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Afghanistan
British soldiers with NATO-led Resolute Support Mission arrive at the site of an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan March 6, 2020.
19,000: According to a BBC report, the personal details of 19,000 Afghans who had applied to move to the United Kingdom following the 2021 Taliban takeover were leaked in February 2022. The government learned of the data breach in August 2023 and created a secret resettlement scheme for those affected, as it was deemed they were at risk of harm by the Taliban. Under the program, 4,500 Afghans have relocated to the UK.
20: At least 20 Palestinians were killed in a stampede at an aid distribution site operated by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund on Wednesday. The UN says at least 875 people have lost their lives in the past six weeks alone while trying to access aid at these sites, with the majority reportedly gunned down by Israeli security forces. While Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians, it has said it is investigating the incidents.
$400 million: US Republican senators reached a budget deal on Tuesday that will preserve the $400-million President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, which helps to stem the spread of HIV in more than 50 countries and has reportedly saved 26 million lives. President Donald Trump had previously frozen funding for PEPFAR as part of his foreign-aid freeze.
2: A US citizen, Daniel Martindale, who spent more than two years spying on Ukrainian troops for Russia was awarded citizenship by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Martindale reportedly biked from Poland to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022, and surveyed key military positions and facilities from a Ukrainian village near the front line.
4: Our new robot umpire overlords have arrived! Last night’s Major League Baseball All-Star game – a meaningless but fun contest between the sport’s biggest stars – featured a trial system allowing players to appeal to a computerized system to challenge ball-and-strike calls made by human umps. Four out of the five challenges in the game were successful. The system could be introduced in meaningful games at the Major League level as soon as next season. Do we want this?
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to press before boarding Marine One to depart for Florida, on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 1, 2025.
$199: For the low low price of $199 you too can wear the scent of the US president. Donald Trump has just released a line of signature fragrances – “for patriots who never back down” – with names like “Fight Fight Fight” and “Victory 47.” For true enthusiasts there’s even a limited edition bottle featuring a golden (and deceptively svelte) statuette of Trump, costing a mere $249. Yes, by the way, it’s legal for the president to sell perfumes.
250,000: Over 250,000 Afghans left Iran last month, after the government ordered the expulsion of all undocumented Afghans – many of whom fled the Taliban – by July 6. The expulsions are part of a broader forcible repatriation effort by Iran and Pakistan that the UN’s Refugee Agency warns could destabilize an already fragile region.
39: More than 39 people have been killed so far in a factory fire in South India’s Telangana state. While the cause is still unclear, Sigachi Industries – the pharmaceutical company which operates the factory – has announced that it will suspend operations for 90 days.
115.9 (46.6): A heat wave is ripping across Europe, with temperatures soaring into the triple digits, reaching 115.9°F (46.6°C) in one Portuguese town on Sunday. The high temperatures are causing all manner of chaos: two Italians have died as a result, and heat-stoked wildfires are ravaging Turkey.71 Islamist militants have been killed along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in recent days.
Pakistan accused the infiltrators of working for the Pakistani Taliban, a sister terrorist organization to the group that now controls Afghanistan. Islamabad says the Pakistani Taliban is orchestrating a campaign of violence that has rocked the country in recent months with high-profile bombings and shootings
Pakistan’s information minister claimed that India was encouraging the Taliban to strike in a bid to distract Islamabad’s forces from a simultaneous confrontation in Kashmir. Both India and Pakistan partially occupy the disputed mountain region and have traded fire in small skirmishes in recent days after Islamist militants killed 26 civilians last week in the largest terrorist attack to hit the region in years. Indian forces have detained over 1,500 people and destroyed several houses linked to alleged perpetrators. China, a major ally of Pakistan’s, is urging restraint on both sides.
Afghan Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, pictured here at the anniversary event of the departure of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 28, 2022.
The Trump administration has dropped multimillion-dollar bounties on senior Afghan officials from the Haqqani network, a militant faction that carried out some of the deadliest attacks on American troops but has now positioned itself as a moderate wing within the Taliban government.
The “largely symbolic” move this week came days after the US sent its first major diplomatic mission to Kabul since the Taliban took power in 2021, securing the release of an American citizen detained for the past two years.
While the bounties have been lifted, the men, including Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, remain on the US list of “specially designated global terrorists.”
Thawing relations: While few countries formally recognize the Taliban’s government, a handful – including India, Turkey, and Tajikistan – have established limited ties with Kabul.
China was the first country to formally welcome a Taliban diplomat as the official Afghanistan ambassador last year. In the highest-profile state visit yet, Uzbekistan last summer sent its prime minister to Kabul. Last month, Japan received a delegation from the Taliban for the first time.
Mineral riches: Washington estimates that Afghanistan sits atop at least $1 trillion in mineral wealth, including copper, cobalt, and lithium, in addition to gems such as emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. Last year, Beijing stepped up efforts to help the Taliban tap what could be the world’s second biggest deposit of copper. Washington may now want to keep China from seizing a monopoly like the one it has over minerals in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“The Taliban’s war is against women,” Fawzia Koofi, former Afghan parliamentarian and women’s rights activist, told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis on the sidelines of the 2025 Munich Security Conference.
Nearly four years since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Koofi described a country in economic collapse, political repression, and worsening humanitarian conditions. With women erased from public life and banned from education and employment, Afghanistan’s economy has suffered a $3 billion loss—all while 90% of Afghans live in poverty.
Despite international condemnations, Koofi argued that diplomatic efforts have failed to bring meaningful change. “It is naïve to believe the Taliban will reverse their edicts. Their survival depends on suppression.” Instead, she sees division within the Taliban’s ranks as a possible opening for change, provided sustained international pressure weakens the group’s control. As global leaders debate their approach, Koofi warned against engaging the Taliban without clear principles. “We don’t need to fix the Taliban. We need to fix Afghanistan.”
This interview, conducted by Tony Maciulis, is part of the Global Stage series at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Hard Numbers: Rebels advance in DRC, Yuge trade corridor, Tragic flooding strikes US, UN seeks billions for Sudan, Taliban visits Japan, Plane crashes in Toronto
Congolese civilians who fled from Bukavu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, following clashes between M23 rebels and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, carry their belongings as they gather at the Rusizi border crossing point to return home, in Rusizi district, Rwanda, on Feb. 17, 2025.
350,000: M23 rebels are meeting little resistance in their advance on Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, further challenging Kinshasa’s rule. This move comes after the Rwandan-backed rebels seized control of Goma late last month and just two days after the UN warned that unrest in the country has displaced 350,000 people.
600: Israel and India are working on a free trade agreement they hope to announce as early as 2025. Israeli and Indian business leaders held over 600 meetings in New Delhi last week, on cybersecurity, smart agriculture, renewable energy, digital health, and water technologies, AI, and big data. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump continues to push for the rail and shipping corridor advocated by his predecessor, Joe Biden, to connect India to the Middle East, Europe, and the US, which he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi call “one of the greatest trade routes in all of history.”
10: Severe flooding claimed the lives of at least 10 people in the United States over the weekend, including nine in Kentucky and one in Georgia. Storms walloped Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina, with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear saying that nearly 1,000 people had to be rescued.
6 billion: The United Nations announced on Monday that it wants to raise $6 billion for Sudan to help alleviate one of the world’s worst hunger crises caused by nearly two years of civil war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The need, the agency says, has increased 40% from last year’s appeal.
1: While Afghanistan’s Taliban government makes regular visits to countries close to home, such as Russia, China, and parts of Central Asia, this weekend it went further afield. The Taliban sent its first-ever delegation to Japan on Sunday to seek humanitarian support and to discuss establishing diplomatic ties with Japanese leaders. One Afghan leader said that the Taliban seeks “dignified interaction with the world for a strong, united, advanced, prosperous, developed Afghanistan.” Japan’s foreign ministry has not commented yet on the visit.
18: A Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis crash-landed at Toronto's Pearson airport on Monday, injuring at least 18 people, three critically. The plane crashed and flipped upon landing at the airport, which is located just outside Toronto. All 80 passengers and crew are accounted for, and crews are on hand to investigate what happened.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio embraces Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo at the end of their joint news conference at the National Palace in Guatemala City, on Feb. 5, 2025.
40: During a press conference with visiting Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo announced Wednesday that his country will accept 40% more deportation flights from the United States. Guatemala also agreed to the creation of a task force for border control aimed at fighting “all forms of transnational crime.” Under the previous administration, Guatemala received roughly 14 deportation flights per week.
20: President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that aims to bar federal funding for schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, claiming it violates Title IX. The order conflicts with laws in 20 states protecting transgender people from discrimination and allowing them to play on sports teams. It remains to be seen whether any of those states will file lawsuits to try to override the order.
2: Alphabet — Google’s parent company — has updated its AI principles, removing a previous pledge not to use AI for defense or surveillance purposes that “cause or are likely to cause overall harm.” Google’s head of AI on Tuesday said the move reflected a changing world and that it “supports national security.” The news comes just two months after AI leader OpenAI made a similar policy change.
12: In another blow to women’s rights in Afghanistan, officers from the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture on Tuesday raided and shut down the country’s only women’s radio station and arrested two employees. The Taliban, who closed at least 12 media outlets last year, blamed the suspension on violations of broadcasting policy. Kabul-based Radio Begum was not only run by women but also released content aimed at women’s education.
80: Results from a Jewish People Policy Institute Israel Index poll this week show that approximately 80% of Israeli Jews support President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Gaza’s entire population. The same poll found that less than 15% believe the plan is immoral.
2,000: Scientists used X-ray imaging and AI to virtually “unwrap” a scroll uncovered in Herculaneum, Pompeii’s less famous neighbor that was also buried in the infamous 79 CE eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. It was announced Wednesday that researchers from Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the Vesuvius Challenge were the first to peek inside the scroll in nearly 2,000 years — and while more time is needed to fully decipher the full text, they believe it contains a work of philosophy.