Taliban

 A top U.N. envoy met with the Taliban-led Afghan government's higher education minister Saturday to discuss the ban on women attending universities. Markus Potzel is the first international official to meet with him since the ban was introduced last month.

Prince Harry faced a backlash Friday over his memoir "Spare", with criticism from the media, commentators, army veterans and even the Taliban, while Buckingham Palace kept silent on its widely leaked contents.

Prince Harry says his brother William physically attacked him during a ferocious argument — one of many startling allegations in a new memoir that includes revelations about the estranged royal's drug-taking, first sexual encounter and role in killing people during his military service in Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu held a phone conversation with the minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on Jan. 3 and discussed the latest developments in Afghanistan and the raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says it will commit $1.2 billion to the effort to end polio worldwide. The money will be used to help implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative's strategy through 2026. 

Two employees of the Russian embassy in Kabul were killed today in a bomb explosion that occurred in the area of the diplomatic mission, world agencies reported, citing the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The explosion occurred when a Russian diplomat came out to read the list of those waiting in the visa queue, Hamid Haidari, former editor-in-chief of 1TVNews, said. Eyewitnesses reported that there may be around 20 dead, Sputnik reported.
According to the police, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the entrance to the embassy.

Maribor – Mohammad Dawood Rezai left his home in Afghanistan at the age of 14. He could have hardly imagined then that almost seven years on his goal would be to appear in the Olympic boxing tournament for Slovenia, the country he had not heard of before arriving here in February 2016.

An explosion at a mosque in the north of the Afghan capital of Kabul killed 20 people and injured 40 more, media reports said.

Taliban fighters beat women protesters and fired into the air on Saturday as they violently dispersed a rare rally in the Afghan capital, days ahead of the first anniversary of the hardline Islamists' return to power.

Since seizing control on August 15 last year, the Taliban have rolled back the marginal gains made by women during two decades of US intervention in Afghanistan.