Afghan women raise their voices in song in online protests against Taliban's bid to silence them
CBSN
Afghan women have turned to social media to protest the latest draconian edict issued by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, which the Biden administration says is aimed at erasing them completely from society. Women both inside and outside the country have posted poignant videos of themselves singing — a defiant response to the Taliban's latest restrictive laws prohibiting women and girls from using their voices or showing their faces outside their homes.
As CBS News reported, Article 13 of the 114-page law adopted by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in August states that if a woman leaves her own home, "she is obligated to hide her voice, face, and body."
The Biden administration said the law sought to remove women completely from public life in Afghanistan and it has expressed growing frustration with the country's Taliban regime, which swept back to power in the summer of 2021 as U.S. and allied forces pulled out in a chaotic withdrawal.
Tel Aviv — Israeli military strikes killed more than 600 people in the Gaza Strip in the first 10 days of 2025, pushing the death toll over 46,000 since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian territory's health ministry, and one new estimate suggests it could be much higher. Israel launched the war after Hamas carried out its unprecedented terrorist attack, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.
Kano, Nigeria — Authorities in northern Nigeria's largest city have begun evacuating more than 5,000 street children seen as a "security threat" and a growing concern as an economic crisis forces more to fend for themselves. The Hisbah, a regional police force tasked with enforcing Islamic Sharia law, have carried out midnight raids on motor parks, markets and street corners in the regional capital, Kano, since the beginning of the year, evacuating children as they sleep.
Berlin — Poland's President Andrzej Duda has called for a special exemption to let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend events in the country marking 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, without facing the risk of arrest under an International Criminal Court warrant. Poland will host a memorial service eight decades after Allied forces seized the notorious camp from German troops and liberated the surviving prisoners on January 27, 1945.
Ramstein Air Base, Germany — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday said Donald Trump's return to the White House would open "a new chapter" and reiterated a call for Western allies to send troops to help "force Russia to peace." He made the plea as the Biden administration announced what will likely be its last major military aid package for Ukraine — a promise of weapons and other support worth $500 million.
Paris — Jean-Marie Le Pen, the historic leader of France's far-right political movement, died Tuesday at the age of 96, the French news agency AFP said, citing his family. Le Pen, who had been in a care facility for several weeks, died Tuesday "surrounded by his loved ones," the family said in a statement.