AFGHANISTAN

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 Pentagon’s Central Command has ordered interviews of roughly two dozen more service members who were at the Kabul airport when suicide bombers attacked during U.S. forces’ chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, as criticism persists that the deadly assault could have been stopped.

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

The United Nations has released $125 million from its emergency relief fund to boost underfunded humanitarian operations in 14 countries around the world, saying needs are skyrocketing.

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.

More than 840,000 Afghans and their families who applied for a resettlement program aimed at people who helped the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan are still there waiting.

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.

U.N. experts say the Islamic State group still commands between 5,000 and 7,000 members across its former stronghold in Syria and Iraq and its fighters pose the most serious terrorist threat in Afghanistan today.

Police say an explosion has ripped through a hotel in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost, killing at least three people and wounding seven others.

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.

Pakistani officials say the death toll from the IS-claimed weekend suicide bombing at a rally of a pro-Taliban Islamist party has jumped to 63 after eight more wounded people died at hospitals.

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.

One of the architects of the covert U.S. strategy against the Soviets in Afghanistan has published a new memoir.

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.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. says a request for his country to temporarily host a U.S. immigrant visa processing center for thousands of Afghans faces security and other concerns but is still being considered by his administration.

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 refugee system in Texas and nationally is still recovering from major cuts under the Trump administration. The latest casualty is Texas’ largest resettlement agency, Refugee Services of Texas.

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

The Taliban and Iran have exchanged heavy gunfire on the Islamic Republic’s border with Afghanistan.

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.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee says he is pausing an effort to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress now that the State Department is letting him view a redacted classified cable from U.S. diplomats in Kabul sent shortly before the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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.

The State Department is offering to allow the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to view a classified cable from U.S. diplomats in Kabul sent shortly before the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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.

Pakistani authorities and Afghanistan’s Taliban-appointed foreign minister have agreed to enhance trade and lower tensions amid a surge of militant attacks.

This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published by Associated Press photographers in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan in March 2023.

Officials say thousands of mourners have attended the mass funeral of seven minority Shiite teachers who were shot and killed at a school in northwestern Pakistan.

The Biden administration will continue to allow tens of thousands of Afghans who fled Taliban control more than two years ago to stay and work in the U.S. That is according to two White House officials familiar with the plan, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss details that haven’t been released.

An Afghanistan refugee living in San Antonio is trying to get back to doing one of the things he loves the most -- playing wheelchair basketball.

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.

Wasi and his brother pray for their family’s safety as the holy month of Ramadan ends and the Taliban continues to rule Afghanistan.

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 pull out of Afghanistan in May 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.

US Army veteran Beth King is working on earning a spot on the US Paralympic team.

President Joe Biden’s administration is laying the blame on his predecessor, President Donald Trump, for the deadly and chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that brought about some of the darkest moments of Biden’s presidency.

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.

In a highly unusual ruling, a state court judge has voided a U.S. Marine’s adoption of an Afghan war orphan, more than a year after he took the little girl away from the Afghan couple raising her.

House Republicans plan to deliver a subpoena to Secretary of State Antony Blinken for classified cables related to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the Taliban administration says it is trying to take charge of more Afghan embassies and consulates abroad.

The White House says it plans to release next month the results of the long-delayed government review of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake has rattled much of Pakistan and Afghanistan, sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes and offices.

Police have charged the first Australian veteran with murder for a killing in Afghanistan three years after a war crimes investigation found 19 Australian special forces soldiers could face charges for illegal conduct.

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution calling for independent recommendations on how a united international community should address the enormous challenges confronting Afghanistan.

Police say a Taliban-appointed provincial governor and two others have been killed by a bomb.

Active-service members and veterans have provided first-hand testimony in the House of Representatives about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, describing in harrowing detail the carnage and death they witnessed on the ground.

The United Nations says that since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the country has become the most repressive in the world for women and girls.

Two senior regional members of the Islamic State group have been killed in Afghanistan in recent weeks during separate raids in Kabul.

Hundreds of Afghan refugees facing extreme delays in the approval of U.S. visas are protesting in Pakistan’s capital on, as an American program to help relocate at-risk Afghans fleeing Taliban rule stalls.

An opera based on the popular novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns," which is set in Afghanistan, is making its world debut in Seattle.

U.S. officials at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba have returned two Pakistani brothers to their home country.

Russia's president and the deposed leader of Afghanistan were among the top gift givers to President Joe Biden and his family in 2021, according to federal documents.

Several Biden Cabinet members have received a letter from House Republicans as they launch the second investigation into the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

China and Iran have called on mutual neighbor Afghanistan to end restrictions on women's work and education.

A rare public show of division is emerging in the ranks of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.

Hundreds of Afghans have rushed to the Kabul airport chasing a false rumor that an airlift operation was flying people to Turkey to help with the deadly earthquake rescue.

Many refugees and asylum-seekers are literally left out in the cold for months as the European Union fails to get its migration system working properly.

The Dutch government says it will not appeal a court ruling that Dutch forces unlawfully bombed a residential complex in Afghanistan in 2007, killing some 20 civilians, in a civil case.

The Pakistani city of Peshawar was once known as “the city of flowers” but has borne the brunt of rising militancy in the region for the past decades.

A spokesman for the World Food Program says malnutrition rates in Afghanistan are at record highs with half the country enduring severe hunger throughout the year.

The highest-ranking woman at the United Nations says she used everything in her “toolbox” during meetings with Taliban ministers to try to reverse their crackdown on Afghan women and girls.

After months of publicity and a bipartisan congressional effort to request a pardon from the president, Abdul Wasi Safi could be set free.

Police say a former Afghan female lawmaker and her bodyguard were shot dead by unknown assailants at her home in the capital, Kabul.

The Taliban's ban on female aid workers is posing one of the biggest policy challenges over Afghanistan for the United States and other countries since the American military withdrawal in 2021 opened the door for the Taliban takeover.

The Houston Democrat said she has sent a letter to the White House asking the Biden administration to ensure Abdul Wasi Safi starts his life in America without a criminal record.

The vast majority of U.N. Security Council members are urging Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to immediately reverse all “oppressive” restrictions on girls and women including the latest ban on woman working for humanitarian organizations which is exacerbating the already critical humanitarian crisis in the country.

An aid agency chief has told The Associated Press that the Taliban's “internal debates and extreme decrees” are paralyzing humanitarian work in Afghanistan.

The U.N. says one of its top officials has met with the Taliban-led government's higher education minister, who ordered a ban on women in Afghan universities last month.

The Afghan Taliban have killed eight Islamic State group fighters and arrested nine others in raids against the militants' hideouts in Afghanistan.

The U.N. says one of its top officials in Afghanistan has met the Taliban's deputy prime minister to discuss a ban on women working at nongovernmental groups.

A spokesman for the Taliban-led government says a bombing at a military airport checkpoint in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has killed and wounded several people.

Thousands of refugees who fled Afghanistan and now live in the United States are facing an uncertain future.

Aid agencies are warning that Afghans will die because of the Taliban order banning women from working at nongovernmental groups.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan has ordered all foreign and domestic non-governmental groups to suspend employing women.

Eight U.S. military bases that housed tens of thousands of Afghan refugees after they were airlifted out of Kabul last year incurred almost $260 million in damages.

After surviving the fallout from a war in his home country and a global trek, Abdul Wasi Safi was arrested at the Texas-Mexico border on a misdemeanor charge, delaying his chance for asylum.

The minister of higher education in the Taliban government has broken his silence over his decision to ban women from universities.

The Taliban have released two American detainees held in Afghanistan.

Pakistani authorities say one person was killed and at least 11 injured when Afghan Taliban fighters fired mortars toward the civilians near the southwestern Chaman border crossing.

China has advised its citizens in Afghanistan to leave the country “as soon as possible,” following a coordinated attack by Islamic State militants the previous day on a Chinese-owned hotel in the heart of Kabul.

A Taliban official says a hotel catering to foreign visitors in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul was attacked and three of the assailants were killed.