The Associated Press: The Taliban’s morality police are contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans, according to a U.N. report published Tuesday. Edicts and some of the methods used to enforce them constituted a violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the report said. The Taliban set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” after seizing power in 2021. Since then, the ministry has enforced decrees issued by the Taliban leadership that have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, like dress codes, segregated education and employment, and having a male guardian when they travel.      Full news...

Fox News: The United Nations is condemning the Taliban after it publicly flogged more than 60 people at a sports stadium in northern Afghanistan. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan wrote on X that 63 people were “publicly lashed” by “Afghanistan’s de facto authorities” on Tuesday in the Sari Pul province. “UNAMA reiterates its condemnation of corporal punishment and calls for respect for international human rights obligations,” it added. Taliban’s supreme court in a statement confirmed the public flogging of 63 people including 14 women who had been accused of crimes including sodomy, theft and immoral relations.      Full news...

CPJ:Taliban authorities should immediately and unconditionally release radio reporters Ismail Saadat, Wahidullah Masum, and Ehsanullah Tasal and stop harassing the press for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.On Monday, the provincial directorate of the Taliban-controlled Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in eastern Khost Province summoned and detained Saadat of Naz FM Radio, Masum of Iqra FM Radio, and Tasal of Wolas Ghag, according to the exiled Afghanistan Journalists Center watchdog group, the London-based news broadcaster Afghanistan International, and a person familiar with the case, who spoke with CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals.      Full news...

RAWA News: With the return of the oppressive Taliban regime, the dark and bloody history of our land has reverted, reopening the unhealed wounds of our people, particularly from the initial period of the current medieval group's rule. In both eras of their barbaric governance, the people of this stricken land have borne witness to the most heinous crimes. Bamyan stands as a living testament to the atrocities committed by these malevolent individuals, a legacy that our people will never forget. Despite their silence born from a sense of helplessness, the scars of destruction remain apparent even after two decades.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Responding to the double public executions by the Taliban yesterday, Livia Saccardi, Amnesty International’s interim Deputy Regional Director for South Asia, said: “We oppose all executions as a violation of the right to life. The Taliban has been repeatedly carrying them out publicly which is a gross affront to human dignity as well as a violation of international laws and standards and cannot be tolerated.      Full news...

AP News: The Taliban held a public execution on Monday of a man convicted of murder in northern Afghanistan as thousands watched at a sports stadium, the third such death sentence to be carried out in the past five days. The execution took place in heavy snowfall in the city of Shibirghan, the capital of northern Jawzjan province, where the brother of the murdered man shot the convict five times with a rifle, according to a witness. Security around the stadium was tight, said the witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: Al Qaeda is back to its old tricks in Afghanistan. Much as it did before masterminding the 9/11 attacks, the terrorist group is running militant training camps; sharing the profits of the Taliban’s illicit drug, mining, and smuggling enterprises; and funneling the proceeds to affiliated jihadi groups worldwide. An unpublished report circulating among Western diplomats and U.N. officials details how deeply embedded the group once run by Osama bin Laden is in the Taliban’s operations, as they loot Afghanistan’s natural wealth and steal international aid meant to alleviate the suffering of millions of Afghans.      Full news...

UN Women News: Since August 2021, Afghan women and girls have been grappling with increasingly restrictive decrees limiting their participation in all aspects of social, economic, and political life. These have confined millions of women to their home, restricting their important contributions to society. Their already dire situation has been compounded in recent months by humanitarian crises. First, devastating earthquakes rocked western Afghanistan in October 2023. Then, since November 2023, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been forced to return after a Pakistani decree on undocumented migrants went into effect. According to International Organization for Migration (IOM) data, an estimated 80 per cent of those affected are women and children.      Full news...

Daily Excelsior News: The death toll from freezing weather and snowfall in the chilly winter has reached 39 in Afghanistan as spell cold continues in parts of the country, spokesman for national disaster authority Mullah Janan Saeq said Sunday. “About 39 persons of our countrymen have been martyred and 30 others injured due to rain, snowfall and cold weather. Also, 637 houses have been destroyed and 13,889 cattle have died due to the freezing climate,” Saeq told Xinhua.      Full news...

Rukhshana News: Eight people have been flogged and sentenced to prison on charges of “abuse and dishonor” in western Herat province, a Taliban court said Thursday.The Taliban Supreme Court newsletter said the eight people were punished with 20 lashes each and sentenced to five months imprisonment. The decision by Herat’s military court was endorsed by the Taliban Supreme Court, it added. Following its takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban has resumed its rule by severe corporal punishment and swift executions, sometimes as a public spectacle.      Full news...

The Independent: The Taliban on Thursday executed two men convicted of stabbing by gunfire in Afghanistan’s southeastern Ghazni province. Thousands of people watched the public execution in broad daylight after the Taliban-led Supreme Court convicted the two men for a murder by stabbing. The court identified the two men as Syed Jamal from central Wardak province and Gul Khan from Ghazni but did not clarify who carried out the stabbings.      Full news...

The Hindu News:A Taliban official said journalists were committing “a major sin” by taking pictures, Afghan media reported on Wednesday. Television and pictures of living things were banned under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been imposed since authorities took back power in Afghanistan in 2021. “Taking pictures is a major sin,” Mohammad Hashem Shaheed Wror, a senior official in the justice ministry, told a seminar for department staff in the capital Kabul on Tuesday, according to footage broadcast by several media.      Full news...

Taipei Times News: Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday said that Afghanistan’s public health system has been hit hard following a sharp reduction in foreign assistance, coupled with serious Taliban abuses against women and girls, jeopardizing the right to healthcare for millions of Afghans. In a new report, the New York-based watchdog said this has left the “Afghan population increasingly vulnerable to severe malnutrition and illness” among other effects of inadequate medical care.      Full news...

East London Advertiser: The Taliban are restricting Afghan women’s access to work, travel and healthcare if they are unmarried or do not have a male guardian, according to a UN report.In one incident, officials from the Afghan vice and virtue ministry advised a woman to get married if she wanted to keep her job at a healthcare facility, saying it was inappropriate for an unwed woman to work.The Taliban have barred women from most areas of public life and stopped girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade (aged 11-12) as part of harsh measures they imposed after taking power in 2021, despite initially promising more moderate rule.      Full news...

Investing News: The World Bank has expressed serious concerns about the deteriorating state of Afghanistan’s economy, with monetary poverty affecting half of the country’s citizens. The findings were relayed by TOLO News Today, based on insights from a critical discussion held at the US Institute of Peace. Senior economist at the World Bank, Silvia Redaelli, unveiled that monetary poverty has ensnared half of Afghanistan’s population, while Naheed Sarabi from the Institute for Development and Economic Affairs underscored the deepening economic plight of Afghan women. Sarabi traced this rising feminization of poverty back to numerous factors, including restrictive policies imposed by the Taliban.      Full news...

Khaama Press: The Supreme Court of the Taliban has announced the public punishment of a man and a woman in the Shiber district of Bamyan. On Saturday, the court stated that these individuals have been sentenced on charges of “adultery.” Taliban officials have reported that members of the group and some residents from Bamyan were present during the execution of the punishment. According to a report in a Taliban newsletter, the punishment inflicted upon these two individuals was carried out by the judgment issued by the Bamyan Provincial Court. This punishment was further ratified by the Chief of the Public Criminal Court within the Supreme Court of the Taliban.      Full news...

Khaama Press: According to The Wall Street Journal, some key Afghan officials and their families spent millions of dollars in the final years of the war on luxurious mansions in the United States and other countries, and when they fled the rising violence in Afghanistan. Some officials who held senior roles during former President Ashraf Ghani’s administration, which began in 2014, are now residing in “mansions along California’s coast”, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public records, interviews, and other evidence.      Full news...

Etlat-Rooz: Residents have staged a protest following the killing of a civilian in Kabul’s Mirbacheh Kot district. The incident took place this evening (Monday, February 7) in the “Sarai Khaja” area of Mirbacheh Kot district of Kabul and the victim was a shopkeeper. Protesters carried the body on the Parwan-Kabul highway, chanting “Death to the Taliban!” slogan as the road closed to traffic.      Full news...

Kabul Times: Maj. Gen. Mobin Khan, a member of the Emirate, confirmed and regretted the incident of Kashfi Sahib's beating. They stressed that the offenders will be interrogated and dealt with severely.General Mobin assures that journalists are good colleagues of the Emirate and that in any situation they want, the Islamic Emirate will work with them as much as possible.      Full news...

The Hill: While the peace talks in Afghanistan are stalled until the administration of Joe Biden takes new action, calls for more power sharing mechanisms to represent manifold groups in the political system are gaining momentum. This is a tempting idea, and Afghans have had a taste of power sharing in recent years, starting with the appointment of Hamid Karzai as president with the diverse ethnic cabinet, and then the deal between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah after an election dispute.      Full news...

BBC Persian (translated by RAWA): What does the dead of mother, father, three children, seven sisters, one brother and four sister’s children do to a person?Noor Ali, lost 18 members of his family all at once in bombing raid by government forces in Khashrud district of Nimroz province. Among the victims there were children aged three months to then years old.      Full news...

Aljazeera: Afghan authorities have said they are investigating a weekend air raid which local officials say killed more than a dozen civilians, including children.Provincial officials said 15 people died on Saturday night when a rocket struck a house in Khashrod district of Nimroz province. Relatives of the victims and witnesses put the death toll at 18, all members of the same family in Munazari village.      Full news...

BBC News: The incident happened after "thousands of people" gathered to request permits to Pakistan, a local spokesman said.The crowd had been redirected to a sports stadium instead of the usual visa centre in the city of Jalalabad. Visa applications to Pakistan have just resumed after a seven-month pause due to the pandemic.      Full news...

The Christian Science Monitor: When, to kick-start long-delayed intra-Afghan peace talks, thousands of Afghan delegates gathered to consider a final release of hardened Taliban prisoners, Belquis Roshan held up a sign of protest. The words on the female lawmaker’s banner were clear: “Redeeming” the Taliban amounted to “national treason.”      Full news...

The New York Times: Government officials in the southern Afghan province of Helmand said on Monday that as many as 40 civilians, including children, may have been killed during a government commando raid on an insurgent stronghold the night before. Accounts from the scene were fragmentary and contradictory, typical of violent clashes in which civilians are reported killed in remote areas late at night.      Full news...

TOLOnews.com: At least 11 people were taken out of their homes and were killed the “01 Unit” of the National Directorate of Security at a night raid in Zurmat district of the northern province of Paktia, tribal elders and residents claimed. The operation was carried out in Gulal Koh village on Sunday night, August 11.      Full news...