Kabul (AFP) – Women municipal workers will not be returning to work in Kabul, unless they occupy “positions that men could not fill or that were not for men”, says Molavi Hamdullah Nomani, the Taliban member who holds the post of Mayor of Kabul. The other women must “stay at home” and will be paid. In Kabul municipality, 27% of employees are women.
New York (AFP) – “We need to restore confidence,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says as about 100 world leaders are expected to attend the UN General Assembly in New York next week in a hybrid format as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Guterres says the world is “in a very dangerous situation” and adds that discrepancies in the rates of vaccination against Covid-19 between richer and poorer countries are “absolutely unacceptable.”
Ciudad Acuña (Mexico) (AFP) – Migrants, many of them Haitian, cross the Rio Grande from Mexico heading towards the US border city of Del Rio, as Texas State Troopers watch on. Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano had told reporters there were over 14,000 migrants “waiting to be detained.” Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano had told reporters there were over 14,000 migrants “waiting to be detained.”
Fagradalsfjall (Iceland) (AFP) – It has been six months since the volcanic eruption currently mesmerising spectators near Reykjavik first began, making it the longest Iceland has witnessed in more than 50 years.
Atlantic Ocean, United States (United States) (AFP) – Four SpaceX tourists land in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida after spending three days in space, successfully concluding the first orbital mission in history with no professional astronauts on board.
Paris (AFP) – French tightrope walker Nathan Paulin makes his way across a 600-metre long slackline between the Eiffel Tower and Theatre National de Chaillot in Paris – a feat he himself describes as “not as easy as I thought”.
Moscow (AFP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin votes online in a parliamentary election, after he announced this week he was self-isolating due to a coronavirus outbreak at the Kremlin.
Islamabad (AFP) – UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi calls on the international community to help prevent a failure of state in Afghanistan, warning such a collapse could trigger a refugee crisis.
Moscow (AFP) – Russian leader Vladimir Putin calls on the Taliban to keep its word to normalise life for Afghans and prevent violence spilling over into neighbouring countries at the summit of a Moscow and Beijing-led bloc.
Vienna (AFP) – The first civil lawsuit has begun in a court in Vienna over a notorious outbreak of coronavirus at the popular ski resort of Ischgl in March 2020, where thousands of people from 45 countries claim to have become infected.
Berlin (AFP) – Anas Modamani, a young Syrian who had just arrived in Germany, saw a limousine and decided it was his chance for a selfie with a woman he then believed to be a “famous actress”. Within hours the snapshot of the 18-year-old refugee and the chancellor became a symbol of Merkel’s generous migration policy in the face of what she called a humanitarian emergency. It also changed Anas Modamani’s life forever, for better or for worse.
Helsinki (AFP) – A new ‘rage room’ in Finland’s capital allowing clients to vent their post-pandemic anger with a baseball bat is proving a smash hit among the Nordic country’s women. The venture has been fully booked since opening this summer, with frustrations caused by the pandemic the main causes of clients’ anger, but with a divorce-themed smash-up room also proving popular.
