The military victory for the Taliban was confirmed by the deputy governor of Samangan Province, home to the city of Aibak. Speaking to AFP, Afghanistan official Sefatullah Samangani declared that “the Taliban have captured the city of Aibak and have complete control over it.”

The Taliban formally took control of the city on Monday, after a “senator surrendered” and asked Afghanistan to withdraw its forces from the area to avoid further conflict.

being woman

From the time we are born, we are "educated". This involves a daily routine of do's and don'ts in which we learn acceptable behaviour and moral conduct. In most civilisations, religious beliefs have had a great role in making sure we follow the codes — including the secular tenets. We are free to think we are told, but we have little freedom outside the tight square. Even these days tree climbing for kids is a no-no because of insurance premiums.

dissent

Shut up and submit” is now the favorite Covid cure of some of America’s leading progressives. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist, revealed on Tuesday that since freedom is a mirage, people have no good reason not to comply with endless government commands. Unfortunately, punitive panaceas are increasingly popular among both politicians and pundits.

boris

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has been at odds with the weather recently, reportedly didn't enjoy his trip to Scotland's Applecross peninsula in August last year, when most foreign travel destinations remained closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

PM Boris Johnson nearly drowned during his short holiday in the Applecross peninsula, when his was lost at sea on a paddleboard, according to The Times.

abc

One of the federal government’s most vocal critics of the ABC — who claims it is biased and pushing an increasingly “woke” agenda — has admitted he doesn’t actually watch it.

South Australian Liberal senator Alex Antic has accused the public broadcaster of being “bound and gagged by left-wing ideology” and growing “more recalcitrant every day”.

mueller

We live in the age of deceit. This has been one of the main tenets on this site: expose deceit as much as possible. Politics and religions bathe in the sea of deceit. By whatever discussion and "evidence", we are made to accept some falsehoods when we get off the merry-go-round of information. Thus when we scratch our smooth pink surface, the skin, we discover our liver has cirrhosis (or is a circus according to the spell-check)...

dumbo

 Better late than never: most Americans now believe that invading Afghanistan was a mistake. But what good does it do to recognize a screw-up unless you learn from it? 

not the GS

In an article about science of the Gulf Stream, entitled: "Gulf Stream system threatens collapse, study finds" the image above used by DW (deutsche welle) is that of the currents along the Japanese coast in the Pacific and it is clearly marked as "A NASA visualization of the Gulf Stream". with the caption: "Climate change is behind the factors threatening the health of the Atlantic current system"

fd

Chinese government propaganda newspaper China Daily has targeted an Australian journalist’s coverage of the contested origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in a slickly-produced video published on Twitter.

The Australian senior journalist Sharri Markson has played a key role in raising the profile of the so-called lab-leak theory, which centres on the assertion that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.

trump

I believe Michael R. Isikoff is a non-believer in conspiracy theories.

nsw

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state must learn to live with COVID-19 as the number of people in hospital with the virus doubled within a week and the nation’s chief medical officer called for a circuit-breaker to halt the spread across Sydney.

As NSW reported a record 291 new cases on Friday, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said low vaccination rates, non-compliance and the speed of diagnosis highlighted the need to reconsider the state’s strategy.

fishing

At the end of July US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin returned to Asia to resolve one of the key foreign policy challenges facing all the US administrations of the last 10 years – the continuous growth of China’s influence, both in the region and globally.

It is possible that the joint presence in the region of the heads of foreign policy and defense may be a concrete sign of what President Biden (as well as his predecessors) has referred to as the principle of providing “military support” for US foreign policy.

rats

Canberra researchers are tickling rats in a bid to boost their emotional wellbeing and improve their interactions with humans.

orban

parkrort

Scott Morrison has defended his government’s controversial car park grants program, saying the minister was authorised to make the decisions.

But the Prime Minister did not deny his office had worked on a list of marginal seats to focus on for funding during the 2019 election campaign.