As Kabul works to move past decades of violence and hardship, a new challenge has emerged to threaten the Afghan capital's future: a water crisis. The "severe and multifaceted" water problems could "soon pose an existential threat" to Kabul's six million residents if not addressed, a recent study by the non-profit organisation Mercy Corps warned.

How much water does Kabul have?
The city relies heavily on groundwater, the "vast majority" of which comes from "melting snow and ice in the Hindu Kush mountains", said Mercy Corps. This feeds Kabul's three main aquifers, but water levels in these natural underground reserves have dropped by around 30 meters over the past decade due to "rapid urbanisation and climate change". Almost half of the boreholes from which residents access the water have run dry and the remaining wells are not fully efficient. Unicef has warned that without immediate action, Kabul could become the first major capital in modern history to fully exhaust its groundwater supply.

How did it get to this point?
Afghanistan has seen less rainfall and rising temperatures in recent years, resulting in greater evaporation. The water scarcity has been exacerbated in Kabul by the rapid increase in the city's population, which has "grown roughly sixfold over the past 25 years", said The New York Times. But "no decent water management system has been put in place" to address the growing strain from "greenhouses, factories and residential buildings that are mushrooming across the city". 

Although international donors have "financed multiple dam projects" and plumbing initiatives to help address Kabul's water scarcity, most of those schemes "never saw the light of the day or were abruptly stopped" after the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 and returned control to the current Taliban government.

Are there any solutions?
Mercy Corps suggested "increased engagement with the private sector" as a potentially "sustainable way forward" for the city in the absence of "significant funding boosts". The group also recommended that NGOs should focus on regulation to improve safety, efficiency and sustainability. Broader infrastructure work would "go a significant way" towards addressing the situation.

The woman accused of selling ketamine to Matthew Perry has agreed to plead guilty to five charges linked to the death of the "Friends" actor. British-born Jasveen Sangha, known as the "ketamine queen", could face up to 65 years in prison.

'Drug-selling emporium'
Sangha got her nickname from co-defendant Erik Fleming, who described her as the "ketamine queen" in a text message. That "epithet stuck", said Vanity Fair, and captures the "noirish spirit" of the Hollywood "underworld" in which she operated.

The 42-year-old's Instagram posts suggest a "gaudy maximalism" in her lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with a "cast of characters" who have "their own porous relationships" with showbusiness. She has attended both the Golden Globes and the Oscars, according to a friend. Little wonder she has become a "figure of media fascination", said the magazine.

"How on Earth" could a doctor's daughter "born into a respectable British Sikh family" and raised in swanky Calabasas, 30 miles north of Los Angeles, end up in so much trouble, asked the Daily Mail. Authorities described her North Hollywood home as a "drug-selling emporium" after finding 79 vials of ketamine, about two kilos of Xanax and a firearm registered to her boyfriend.

Court documents said that as well as distributing the ketamine that killed Perry, found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home in October 2023, she also sold the ketamine linked to the death of a man called Cody McLaury, who died of an overdose in August 2019.

'Wild West' of Hollywood
Sangha was North Hollywood's "drug linchpin", said The Hollywood Reporter, but the showbusiness district has a wider problem with ketamine. Federal authorities said they had discovered a "broad underground criminal network" of suppliers distributing massive quantities of the drug across Los Angeles.

Another doctor described the spread of ketamine treatments for depression and pain management as the new "Wild West". Perry had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy, but his fatal overdose was not part of a prescribed regimen. Two doctors accused of supplying Perry with illicit ketamine are among a total of five defendants charged in connection with his death. All have now pleaded guilty.

A brown bear carries her cubs back to shore in Alaska's Katmai National Park after the family fell asleep at low tide and woke surrounded by water. The photograph, "Lifeboat" by Casey Cooper, is among donated works on sale from tomorrow for Prints for Wildlife, a fundraiser for Conservation International.

Casey Cooper / printsforwildlife.org

"If I needed brain surgery, I think I would want Henry Marsh to come out of retirement to do it," said Carol Midgley in The Times. "What an empath, and what a glorious piece of television."

The neurosurgeon is the focus of Harriet Bird and Charlie Russell's documentary "Confessions of a Brain Surgeon", after spending decades at the top of his profession, pioneering "awake craniotomy". But Marsh is haunted by what he calls an "inner cemetery, a place full of bitterness and regret" – and can't let go of "the patients he feels he failed and which haunt him to this day", said Midgley.

His own prostate cancer diagnosis has heightened his "painful introspection" and, over the course of the hour-long documentary, he reflects with "raw honesty" on all aspects of his life – both professional and personal.

"Medically astounding and emotionally piercing", the film "is a deep meditation of what it means to have lived", said Jack Seale in The Guardian. It's an "exquisite" documentary that weaves together home movie footage and interviews with "important people from his past".

Medical documentaries are everywhere these days but this one is "discomfiting" and "utterly gripping", said Nick Duerden in The i Paper. Marsh is an "intriguing character" and the film is peppered with some "terrific interviewees", including his long-suffering first wife Hilary, who confirms that "yes, he was 'arrogant' and 'absent'".

A film so scathingly critical would usually be unauthorised, so Marsh's willing participation is "almost masochistic". He has had so many brilliant career successes, but the 75-year-old can only focus on "what went wrong, and how he is to blame". His quest for redemption is "almost biblical".

In Gaza City, we are saying goodbye
Sara Awad on Al Jazeera 
"This may be the last letter I write" from "my beloved" Gaza City, says Sara Awad. We are "on the brink" of a "full military occupation" by Israel, which plans "to force us" to "leave our homes and move into tents" in the south of the Strip. We thought the threat of occupation was just "psychological warfare" but it is becoming "very real". When the Israelis "invade", it won't be "punishment"; it will be "erasure".

Rachel Reeves, a property tax will be the end of your career
Kwasi Kwarteng in The i Paper
Everyone knows "an Englishman's home is his castle", writes former Conservative chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. So any attempt to tax property in "new or more burdensome ways is bound to be controversial". Rachel Reeves is considering a "proportional" property tax in place of stamp duty and council tax, but this "deeply flawed" idea would have "grave electoral consequences". And "most worryingly for Labour", the beneficiaries of a backlash would be their "number one bogeyman", Nigel Farage. 

European leaders behave like supplicants to an almighty Trump. Putin just sees him as a protege
Rafael Behr in The Guardian
A "flock of European pigeons raced to Washington" on Monday, "cooing and flapping" before Donald Trump like "supplicants at the court of a king", writes Rafael Behr. Europe's "diplomatic dance" might "nudge" the US president's position on the Ukraine war, but it's Vladimir Putin who connects on a "higher frequency". "Russia's modern Tsar" appeals to Trump's "narcissistic personality" by treating him as a "recruit to the exclusive club of world historical figures who dictate the destiny of millions".