Afghanistan: Taliban burn ‘immoral’ musical instruments
The Taliban have burned musical instruments in Afghanistan, claiming music “causes moral corruption”.
Thousands of dollars worth of musical equipment went up in smoke on a bonfire on Saturday in western Herat province.
Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions, including on playing music in public.
Ahmad Sarmast, Afghanistan National Institute of Music founder, likened their actions to “cultural genocide and musical vandalism”.
“The people of Afghanistan have been denied artistic freedom… The burning of musical instruments in Herat is just a small example of the cultural genocide that is taking place in Afghanistan under the leadership of the Taliban,” Dr Sarmast, who is now based in Portugal, told the BBC.
China: 31,000 forced to flee homes in Beijing as Typhoon Doksuri brings heavy rains
Strongest storm to hit country in years has also caused widespread flooding and evacuations in province of Fujian
Two people are reported to have died in severe flooding that has engulfed parts of Beijing, as Typhoon Doksuri passed through China’s capital.
People’s Daily reported on Monday that two people were found unresponsive in a river in Mentougou, a district in west Beijing that has suffered some of the worst flooding. According to state broadcaster CCTV, more than 31,000 people have evacuated their homes in the city.
Heavy rain continued to fall in Beijing as well as in Hebei, Tianjin and eastern Shanxi as Doksuri dissipated over northern China, the China Meteorological Administration said.
Germany wants more women in the military
Women are underrepresented in Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr. A new initiative aims to change that, and it’s part of a broader effort to strengthen Germany’s military in the wake of the Ukraine conflict.
Germany wants you for the armed forces — especially if you’re a woman. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Cabinet adopted a series of measures this week to boost equal opportunity in the military.
The changes aim to align procedures in the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, with a recent strengthening of equal opportunity laws that apply to the government overall. The Bundeswehr needs people to fill its ranks, as part of Germany’s efforts to bolster its military capabilities in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Women are still underrepresented in the Bundeswehr,” Steffen Hebestreit, the government spokesperson, told reporters on Wednesday.
Migrants between life and death in Tunisia-Libya desert
In the unbearable midday heat, a Libyan patrol near the border with Tunisia comes across a black African man collapsed on the reddish-brown desert sand.
He is barely breathing, and officers try to revive him, gently, with a few drops of water on his lips.
The man is just one among hundreds of migrants arriving daily in Libya after being abandoned in the desert borderland by Tunisian security forces, according to Libyan border guards and the migrants themselves.
By the time they reach Libya, the migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are ready to drop from exhaustion, in temperatures that have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
AFP on Sunday witnessed the border guards rescue around 100 men and women from an uninhabited zone near Sebkhat al-Magta, a salt lake along the Libya-Tunisia border.
In the distant shimmering heat haze, six figures emerge, the latest to reach the area. They speak Arabic and say they have come from Tunisia.
Niger coup makers say ousted govt ‘authorised French attack to free Bazoum’
Coup makers have warned against foreign attempts to extract detained President Bazoum, saying it would result in bloodshed and chaos.
The coup leaders who seized power last week in Niger have alleged that the toppled government had authorised France to carry out an attack on the presidential palace to try to free President Mohamed Bazoum.
The claims were made on Monday by Colonel Amadou Abdramane, one of the coup plotters, on state television. He said the authorisation was signed by Foreign Minister Hassoumi Massoudou, acting as prime minister. The claims could not be independently verified.
The whereabouts of Massoudou and Bazoum remain unknown.
Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group
Elon Musk has called himself a free-speech absolutist and has praised “even my worst critics.” But now Twitter has threatened to sue a nonprofit known for sharply criticizing the platform for its handling of hate speech and misinformation.
In a July 20 letter shared publicly Monday, Twitter threatened to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accusing the group of a campaign to hurt Twitter by driving away its advertisers. The CCDH has published numerous reports about various social media companies’ approach to everything from vaccine misinformation to online racism and antisemitism.
The letter by Alex Spiro, an outside attorney representing Twitter owner Musk, alleges that CCDH has made “inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter and its operations” through its reports, which he argued lack scientific rigor.
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