Global Headlines Roundup | All 13 of Thailand's Trapped Soccer Team Are Out; The Atlantic on the Emotional Cost of Sperm Donation

Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018 and still in trial run. As ever, it is here to help you understand more of the world.

What the Agenda-Setters Are Talking About

The Atlantic: The Side of Sperm Donation Nobody Talks About — Feelings.

Sperm donation looks like the quickest fix for a couple who cannot conceive, and more and more people are taking that route. The most recent US figures date from 2010: of the 4 million babies born that year, between 30,000 and 60,000 were conceived with donated sperm.

But a donation is not just a transaction. It usually happens one of two ways: sperm from a friend, an acquaintance or a relative, or screened sperm from a sperm bank or fertility clinic. People lean on the technology and forget to think in advance about what it may do to the mood of the household, or to the minds of the people in it.

For the past 15 years, Los Angeles marriage and family therapist Aaron Buckwalter has studied the strain that fertility problems put on families. Among the heterosexual couples he counsels, it is the men who fixate on "owning" the child and on whether the child carries their genes. Their anxiety usually runs higher than the women's, but they notice it only afterwards, or refuse to admit it at all. So during the donation process men tend to narrow in on "making it work" and lose sight of why they started — to build a fuller, closer family. That, more than anything, is what damages their relationships with their wives and children later on.

Two brothers interviewed for the piece hit exactly this problem. The younger one asked his older brother to donate. When the older brother and his wife came to visit afterwards, they found the atmosphere tense: the younger brother did not want them near the baby, and said sadly that he wished he and his wife "could have had children the normal way." The two families drifted apart, which left the older brother baffled: "Why did nobody warn us beforehand that this might test how close we are?"

Public discussion of the psychological and emotional side of sperm donation has in fact always been thin. In recent years the best-known works on the subject are Lisa Cholodenko's 2010 film The Kids Are All Right and The Pea That Was Me: A Sperm Donation Story, a 2012 children's book by therapist Kimberly Kluger-Bell.

The law has not kept up either. According to Susan Crockin, an associate professor at Georgetown University Law Center, in her book Legal Conceptions: The Evolving Law and Policy of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, most US states broadly follow the 2000 revision of the Uniform Parentage Act, under which a man who donates sperm to a married couple is not treated as the baby's parent, and custody rests with the husband in the recipient couple. In 2017, after same-sex marriage was legalized in the US, the act was adjusted slightly to say that, whatever their gender, the married couple receiving the donation are the baby's legal parents.

Beyond that, no formal body in the US currently watches over sperm donation practice. The closest thing to a regulator is the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).

ASRM has issued a set of conduct rules for doctors, fertility specialists and sperm banks. They cover, for instance, whether to tell a child in a recipient family how they were conceived (strongly recommended), and how much a child should be told about the donor (still under study, though current research suggests that non-identifying information can be provided if the child asks for it). ASRM also advises doctors to offer counseling to everyone involved before a donation goes ahead. And it says a single donor's successful donations should be capped at 25 for every 800,000 people, to avoid the risk of accidental incest.

Not every family needs help beforehand to come through a donation intact, of course, but fuller rules and support are always worth having. Britain does this best: in 2008 it passed the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA), setting up a national body to oversee every donation and every use of assisted reproductive technology.

The 24-Hour News Makers

After 18 Days Underground, All 13 Members of the Thai Soccer Team Are Rescued.

Xinhua reports that the last four boys and their coach, trapped in a cave in Chiang Rai, Thailand, were brought out safely on the 10th. All 13 people stuck in the cave since June 23 are now out.

Thai Deputy Public Health Minister Jesada said on the 10th that those rescued would spend at least seven days in hospital isolation.

Twelve Thai youth soccer players aged 11 to 16 and their coach lost contact with the outside world after entering a cave in Chiang Rai on June 23. More than 1,000 rescuers from several countries searched for 10 days before finding them on the night of July 2, about 4 kilometers from the cave mouth. The extraction began on the 8th and ran in three rounds, 15 hours apart.

For the final round, 19 people — the world's top cave-diving specialists and divers from the Thai navy's rescue team — went into the cave on the morning of the 10th. More than 100 rescuers from China, the US, Australia and elsewhere carried in oxygen tanks and other supplies.

A former Thai Navy SEAL taking part in the operation suffocated on the 6th, from lack of oxygen and exhaustion, while delivering oxygen tanks. A Chinese cave-diving expert who joined the rescue told reporters it was one of the hardest and riskiest operations of its kind anywhere in the world.

The story took over social media as well. As of Tuesday, a Google search for "Thai cave rescue" returned about 359 million results. The most common hashtags on Twitter and Instagram included #Thaicaverescue, #boarteam, #Thainavyseals, #PrayForThaiBoys and #Bringtheboarteambackhome. Twitter carried 160,000 tweets containing the phrase "All 12" — meaning all 12 boys were safe.

US President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Theresa May, the Spanish royal family, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir all sent congratulations on Twitter.

What Else Happened in the World

The US Plans Tariffs on $200 Billion of Chinese Goods. The new list runs to 6,000 items, including farm produce, minerals and consumer goods such as handbags. The US government expects to start charging a 10% tariff on them once a public comment period ends on August 30. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said China's retaliation had "no justification whatsoever."

China and Germany Issue a Joint Statement on Closer Cooperation. Premier Li Keqiang and German Chancellor Angela Merkel chaired the fifth round of China-Germany intergovernmental consultations in Berlin on July 9. The statement covers strengthening the all-round strategic partnership and the rules-based international order; treating free trade and open markets as the engine of the two countries' economic relationship; a joint commitment to research and innovation; cooperation on domestic and global security; and cultural and educational exchange.

Switzerland Takes the US Steel and Aluminum Tariffs to the WTO. Switzerland is the eighth WTO member to file such a complaint. Its economics ministry said in a statement that tariffs imposed in the name of national security were "unjustified." Under WTO rules the US has 60 days to settle. After that, Switzerland can escalate and ask the WTO to convene a panel to rule on the case.

Cameroon Will Hold Its Presidential Election on October 7. Incumbent President Paul Biya confirmed the final date. Biya, 85, has ruled since 1982 and is one of Africa's longest-serving leaders. Whoever wins will inherit a civil war: government troops are fighting separatists in the southwest and northwest of the country's Anglophone community, who want the region to break away and form a new state called Ambazonia.

The Phuket Boat Capsizing Death Toll Rises to 45, With 2 Still Missing. Phuket Governor Norraphat said on the 10th that searchers, helped by local fishermen, had found three more bodies, almost certainly victims of the capsizing. The Thai military plans to keep searching the area predicted by wind and current models until everyone missing is found.

Japan's Death Toll From Freak Torrential Rain Rises to 158. It is the deadliest rain disaster in Japan in nearly 30 years. As of the evening of July 10, 158 people had died nationwide and 57 more were unaccounted for. Eleven prefectures issued the highest-level "heavy rain emergency warning"; Hiroshima and Okayama were hit hardest.

A Small Plane Crashes in South Africa, Killing at Least 1 and Injuring About 20. The aircraft was due to fly from East Africa to the Netherlands via Egypt, Croatia and Austria. It came down on Tuesday in a field near Wonderboom Airport in Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital.

Sun Yat-sen University Says on Its Official WeChat Account on July 10 That It Has Suspended the Teaching Credentials of Professor Zhang Peng, Accused of Sexual Harassment. The university also stripped Zhang Peng of his right to supervise master's and doctoral students, terminated his contract under the Cheung Kong Scholars Program, and asked the supervising authorities to revoke his "Cheung Kong Scholars" young scholar title.

France Beat Belgium's "Red Devils" 1-0 on July 10 to Become the First Team Into the Final.

Someone Said

"It is not just Nirbhaya — the other women of this country deserve justice too."

On July 9, India's Supreme Court dismissed the review petitions of three men condemned to death in the 2012 New Delhi bus gang rape case, upholding their sentences. Those were the words of Asha Devi, mother of the victim known as Nirbhaya, on hearing the final ruling.

On the night of December 16, 2012, Nirbhaya, a 23-year-old medical intern, was riding a bus in New Delhi with her boyfriend when five male passengers attacked them. The five gang-raped her, and she later died of her injuries.

Police arrested the five suspects and the bus driver after the attack. Four adult defendants were sentenced to death; the driver hanged himself during the trial; and one more, a minor at the time, was released after serving a term in a juvenile facility.

After the Supreme Court last year upheld the death sentences handed down by the Delhi High Court and the trial court, three of the defendants petitioned the court in May of last year for a review, asking to have their sentences reduced to life imprisonment.

Nirbhaya means "fearless."

Things You Might Also Be Interested In

Real Madrid Confirms Ronaldo's Transfer to Juventus.

La Liga giant Real Madrid announced on July 10 that it had accepted Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo's transfer request and would let him join Juventus.

Ronaldo, 33, joined Real Madrid in the summer of 2009 for a fee of £80 million. Across nine seasons at the club he helped it win four Champions League titles, two La Liga titles, two Copa del Rey titles, two Spanish Super Cups, two UEFA Super Cups and two Club World Cups. He scored 450 goals for Real Madrid, 1.03 per game, making him the club's all-time leading scorer.

Scientists Have Found the World's Oldest Color — Bright Pink.

The find comes from a new study led by the Australian National University. The researchers analyzed rock samples an oil company had sent them from the Taoudeni Basin in the western Sahara.

That brilliant pink is chlorophyll, the photosynthetic pigment made 1.1 billion years ago by cyanobacteria, which drew their energy from photosynthesis. It is 500 million years older than the oldest biological pigment known until now.

Associate Professor Jochen Brocks, who worked on the study, said the finding helps explain why complex life took 4 billion years after the Earth formed to appear. People used to assume that low oxygen in the atmosphere held back the evolution of complex organisms; in fact there was simply no food source able to sustain large ones. Cyanobacteria faded out around 650 million years ago, replaced by floating algae a thousand times bigger, which became the energy source for complex ecosystems — and only then could large animals, humans among them, emerge and multiply.

On This Day

July 11, 1405: Zheng He sets out on his voyages to the Western Seas.

July 11, 1960: Four West African countries — Dahomey, Niger, Upper Volta and Ivory Coast — declare independence.

July 11, 1982: Italy wins the 12th World Cup.

July 11, 1985: The world's population reaches 5 billion; the date is later made World Population Day.

July 11, 2006: Liu Xiang breaks the world record in the men's 110-meter hurdles at the Athletics Super Grand Prix in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 12.88 seconds.

Born today: John Quincy Adams (1767), E.B. White (1899), Yasuo Otsuka (1931), Giorgio Armani (1934), Pai Hsien-yung (1937).

Died today: Yu Shinan (638), George Gershwin (1937), Laurence Olivier (1989), Deng Yingchao (1992), Ji Xianlin (2009).

Cover image from cbssports.com