Taliban leadership pledges that all girls will be in school soon
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers say they hope to be able to open all schools for girls across the country after late March, their spokesman told The Associated Press on Saturday, offering the first timeline for addressing a key demand of the international community.
Since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, girls in most of Afghanistan have not been allowed back to school beyond grade 7. The international community, reluctant to formally recognize a Taliban-run administration, is wary they could impose similar harsh measures as during their previous rule 20 years ago. At the time, women were banned from education, work and public life.
Zabihullah Mujahid, who is also the Taliban’s deputy minister of culture and information, said their education departments are looking to open classrooms for all girls and women following the Afghan New Year, which starts on March 21. Afghanistan, like neighboring Iran, observes the Islamic solar Hijri Shamsi calendar.
Education for girls and women “is a question of capacity,” Mujahid said in the interview.
Girls and boys must be completely segregated in schools, he said, adding that the biggest obstacle so far has been finding or building enough dorms, or hostels, where girls could stay while going to school. In heavily populated areas, it is not enough to have separate classrooms for boys and girls — separate school buildings are needed, he said.
“We are not against education,” Mujahid said, speaking at a Kabul office building with marble floors that once housed Afghan attorney general’s offices and which the Taliban have adopted for their culture and information ministry.
The Taliban’s dictates so far have been erratic, varying from province to province. Girls have not been allowed back to classrooms in state-run schools beyond grade 7, except in about 10 of the country’s 34 provinces. In the capital, Kabul, private universities and high schools have continued to operate uninterrupted. Most are small, and the classes have always been segregated.
The international community has been skeptical of Taliban announcements, saying it will judge them by their actions — even as it scrambles to provide billions of dollars to avert a humanitarian catastrophe that the U.N. chief this week warned could endanger the lives of millions.
Jersey fire: A dramatic fire near a chemical plant burned through the night and into Saturday in northern New Jersey but led to no evacuation orders or serious injuries — just heavy smoke that was seen and smelled in nearby New York City.
The fire at Majestic Industries and the Qualco chemical plant in Passaic was in buildings housing plastics, pallets and chlorine, officials said, but catastrophe was averted.
Crews battled pockets of the blaze into the afternoon, Passaic Mayor Hector Lora said, but it was contained.
The fire was prevented from reaching the main chemical plant, which could have endangered the densely populated New York City suburbs of New Jersey, Lora said.
Nearby residents were advised to close their windows but were not
required to evacuate, with officials saying air quality remained acceptable and would be monitored.
Greece protests: A protest march by 1,500 far-left activists in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki turned violent Saturday toward its end when some protesters threw firebombs and rocks at riot police, who responded with stun grenades and tear gas.
Police prevented the marchers from reaching their intended destination, the campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Thirty people were detained, of whom 27 will face charges, police said.
The march was the culmination of a week of protests over the New Year’s Eve eviction of activists who had occupied a room at the university’s biology department for 34 years.
Prince estate: The six-year legal battle over pop superstar Prince’s estate has
ended, and the process of distributing the artist’s wealth could begin next month.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the Internal Revenue Service and the estate’s administrator, Comerica Bank & Trust, agreed to value Prince’s estate at $156.4 million, a figure that the artist’s heirs have also accepted.
The valuation dwarfs Comerica’s earlier $82.3 million appraisal.
The IRS in 2020 had valued the estate at $163.2 million.
Prince, who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016, did not leave a will.
Since then, lawyers and consultants have been paid tens of millions of dollars to administer his estate and come up with a plan for its distribution.
Two of Prince’s six sibling heirs, Alfred Jackson and John R. Nelson, have since died. Two others are in their 80s.
The estate will be almost
evenly divided between a well-funded New York music company — Primary Wave — and the three oldest of the music icon’s six heirs or their families.
Haiti president’s assassination: Haiti’s National Police said Saturday that a former senator sought in the killing of President Jovenel Moise has been arrested in Jamaica.
Police spokesman Gary Desrosiers told The Associated Press that John Joel Joseph was in custody. No further information was immediately available.
Meanwhile, Jamaica Police Superintendent Stephanie Lindsay told the AP that other people were arrested along with Joseph and that authorities were trying to determine whether they are family members.
She said they were arrested before dawn Saturday and declined to share other details.
Migrant caravan: Some 600
migrants hoping to reach the United States set off in a caravan Saturday from the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula.
Hundreds of young men, women and children, most from Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba, had gathered overnight and early morning at the city’s central bus station.
Shortly after dawn, they set out walking toward the Guatemalan border in hopes that traveling in a group
would be safer or cheaper than trying to hire smugglers or trying on their own. A smaller second group soon joined.
Large numbers of migrants, many from Central America and Haiti, have reached the U.S. border over the past year.
The U.S. Border Patrol has said it had more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the Mexican border between September 2020 and the same month in 2021 — more than four times the previous fiscal year.