Afghanistan

The Taliban’s governance remains deeply controversial. Since returning to power in 2021, the group has imposed sweeping restrictions on women and girls and enforcing strict social rules.

Mujahid clarified that the Taliban would show sympathy and possibly cooperate with Iran if requested, but the group is not committing to joining a retaliatory war against the US.

Under the Taliban’s penal code, which includes 119 articles, published on January 7, 2026, the penalty for animal abuse outweighs that of a serious case of domestic violence.

Firefighting teams arrived at the scene in Tehran's Jannat Abad neighborhood, attempting to extinguish the fire. It remains unclear if the fire was directly related to anti-regime protest activity.

State broadcaster Pakistan Television reported that members of an armed group carried out coordinated attacks at more than a dozen locations, including Quetta, Nushki, Dalbandin, Pasni, and Gwadar. 

Amid heavy snowfall, tens of thousands of families have evacuated Pakistan’s Tirah Valley, driven by warnings of military operations against Islamist terrorists in the region.

Americans are being held in near-solitary confinement by a Taliban counterintelligence unit whose personnel include former detainees from Guantanamo Bay and the US-run Bagram prison.

In recent years, the Sulaymaniyah governorate in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan has become a hub for Iranian narco trafficking.

President Trump said of NATO, “They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”

The great game has begun for Israel, Hamas, the US, Qatar, Turkey, and others to try to reframe the future of Gaza conflict and the Middle East.