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Taliban reverses decision to allow girls to attend secondary school in Afghanistan

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Taliban reverses decision to allow girls to attend secondary school in Afghanistan

The Taliban have reversed a choice to permit teenage ladies again to secondary college regardless of repeated assurances they may resume lessons from Wednesday, sparking worldwide condemnation and leaving determined college students stranded outdoors campuses.

Faculties have been scheduled to reopen in Afghanistan on Wednesday for the brand new educational 12 months. Ladies have been allowed to attend major college however the Taliban had mentioned college students from Grade 7, or about age 13, can be allowed to renew lessons for the primary time because the militants seized energy final August.

However the Taliban made a U-turn on Wednesday morning, saying that ladies’ excessive colleges would stay closed “till additional discover”, in response to the official Bakhtar Information Company, which mentioned ladies’ uniforms weren’t in compliance with Islamic legislation.

The way forward for ladies’ schooling has turn out to be one of the contentious points in Afghanistan because the Taliban returned to energy. The hardline Islamist group banned ladies from finding out or working once they beforehand dominated the nation within the Nineties, a part of a collection of insurance policies that made them worldwide pariahs.

The Taliban claimed to have dropped their objection to women’ schooling, arguing that they had reformed with the intention to acquire worldwide recognition and rebuild monetary ties with the west.

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Quickly after taking energy the Taliban mentioned they might defend ladies’s rights “throughout the framework of Islamic legislation”. In elements of the nation, ladies have been allowed to proceed working in some areas reminiscent of healthcare.

However diplomats and analysts have remained deeply sceptical, suggesting that there have been unresolved rifts throughout the group and a few senior Taliban leaders nonetheless opposed ladies’ schooling.

Wednesday’s reversal was broadly condemned internationally. The UN mentioned it “deplores” the Taliban’s ban and Rina Amiri, US particular envoy to Afghanistan, wrote on Twitter that the choice “not solely weakens confidence within the Taliban’s commitments however additional dashes the hopes of households for a greater future for his or her daughters”.

The transfer left college students, lots of whom had already arrived for what they anticipated to be their first day in school, shocked.

One pupil in Kabul mentioned she cried when she heard yesterday that colleges have been reopening. “However in the present day I’m actually upset. I can’t say something — what can we are saying? What can we do?” she advised Tolo Information, native media group, outdoors her college. “It has been 186 days that we haven’t been to highschool — why? What are we responsible of?”

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Girls have confronted widespread harassment and discrimination by the hands of Taliban officers and militants, with activists arrested and others fleeing the nation.

Afghanistan has been plunged right into a devastating monetary and humanitarian disaster because the Taliban re-took energy. The international help that made up about 80 per cent of the earlier authorities’s funds was suspended and help businesses say 98 per cent of Afghans do not need sufficient meals and hundreds of thousands are vulnerable to hunger.

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Two Bodies Found in Plane’s Landing Gear at Fort Lauderdale Airport

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Two Bodies Found in Plane’s Landing Gear at Fort Lauderdale Airport

Two bodies were discovered in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue plane on Monday after a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the airline said in a statement on Tuesday.

JetBlue Flight 1801 departed Kennedy Airport in New York at 7:49 p.m. Monday and landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport at 11:10 p.m., according to flight tracker data. The bodies were discovered during a routine post-flight maintenance assessment of the plane, the airline said.

Paramedics pronounced the two people dead at the scene, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. It was unclear how long the people had been in the landing gear compartment.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages Kennedy Airport, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about how the individuals may have gained access to the aircraft.

Landing gear compartments, located under an aircraft’s wings and at the front of the plane, have long been used by people attempting to travel undetected on airplanes. The airline did not say whether the two people who were found dead on Monday were stowaways.

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Such attempts to hide in landing gear compartments have proven deadly in the past. The compartments open and close upon takeoff and landing to deploy and retract wheels and other landing components, and other stowaways have fallen to their deaths from the openings, sometimes landing in public spaces along flight paths.

Those who can stay within the compartment risk being crushed by landing gear when it is withdrawn back into the aircraft, along with other hazards, including severe temperatures, pressure changes and lack of oxygen. Many stowaways die of hypothermia.

As recently as Christmas Day, a body was discovered in a wheel well of a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Hawaii. In 2023, a man was found alive in a landing gear compartment after a commercial flight from Algeria to France, though he was suffering from severe hypothermia.

An investigation was underway on Tuesday to determine the identities of the two individuals discovered in Fort Lauderdale and how they might have accessed the aircraft before it departed from New York, JetBlue said.

“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” the airline said.

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Meta ends third party fact-checking scheme

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Meta ends third party fact-checking scheme

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Facebook owner Meta is ending its third party fact-checking programme and will instead rely on its users to flag misinformation.

The social media platform on Tuesday said it would “allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations” and “take a more personalised approach to political content”.

Starting in the US, Meta will move to a so-called “community notes” model, similar to the one employed by Elon Musk’s X, which allows users to add context to controversial or misleading posts. Meta itself will not write community notes.

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Jimmy Carter’s body set to be transferred today to Washington, D.C., for state funeral

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Jimmy Carter’s body set to be transferred today to Washington, D.C., for state funeral

Former President Jimmy Carter‘s casket is being transferred Tuesday to Washington, D.C., for the next phase of his state funeral.

Carter has been lying in repose in Atlanta, as part of six days of observances that began Saturday with a service at his boyhood home in Plains, Georgia. 

“This is somebody from a small town in south Georgia who was a peanut farmer who ultimately became the president of the United States,” said Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, at the Plains service on Saturday. “It’s a pretty remarkable American story.”

Carter, the 39th president, died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100 — living longer than any president in U.S. history. His beloved wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, died in November 2023.

On Tuesday, Carter’s body will be flown from Atlanta to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where his casket will be transferred with ceremony to a hearse. From there, a motorcade will proceed to the U.S. Navy Memorial, where his casket will then be transferred from a hearse to a horse-drawn caisson with ceremony.

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Jimmy Carter
Members of the joint services military honor guard conduct a changing of the guard near the casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, on Jan. 6, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. 

Erik S. Lesser / AP


The caisson will travel to the U.S. Capitol, where Carter’s casket will be carried up the stairs into the Rotunda by military body bearers. Members of Congress will be able to pay their respects during a service.

Beginning Tuesday afternoon, Carter will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until Thursday, when his funeral service will be held at the National Cathedral before his remains are flown back to Georgia. President Biden is will be delivering a eulogy at Thursday’s service, along with several others. President-elect Donald Trump said he will attend

There will be a final private service in Plains, and Carter will be buried next to Rosalynn Carter at his family’s peanut farm. 

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Full schedule of Tuesday’s events (all times Eastern): 

  • 9:30 a.m.: A departure ceremony from the Carter Presidential Center.
  • 10 a.m.: The motorcade departs for Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Georgia.
  • 10:40 a.m.: The late president and his family arrive at Dobbins Air Reserve Base and board Special Air Mission 39 after an arrival ceremony.
  • 11:15 a.m.: Special Air Mission 39 departs for Washington.
  • 12:45 p.m.: Special Air Mission 39 arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, and Carter’s remains are transferred with ceremony to the hearse.
  • 1:15 p.m.: The motorcade departs for the U.S. Navy Memorial.
  • 2 p.m.: The motorcade arrives at the U.S. Navy Memorial and Carter’s remains are transferred from a hearse to a horse drawn caisson with ceremony.
  • 2:15 p.m.: The funeral procession begins marching up to the U.S. Capitol via Pennsylvania Avenue, turning left onto Constitution Avenue.
  • 2:40 p.m.: Upon arrival at the U.S. Capitol, the late president is carried up the stairs by military body bearers and into the Rotunda.
  • 3 p.m.: Congress pays their respects during a service in the Rotunda.
  • 3:45 p.m.: Carter begins lying in state while the military maintains a guard of honor.
  • 7 p.m. to midnight: Lying in state opens to the public.

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