Taliban

Gunmen stormed a Sikh temple in the Afghan capital on June 18, lobbing at least one grenade and wounding two people, the interior ministry and witnesses said.

While the number of bombings has dropped across the country since the Taliban seized power in August, several fatal attacks have rocked the country in recent months.

UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly T. Clements has called on the Taliban to discuss the plight of Afghan refugees and their return to the soil as many of them flee the war-torn nation when it seized power in Afghanistan last year.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers are maintaining close ties with al-Qaida as they consolidate control over the country, and their main military threat is coming from the ISIL extremist group and guerrilla-style attacks by former Afghan government security personnel, U.N. experts said in a new report.

The Taliban members who killed her activist husband offered Zahra Husseini a deal: Marry one of us, and you'll be safe.

Husseini, 31, decided to flee. Through swaths of lawless flatlands she and her two small children trekked by foot, motorcycle and truck until reaching Iran.

A Taliban official says a bombing at a mosque and religious school in northern Afghanistan on Friday killed at least 33 people, including students of a religious school.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban's deputy culture and information minister, said the bombing in the town of Imam Saheb, in Kunduz Province, also wounded another 43 people, many of them students.

Since Taliban fighters seized control of Afghanistan last year after ousting the US-backed government, the number of bombings has fallen but the jihadist and Sunni ISIL has continued with attacks -- often against Shiite targets.

Earlier this week, at least six people were killed in twin blasts that hit a boys' school in a Shiite neighbourhood of Kabul.

It is disingenuous given how Turkey both legitimized & encouraged the Taliban in Afghanistan & has positioned itself as a hub for Russian sanctions evasion

Afghanistan's main universities have reopened six months after the Taliban returned to power, but only a trickle of women went back to now-segregated classes.

The Taliban insist they will allow girls and women to be educated this time around, but only in segregated classes and according to an Islamic curriculum.

Brussels – Janez Lenarčič, Slovenia’s European commissioner, told Slovenian correspondents in Brussels on Friday that the European Commission’s work was currently most affected by the Ukraine crisis. It is preparing for all possible scenarios, hoping that reason will prevail and peace will be preserved, he stressed.

Brussels – EU foreign ministers were clear as they met in Brussels on Monday that any aggresion by Russia against Ukraine will have political consequences and a high economic cost, said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, while Slovenian FM Anže Logar added that there was a general awareness of the gravity of the situation.