Gandhara: Chanting “Bread, work, freedom,” some two dozen women took to the streets of the Afghan capital of Kabul on May 29 to protest against the Taliban’s harsh restrictions on their rights. The Taliban has rolled back women’s rights since returning to power in August 2021. Girls have been banned from school beyond the sixth grade in most of Afghanistan. In March, the Taliban ordered girls’ high schools closed on the morning they were scheduled to open.      Full news...

8am: A dozen of women launched a demonstration against the closure of education doors to girls and obstructing the right to work for women in Kabul, Afghanistan. According to sources, while women protestors were chanting the slogans, the Taliban fighters scattered the march by shooting.      Full news...

Rukhshana: At least nine civilians were killed and 15 wounded in Wednesday’s back-to-back explosions which targeted passenger vehicles in Mazar-e-Sharif city in northern Afghanistan, confirmed reports said. All victims were members of ethnic Hazara and religious Shia community, including Maryam Madadi, a former female journalist. Madadi worked at Rabia Balkhi radio station in Balkh, according to Mobina Saiee, the radio station’s former manager.      Full news...

CNN: Sirajudin Haqqani, a secretive Taliban leader, spoke to CNN in an on-camera interview aired Tuesday. He said "good news" is in store for Afghan girls who want to attend secondary school. At the same time, he joked that the Taliban wants to “keep naughty women at home.” When asked to clarify his comment, Haqqani said: “By saying naughty women, it was a joke referring to those naughty women who are controlled by some other sides to bring the current government into question.”      Full news...

Al Jazeera: Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have told television broadcasters to ensure that female presenters working in local stations cover their faces when on air, a government official said.The order follows a recent directive from Taliban authorities that Afghan women must cover their faces in public and is seen as the latest sign of a possible return to the Taliban’s ultraconservative rule of the past and an escalation of restrictions on women that are causing anger at home and abroad.      Full news...

BBC: Hidden away in a residential neighbourhood is one of Afghanistan’s new “secret” schools - a small but powerful act of defiance against the Taliban.Around a dozen teenage girls are attending a maths class. “We know about the threats and we worry about them,” the sole teacher tells us, but she adds, girls’ education is worth “any risk”.      Full news...

Save the Children: KABUL, 9 May 2022 – 9.6 million children in Afghanistan are going hungry every day due to a dire combination of economic collapse, the impacts of the war in Ukraine and the ongoing drought, new figures released today show. Immediate food assistance is needed to save lives in the short-term, but aid alone is not enough to tackle the country’s worst hunger crisis on record, Save the Children said.      Full news...

CNA: KABUL: About a dozen women protested in the Afghan capital on Tuesday (May 10) against the Taliban’s new edict that females must fully cover their faces and bodies when in public. Afghanistan’s supreme leader and Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a mandate over the weekend ordering women to cover up fully, ideally with the traditional all-covering burqa.      Full news...

8am: Following the reactions to the Taliban’s compulsory hijab, the Women’s Movement for Justice and Freedom has said that the Taliban have insulted all Muslim women and girls in Afghanistan with their baseless vague religious decrees. In a protest rally on Monday, they said that the Taliban are interfering in the most personal affairs of women by forcing them to wear the hijab.      Full news...

Pixstory: A poll by an Afghan research organization shows that the majority of Afghans disagree with the Taliban’s values ​​and way of governing. The popularity of the Taliban among the people is 7% in total. In this survey, 81% of people in Afghanistan’s cities and villages support women’s education and work. In this study, the Afghanistan Research and Analysis Organization interviewed nearly 10,000 Afghans in 2020 and 2021, according to which more than 77 percent of the population rejected the Taliban’s way of governing, especially its religious extremism.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan’s Taliban government ordered women on Saturday to cover their faces in public, a return to a signature policy of their past hardline rule and an escalation of restrictions that are causing anger at home and abroad. A decree from the group’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, said that if a woman did not cover her face outside home, her father or closest male relative would be visited and face potential prison or firing from state jobs.      Full news...

Afghan Women News Agency: Popular sources in Nimroz province reported finding the strangled body of a woman, which was found on Wednesday afternoon (May 4, 2022) in the Nad Ali area north of Zaranj, the capital of the province. Sources say the woman was a teacher and was abducted by unknown individuals at 2pm and then her strangled body was found at 5pm that day.      Full news...

CNN: Millions of Afghans are now experiencing intense food shortages following the Taliban’s takeover in August. As Muslims around the world celebrated Eid, experts say that for most Afghans, it was simply another day of struggle to put food on the table. According to the United Nations, 97 per cent of Afghans are experiencing food shortages. Following the Taliban’s takeover in August, most Western aid was stopped. Hospitals and schools are unable to pay their employees, and many people are unable to purchase food, exacerbating an already dire crisis.      Full news...

VOA: For several months Pashtana kept rejecting marriage proposals made for her 14-year-old daughter, Zarghona, until she had to make a final decision. “I had to choose between the survival of my four little children and giving Zarghona to marriage,” Pashtana told VOA over the phone from the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, where last year her husband, an army soldier, was killed in clashes with then Taliban insurgents.The young widow made every effort to provide for her children, but there was no job for her under a Taliban regime that has banned work for women.      Full news...

Deutsche Welle: It’s eight months since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and the country has slipped down the news agenda. ’The world forgets about us,’ says Friba Rezayee, the first Afghan woman to compete at the Olympics. “I wish I didn’t exist," Afghan athlete Amira (name changed) writes. "I didn't do anything wrong. The only crime I have committed is to play sports.” Before the Taliban took power in Kabul in August 2021, Amira was one of the best judo fighters in the country. A few weeks ago, the Taliban raided her home for documents that would prove the young woman had been a member of the Afghan national team.      Full news...

Etlaat-e-Rooz: A family in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, claims that Taliban forces killed a teenage boy and wounded two others. Salahuddin, a member of the family, said that the incident took place last night (Saturday, April 24) in the seventh district of Jalalabad. According to him, a 15-year-old boy, his name was Adel, was killed in a Taliban shooting.      Full news...

The New York Times: The blast in Mazar-i-Sharif, one of Afghanistan’s economic hubs, was the latest in a series of attacks on one of its religious minorities and was claimed by an ISIS affiliate. KABUL, Afghanistan — An explosion at a Shiite mosque in northern Afghanistan on Thursday killed at least 10 people and wounded more than two dozen others, local officials said, adding to the toll of a bloody week for one of the country’s religious minorities.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: Violence is intensifying in Afghanistan eight months after the United States’ retreat allowed the Taliban to return to power, fueling concerns that the country may again become a hub of instability and terrorism across South and Central Asia and beyond. Afghanistan has long been a base for militants with ambitions for global jihad. Dozens of groups that have been present since the Taliban’s last turn in power from 1996 to 2001 are again operational, looking for opportunities to expand their reach, said security, diplomatic, and military sources.      Full news...

The Washington Post: KABUL — At least six people were killed and 11 injured by two explosions Tuesday morning outside a large public school in western Kabul, police and school officials said. The death toll was expected to climb, as witnesses and survivors said scores of people had been injured and taken to nearby hospitals. The back-to-back blasts struck at the heart of the capital’s minority Shiite Hazara community, just outside the prominent Abdul Rahman Shahid school, where dozens of students were leaving after morning classes.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Responding to the deaths of at least six people and the injury of 11 others, including children, following bomb blasts in schools in predominantly Hazara Shiite communities in Kabul today, Samira Hamidi, Amnesty International’s South Asia Campaigner, said:“These reprehensible attacks on schools highlight the violence that Afghan people continue to face in their daily lives. It also shows that the Taliban, as the de-facto authorities, are failing to protect civilians, especially those from ethnic and religious minority groups, from harm.      Full news...

Tolo TV: On Friday night, the Pakistani air strikes targeted civilians in Esperai district in Khost, killing dozens of people. Strong reactions continue at national level against Pakistani military’s air strikes and rocket attacks on Afghan provinces with many blaming Pakistan for violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty.      Full news...

Tolo TV: Family members claim that US forces took their wounded six-year-old daughter with them after the attack, and they have no information about her fate.“We raised our voices, but no one heard us,” said Safir Khan, a member of the family. “These children do not have a father and do not have a supporter,” said Hassan Khan, a relative of the family.      Full news...

The Intercept: EIGHT MONTHS AFTER a U.S.-supported government in Afghanistan was defeated by the Taliban, violence against civilians and politically motivated violence persist in the country even as incidents have become harder to report and verify amid an intensifying information blackout, a report published today reveals. Journalists and women, particularly those participating in or covering demonstrations in opposition to Taliban rule, have been increasingly targeted, as have members of the former government and security forces.      Full news...

The Bharat Express News: Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan last year, they have hunted down government officials aided by the United States. Contrary to their promise, they have been investigating these officials for months and, despite their promise of clemency, have finally punished them. According to a report, 500 government officers have been killed or disappeared so far. The Taliban, however, call these allegations baseless. According to media reports, the Taliban used numerous tactics to track the whereabouts of Afghan soldiers and government officials who aided the United States.      Full news...

The Washington Post: HERAT, Afghanistan — Without work, Khangul Sadiqi found himself heavily in debt. His children often went to bed hungry, shivering in their unheated home. And so, six months into Taliban rule, he began to see his three girls through the prism of survival. “Rather than all of my family members die, I decided it’s better to sell one of my girls to save the rest,” Sadiqi said. The daughter he sold is Zahra. She is 3 years old. Her buyer is a wealthy man in search of another wife. He is 50. The cost of the sale: roughly $500.      Full news...

The Print: Even as Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate continues to deny education to girls beyond the sixth grade, more than two dozen top Taliban leaders are educating their daughters at schools in Doha, Peshawar and Karachi, sources familiar with the movement have told ThePrint.The leaders include Health Minister Qalandar Ebad, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, and spokesperson Suhail Shaheen.      Full news...

8am: Sources in Bamyan province confirm that the Taliban have arrested 11 women in the province on charges of disrupting the group’s support program.The sources told the 8am newspaper on Thursday that 11 women have been detained by the Taliban since Saturday. According to these sources, first three people who had lowered the Taliban banners were arrested and then eight others were arrested on charges of disrupting the program.      Full news...

Etilaat-e-Rooz: Local sources in Bamyan province say female students tore down Taliban banners in response to a “staged” support program. This happened three days ago in Bamyan. According to sources, Bamyan University officials had asked female students to participate in a women’s rights program at the Bamyan Sports Stadium, but when the girls attended the program, they realized that the program was not in support of women’s rights, but in support of the Taliban.      Full news...

GALLUP: WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Taliban’s recent decision to renege on its promise to allow girls to attend school past sixth grade is a stark reminder of how much life has changed for Afghans since the group returned to power last year -- and Gallup's surveys in the country show it hasn’t been for the better. As the Taliban completed its takeover of Afghanistan last year, nearly all Afghans (94%) rated their lives poorly enough to be considered suffering. This was not only a record high for Afghanistan, but also the highest level of suffering that Gallup has measured for any country since 2005.      Full news...

Daily 8am: The Taliban Ministry of Higher Education has written to all public and private universities that female professors are no longer allowed to attend men’s scientific conferences. The letter states that female professors, students and graduates are not allowed to participate in men’s programs.      Full news...