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Tens of thousands of girls were due to return to secondary school across Afghanistan Wednesday, more than seven months after the Taliban seized power and imposed harsh restrictions on the rights of women to be educated, NDTV reported.

All schools were closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic when the Taliban took over in August -- but only boys and some younger girls were allowed to resume classes two months later.

The international community has made the right to education for all a sticking point in negotiations over aid and recognition, with several nations and organisations offering to pay teachers.

The education ministry said schools would reopen Wednesday across several provinces -- including the capital Kabul -- but those in the southern region of Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual heartland, will not open until next month.

The ministry said reopening the schools was always a government objective and the Taliban were not bowing to pressure, according to NDTV.

"We are not reopening the schools to make the international community happy, nor are we doing it to gain recognition from the world," said Aziz Ahmad Rayan, a ministry spokesman.

"We are doing it as part of our responsibility to provide education and other facilities to our students," he told AFP.

The Taliban had insisted they wanted to ensure schools for girls aged 12 to 19 were segregated and would operate according to Islamic principles.

"We are behind in our studies already," said Raihana Azizi, 17, as she prepared to attend class dressed in a black abaya, headscarf and veil over her face.

The Taliban have imposed a slew of restrictions on women, effectively banning them from many government jobs, policing what they wear and preventing them from travelling outside of their cities alone.

They have also detained several women's rights activists, NDTV reported.

Despite the schools reopening, barriers to girls returning to education remain, with many families suspicious of the Taliban and reluctant to allow their daughters outside.

Others see little point in girls learning at all.

"Those girls who have finished their education have ended up sitting at home and their future is uncertain," said Heela Haya, 20, from Kandahar, who has decided to quit school.

China refused to assist Sri Lanka which appealed to reschedule its huge Chinese debt burden in the face of the Covid-19 outbreak that has adversely affected the tourism sector, said a media report, ANI reported.

Colombo appealed if a restructuring of the debt could be arranged to mitigate the economic crisis that had arisen in the face of the Covid-19 outbreak.

President of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa in a meeting with Foreign Minister of China Wang Yi sought the assistance of Beijing in the face of the deepening foreign exchange crisis of Sri Lanka and spiralling external debt. 

"Replying to a question on the pending request from Sri Lanka for a debt relief, Foreign Ministry spokesman of China Zhao Lijian said in a news conference this month,that China had been providing assistance for the socio-economic development of Sri Lanka to the best of its ability and would continue to do so. In concrete terms, this meant nothing," the hong Kong post reported, according to ANI.

China has shed some crocodile tears over the economy of Sri Lanka getting caught in a quagmire after hobnobbing with the BRI projects of China: record inflation, soaring food prices and the sufferings of the people said a media report.

"The key concern, however, is how such a negative situation would impact the attitude of Colombo towards borrowings from China,and what it would mean for the ultimate relation between China and Sri Lanka.

There is concern that the experience of Sri Lanka is prompting countries like Myanmar, Malaysia and Nepal to suspend Chinese investment projects, it added, ANI reported.

Though the crisis in Sri Lanka was apparent after the pandemic that dried up the international tourist traffic to the island nation, one of its main foreign exchange-earners, the country's debts spiralled and foreign exchange reserves shrunk as the end result of reckless borrowings from China to finance infrastructure projects, reported The Hong Kong Post.

With tourism hit by the pandemic, the economic structure of Sri Lanka, which was already tottering under the heavy burden of loans, crumbled. A major part of this debt was owed to China, which accounts for nearly USD 8 billion.

This debt burden was a result of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects like Hambantota Port and Colombo Port City for which Chinese agencies lent large amounts to Sri Lanka under stiff terms of repayment.
Notably, in 2021-22, Colombo's debt repayment to Beijing amounted to nearly USD 2 billion.

Further, Hambantota port has already been leased out to China for 99 years against USD 1.2 billion, according to ANI.

In the face of the deepening foreign exchange crisis, Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa sought China's help in December 2021 as he requested a debt restructuring in a meeting with China Foreign Minister Wang Yi. However, Beijing has reportedly shown Colombo the door, according to the media outlet.

Ironically, the deeply pro-China Rajapaksa government dug its own grave as it had booted out the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) of the USA with its offer to extend developmental assistance grant to Colombo as the Board of Directors of MCC discontinued its USD 480 million contract with Sri Lanka in December 2020 "due to lack of partner country engagement," the publication reported citing the US embassy.

Further, China-assisted projects in Sri Lanka are likely to deepen the indebtedness of the island nation. Moreover, locals of Sri Lanka are protesting against some of these projects which will affect their livelihood.

One of these projects is an industrial park attached to the Hambantota International Port which has incited violent protests by local people as they fear that the area would become a Chinese colony, reported the media outlet, ANI reported.

Given the current crisis coupled with the absence of any assurances from China for concrete support, Sri Lanka seems to be reassessing the extent to which it can bank on China.

However, it is nearly impossible for Rajapaksas to deny China its committed space in Sri Lanka due to arbitration threats and likely obligations. It is an economic annexation of a sovereign country and not a debt trap alone.

Russian military forces have destroyed a new laboratory at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that among other things works to improve management of radioactive waste, the Ukrainian state agency responsible for the Chernobyl exclusion zone said Tuesday, Associated Press reported.

The Russian military seized the decommissioned plant at the beginning of the war. The exclusion zone is the contaminated area around the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear meltdown in 1986.

The state agency said the laboratory, built at a cost of 6 million euros with support from the European Commission, opened in 2015.

The laboratory contained “highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy, which we hope will harm itself and not the civilized world,” the agency said in its statement.

Radionuclides are unstable atoms of chemical elements that release radiation, according to the Associated Press.

In another worrying development, Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said Monday that radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working.

Russia’s false accusation that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons is a “clear sign” that a desperate Vladimir Putin is considering using them himself, Joe Biden has said, The Guardian reported.

The US president said Putin’s “back is against the wall and now he’s talking about new false flags he’s setting up including, asserting that we in America have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe – simply not true. I guarantee you,” Biden said at an event on Monday.

“They are also suggesting that Ukrainehas biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That’s a clear sign he’s considering using both of those.

He’s already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful of what’s about to come.”

Putin “knows there’ll be severe consequences because of the united Nato front,” he said, without specifying what actions the alliance would take, according to The Guardian.

The remarks echo previous comments by officials in Washington and allied countries, who have accused Russia of spreading an unproven claim that Ukraine had a biological weapons program as a possible prelude to potentially launching its own biological or chemical attacks.

Biden spoke after the Pentagon said it had seen “clear evidence” Russian forces were committing war crimes and that it was helping collect evidence. Last week, the US president said he thought Putin was a “war criminal”, as well as a “murderous dictator” and “thug”, comments the Russian foreign ministry said were “unworthy of a state figure of such a high rank” and risked rupturing US-Russian ties.

The UN’s international court of justice has already ordered Moscow to halt its invasion, and a prosecutor at the international criminal court has launched a war crimes investigation, The Guardian reported.

On Monday night, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy again urged direct talks with Putin, saying: “Without this meeting it is impossible to fully understand what they are ready for in order to stop the war.”

He also said his country will never bow to ultimatums from Russia and cities directly under attack, including the capital, Kyiv, and Mariupol and Kharkiv would not accept Russian occupation, according to The Guardian.