Plateau, at an estimated cost of at least $170 billion. There's a link to the story in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. And remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.