Canberra is home to more than 110 diplomatic missions but none are more resolute in continued diplomacy than the Embassy of Afghanistan, operating without government guidance or financial support since the country fell to the Taliban in 2021.
The sanctimonious manner in which certain journalists are reporting the outcome of the defamation case brought by Ben Roberts-Smith is a matter of great concern to Hugh Poate, father of Private Robert Poate, the only soldier from Canberra killed during the Afghanistan War.
Iran has executed a British-Iranian national who once served as its deputy defence minister, defying calls from London for his release after he was handed the death sentence on charges of spying for Britain.
Pakistan has fired off a sharp warning to Afghanistan's hard-line religious rulers to stop sheltering homegrown Pakistani Taliban militants who have staged increasingly deadly attacks.
Taliban fighters have summarily killed or forcibly "disappeared" more than 100 former police and intelligence officers since taking power in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch says.
The Taliban have formed a commission to purge "people of bad character" from their ranks to protect Afghanistan's reputation, the group says, in the latest sign it is trying to change from an insurgency into a regular government.
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has suspended flights to the Afghan capital, Kabul, after what it called "heavy handed" interference by Taliban authorities, including arbitrary rule changes and intimidation of staff.
An Islamic State suicide bomber has struck at a mosque packed with Shi'Ite Muslim worshippers in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 46 people and wounding dozens in the latest security challenge to the Taliban as it transitions from insurgency to governance.
A school for girls has been blown up in northwestern Pakistan in the first bombing targeting female education in several years, weeks after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Female employees in the Kabul city government have been told to stay home, with work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men, the interim mayor of Afghanistan's capital says.
Workers in the Afghan capital Kabul have replaced signs for the country's women's ministry with those for the Taliban's moral police as female former employees of the department say they have been locked out of the building.
The United Nations is hosting a high-level donors conference to drum up emergency funds for Afghanistan after last month's Taliban takeover of the country that stunned the world.
