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Hurricane Hanna battered the south Texas coast with blistering winds and crashing waves into the early hours of Sunday, leaving a large area already badly hit by COVID-19 bracing for torrential downpours and potential flash floods. Hanna came ashore on Padre Island on Saturday afternoon as a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, and later made a second landfall in Eastern Kennedy County, Texas. Weakening as it headed west over land, Hanna was a tropical storm by Sunday morning, with its center about 40 miles (65 km) from Mcallen, Texas and about 65 miles (105 km) from Monterrey, Mexico, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Two men stand near a seawall as Hurricane Hanna makes landfall, July 25, 2020, in Corpus Christi, Texas.At 0400 CDT (0900 GMT), Hanna’s top sustained winds were around 60 miles per hour (95 kph), it said. It was forecast to further lose steam as it moved across Texas and northeastern Mexico. The center canceled storm surge warning it had issued for the Texas coast but said Hanna could dump upward of 18 inches (45 cm) of rain in the area through Monday. “This rain will produce, life-threatening flash flooding, rapid rises on small streams, and isolated minor to moderate river flooding,” the NHC said. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said during a Saturday briefing that the storm was especially challenging as it was sweeping through an area of the state that has been the worst hit by the coronavirus. He issued a disaster declaration for 32 counties in Texas that were in the storm’s path. The storm was not expected to affect offshore oil and gas production. Energy companies have not evacuated workers or shut down production from their Gulf of Mexico platforms because of Hanna. The Texas area struck by Hanna has struggled to contain outbreaks of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Cases along the state’s coast have soared into the tens of thousands. More than 400 people in Corpus Christi were hospitalized with the illness on Friday, according to city data. 
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French authorities have charged a Rwandan church volunteer who confessed to setting the 15-century Nantes cathedral on fire.The local prosecutor’s office said that the 39-year-old asylum-seeker who has lived in France for several years, was detained Saturday for a second time.  He had been held for a day, questioned and released immediately after the fire on July 18.Prosecutor Pierre Sennès, said the suspect admitted being responsible for the fire that started in three different places at the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul after initially denying it.Sennès said in a statement that the man has been charged with “destruction and damage by fire,” and faced up to 10 years in prison and $175,000 in fines. French authorities have not identified the man and gave no motive for the arson.His lawyer, identified in the media as Quentin Chabert, said his client bitterly regretted his acts. 
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At least one person has died after someone shot into a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the southwestern U.S. city of Austin, Texas.Emergency services officials say they are looking for other victims following the Saturday night shooting.Police say they are treating the incident as a homicide.
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For Shelly Hutchinson, a Georgia state representative, the message of Stone Mountain, the nation’s largest Confederate monument, is personal.The 250-meter-high mountain of quartz monzonite bears the largest bas-relief carving in the world, featuring the likenesses of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, in a grandiose piece of art plainly visible from a nearby highway.This homage to the Civil War – the war Americans fought at least in part over the right to own slaves — is located in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, where more than one-third of the population is black. And U.S. census numbers show that the village of Stone Mountain, within sight of the huge carving, has a population that is nearly three-quarters black.“Kids (are) molded by their environment,” Hutchinson said in a recent phone interview. “If you have schoolchildren who drive past that memorial or any other Confederate memorial, the message is that the Confederacy means more than you do.”Yet, there are others, like Martin O’Toole of Atlanta’s Sons of Confederate Veterans, who say getting rid of Confederate monuments would be akin to trying to erase history, and discussion of their significance is normal.“Diversity of opinion on these matters is essential,” he said in an email to VOA.Since 1915, the mountain has been a gathering place for the white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan, and other groups like it. For decades, the Klan met annually at the site, with the blessing of the family who owned it. Even now that the mountain is state property, historic Confederate flags fly at the site, and some visitors bring their own.This July 20, 2020, photo shows the statue of General Robert E. Lee at Antietam battlefield in Maryland. The National Park Service covered it after it was vandalized July 16, 2020. (M. Melton/VOA)Not only would it be difficult to destroy or alter a gigantic memorial literally carved in stone, but it is also protected by Georgia state law. When lawmakers removed Confederate imagery from the Georgia state flag in 2003, they added a compromise: a provision that Stone Mountain’s tribute to the Confederacy remain, as is, in perpetuity. Hutchinson has introduced legislation to get that changed – in fact, to outlaw Confederate memorials outright on Georgia public land, all of which are now protected by a law passed last year in Georgia’s Legislature.Georgia is not alone in passing laws to protect its monuments. A number of other Southern states – North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and until recently Virginia — had similar laws. They apply to all historical monuments, not just those related to the Civil War. They protect the even the most controversial of monuments from being hastily taken down.Hutchinson said the effort to hang on to Confederate symbols indicates, to her, that it is motivated by more than reverence for history. “This is a passive-aggressive way of saying, ‘We still have the upper hand,’” she said.Similarly, O’Toole questions the motivation of those who say the monuments are upsetting and should be taken down.“What monuments are agreed upon by all Americans?” he said. “What the censors are demanding is either destruction of the monuments they disagree with or ‘contextualization’ markers to promote their own viewpoints.”He suggested providing contextualization markers for all monuments, “not just Confederate or traditional American memorials.”Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a House subcommittee held a hearing on what to do about Confederate memorials on public lands – specifically, several in Washington, D.C., and a statue of General Lee at a Civil War battlefield in Maryland, all of which have been vandalized recently by supporters of Black Lives Matter.An image stating ‘No America Without Black America’ is projected on to the pedestal of the statue of confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue, July 22, 2020, in Richmond, Va.Robert W. Lee, a North Carolina pastor and descendant of General Robert E. Lee, told lawmakers that he supports removal of the statue of his ancestor in Maryland and the many others like it across the South.He read quotes from General Lee’s own congressional testimony, in which the Confederate general stated plainly that he did not believe Blacks were as capable of learning or of voting intelligently as whites.Following those comments with his own, Robert W. Lee said, “For us to continue to celebrate a man who questioned the education, disparaged the right to vote … and had previously fought for the continued enslavement of Africans on the North American continent, is an affront to those now suffering under the continued weight of oppression.”At that same hearing, Joseph Loconte of the Heritage Foundation criticized those who vandalized the monuments, saying, “This is not the way to bind up the nation’s wounds.”Loconte also said historians like himself study the past “in order for … history to speak its truths and warnings and lessons into our present reality,” he said. “In the history of the world, that is quite a story – a story worth remembering and defending.”Meanwhile, the times keep changing.Late Thursday, the state of Virginia swiftly and quietly removed all Confederate memorials from its state Capitol building in the city of Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy. And Fairfax County, Virginia, just announced it will change the name of its Robert E. Lee High School to that of John R. Lewis, a Black civil rights leader and longtime U.S. congressman who died last week. 
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Seattle police declared a riot Saturday following large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and deployed flash bangs and pepper spray to try to clear an area near where weeks earlier people had set up an “occupied protest zone” that stretched for several blocks.Via Twitter, police said they had made multiple arrests and were “investigating a possible explosive damage” to the walls of the city’s East Precinct police station. Authorities said rocks, bottles and mortars were thrown at officers as they attempted to clear the area.Earlier, protesters in Seattle broke through a fence where a youth detention facility was being built, with some people setting a fire and damaging a portable trailer, authorities said.Thousands of protesters had initially gathered peacefully near downtown Seattle on Saturday in a show of solidarity with fellow demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, where tensions with federal law enforcement have boiled over during protests stemming from the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police.Initially there was no sign of law enforcement near the Seattle march. Later, Seattle Police said via Twitter that about a dozen people breached the construction site for the King County youth detention facility. Also, police said protesters broke out windows at a King County court facility.Protesters march near the King County Juvenile Detention Center, July 25, 2020, in Seattle in support of Black Lives Matter and against police brutality and racial injustice.Earlier this week King County Executive Dow Constantine, in response to long-standing demands by community activists, said he would work to eliminate youth detention centers in the county by 2025.After the fire at the construction site authorities said they had ordered people to leave a different area, in a section of Capitol Hill, near downtown, where the East Precinct is.Earlier this month police cleared the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” zone after two fatal shootings. A group had occupied several blocks around a park for about two weeks following standoffs and clashes that were part of the nationwide unrest over Floyd’s death.Prior to Saturday’s protests Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best had announced officers would be armed with pepper spray and other weapons, promising officers would not use tear gas and urging demonstrators to remain peaceful.”In the spirit of offering trust and full transparency, I want to advise you that SPD officers will be carrying pepper spray and blast balls today, as would be typical for events that carry potential to include violence,” Best said.At an emergency hearing on Friday night, U.S. District Judge James Robart granted a request from the federal government to block Seattle’s new law prohibiting police from using pepper spray, blast balls and similar weapons.The temporary restraining order halts the law that the Seattle City Council passed unanimously last month after confrontations that have largely been peaceful but were occasionally marked by violence, looting and highway shutdowns. The law intended to deescalate tensions between police and demonstrators was set to take effect on Sunday.But the U.S. Department of Justice, citing Seattle’s long-standing police consent decree, successfully argued that banning the use of crowd control weapons could actually lead to more police use of force, leaving them only with more deadly weapons. 
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After months of denying it had any coronavirus infections, North Korea has reported its first suspected case, blaming an alleged defector who had recently reentered the country.State media said a runaway who was “suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus” had left for South Korea three years ago but returned July 19 “after illegally crossing the demarcation line” that separates the two Koreas.The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said an “uncertain result was made from several medical checkups of the secretion of that person’s upper respiratory organ and blood,” but it did not say whether the patient had undergone a coronavirus test.“The person was put under strict quarantine as a primary step and all the persons in Kaesong City who contacted that person and those who have been to the city in the last five days are being thoroughly investigated, given medical examination and put under quarantine,” it said.North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened a politburo meeting Saturday during which he acknowledged “the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country,” KCNA said.FILE – Students wearing face masks take a class at the Ryongwang Senior Middle School in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 3, 2020. After months of denying it had any coronavirus infections, North Korea reported its first suspected case July 25, 2020.Kim, the report said, declared a state of emergency in the affected area and “took the preemptive measure of totally blocking Kaesong City and isolating each district and region from the other within July 24 afternoon just after receiving the report on it.”North Korea had long insisted it was coronavirus-free, even though a wide range of outside experts said that was practically impossible. The country shares a long border with China, where the virus originated. Although North Korea moved quickly to formally close the border, much of the interaction across that border is informal and hard to control.An outbreak in North Korea would be extremely dangerous, since many parts of the country are impoverished and lack an adequate health care system.International aid groups have sent medical supplies, including face masks and thousands of coronavirus test kits, to North Korea since the worldwide coronavirus pandemic began.The delivery of that medical aid has been complicated by export controls, border closures and international sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear program.Since the coronavirus emerged last December in China, more than 200 countries have reported cases. Worldwide, nearly 16 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, and more than 640,000 people have died.
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Peter Green, the dexterous blues guitarist who led the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in a career shortened by psychedelic drugs and mental illness, has died at 73.A law firm representing his family, Swan Turton, announced the death in a statement Saturday. It said he died peacefully in his sleep? this weekend. A further statement will be issued in the coming days.Green, to some listeners, was the best of the British blues guitarists of the 1960s. B.B. King once said Greenhas the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”Green also made a mark as a composer with Albatross,'' and as a songwriter withOh Well” and Black Magic Woman.''  He crashed out of the band in 1971. Even so, Mick Fleetwood said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2017 that Green deserves the lion's share of the credit for the band's success.Peter was asked why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, Well, you know I thought maybe I'd move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John (McVie) to have a band.' End of story, explaining how generous he was,'' said Fleetwood, who described Green as a standout in an era of great guitar work.Indeed, Green was so fundamental to the band that in its early days it was called Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.Peter Allen Greenbaum was born on Oct. 29, 1946, in London. The gift of a cheap guitar put the 10-year-old Green on a musical path.He was barely out of his teens when he got his first big break in 1966, replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers _ initially for just a week in 1965 after Clapton abruptly took off for a Greek holiday. Clapton quit for good soon after and Green was in.In the Bluesbreakers he was reunited with Mick Fleetwood, a former colleague in Peter B's Looners. Mayall added bass player McVie soon after.The three departed the next year, forming the core of the band initially billed as ``Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring (guitarist) Jeremy Spencer.''Fleetwood Mac made its debut at the British Blues and Jazz festival in the summer of 1967, which led to a recording contract, then an eponymous first album in February 1968. The album, which included ``Long Grey Mare'' and three other songs by Green, stayed on the British charts for 13 months.  The band's early albums were heavy blues-rock affairs marked by Green's fluid, evocative guitar style and gravelly vocals. Notable singles included ``Oh Well'' and the Latin-flavored ``Black Magic Woman,'' later a hit for Carlos Santana.But as the band flourished, Green became increasingly erratic, even paranoid. Drugs played a part in his unraveling.On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, notorious supplier of powerful LSD to the The Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey, the anti-hero of Tom Wolfe's book ``The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.''  ``He was taking a lot of acid and mescaline around the same time his illness began manifesting itself more and more,'' Fleetwood said in 2015. ``We were oblivious as to what schizophrenia was back in those days but we knew something was amiss.''``Green Manalishi,'' Green's last single for the band, reflected his distress.In an interview with Johnny Black for Mojo magazine, Green said: ``I was dreaming I was dead and I couldn't move, so I fought my way back into my body. I woke up and looked around. It was very dark and I found myself writing a song. It was about money;The Green Manalishi’ is money.”In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk’s robe and a crucifix. Fearing that he had too much money, he tried to persuade other band members to give their earnings to charities.Green left Fleetwood Mac for good in 1971.In his absence, the band’s new line-up, including Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, gained enormous success with a more pop-tinged sound.  
 
Green was confined in a mental hospital in 1977 after an incident with his manager. Testimony in court said Green had asked for money and then threatened to shoot out the windows of the manager’s office.  Green was released later in the year, and married Jane Samuels, a Canadian, in 1978. They had a daughter, Rosebud, and divorced the following year. Green also has a son, Liam Firlej.  Green returned to performing in the 1990s with the Peter Green Splinter Group.  In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other past and present members of Fleetwood Mac.
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Jordanian security forces arrested leading members of the opposition-run teachers union Saturday, raided its offices and shut it down for two years, escalating a confrontation with a group that has become a leading source of dissent.Prosecutors charged Nasser Nawasreh, the acting head of the Jordanian Teachers Syndicate, with incitement over a speech to supporters last Wednesday that criticized Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz’s government. State media said other charges related to allegations of financial and administrative wrongdoing.Riot police reinforcements were deployed Saturday near the seat of government in the capital and in other areas where teacher activists were planning protests. Security forces raided the union’s headquarters in Karak.Political opposition is often marginalized in Jordan, but protests have grown in recent years over eroding living standards, corruption and the slow pace of political reforms. Saturday’s crackdown on the union would “only further aggravate political tensions by the government at a time people are choked under hard economic conditions,” said Murad Adailah, head of Islamic Action Front, the largest opposition party.Monthlong strikeThe 100,000-strong union went on strike last year, shutting down schools across Jordan for a month in one of the longest and most disruptive public sector strikes in the country’s history.In recent weeks its leadership has accused the government of failing to honor a deal signed last October that ended the strike.The deal included a 50% pay raise this year, which the government now says is unaffordable because of the economic blow from the coronavirus crisis.Some officials have also accused union leaders of harboring the Islamist opposition’s political agenda. The union says this accusation is part of a government smear campaign.Opposition politicians say the government has been using draconian emergency laws enacted in March at the start of the coronavirus lockdown to limit civil and political rights. Activists have been arrested in recent weeks over comments on social media.
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Somalia’s parliament has removed Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre in an unexpected vote of no-confidence, the speaker of parliament said.Holding a press conference Saturday after the voting, the speaker, Mohamed Mursal Abdurahman, accused the government of Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre of “ineffectiveness.”  
 
“One hundred and seventy lawmakers favored the motion against the prime minister, and only 8 lawmakers opposed,” the speaker of parliament, announced. “Therefore, the motion has passed, and we urge Somalia’s president to appoint a new prime minister.”
 
The speaker has accused Prime Minister Khayre and his government of not fulfilling promises they made to the nation.
 
“The government has failed to fulfill its national promises, including holding one man – one vote elections, and establishing a national security force capable of tightening the security,” the speaker said.
 
The unexpected vote came after what analysts have termed “the explosion of a long-awaited dispute” between the president and the prime minister on the model and the timing of the country’s upcoming elections.
 
Khayre, a dual Norwegian citizen and former Soma Oil Company executive, was not immediately available to respond to the action. He had been prime minister of the eastern African country since March 2017.
 
Immediately after the voting, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (also known as President Farmajo) said he accepted the decision by parliament to remove Khayre and that he will nominate a new prime minister.
 
“Any rift between the parliament, which is the base of our government, and the cabinet of ministers will weaken the progress made so far; therefore, to save that progress, I have decided to respect and accept the decision of the parliament,” the president said in a statement published on state radio’s website.
 
Members of Khayre’s cabinet say they have rejected the parliament’s decision and described it as a political conspiracy against the government.
 
“The parliament members were meeting to debate an election law agenda when the speaker unexpectedly brought the issue of voting for a motion of no confidence against the government,” said Somalia’s minister of Internal Security, Mohamed Abukar Islow. “The vote did not go through legal parliamentary process and looked a conspiracy.”
 
Analysts say the action could be a big political setback for Somalia because it came a few months before the country’s elections.
 
“The voting was not timely and could derail the efforts to hold elections within the few remaining months,” said Abdirashid Hashi, executive director of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, a Mogadishu based independent, nonprofit research group.
 
“Now the ball is in the court of the president. He only has two options — to appoint a prime minister within the short period, who will also lead the nation into elections on time, or work on establishing an all-inclusive national unity government to avoid a vacuum,” Hashi said.
 Ousting prime minsters
 
A Somali parliament firing a prime minister and differences between the president and the prime minister are nothing new in Somalia’s political culture.
 
Since the collapse of the former central military regime of Mohamed Siyad Barre, at least four presidents, going back to 2004, have had major problems with their prime ministers. Each president had three prime ministers in their respective single terms.  
 
Of the more than 10 prime ministers the country has had since 2000, only two were not dismissed.  
 
President Farmajo and former prime minister Hassan Ali Khayre were praised for avoiding such disputes for nearly four years now, but what seemed to be a minor difference between the two leaders escalated into an open feud this week when the two leaders attended a meeting in the central Somalia town of Dhusamareeb.
 
In that meeting, the country’s federal government leaders and leaders across the federal member states agreed to hold timely national elections, a move for which the prime minister campaigned.
 
Although the president did not openly oppose the agreement, his supporters and the speaker of the parliament wanted any decisions relating to elections to be made by the parliament, not by the federal government and state leaders. The tenure of the incumbent president and the two houses of the parliament expires later this year.
 Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulle contributed this report from Mogadishu.
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A Taliban claim that it has moved away from its strict restrictions on the local Afghan population has been received with skepticism, with some observers warning that the militants continue to violate fundamental human rights in remote Afghan districts they control.  
 
Before their ouster by the U.S. in 2001, the Taliban imposed very repressive rules in Afghanistan, particularly on women.
 
The militant group that entered into a peace deal with the U.S. in recent months has portrayed itself as reforming its views.
 
However, some experts charge the group’s pledges to modernize can be a tactical move to gain international recognition.  
 
Andrew Watkins, a senior Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, told VOA the militants are trying to adapt to their exposure to the outside world, with their representatives learning the “language of international diplomacy.”  
 
Watkins warned that the Taliban throughout 19 years of war with the U.S. have protected “much of their ideology” by which they ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s. He said the change in tone showed “a bit of tactical or strategic move to begin speaking all of the right terms.”
 
Human Rights Watch, in a report last month, said that the Taliban continue with their extreme restrictions in the areas they control. It said that despite the Taliban officially claiming it no longer objected to girls’ education, some Taliban would not allow girls’ schools at all and only a few of them would allow girls to go to school after puberty.
 
“What the Taliban say at the leadership level …does not mean that is what happens on the ground,” John Sifton, the Asia Advocacy Director at HRW told VOA.  
 
Sifton said the Taliban’s local commanders “interpret things their own way.”
 
The watchdog group accused the Taliban of restrictions on media and freedom of expression in the areas they controlled. It said the group’s public punishment measures were “infrequent” compared to the 1990s but its “vice and virtue” police continued imprisonment and corporal punishment, such as beating.
 
The Taliban have rejected the HRW’s accusations as propaganda, calling them “spiteful and politically motivated.”  
 
Stressing a shift in the militants’ direction, Mawlai Qalamuddin, a former deputy head of the Taliban’s Promotion of Virtue and Elimination of Vice, told VOA the Taliban were committed to protecting basic rights of civilians, including the rights of women and girls to education.   
 
Qalamuddin said the Taliban restrictions on women’s education in the past had to do with lack of infrastructure.  
 
“At that time, there were no places for education, no transportation, or designated institutions for women’s education. But now we have [facilities]. If there is security and a stable state, then women would be given full rights based on Islamic law,” he said.
 
The Taliban leadership is mainly based outside of Afghanistan, though it maintains control over the group inside the country through a shadow government.  
 
According to Long War Journal (LWJ), the Taliban control 20 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts and contest about 50 percent of the districts. There are 4.5 million people living in the areas controlled by the Taliban, and 12 million Afghans are living in the contested areas.
 
Shinkai Karokhail, a member of the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of Afghanistan’s parliament, told VOA that there was a major disparity between what the Taliban do on the ground and what their political mouthpieces say.
 
The “Taliban’s political office issues statements but they do not take responsibility for the violations that take place in the areas the Taliban control,” said Karokhail.
 Girls’ education
 
According to Qamar Niazi, an advisor to Helmand’s governor and a women rights activist, gender norms hindered girls’ education in her province. She said that the Taliban has allowed boys to go to school “which is a positive change.” But the militants’ extremist view on girls’ education has seen “no major change.”
 
Niazi added that she and other activists in Helmand could only work with women from four districts that are under full government control. The activists are blocked from accessing another nine districts of the province where the Taliban has influence.  
 
Sifton of HRW told VOA that the Taliban in areas such as Kunduz province maintained an inconsistent approach towards female education, allowing girls to go to school in some areas, while providing no female schools or only allowing girls education until puberty in other areas.
 
“They say that there is right to education, but then they say: If a local community does not want education to be there for girls,then there won’t be,” said Sifton, calling it a “violation of those girls’ rights.”
 
After the Taliban were removed from power in late 2001, the new Afghan government and the international community pledged to get all girls to school.  
 
Nevertheless, data from the U.N.’s children’s agency UNICEF shows that only 50 percent of girls, of the official primary school age, attended primary or secondary education in 2015. Rights organizations say the number of girls going to school has been dropping in recent years due to insecurity, poverty, and displacement.  
 Press restrictions
 
Some activists and observers say monitoring rights violations in Taliban-controlled areas could be a life-threatening task. The militants have imposed strict regulations on media, requiring journalists to obtain permission before any reporting.  
 
“One cannot go on his own,” said Sami Serat, a journalist working with a local radio station in Helmand.  
 
“It is dangerous to go to those areas, you can get killed,” he told VOA.   
 
The 2020 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Afghanistan 122nd out of 180 nations for violations against journalists. The organization said press freedom in Afghanistan faced a “permanent threat” from the Taliban, the Islamic State, warlords, and corrupt political officials.   
 
Given the Taliban’s unwillingness to change, a possible return of the extremist group to power in Afghanistan would be a ‘tragedy’, warned Scott Smith, a senior expert for Afghanistan peace processes at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP).
 
“I think the international community will look very carefully at the kind of government that it will be funding and would want to see (that) some of these basic rights are reflected in the agreement so that it can justify …that it is not funding the Taliban’s government like  the 1990s,” said Smith, adding that the Taliban have to understand that any future government in Afghanistan would depend on international funding.
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