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Iraqis Find Escape, Success on a Virtual Battleground

Iraqis tap away at computers and mobile devices at co-working space The Station in Baghdad - AFP
Iraqis tap away at computers and mobile devices at co-working space The Station in Baghdad - AFP
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Iraqis Find Escape, Success on a Virtual Battleground

Iraqis tap away at computers and mobile devices at co-working space The Station in Baghdad - AFP
Iraqis tap away at computers and mobile devices at co-working space The Station in Baghdad - AFP

Bashar Abo Khalil's PUBG character dashes around a wall in a pink dress and samurai helmet, thwacking an enemy with a frying pan -- standard fare in the mobile game that is a mega-sensation in Iraq.

The online star, known as G2G, is one of many Iraqis hooked on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds -- a battle royal first-person shooter game that's reminiscent of the book and film series "The Hunger Games".

The mobile version of the game has become so popular in Iraq, where 60 percent of the 40-million-strong population is under 25, that the country's youth have been dubbed the "PUBG generation".

Iraqis across the country are spending hours every day on the game's virtual battleground, socializing via its live chat, playing competitively or even falling in love.

Abo Khalil, 31, said he used to play for hours to "stop thinking about problems".

"When you're playing the game you can become closed off to the rest of the world. It can be like a drug," he added.

Now based in Turkey, he earns a living streaming games and making videos.

Fan Dalya Waheed said she plays PUBG for an hour or two a day with friends she met on the game, and has even set up a gaming hub at the electronics reseller where she works.

"It's really easy to meet people on PUBG," said the woman in her thirties, who lives in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

- Better internet, better opportunities -

Some Iraqi parents have criticized the game as time-sucking or have expressed worry about the violence it portrays, with guns-a-plenty and explosives sending up blood spatter.

But Reshar Ibrahim, who plays PUBG Mobile competitively, said the game would never be as bad as what many Iraqis had experienced in real life over the decades of conflicts that have devastated the country.

"It's just a game," said the 19-year-old Iraqi Kurd, who has lived in Sweden for the past three years.

In 2019, the country's parliament banned PUBG amid local reports it was leading to bankruptcy, suicide and divorce.

The move, which was easily circumvented, was criticized as being out of touch with the real challenges facing Iraqis.

Nearly 40 percent of Iraqi youth are unemployed, according to the World Bank, and the country's poverty rate has doubled to 40 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Later that year, thousands of young Iraqis -- some dressed in PUBG outfits -- filled the streets to protest endemic corruption and unemployment. Over the months that followed, some 600 demonstrators were killed in protest-related violence.

Abo Khalil and Ibrahim are just two of many successful Iraqi gamers outside the country, away from the additional challenges of poor internet and unreliable electricity that players back home face.

Ibrahim, aka Freak, recently won Most Valuable Player in the PUBG Mobile Star Arabia Challenge, which doled out $100,000 in total prize money.

His team, GunZ Esports, won the competition despite one player in Iraq losing power mid-game and another having to travel from southern Najaf to the northern Kurdistan region -- where internet connectivity "is slightly better", Ibrahim said.

Helmat Shiar, 23, who competed in the tournament with the Iraqi iKurd E-Sports team, said it wasn't just that Iraqis "play against teams abroad who have much stronger internet".

There was also "no support" from private or governmental sponsors, he lamented.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, governments and major sponsors are pouring money into eSports.

In the Gulf, the gaming market is expected to reach $821 million this year, according to consulting firm Strategy&.

Hayder Jaafar said he had struggled for 10 years to register his non-governmental Iraqi Electronic Sports Federation as a full member of the international gaming body before succeeding in 2020.

"The youth ministry structure for eSports was last modified in 2009, and a lot has changed in eSports since then," the 38-year-old told AFP.

Iraq suffers from war-ravaged infrastructure and poor electricity -- most households only have a few hours of state-provided electricity per day.

But there are 40 million mobile phone connections in the country and 30 million internet users, according to a 2021 DataReportal study.

Last year, PUBG was the 11th-most-searched term in Iraq on Google, and variations on the game's name took several top spots on YouTube searches as well.

PUBG's widespread popularity is in part due to the launch of a free-to-play mobile version by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which said in March that over one billion people had downloaded the app since 2018.

iKurd player Jiner Hekmat, 18, said he was hooked on the mobile version but wasn't banking all his hopes on being a competitive player, saying he wanted to focus on his studies.

But, he added, "I'm also going to do everything I can to keep my level in PUBG, and keep playing as long as the game exists".

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Varieties

17th Century Wreck Reappears from Stockholm Deep

The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)
The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)
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17th Century Wreck Reappears from Stockholm Deep

The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)
The remains of a 17th century shipwreck is pictured after resurfacing in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 17, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)

A 17th century Swedish Navy shipwreck buried underwater in central Stockholm for 400 years has suddenly become visible due to unusually low Baltic Sea levels.

The wooden planks of the ship's well-preserved hull have since early February been peeking out above the surface of the water off the island of Kastellholmen, providing a clear picture of its skeleton.

"We have a shipwreck here, which was sunk on purpose by the Swedish Navy," Jim Hansson, a marine archeologist at Stockholm's Vrak - Museum of Wrecks, told AFP.

Hansson said experts believe that after serving in the navy, the ship was sunk around 1640 to use as a foundation for a new bridge to the island of Kastellholmen.

Archeologists have yet to identify the exact ship, as it is one of five similar wrecks lined up in the same area to form the bridge, all dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

"This is a solution, instead of using new wood you can use the hull itself, which is oak" to build the bridge, Hansson said.

"We don't have shipworm here in the Baltic that eats the wood, so it lasts, as you see, for 400 years," he said, standing in front of the wreck.

Parts of the ship had already broken the surface in 2013, but never before has it been as visible as it is now, as the waters of the Baltic Sea reach their lowest level in about 100 years, according to the archaeologist.

"There has been a really long period of high pressure here around our area in the Nordics. So the water from the Baltic has been pushed out to the North Sea and the Atlantic," Hansson explained.

A research program dubbed "the Lost Navy" is underway to identify and precisely date the large number of Swedish naval shipwrecks lying on the bottom of the Baltic.

Varieties

China Has Slashed Air Pollution, but the ‘War’ Isn’t Over 

This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)
This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)
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China Has Slashed Air Pollution, but the ‘War’ Isn’t Over 

This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)
This picture taken on February 11, 2026 shows pedestrians walking along an overpass as traffic snarls in Beijing. (AFP)

Fifteen years ago, Beijing's Liangma riverbanks would have been smog-choked and deserted in winter, but these days they are dotted with families and exercising pensioners most mornings.

The turnaround is the result of a years-long campaign that threw China's state power behind policies like moving factories and electrifying vehicles, to improve some of the world's worst air quality.

Pollution levels in many Chinese cities still top the World Health Organization's (WHO) limits, but they have fallen dramatically since the "airpocalypse" days of the past.

"It used to be really bad," said Zhao, 83, soaking up the sun by the river with friends.

"Back then when there was smog, I wouldn't come out," she told AFP, declining to give her full name.

These days though, the air is "very fresh".

Since 2013, levels of PM2.5 -- small particulate that can enter the lungs and bloodstream -- have fallen 69.8 percent, Beijing municipality said in January.

Particulate pollution fell 41 percent nationwide in the decade from 2014, and average life expectancy has increased 1.8 years, according to the University of Chicago's Air Quality Life Index (AQLI).

China's rapid development and heavy coal use saw air quality decline dramatically by the 2000s, especially when cold winter weather trapped pollutants close to the ground.

There were early attempts to tackle the issue, including installing desulphurization technology at coal power plants, while factory shutdowns and traffic control improved the air quality for events like the 2008 Olympics.

But the impact was short-lived, and the problem worsened.

- Action plan -

Public awareness grew, heightened by factors like the US embassy in Beijing making monitoring data public.

By 2013, several international schools had installed giant inflatable domes around sport facilities to protect students.

That year, multiple episodes of prolonged haze shrouded Chinese cities, with one in October bringing northeastern Harbin to a standstill for days as PM2.5 levels hit 40 times the WHO's then-recommended standard.

The phrase "I'm holding your hand, but I can't see your face" took off online.

Later that year, an eight-year-old became the country's youngest lung cancer patient, with doctors directly blaming pollution.

As concerns mounted, China's ruling Communist Party released a ten-point action plan, declaring "a war against pollution".

It led to expanded monitoring, improved factory technology and the closure or relocation of coal plants and mines.

In big cities, vehicles were restricted and the groundwork was laid for widespread electrification.

For the first time, "quantitative air quality improvement goals for key regions within a clear time limit" were set, a 2016 study noted.

These targets were "the most important measure", said Bluetech Clean Air Alliance director Tonny Xie, whose non-profit worked with the government on the plan.

"At that time, there were a lot of debates about whether we can achieve it, because (they were) very ambitious," he told AFP.

The policy targeted several key regions, where PM2.5 levels fell rapidly between 2013 and 2017, and the approach was expanded nationwide afterwards.

"Everybody, I think, would agree that this is a miracle that was achieved in China," Xie said.

China's success is "entirely" responsible for a decline in global pollution since 2014, AQLI said last summer.

- 'Low-hanging fruits' gone -

Still, in much of China the air remains dangerous to breathe by WHO standards.

This winter, Chinese cities, including financial hub Shanghai, were regularly among the world's twenty most polluted on monitoring site IQAir.

Linda Li, a running coach who has lived in both Beijing and Shanghai, said air quality has improved, but she still loses up to seven running days to pollution in a good month.

A top environment official last year said China aimed to "basically eliminate severe air pollution by 2025", but the government did not respond when AFP asked if that goal had been met.

Official 2025 data found nationwide average PM2.5 concentrations decreased 4.4 percent on-year.

Eighty-eight percent of days featured "good" air quality.

However, China's current definition of "good" is PM2.5 levels of under 35 micrograms per cubic meter, significantly higher than the WHO's recommended five micrograms.

China wants to tighten the standard to 25 by 2035.

The last five years have also seen pollution reduction slow.

The "low-hanging fruits" are gone, said Chengcheng Qiu from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Qiu's research suggests pollution is shifting west as heavy industry relocates to regions like Xinjiang, and that some cities in China have seen double-digit percentage increases in PM2.5 in the last five years.

"They can't just stop all industrial production. They need to find cleaner ways to produce the output," Qiu said.

There is hope for that, given China's status as a renewable energy powerhouse, with coal generation falling in 2025.

"Cleaner air ultimately rests on one clear direction," said Qiu.

"Move beyond fossil fuels and let clean energy power the next stage of development."

Varieties

Sydney Man Jailed for Mailing Reptiles in Popcorn Bags 

Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)
Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)
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Sydney Man Jailed for Mailing Reptiles in Popcorn Bags 

Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)
Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania. (AFP file)

A Sydney man who tried to post native lizards, dragons and other reptiles out of Australia in bags of popcorn and biscuit tins has been sentenced to eight years in jail, authorities said Tuesday.

The eight-year term handed down on Friday was a record for wildlife smuggling, federal environment officials said.

A district court in Sydney gave the man, 61-year-old Neil Simpson, a non-parole period of five years and four months.

Investigators recovered 101 Australian reptiles from seized parcels destined for Hong Kong, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Romania, the officials said in a statement.

The animals -- including shingleback lizards, western blue-tongue lizards, bearded dragons and southern pygmy spiny-tailed skinks -- were posted in 15 packages between 2018 and 2023.

"Lizards, skinks and dragons were secured in calico bags. These bags were concealed in bags of popcorn, biscuit tins and a women's handbag and placed inside cardboard boxes," the statement said.

The smuggler had attempted to get others to post the animals on his behalf but was identified by government investigators and the New South Wales police, it added.

Three other people were convicted for taking part in the crime.

The New South Wales government's environment department said that "the illegal wildlife trade is not a victimless crime", harming conservation and stripping the state "and Australia of its unique biodiversity".