I watched the sun come over the mountains and looked outside the window as we took off over Kabul and took off over the city that I’ve watched as I’ve departed quite a few times at this point, always knowing I was coming back. It was a very strange and heavy feeling to think that so many colleagues that I work with, so many friends, are there and won’t have the opportunity to leave, at least anytime soon, and just wondering what’s next for them. Looking down at the city, even though you can’t see any difference, to the naked eye, there is no difference – but it’s so different this week than it was when I left for a holiday two months ago. It’s such a different city.
Irish teacher Aoife MacManus on leaving Afghanistan after it fell to the Taliban.
For the prime minister and foreign secretary to be on holiday during the biggest foreign policy crisis in a generation is an unforgivable failure of leadership.
Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy on the handling of the crisis in Afghanistan by Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab.
I’m really, really sorry for them. It is so hard to see your country destroyed in front of your eyes. And the same for your dreams, your life.
Chahira Bourhan on the situation in Afghanistan, having herself been displaced from Syria by the civil war.
What is going on is not simply a warm decade or two in a wandering climate pattern. This is unprecedented. We are crossing thresholds not seen in millennia, and frankly this is not going to change until we adjust what we’re doing to the air.
Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, on the news that it rained for the first time on record at the summit of Greenland.
Seatbelts are great, but when you’re wearing your seatbelt, you still have to be careful driving, still need to obey the rules of the road. Watch the speed limits – and remember that speed limits are limits, not targets.
Professor Martin Cormican joined other health experts comparing vaccines to seatbelts.
It’s up to people to cop on and have consideration for this poor wild animal, which is a long way from home.
Minister of State Malcolm Noonan on Wally the Walrus, who is having an awful time of it altogether.
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