The ruling Taliban regime has shut down internet access across some of Afghanistan’s most populous provinces, in an escalating crackdown on “immorality”.

The ban on high-speed fiber-optic connections is the latest impediment to education – particularly for women – imposed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, and also poses a threat to the country’s economic security. 

Why is high-speed internet being throttled?
This latest crackdown comes after the Taliban released a “long set of rules governing morality” late last year, including mandates that women wear facial coverings and that men grow beards, said Reuters. The government has also restricted access to some social media platforms and websites deemed pornographic.

 Blocking internet access makes it even more difficult for Afghans to “communicate, attend online classes and receive or send news”, said The Washington Post.  Coming on the heels of the Taliban’s education ban for girls, these latest measures “extend beyond media and entertainment, targeting women and girls in daily life”, said The Diplomat. As well as disrupting “millions of citizens’ access to free information and essential services”, said the Afghanistan Media Support Organisation, the ban also “poses a grave threat to freedom of expression and the work of the media”. 

Can the Afghan economy survive the ban?
The shutdown is “connected to a lingering competition for power” between the Taliban’s central authority in the city of Kandahar and the "more pragmatic officials" tasked with “day-to-day” governance in Kabul, said The Washington Post. But the effects have been “so biting” that many of the affected – including provincial and business leaders – have urged the government to “find an alternative”, said The New York Times.

Any internet ban is “beyond my comprehension in such an advanced era”, a resident of the northern province of Balkh told The Associated Press, refusing to provide his name “for fear of Taliban reprisals”. The decision to throttle high-speed access in Balkh is “absurd and unwise”, said Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US special representative to Afghanistan, on X. It will “undermine investment and development” while damaging the local economy and the country’s “prospects as a whole”.

The Scottish Parliament’s decision to scrap a centuries-old option of a “not proven” verdict in jury trials has delighted many crime survivors but raised legal worries about justice and conviction rates.

The Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill will abolish the “legal idiosyncrasy” that gave juries the option of the third possible verdict, along with guilty and not guilty, said the BBC. The bill also introduces another major change to jury procedures: “raising the bar for guilty verdicts” to a “two-thirds majority”, instead of a simple majority, in an attempt to “allay concerns of some defence lawyers” that removing the “not proven” verdict could “make it harder for their clients” to get a fair trial.

‘Uncertainty and incompleteness’
Politicians hope that removing the “not proven” verdict will improve “the shamefully low conviction rates for rape and attempted rape”, said The Scotsman. In 2022-23, only half (48%) of such cases resulted in a conviction – well below the “overall conviction rate of 88%”, said London’s The Standard.

“Not proven” is technically a differentiated acquittal: although the jury may not be convinced enough of the accused’s innocence to agree on a non-guilty verdict, the accused is considered innocent in the eyes of the law. It’s often called a “bastard verdict”, because juries see it as a “compromise between guilt and innocence”, said The Times. But it also carries a sense of “uncertainty and incompleteness”, said The Herald, and has “often felt like a legal limbo, leaving emotional scars that can last decades”. 

‘Act of self-harm’
Critics of the changes to the Scottish judicial system worry about potential miscarriages of justice. “Scotland will now have a system where a person can be convicted despite five members of the jury having significant doubts about their guilt,” Stuart Munro of the Law Society of Scotland told The Times. Other countries that allow only guilty or not guilty verdicts require juries to reach a unanimous or near-unanimous guilty verdict.

It’s a “predictable act of self-harm” to abolish a “legal construct that sets the Scottish criminal justice system apart – and ahead of – every other criminal justice system in the world”, said criminal barrister Thomas Ross in Scottish Legal News. This is a “capitulation to influential advocacy groups, with little regard for the resultant increased risk of miscarriages of justice”.

Models walk the runway at the Rory William Docherty show on the final day of London Fashion Week. This year’s festival of style also featured Romeo Beckham’s catwalk debut, while Bake Off star Prue Leith got a slice of the action modelling a reworked parachute.

Hoda Davaine / Getty Images

Traditional British desserts are “struggling for survival”, said Xanthe Clay in The Telegraph, but could an Australian sweet treat be the answer to our pudding woes? Tim Tams, “a sort of antipodean Penguin”, hit UK supermarket shelves last year, and now “a new contender, the lamington, is coming for our tea tables”.

A staple of “countless children’s birthday parties and grown-up afternoon teas” down under, a typical lamington should follow a “strict formula”: a fluffy cube of vanilla sponge cake, sandwiched with jam, rolled in a “sticky” chocolate sauce and dusted with desiccated coconut.

But M&S has caused quite a stir with its launch of two lamington “varieties”: classic coconut and chocolate, and a caramelised biscuit version. Both veer away from Aussie tradition: adorned with a “leaden swirl of icing on top”, they are made with chocolate cake instead of vanilla sponge.

“As an Australian living in London”, I was surprised to discover my British colleagues hadn’t even heard of lamingtons, said Rose Johnstone in The Guardian. So I gathered a group of fellow Aussies to taste the new M&S offerings.

The “artfully piped buttercream” is “unconventional” but does look appealing. We were “genuinely shocked”, though, to discover the chocolate cake inside. “I can’t fully convey just how wrong this made us feel; like shucking an oyster to reveal a piece of popcorn instead of a pearl.” Still, all tasters “somewhat guiltily” enjoyed the balance of the jam’s “tartness” with the “rich density” of the chocolate centre. “Just don’t call it a lamington.”

Labour’s recognition of Palestine is not a concession to the Left
Richard Johnson on UnHerd
Some commentators are portraying the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state as a “capitulation to the Labour Left”, but that’s not “the whole story”, writes Richard Johnson. It’s actually “the realisation of a long-standing party policy”. What’s “remarkable” is that Keir Starmer “has actually followed through”, despite “his tendency to jettison policies that could be read as too ‘Left-wing’”. His MPs should “be happy that their own principled beliefs and the leader’s electoral calculations have, for once, aligned”.

Personalised number plates are vulgar Britain at its worst
William Sitwell in The Telegraph
Demand for personalised number plates has “doubled in the last decade”, writes William Sitwell. “Who are these vulgar braggadocios” wasting their money on this “epitome of excess”? Such “public displays of wealth” do not “belong on the streets of our towns and cities”. If you have “serious money, you should do quite the opposite”: drive a “ragged” car, “dress like a retired gardener” and claim that you’re “as poor as a church mouse”.

Pub etiquette
Emma Duncan in The Times
“Shocking news,” writes Emma Duncan. A recent poll found that “a quarter of respondents” had seen a queue “to get served in a pub”. Every “decent” Brit knows the “correct way to get served” is to “approach the wall of rear ends” at the bar, “insert yourself among them” and “fix your eyes on one of the bar staff with the intensity of a hungry cobra”. When a pint appears, “eventually”, you then “congratulate yourself on your magnetism”.