Taliban to talk prisoner releases under U.S. deal Cuomo OKs ‘no mask, no service’ business rule

KABUL, Afghanistan — A five-member Taliban team was in Kabul on Thursday to follow up on this week’s prisoner release by the Afghan government that saw hundreds of insurgents freed. It was the single largest such release since a U.S.-Taliban deal earlier this year spelling an exchange of detainees between the warring sides.

Javid Faisal, an Afghan national security spokesman, and Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen both confirmed that a Taliban team was in the Afghan capital, without providing details.

Earlier this week, Shaheen had said from Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office, that the insurgents planned to free “a remarkable number” of Afghan officials and others they hold captive.

Later on Thursday, Shaheen tweeted that the Taliban released another 80 Afghan soldiers and government officials from their jails in northern Baghlan and Kunduz provinces, bringing to 347 the number of captives freed so far by the Taliban. With the release of hundreds of Taliban on Tuesday, the government has freed 2,000 insurgents.

The prisoner release is part of a deal signed by the United States and the Taliban in late February, designed to bring peace to Afghanistan and allow American soldiers to return home, ending America’s longest military engagement.

NEW YORK — Store owners who require customers to wear face coverings will now be backed up by an executive order from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The promised executive order authorizing businesses to deny entry to people without face covering comes as outbreak-related restrictions on shops are beginning to loosen, though not yet in New York City.

“We’re giving the store owners the right to say, ‘If you’re not wearing a mask, you can’t come in.’” Cuomo said at his daily briefing. “That store owner has a right to protect themselves. That store owner has a right to protect the other patrons in that store.”

Many stores already require people to wear masks to enter, but Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said the right of business owners to do that had

not been made explicit in law. He said the order also gives local police the ability to enforce the rule.