Freedom, defined as “the power or right to speak, act, and change as one wants without hindrance or restraint,” remained elusive for many in Afghanistan during years of conflict. For three Afghan women now living in the United States, freedom signifies a fresh start.

A suicide bombing in the Afghan capital has killed the Taliban refugee minister and two others in the most brazen attack on a member of the Taliban inner circle since they returned to power three years ago.

The lower house of Russia's parliament has given initial approval to a long-discussed bill that would clear the way for Moscow to remove the Taliban’s designation as a terrorist group.

The State Department says it isn't actively reviewing the “foreign terrorist organization” designation of the main Syrian rebel group that overthrew of President Bashar Assad’s government this weekend.

The European Union has condemned the Taliban for violating human rights and women’s access to education after media reports that the Taliban’s leader has ordered private and public institutions to stop providing medical courses for women and girls in Afghanistan.

An Afghan official says the Taliban will attend a UN climate conference for the first time since their takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.

A Taliban government minister says Afghan women are forbidden from praying loudly or reciting the Quran in front of other women.

A Taliban official says official media have stopped showing images of living beings in some Afghan provinces to comply with morality laws.

House Republicans have voted to condemn President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The U.N. says the Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan.

The Taliban say gunmen have killed 14 people in a Shiite-majority area in central Afghanistan.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has presented Congress’ highest honor — the Congressional Gold Medal — to 13 U.S. service members who were killed during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

House Republicans have released a scathing report on their investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Taliban is rejecting concerns and criticism raised by the United Nations over new vice and virtue laws that include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public.

A top UN official is warning that the Taliban’s new vice and virtue laws provide a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future.

The Taliban say it's mandatory for Afghan women to conceal their voices and bare faces in public.

The Taliban have deliberately deprived at least 1.4 million Afghan girls of schooling through bans.

The Taliban are celebrating their third year as rulers of Afghanistan at a former U.S. air base.

Taekwondo Paralympian Zakia Khudadadi says she is competing in the name of women in Afghanistan who have gradually been stripped of their rights over the past three years.

Taliban officials say heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan have killed at least 40 people and injured nearly 350 others.

The Taliban’s morality police are contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans.

The Taliban is saying the West should look past their harsh edicts on Afghan women and girls to improve relations.

The U.N. political chief who will chair the first meeting between Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and envoys from about 25 countries says women's rights will be raised at every session.

Thousands of jubilant Afghans are celebrating their country’s most iconic sporting moment after their men's national cricket team reached the Twenty20 World Cup semifinals for the first time.

A thousand days have passed since girls in Afghanistan were banned from attending secondary schools.

A Taliban official said that at least 20 people were killed as a river ferry sank in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's Taliban have confirmed the resumption of Turkish Airlines flights to Kabul’s international airport.

Taliban officials say flash floods from heavy seasonal rains have killed at least 68 people in Afghanistan, adding the death toll was based on preliminary reports.

Police say suspected militants have bombed a girl's school in a former Pakistani Taliban stronghold, destroying the structure.

The U.N. food agency says more than 300 Afghans have died in flash floods that also destroyed more than 1,000 houses in the northern province of Baghlan.

A Taliban official says that flash floods from seasonal rains in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan have killed at least 50 people.

The Taliban are warning journalists and experts against working with Afghanistan International TV.

Experts say messages by two influential Taliban leaders in Afghanistan this week showed tensions between hardliners and more moderate elements who want to scrap harsher policies and attract more outside support.

The school year in Afghanistan has started but without girls whom the Taliban barred from attending classes beyond the sixth grade, making it the only country with restrictions on female education.

The former top military chief Gen. Mark Milley and former head of U.S. Central Command testified before Congress Tuesday on policy failures by the Biden administration to adequately plan for or direct an evacuation in time to avoid the chaotic final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The United Nations chief says legal equality for women could take centuries as the fight for gender equality has become an uphill struggle against rank discrimination and gross human human rights abuses.

More than two-thirds of the U.N. Security Council’s members have demanded that the Taliban rescind all policies and decrees oppressing and discriminating against women and girls, including banning girls education above the sixth grade and women’s right to work and move freely.

The Taliban have publicly executed a man convicted of murder in northern Afghanistan as thousands watched at a sports stadium.

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have carried out a double public execution at a stadium in the southeast of the country.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan says women are scared to leave the home alone because of Taliban rules on clothing and male guardians.

Human Rights Watch says 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, It says this is jeopardizing the right to healthcare of millions of Afghans.

In a story published January 22, 2024, about a U.N. report on restrictions imposed on women in Taliban-run Afghanistan, The Associated Press erroneously reported a quote by U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

A Pakistani political party says its chief met the Taliban supreme leader in Afghanistan.

A Taliban official says a minibus has exploded in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, killing at least two civilians and wounding 14 others.

A senior Taliban official says security forces in Afghanistan killed a number of Tajik and Pakistani nationals and arrested scores others involved in attacks against religious clerics, the public, and mosques in Afghanistan.

Afghan schoolgirls are weeping as they finish sixth grade, knowing their education is over.

A U.N. report says Taliban officials are sending Afghan women to prison to protect them from gender-based violence.

Myanmar, already wracked by a brutal civil war, has regained the unenviable title of world’s biggest opium producer.

A rights group says the Taliban’s education policies are harming boys as well as girls in Afghanistan.

Rights group Afghan Witness says online abuse and hate speech targeting politically active Afghan women significantly increased since the Taliban took over the country in August 2021.

Officials from Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban welcomed the resumption of FlyDubai flights to Kabul international airport.

A report from the U.N. drugs agency says Afghan farmers lost more than $1 billion of cash income from opium sales after the Taliban banned poppy cultivation.

The Taliban are appealing to Afghanistan's private sector to help those fleeing Pakistan's mass deportation drive.

Afghans are piling into trucks and buses and leaving Pakistan to avoid arrest and deportation.

A nonprofit organization in Afghanistan says the Taliban have freed an activist who campaigned for the education of girls.

At a time when Americans are deeply divided along party lines, a new poll shows agreement on at least one issue: The United States' two-decade-long war in Afghanistan was not worth fighting.

A Taliban government spokesperson says the death toll from strong earthquakes that shook western Afghanistan has jumped to more than 2,000.

Pakistan has launched its second nationwide anti-polio campaign of the year Monday in an effort to inoculate 44 million children under the age of 5.

The U_N_’s most powerful body is being asked to support governments seeking to legally declare the crackdown by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on women and girls “gender apartheid."

In the first Asian Games since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, two teams of athletes are arriving in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, looking very different.

The United Nations says it has documented more than 1,600 cases of human rights violations committed by Afghanistan's Taliban authorities during arrests and detentions of people.

A joint report from three U.N. agencies says 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.

The Taliban have hailed China’s new ambassador to Afghanistan with fanfare, saying his arrival is a sign for other nations to come forward and establish relations with them.

Afghanistan is now the world's fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine.

The U.N. food agency says it is forced to drop another 2 million hungry people from food assistance in Afghanistan in September due to a massive funding shortfall.

A Taliban official says women lose value if their faces are visible to men in public, and that the only way to wear the hijab, or the Islamic headscarf, is if the face is hidden.

Two years after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the United States has begun easing rules that could allow commercial airlines to fly over the country in routes that cuts time and fuel consumption for East-West travel.

The U.N. special envoy for global education says the International Criminal Court should prosecute Taliban leaders for crimes against humanity for denying education and employment to Afghan girls and women.

The chief Taliban spokesman says the Taliban view their rule of Afghanistan as open-ended, drawing legitimacy from Islamic law and facing no significant threat.

An Afghan higher education official says universities are ready to welcome back female students but the Taliban supreme leader has to give the order for their return first.

When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in August 2021 it airlifted tens of thousands of Afghans to safety.

The Taliban says all beauty salons in Afghanistan must now close as a one-month deadline ended, despite rare public opposition to the edict.

Afghan women protesting a beauty salon ban say the Taliban used stun guns, fire hoses and gun shots into the air to break up their demonstration.

A spokesman at Afghanistan's Vice and Virtue Ministry says the Taliban are banning women's beauty salons.

A State Department report says the department failed to do enough contingency planning before the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.

The supreme leader of the Taliban has released a message claiming that his government has taken the necessary steps for the betterment of women's life in Afghanistan, where women are banned from public life and work and girls’ education is severely curtailed.

The U.N. envoy for Afghanistan is warning the country’s Taliban rulers that international recognition as the country’s legitimate government will remain “nearly impossible” unless they lift severe restrictions on women and girls’ education and employment.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have carried out what is believed to be the second confirmed public execution since the religious group took power in 2021.

A Taliban official says a bombing in Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province killed at least 13 people during a memorial service.

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The supreme leader of the Taliban met in Afghanistan with Qatar’s prime minister this month.

Two top rights groups say the severe restrictions imposed on women and girls by the Taliban in Afghanistan amount to gender-based persecution, which is a crime against humanity.

The head of a major international aid organization says Taliban officials in Kandahar have agreed to consider allowing women to resume work at the agency in the Afghan province.

The head of a major international aid agency says key Taliban officials told him they are close to finalizing guidelines that will allow Afghan women to resume working for nongovernmental organizations.

A U.K.-based rights group is launching an interactive map documenting human rights abuses and violence against civilians since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan nearly two years ago.

A U.N. report has strongly criticized Afghanistan's Taliban rulers for carrying out public executions, lashings, stonings and other types of punishments since taking power almost two years ago.

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution calling on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to swiftly reverse their increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls.

A U.N. resolution that calls on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to swiftly reverse their increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls and condemns their ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations is set to be voted on Thursday by the Security Council.

U.S. officials say the Taliban have killed the Islamic State group militant who spearheaded the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that left 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans dead during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

Director Guy Ritchie co-wrote the script for "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant" with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies after seeing a documentary about Afghan translators. They created a story about two men from different worlds who wind up forming an incredible bond.

The watchdog for U.S. assistance to Afghanistan warned lawmakers that American aid to the country could be diverted to the Taliban as he accused the Biden administration of stonewalling his efforts to investigate.

The United Nations says it's ready to take the “heartbreaking” decision to leave Afghanistan if it can’t persuade the Taliban to let local women work for the organization.

The Taliban's supreme leader says Afghanistan will be ruined without justice, in a rare audio message shared on social media.

The U.N. food agency says it urgently needs $800 million for the next six months to help Afghans, with the country at the highest risk of famine in a quarter of a century.

The Taliban have banned families and women from restaurants with gardens or green spaces in Afghanistan’s northwestern Herat province.

Afghan religious scholars say the government's ban on girls' education is un-Islamic.

The United Nations says the 3,330 Afghan men and women it employs stayed home for a second day to protest the Taliban’s ban on U.N. female staff working in the country, as it continued to press for the decision to be reversed.

The United Nations says it cannot accept a Taliban decision to bar Afghan female staffers from working at the agency, calling it an “unparalleled” violation of women’s rights.

U.N. officials say that female Afghan employees of the United Nations have been banned from working by Taliban authorities.

The Taliban say their forces in Afghanistan have killed six members of the extremist Islamic State group during a raid in the country's north.