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Afghan junior female football team to relocate to UK

Afghanistan’s junior female football team and their immediate families are set to relocate to Britain from Pakistan after recently escaping their homeland, the UK government said on Monday.

“We are working to finalise visas to the Afghanistan women’s football team and look forward to welcoming them to the UK shortly,” a government spokesperson said.

The team of around 35 young footballers, mostly teenagers, and their families — totalling around 130 people — just missed the hurried British airlift from Kabul in August, according to a UK-based charity helping them.

The squad were able to flee in small groups to Pakistan “with the assistance of some very brave people on the ground in Afghanistan”, said Jonathan Kendrick, chairman of the ROKiT conglomerate, whose foundation is providing assistance.

“From a humanitarian perspective, there was simply no option,” he said in a statement, noting they were “in a hugely dangerous, life-threatening, position should they not find a way to leave Afghanistan”.

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Pakistan granted the players temporary 30-day visas and they were transported to Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, from where they applied to relocate to Britain.

“These young players, with whom we are in regular contact via video calls, are absolutely thrilled and relieved to have been given the opportunities that will come available to them in their new lives in the UK,” said Siu-Anne Marie Gill of the ROKiT Foundation.

She added it will “continue to support them as they settle into their new home in the coming weeks, to include helping to arrange further education, where possible”.

Gill said she hoped many of the players would undergo trials with several professional women’s football teams in Britain that “have already expressed great interest in meeting them”.

Britain has airlifted more than 15,000 people — both UK nationals and Afghan allies — from the war-torn country since the Taliban recaptured it in August.

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London has also committed to welcome up to 20,000 people over the coming years, including around 5,000 in the first year, as part of its Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme (ACRS).

“The government is committed to doing all it can to support those most in need, including vulnerable women and girls, and those at risk who have had to flee Afghanistan,” the government spokesperson added.

The interior ministry declined to detail the type of visas the female players would be getting and whether it was part of ACRS.

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

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Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.