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The US has warned American citizens to avoid Kabul airport because of security threats, just hours after secretary of state Antony Blinken urged the Taliban to ensure “safe passage” for people seeking to flee Afghanistan. The deteriorating security situation at the airport has been a mounting concern for US and western officials trying to evacuate

Delta Air Lines said it would start charging unvaccinated employees enrolled in its healthcare plan an additional $200 a month, becoming the latest US company to cajole workers into having the Covid-19 jab. The first fully-fledged approval of a vaccine this week by the US Food and Drug Administration, which gave a green light to

Joe Biden is sticking by his plan to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the month, defying international pressure, including from key European allies, to allow more time for evacuations. The US president’s decision caps days of uncertainty about the fate of the August 31 deadline for the final pullout of American

US president Joe Biden urged employers to require workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19 after the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the BioNTech/Pfizer jab. “If you’re a business leader, a non-profit leader, the state and local leader, who has been waiting for full FDA approval to require vaccinations. I’m calling on you

Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, will on Tuesday host crisis talks on Afghanistan with world leaders, as Britain presses the US to extend the evacuation timetable amid chaos and deaths at Kabul airport. Johnson, as chair of the G7, will hold talks that will include evacuation arrangements for western nationals and Afghan citizens, with Britain

Seven Afghan civilians have been killed around Kabul international airport as chaos continued to hamper western efforts to evacuate people from the country, one week after the Taliban retook control. Confirming the civilian deaths, the UK defence ministry acknowledged on Sunday that “conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging”, as the US warned its citizens

Tsai Hui-chun has lived under the roar of fighter jets her whole life. In her hometown Hualien, on Taiwan’s east coast, they can be seen and heard everywhere, taking off from the local air base. But over the past year, the patrols and exercises have grown almost constant. “They used to do a couple of

Vaccinating children against Covid-19 would be a “very marginal decision” and it is hard to predict whether that would go ahead in the UK, a government adviser has said. Meanwhile, a decision on a booster jab is imminent, said Adam Finn, a member of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the

The Taliban was facing growing signs of dissent in several cities as Afghans carried the national flag in a second day of protests that led to reports of at least two deaths. Protesters marched in Kabul and other cities on Thursday to celebrate Afghanistan’s Independence Day, which commemorates the 1919 war that ended British control

The FT Weekend Magazine sent Jon Boone, the Financial Times’ formerKabul correspondent, to Afghanistan in early August. Because theTaliban’s conquest of the country potentially puts their lives injeopardy, we have not photographed most of the subjects and some nameshave been changed. There is less than a minute to go before Afghanistan’s most-watched news broadcast goes

Afghans were bracing themselves for life under strict Islamic rule on Monday after the Taliban drove the US-backed government of Ashraf Ghani from power to establish control of Kabul. Thousands of residents filled the airport and throngs of people tried to push their way on to planes in a desperate effort to flee after the

Shortly after her 12th birthday, Ameneh — not her real name — was forced to get engaged to her adult, bearded cousin and move into the house of her uncle, a businessman who traded with the Taliban. That was two decades ago. Back then, the Islamist movement was at the height of its power, controlling

Just six weeks ago, Joe Biden seemed confident that the 300,000 men of the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces had the training, equipment and competence to hold off a Taliban takeover of the country after the US withdrew its military forces. “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the

The US Senate is set to pass a $1tn package to invest in America’s crumbling infrastructure with significant Republican support, a bipartisan vote that will be seen as a major legislative achievement of Joe Biden’s young presidency. Senators voted 68-29 late on Sunday to end the debate on the infrastructure bill, setting up a final

The US, UK and Canada have tightened sanctions against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, exactly one year after he won re-election in a presidential ballot that he has been accused of rigging. Also on Monday, Latvia said it was poised to declare a state of emergency on its frontier with Belarus and build

The spread of the Delta strain of the virus that causes Covid-19 through the US has prompted a flurry of state-level proclamations over the weekend relating to mask mandates and vaccinations. The US is averaging about 100,000 new Covid-19 infections a day, according to Johns Hopkins University data, compared with 11,000 cases a day in

The world is likely to temporarily reach 1.5C of warming within 20 years even in a best-case scenario of deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a landmark report on climate change signed off by 234 scientists from more than 60 countries has concluded. Even with rapid emissions cuts, temperatures would continue to rise until “at

For decades, Kuwait was a critical hub in North Korea’s network of foreign outposts. Every year, thousands of labourers would take an Air Koryo flight from Pyongyang via Islamabad before being dispatched to construction sites across the oil-rich Gulf state or elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa. At its peak, the sweat of about

The Pentagon plans to make Covid-19 vaccines mandatory for US troops by mid-September, as the country grapples with a rise in cases caused by the spread of the contagious Delta variant. “To defend this nation, we need a healthy and ready force,” wrote Lloyd Austin, defence secretary, in a memo to US forces released on

Robinhood shares surged as much as 82 per cent at the start of trading on Wednesday, prompting multiple trading halts as the market capitalisation of the newly listed US brokerage briefly climbed to $71bn. The rally, which lifted the stock to a high of $85, has accompanied a furious start to trading in the company’s