Speculation about how the Taliban will treat al-Qa'ida after taking control of Afghanistan.

Impecunious parents in the UAE can't get a birth certificate for their baby until they pay the hospital bill, which is impossible. (They lost their jobs.) This renders the baby effectively stateless.

Many animal species, including vertebrates and invertebrates, depend on cultural knowledge to survive in the wild. Preventing species's extinction sometimes requires helping the species recover lost cultural knowledge.

As Germany's economy recovers, it is headed for more fossil fuels, not conservation.

The Taliban have captured Kabul and announced victory. The fighting seems to have ended.

The statement that they won't allow Afghanistan to be used to attack other countries suggests that it will not let al-Qa'ida conduct attacks from there. I hope that the US and Afghanistan can make peace. More information.

I expected the Afghan government to fall, when left to itself, but not this fast. The rapidity of the conquest may mean that many Afghans who worked for the government or the NATO armies are trapped there. Foreigners, too. However, the Taliban seem to have said they will let foreigners leave, and accept the service of the men that worked for the old government, and even for foreign armies.

They say they will allow women to study and work. Maybe they are starting to value the prosperity of the nation as a goal, and appreciate that this depends on the contribution of women. That would be repressive by our standards, but less so that the Taliban of the 1990s.

I expect that these official Taliban statements are sincerely meant by the leaders, but they will have to work hard to make Taliban soldiers obey them. (We see the same thing in the US Army.)

The news that the US has kept its embassy open is a good sign. Vietnam and the US are allied now against the empire that Vietnamese have fought for 2,000 years. (This does not make Vietnam a free country, not the slightest little bit.) It won't surprise me if someday I see the Taliban and the US allied against that same empire.