TALIBAN BREAK PROMISE ON EDUCATING AFGHAN GIRLS
KABUL Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers unexpectedly decided against reopening schools Wednesday to girls above the sixth grade, reneging on a promise and opting to appease their hard-line base at the expense of further alienating the international community.
The surprising decision, confirmed by a Taliban official, is bound to disrupt efforts by the Taliban to win recognition from potential international donors at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis. The international community has urged Taliban leaders to reopen schools and give women their right to public space.
The reversal was so sudden that the Education Ministry was caught off guard . Some girls in higher grades returned to schools, only to be told to go home.
California man accused in Capitol riot granted asylum in Belarus.
A U.S. citizen wanted by the FBI on charges including assaulting police officers at the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been granted asylum in Belarus, state media for the repressive Eastern European country announced.
Evan Neumann, a former California resident whom prosecutors in Washington have accused of more than a dozen crimes, including striking police officers and using a metal barricade as a battering ram, left the United States soon after the riot last year.
After crossing into Belarus near the southwestern city of Pinsk in August, Neumann formally applied for asylum, according to state media. Belarusian authorities confirmed the request had been granted, airing footage on Belta, the state news agency, that appeared to show Neumann, 49, formally signing an immigration document.
Abel Prize goes to New York mathematician.
Dennis P. Sullivan, a professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University and the City University of New York Graduate Center, is the winner of this year’s Abel Prize — the equivalent of a Nobel in mathematics.
In its citation, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the organization that administers the Abel, said Sullivan was honored “for his groundbreaking contributions to topology in its broadest sense and in particular its algebraic, geometric and dynamical aspects.”
Supreme Court tosses legislative voting maps.
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out Wisconsin state legislative maps that were preferred by the state’s Democratic governor and selected by Wisconsin’s top court, a victory for Republicans that makes it unclear what the boundaries will be for the fall election.
But while the justices in an unsigned opinion threw out voting maps the Wisconsin Supreme Court had selected for the state Assembly and Senate, they left in place state congressional maps.
The U.S. Supreme Court has signaled it may significantly change the ground rules that govern redistricting. Last month it stopped a ruling by a panel of federal judges requiring Alabama to redraw its maps to give African-americans a better shot at selecting their representatives, saying it may need to revise the longstanding case law that governs that.
The court declined to overrule state supreme courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to block the maps those bodies ordered be implemented in 2022, but four conservative justices wrote that they want to rule on the legal theory that state legislatures, rather than state courts, have supreme power in drawing maps.