36 1GM Wednesday December 2 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Australia swelters in hottest spring
Australia
Roger Maynard SydneyIt will be little surprise to those Aus-
tralians who have braved a heatwave
over the past few days that the coun-
try has recorded its hottest Novem-
ber.
The Bureau of Meteorology said it
was not only the hottest November
for maximum, minimum and average
temperatures, it was also Australia’s
warmest spring.
New South Wales had its hottest
November day, recording 46.9C
(116.4F) at Smithville, an outback
homestead in the northwest. On Sat-urday, two days before the start of
meteorological summer yesterday,
Sydney reported its hottest Novem-
ber night on record, with a minimum
overnight temperature of 25.4C.
The heatwave affecting much of
the east coast is expected to gather
strength again after a couple of cooler
days, and forecasters expect temper-
atures to edge back over 40C.
“What’s making this exceptional is
temperatures up to 18C above aver-
age,” Dean Narramore, of the Bureau
of Meteorology, said.
The weather has sparked bushfires
in several parts of rural New South
Wales and farmers who had antici-pated a bumper harvest now worry
about the threat to crops.
Farther north, Fraser Island, a
tourist resort and a Unesco world
heritage site, has been evacuated.
About 30 fire crews are tackling a fire
that began six weeks ago, and the
blaze has covered much of the area
with smoke and haze.
The early start to the bushfire
season has renewed fears of a repeat
of last summer’s catastrophic condi-
tions, which destroyed more than
3,000 homes and claimed 34 lives.
It was estimated that three billion
animals, including kangaroos and ko-
alas, died in the fires.Gang of 30 cuts off city for bank raid
Brazil
Stephen GibbsDozens of robbers armed with high-
calibre weapons and explosives took
control of a city in southern Brazil,
blocking off main roads and blasting
their way into several banks before
escaping with sackfuls of cash in a
convoy of ten bullet-proof cars.
Images posted on social media in
the aftermath of the hour-long oper-
ation in the early hours of Tuesday
showed an army of about 30 thieves,
all wearing black balaclavas, roaming
the streets of Criciuma, about 550
miles south of Sao Paulo. A local manwho was filming the robbery from his
window was told by a gang member to
“go back to sleep”. He apologised and
stopped filming.
The main target was the local
branch of the Bank of Brazil, which
had a large hole blasted in a wall. The
force of the explosion led to a confetti
of banknotes, worth at least
£100,000, being strewn across the
streets, where they were quickly
snatched up by passers-by.
None of the robbers was captured
but several residents in the city of
200,000 people were detained. “So
far, four people have been arrested
who collected part of the paper billsthat were scattered on the ground,”
the police said.
Anselmo Cruz, head of the Santa
Catarina state police’s robbery and
kidnapping department, told Globo
News that the criminals had blocked
key access points to prevent police
reinforcements getting to the scene.
Six people were forced to sit on a road
to make it impassable. A police officer
and a security guard were injured.
Analysts said that the raid could
mark the resurgence of brazen ban-
ditry across Brazil, with smaller cities
known to have weak security being
targeted. The tactic was common in
the 1920s and 1930s.The game between the Vanderbilt
Commodores and the Missouri
Tigers was not the pick of the Amer-
ican football fixtures last Saturday.
It went down in the archives, how-
ever, as a game to remember.
“History is on the field in
Columbia, Missouri,”
the commentator said
before the second half
kick-off. “Sarah Fuller
is about to put her
right foot into a foot-
ball, speaking volumes
to women around the
world.”
Fuller, 21, a goalkeeper
with Vanderbilt’s
women’s soccer team,
had been called up as
emergency kicking cover
by the Commodores less
than a week before. She was
about to become the first
woman to play at the elite
level of college American
football.
The 6ft 2in recruit, wear-
One giant kick for womankind
United States
Ben Hoyle Los Angeles
paigner, tweeted congratulations to
Fuller as well as “the women players
who came before her, the athletes of
women’s football, and all those work-
ing on both the sidelines and back
offices for blazing trails for the next
generation”.
Mia Hamm, 48, a forward for the
US women’s football team that Fuller
grew up idolising, tweeted that it had
been “amazing watching you make
history with my daughters”.
LeBron James, 35, the basketball
player and perhaps the most cele-
brated US athlete, praised her
achievement on Instagram as “dope”.
Six days earlier she had no inkling
that she was about to become a pio-
neer for women. She was focused on
the final of a soccer tournament,
which Vanderbilt won to become
champions of the Southeastern Con-
ference for the first time in 26 years.
As she was packing to go home the
following day she got the call-up from
the American football team.
The regular kickers were all ruled
out of the Missouri game because of
coronavirus contact tracing. The
game itself did not go well for the
Commodores. At half time they were
in a slump and Fuller gave them a
rallying speech in the changing room.
“That just shows she’s a leader, no
matter the sport,” Mike Wright, the
team’s quarterback, told The Wall
Street Journal. Unfortunately the
team went on to lose 41-0.
Fuller never got a chance to kick at
goal, although she hopes to have
another attempt on Saturday.
She will be kicking under a new
coach, however, after Mason was
fired on Sunday.
In a farewell statement, he said: “It
has truly been my honour to have
been given the opportunity to teach,
mentor, champion and coach hun-
dreds of Vanderbilt young men and
one courageous female.”Sarah Fuller practises before the American college football game with
Vanderbilt University. She usually plays in goal with the soccer teaming a helmet bearing the message
“Play Like a Girl”, raised her left arm,
took four quick steps and drilled the
ball 30 yards downfield with a low-
hanging “squib kick”, a manoeuvre
designed to deny the opposition
time and space to run the ball back.
“I thought she punched it exactly
where she needed to punch it,”
Derek Mason, the Commodores’
coach, said later.
Fuller jogged calmly off
the field and with that,
history was made.
Social media exploded.
Billie Jean King, 77, the
former tennis champion
and women’s rights cam-HUNTER DYKE/MIZZOU ATHLETICS/UPI/ALAMY