Sky News: The Taliban regime forced women to choose between abiding by the law or surviving - and so many died in fear. Weeks on from one of the most destructive earthquakes in Afghanistan's history, thousands of people in Herat are living in tents next to what remains of their homes.The 6.3-magnitude quake hit on 11 October, destroying entire villages and leaving more than 2,400 people dead.Women and children have been disproportionately affected by the disaster, the UN has said, and make up more than 90% of the dead.      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...

Rukhshana: A newlywed woman from Faryab province has been found dead in the bathroom of her home after allegedly hanging herself. The Taliban’s head of information and culture in Faryab Shamsuddin Mohammadi said the 21-year-old woman was found at about 12:30pm on Tuesday at home in the Arzlik area of Qaisar district.Anecdotally, the number has been increasing in proportion to girls and women losing their freedom and human rights under Taliban rule since August 2021.      Full news...

Hasht-E Subh: Local sources in Badghis have reported a horrifying incident where a man, identified as Ismail, murdered his two wives.The motive behind this tragic event has been identified as domestic violence. The Taliban in Badghis have confirmed the incident and announced that they are actively trying to apprehend the suspect.This unfortunate incident mirrors similar cases that have occurred in various parts of the country in the past.      Full news...

Hasht-E Subh: Local sources have confirmed the tragic death of a young social activist who succumbed to torture while in a Taliban prison. The sources, speaking to Hasht-e Subh on Tuesday, October 17th, verified that the victim was Matiullah Fathzada, who passed away due to his injuries two days prior while in Taliban custody.In a recent incident, the group opened fire on a young man named Abdulaziz, a prominent figure from Panjshir, on Saturday, October 14th, following a verbal altercation in the Qala-e Fathullah area of Kabul city.      Full news...

Rukhshana: Morality police in eastern Afghanistan have ordered media in Kunduz province to send their reports to the Taliban before publication. The statement from the Ministry warned audio, visual, and print/online media from publishing content “against the Islamic Sharia”. Media is not permitted to publish critical reports of authorities. Those that have done so have been punished and threatened, including being imprisoned, beaten or having their families threatened.      Full news...

New York Times: A suicide attack by the Islamic State at a Shiite mosque in northern Afghanistan killed at least 17 people on Friday, according to hospital officials and eyewitnesses, in a bloody reminder of the insecurity that remains in the country and has spread to Pakistan two years after the end of the U.S.-led war.ISIS-K has been antagonistic toward the Taliban administration, claiming it is not implementing true Shariah law, the legal code of Islam, and carrying out hit-and-run attacks on Taliban security forces.      Full news...

America Magazine: International aid groups are rushing to respond to this latest disaster, but relief supplies are stretched thin, Mr. Gonsalves says, and there is no capacity at this time for rebuilding and rehabilitation. He was already concerned that the world was not attending to the vast humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Now the earthquakes and aftershocks have just piled on the suffering. According to U.N. sources, the humanitarian aid system in Afghanistan is already desperately overstretched and underfunded, with over 29 million Afghans in need of assistance.      Full news...

Associated Press: Afghan women and children were disproportionately killed by the earthquake across Herat province this last weekend because they were more likely to be at home when buildings fell. Many are now concerned about who will raise the children left without mothers. The Afghanistan representative for the U.N. Population Fund, Jaime Nadal, said there would have been no “gender dimension” to the death toll if the quake had happened at night.      Full news...

Hasht-E Subh: The Earthquake in Herat province has claimed the lives of more than two thousand people and injured thousands more. As a result of this earthquake, approximately 13 villages have been destroyed, and hundreds are still trapped under the rubble.On the other hand, sources report that on the first day of the earthquake, the Taliban prevented women who had left their homes for safety from venturing outside. These sources alleged that the Taliban told women they had no right to leave their homes without a male escort. Additionally, the Taliban’s office in Herat had arranged transportation for male journalists to go to the disaster site on the previous day but did not provide the same facilities for female journalists.      Full news...

Rukhshana: Taliban forces have detained three employees of Radio Naseem in central Daikundi province and sealed its office closed, according to two local sources.Naseem Radio station was mostly active in the field of health and environment in Daikundi province and had recently published several reports about the situation of women in the province. The three men were also forced to commit to not speak to external media or reporters.      Full news...

Reuters: The United Nations has recorded over 1,600 incidents of rights violations against people detained by the Taliban authorities, nearly half of them acts of torture and ill-treatment mostly by police and intelligence agents, a report released on Wednesday showed. The U.N. Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) said 18 people had also died in prisons and in the custody of police and intelligence in the 19 months ending July 2023.      Full news...

AP: The mental health of Afghan women, who have suffered under harsh measures imposed by the Taliban since taking power two years ago, has deteriorated across the country, according to a joint report from three U.N. agencies released Tuesday. Nearly 70 percent reported that feelings of anxiety, isolation and depression had grown significantly worse between April and June, an increase from 57 percent in the preceding quarter, according to the report from U.N Women, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.      Full news...

VOA: There has been a “disturbing surge” in the number of female suicides and attempted female suicides in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control in 2021, according to a report by British newspaper The Guardian. The Taliban government has not published any statistics on the phenomenon and has forbidden health care workers from sharing the numbers, the newspaper said. However, the report said health care providers agreed to privately share the information from August 2021 to August 2022 “to highlight an urgent public health crisis” that has made Afghanistan one of the few locations in the world where more women than men kill themselves.      Full news...

HRW: Taliban authorities in Afghanistan are committing the crime against humanity of gender persecution against women and girls, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Since taking over the country in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed laws and policies intended to deny women and girls throughout the country their fundamental rights because of their gender.      Full news...

BNN: A young student was killed by Taliban gunfire in Laghman province on August 27, after he attended a wedding party where music was played. The incident occurred in the Qarghayi district of the eastern province, where the Taliban have a strong presence. The victim was identified as Samiullah, a resident of the Chapa Daria area of Qarghayi district. He was a first-year student at the Faculty of Agriculture of Nangarhar University, one of the largest and oldest universities in Afghanistan.      Full news...

BBC: The Taliban government have banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir national park in Bamiyan province. Afghanistan’s acting minister of virtue and vice, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, said women had not been observing hijab inside the park. He called on religious clerics and security agencies to forbid women from entering until a solution was found.      Full news...

Amu: As per reliable accounts, these women were participating in a protest held at a residence located in Khairkhana area in northern Kabul when the Taliban forces took them into custody.A video obtained by Amu captures the moment when a contingent of Taliban members entered the premises, making efforts to detain the women involved.      Full news...

8am: In a recent and concerning development, Taliban fighters have reportedly detained eight individuals associated with the “Union and Solidarity of Afghan Women” movement following an attack on a gathering of women protesters in Kabul. Sources reveal that the Taliban apprehended these eight individuals within Kabul city and have taken them into custody. The incident unfolded on Sunday, August 20th, when Taliban fighters executed the arrests from a confined location in the Khairkhana district of Kabul.      Full news...

RAWANews: On the 15th August, two terrible years have passed when, according to the plans of the US and NATO, the brutal and misogynist creatures named Taliban, were replaced with the "republican" brothers and took the responsibility for the advancement of the United States colonial policies in our homeland; Two years that brought nothing but the collapse of the last manifestations of freedom, humanity and knowledge, poverty and cruelty for the people and especially the women of Afghanistan...      Full news...

VOA:The Taliban on Wednesday banned all political parties in Afghanistan, stating that such activities are against Islamic law, or Sharia. More than 70 major and small political parties were formally registered with the Ministry of Justice until two years ago, when the then-insurgent Taliban reclaimed control of war-ravaged Afghanistan. Many self-exiled Afghan political leaders have since opposed the new rulers in Kabul and called for armed resistance to dislodge them, but they have not received international backing for their campaign.      Full news...

Afghanistan International: On Saturday, two groups of women held demonstrations in Kabul and Takhar against the "tyrannical policies of the Taliban".Sources from Kabul told Afghanistan International that the Taliban had been aware of the women’s demonstration in Kabul and still attacked the demonstrators.However, Afghanistan International received images from the protest site which showed that the female protesters had changed the location of the demonstration and read their resolution in a different area.      Full news...

Classic FM: Photos have emerged from Afghanistan of musical instruments being set on fire by the Taliban as a spokesperson for the ruling government describes music as “immoral”. One photo showing four men watching a large pile of instruments engulfed by flames was released to the press by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice on Sunday and was reportedly taken in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city.      Full news...

BBC News: The Taliban have burned musical instruments in Afghanistan, claiming music “causes moral corruption”. Thousands of dollars worth of musical equipment went up in smoke on a bonfire on Saturday in western Herat province. Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions, including on playing music in public. All forms of music were banned from social gatherings, TV, and radio while the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan from the mid-90s until 2001.      Full news...

WION: Gen-Z, their predecessor millennials and even the people from Gen-X often take to social media when they are behind or near the wheel, to show a fleeting world in front of the car's windshield sometimes accompanied by a particular music track.For Zareena, 24, who last year lost her right to attend university in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan's capital Kabul, a behind-the-steering-wheel Snapchat update while she was on Kabul's roads was a part of her life until August 2021. Not anymore.      Full news...

NBC News: Dozens of Afghan women protested a beauty salon ban Wednesday after the Taliban ordered their closure nationwide. Security forces used fire hoses and stun guns and shot their weapons into the air to break up the protest.The Taliban said this month they were giving all salons in Afghanistan one month to wind down their businesses and close shop, drawing concern from international officials worried about the impact on female entrepreneurs. The Taliban say they are outlawing salons because they offer services forbidden by Islam and cause economic hardship for grooms’ families during wedding festivities.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: For the Taliban, who’ve made so much money from other illicit trades, arms deals are just another source of income: The Taliban likely control and tax the new black market, said Asfandyar Mir, a South Asia expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. And as the Taliban (and allied terrorist groups) seek new recruits, few things talk more eloquently than fancy, deadly kit. Left-behind American assault rifles command a premium: an M4 in good condition can fetch up to $2,400, a status symbol with as much cachet in the Himalayan tribal belt as a luxury handbag in Manhattan.      Full news...

The Guardian: The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has ordered beauty salons to close within a month, the morality ministry said, in the latest shrinking of access to public places for Afghan women. “The deadline for the closing of beauty parlours for women is one month,” Mohammad Sadiq Akif, a spokesperson for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue, said on Tuesday, referring to a ministry notice.      Full news...

EFE: Without a husband or grown-up sons to go out and earn in a highly orthodox and patriarchal Islamist society, widows in Afghanistan are left in a lurch, condemned to poverty on account of increasing restrictions on women by the Taliban. Fatima is the oldest of four widows in a 100 square meter house in the northern state of Kandahar, a few meters from the office of the provincial governor. The other three are her 25- and 30-year-old daughters-in-law – each with four children – and her niece, who has one child.      Full news...

Tortoise media: Afghan women working for the UN in Kabul say they have been betrayed by the organisation’s failure to protect them from the Taliban’s gender apartheid. Also in today’s Sensemaker: why an opposition win in Thailand isn’t quite a win.      Full news...