Now, the midfielder is back in the region at Sweden’s World Cup training base in Gelendzhik, less than 200 kilometres (124 miles) along the Black Sea coast from the region annexed by Russia.

“I’m very close to where I used to be,” Svensson, 31, told reporters as the Nordic side prepared for their World Cup opener against South Korea Monday.

“Some memories are coming back, but not all bad ones, I mostly remember the positive ones from there,” he said.

The former IFK Goteborg and Bursaspor stalwart signed for Tavriya Simferopol in 2012 and played 21 times for the club.

Then in February 2014, pro-Russian militia suddenly appeared in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, taking over the airport and other strategic locations in the city.

By April, Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered military units to enter the peninsula, prompting Svensson and foreign teammates to flee from Crimea on a bus past militia checkpoints into mainland Ukraine.

“Power and military enters and takes over what it thinks is theirs. There are other ways to solve things, it was a very wrong way to act,” said Svensson.

The player had hoped to return to Ukraine, but decided it would be wiser to return to his former Swedish club Gothenburg.

After moving back to Sweden, Svensson, who now plays for Major League Soccer side Seattle Sounders, says he lost contact with his former Tavriya teammates.

“Most of them went back home, to Argentina and Brazil. It became a bit chaotic,” he said.

These days, two teams called Tavriya carry on the club’s name.

Tavriya Simferopol are now based in mainland Ukraine across the de facto border, while TSK Simferopol, a club founded after the annexation, remains on in the city and plays in a new Crimean league.

Svensson said he had “no idea” the club had split in two.//AFP

Samen was among dozens of male relatives who were carrying his mother’s coffin to a lakkean, a traditional wooden stilt house in which dead bodies are stored during the Toraja traditional funeral ceremony.

Video footage of the incident went viral on social media, which showed the crowd climbing a bamboo ladder to put the coffin inside the lakkean, when suddenly the ladder broke and the carriers lost control of the coffin. The coffin slid and struck the crowd.

TribunToraja.com quoted an eyewitness, Ardi, as saying that Samen sustained a severe injury to his head in the incident. He died on the way to the hospital.

This new weapon in the hands of New York’s sanitation service spells certain death for the rat. Rick Simeone’s team is at work in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side, one of Manhattan’s oldest districts.

The day before, they spent more than three hours locating all the entrances to the burrows, 67 in all. That means there could be more than 250 “rattus norvegicus,” the scientific name for common brown rats, living there.

Burrow by burrow, the team drops into each hole several small pellets resembling ice cubes but which are actually dry ice, carbon dioxide in solid form.

The surrounding air temperature ensures that the carbon dioxide reverts to gaseous form and asphyxiates the rats, which are usually asleep at this time of the day.

Normally, 90 to 100 per cent of the rodents are exterminated.

“It’s a method that’s very effective in mostly green spaces, parks,” says Simeone, director of pest control for the New York City Health Department.

“You always hear that rats are winning the battle. But this turns it around.”

Rats have made their home in New York since the middle of the 18th Century and are responsible for the transmission of numerous diseases.

A 2014 study published by a PhD candidate at Columbia University estimated about two million rats in the US financial capital, which has a human population of more than 8.5 million.

The rats are most often seen scurrying in the street or in the subway. A celebrated video posted on YouTube in 2015 showed a rat dragging a slice of pizza on the subway stairs.

They live an average of only six or seven months in the port city, but a female can give birth to as many as 100 baby rats each year.

Shutting the pantry door

In 2012, John Stellberger became the first to use dry ice against rats in the United States, based on an idea from one of his employees.

The head of EHS Pest Control company, Stellberger recalls that he spoke of the idea with sanitation officials in Boston, who conducted a brief trial in 2016.

That pilot was suspended after several months pending an approval by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which came in June 2017.

At the beginning of this year after several months of tests, New York officially adopted the dry ice technique, joining Boston, Chicago and Washington.

Dry ice is only used in open spaces including parks and green areas, Simeone explained, because it would be too complicated to identify rat tunnels in the streets or residential areas where concrete is everywhere.

Aside from its effectiveness, dry ice presents no risk to wildlife in parks and public gardens, unlike rodenticide which had previously been the only weapon deployed against rats.

The newer method, which costs about the same as poison, corresponds to the times, Stellberger explains. Many of his customers ask him to get rid of rats without cruelty.

Simeone says the rodents “sort of go to sleep” as they asphyxiate.

But dry ice alone will not resolve New York’s rat problem, warns Simeone, as well as Robert Corrigan, the president of RMC Pest Management Consulting who is sometimes called the “Rat Czar” for his expertise in ridding the world of rodents.

In July, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio presented a major $32 million plan targeting rats and focused on the three most infected districts of the city.

The plan did not put dry ice in the forefront but rather the rats’ access to food, which is the heart of the problem. Each pest needs about 80 grams (2.5 ounces) of food a day to survive.

Intelligent garbage cans, closed containers, greater frequency of garbage collection, and collaboration among different city services — the program aims to put an end to the permanent pantry which New York streets have become for rats.

Corrigan, who worked with the Department of Health for 12 years, is pleased that authorities have finally chosen to tackle the question from a scientific rather than an empirical way.

“When I see a lot of rats on a block, instead of asking where should I put my poison, I ask: ‘Who’s feeding these rats?’,” Corrigan said to illustrate this change in philosophy.

As Simeone says, “eliminate the garbage” and you no longer need poison.//AFP

“The ministers encourage the US and the DPRK to fully implement the statement in order to lay the groundwork to establish a lasting and stable peace regime and complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” the ministers said in a press release.

Their remarks came four days after the US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shook hands in a historic summit in Singapore and signed the declaration of peace.

The summit statement lays emphasis on the establishment of ties between Washington and Pyongyang, lasting peace in the Korean peninsula, complete denuclearisation and exchange of prisoners of war.

The joint statement added: “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to North Korea and Chairman Kim Jong-un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to a complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.”

The body of 54-year-old Wa Tiba was found Friday when villagers cut open the seven-metre (23-foot) python which was found bloated in the village of Persiapan Lawela on the island of Muna, offshore of Sulawesi.

“Residents were suspicious the snake swallowed the victim, so they killed it, then carried it out of the garden,” said local police chief Hamka, who like many Indonesians has only one name.

“The snake’s belly was cut open and the body of the victim was found inside.”

Some 100 residents, including worried relatives, launched a search for the woman after she failed to return from her garden Thursday night.

Hamka said villagers found the giant serpent lying about 30 metres from Tiba’s sandals and machete, adding she was swallowed head first and her body was found intact.

The garden in which she disappeared was at the base of a rocky cliff, pockmarked by caves, and known to be home to snakes, Hamka added.

Giant pythons, which regularly top six metres, are commonly found in Indonesia and the Philippines.

While the serpents have been known to attack small animals, attempts to eat people are rare.

In March last year, a farmer was killed by a python in the village of Salubiro on Sulawesi island.

In a television interview, Abe said his government has contacted the North Korean side “through various channels” in a bid to arrange a meeting with Kim.

During historic talks with US President Donald Trump in Singapore on Tuesday, Kim reportedly said he was open to a meeting with Abe.

Japan wants the talks to push the emotive issue of citizens abducted by the North decades ago, which has seen little movement despite a whirlwind of international diplomacy in recent months.

“I want to take a step forward and resolve the (abduction) issue after each of us breaks our mutual distrust,” Abe said.

“I have a strong sense of mission to resolve the issue under my own responsibility,” he added.

Abe has already said publicly that he would be willing to meet Kim in order to resolve the abduction issue.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono is considering talks with his North Korean counterpart on the sidelines of a meeting of ASEAN envoys in Singapore starting in late July, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

During the interview, Abe expressed a readiness to finance denuclearisation costs in North Korea.

In the joint statement following Tuesday’s talks with Trump, Kim agreed to the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.”

“It is natural for Japan and other countries which would benefit from easing fears of nuclear weapons to bear the costs,” Abe said.

But Abe warned that Tokyo has no plan to give financial aid to Pyongyang without a resolution of the abduction issue.

The issue of Japanese citizens who were abducted in the 1970s and 1980s to help Pyongyang train its spies has long soured already strained relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang.

The Japanese government has officially listed 17 people as abductees, but suspects dozens more were snatched.

Japan has maintained a hardline position on North Korea despite the stepped-up diplomacy with Pyongyang in recent months, and has been left largely on the sidelines as South Korea, China and the United States have held talks with Kim.

The worst part is that plastic is literally everywhere, as it is something we use and throw away on a daily basis. It’s gotten to the point where plastics are clogging rivers and sewers and causing floods.

While the government has the responsibility to take action on this, here are some of the things that Greenpeace suggests we can do to help.

1. Carry around a reusable bottle

There are places where you can get water for free, so carrying a reusable bottle with you is a great idea. Regularly doing so will help cut down the use of plastic bottles.

2. Don’t use plastic straws

These slim plastic products cause more harm than good. For instance, plastic straws are incredibly bad for ocean creatures: a turtle was documented with a piece of it stuck in its nose.

Use paper straws instead of plastic straws if you don’t want to cut out using straws entirely.

3. Use reusable coffee cups & tumblers

Are you an avid coffee drinker? Carry around reusable coffee cups or tumblers with you instead of using plastic cups. Statistics indicate that 2.5 billion cups are thrown away each year, and only 1 in 400 cups end up recycled.

Read also: Seaweed, Indonesia’s answer to the global plastic crisis

4. Start carrying shopping bags

Carrying extra bags around with you to help with your shopping can also do wonders for the environment.

Ever since Jakarta went on a plastic bag diet back in 2017, there has been a huge decline in the amount of plastic waste from shopping bags, and it has brought many benefits for the people living in the city.

5. Don’t use disposable spoons and forks

Those one-time-use spoons and forks are contributing to the plastic waste problem, and it’s a difficult one to tackle, considering how the cutlery in some places are mostly made of plastic.

Consider bringing your own stainless steel cutlery the next time you go out for a bite.

6. Avoid microbeads like the plague

Microbeads are beginning to be banned all over the world, although products containing them are still being sold in some parts of the world. They are mostly found in cosmetics and personal care products, like facial scrubs and exfoliating body washes, and they harm marine life.

Keep an eye out for products containing polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and nylon.

7. Buy refill packages of cleaning products

Instead of buying new plastic bottles of detergents and other cleaning products, you can save plastic by buying the refill packets instead.