Taliban Continues Clampdown on Afghan Women’s Rights
Happy Thursday! Days after old lyrics the rapper Drake wrote as a teenager were found in a dumpster outside a Memphis furniture store, an auction house is attempting to sell the loose-leaf pieces of paper for at least $20,000.
Just imagine how much an early 2019 draft of The Morning Dispatch would fetch …
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Due to a reported explosion of new infections in recent weeks, the Centers for Disease Control announced Wednesday that starting January 5, the United States will require all travelers from China, Hong Kong, or Macau over the age of two to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test from within 48 hours of their departure. The CDC said China’s “lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data” rendered the move necessary.
- The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that, after lobbying from the U.S. dairy industry, imported baby formula will once again be subject to tariffs in 2023. Congress voted over the summer to temporarily suspend the tariffs—which can reach as high as 17.5 percent—in an effort to boost supply amid nationwide shortages, which are expected to continue into next year.
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday it had banned imports from three companies that, according to an agency investigation, use North Korean labor in their supply chains. The 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act prohibits the importation of goods produced by North Korean nationals, unless “clear and convincing evidence” exists proving the goods were not made with “convict labor, forced labor, or indentured labor under penal sanctions.”
New Taliban Restrictions Leave Afghan Women ‘Buried Alive‘
Hasti, a third-year political studies student in Afghanistan, was preparing for a final exam last week when she heard that the Taliban had shut universities to female students. She spent the evening crying instead of studying, and armed Taliban guards turned away young women at the campus gate in Kabul when they arrived to sit exams.
“It is very hard for me, because right now I have to stop my studying and my goals are not achievable,” Hasti told Reuters. “Women and girls are being buried alive.”
