IRIN: The average per capita monthly expenditure of nine million Afghans is less than 66 US cents a day, and millions of other Afghans spend about $42 a month, according to a summary of Afghanistan’s new National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA). NRVA 2007/08 was produced by the government with European Union funding and in collaboration with aid agencies. A bleak picture is painted.      Full news...

UNDP: This year's HDI, which refers to 2007, highlights the very large gaps in well-being and life chances that continue to divide our increasingly interconnected world. The HDI for Afghanistan is 0.352, which gives the country a rank of 181 out of 182 countries. By looking at some of the most fundamental aspects of people’s lives and opportunities the HDI provides a much more complete picture of a country's development than other indicators, such as GDP per capita.      Full news...

e-Ariana: There is a common consensus that armed violence will increase across Afghanistan in the summer months, most probably into unprecedented levels since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Summers have consistently witnessed the peak of insurgency-related violence over the past seven years as insurgent fighters find the weather and the geography suitable to launch hit-and-run attacks, raid and terrorize villages, perpetuate suicide and roadside explosions, and create a situation of widespread insecurity.      Full news...

PAN: Unknown assailants beheaded a university student in the southern Kandahar province, birthplace of Taliban movement, officials and witnesses said on Friday. Studying in a mosque on university premises, medical faculty student from Kabul Muhammad Mushtaq was stabbed to death just before noon, one of his classmates told PAN.      Full news...

Six schools in the northern region of Kunduz closed following Taliban threats in recent weeks. The German army says it can't protect them. The schools received letters threatening acid and gas attacks, and teachers and pupils responded by staying home. The Afghan authorities finally decided to shut the schools altogether. The affected district of Chahar Darreh in the province of Kunduz is largely under the Taliban's control.      Full news...

Xinhua: Nearly 100 girl students and teachers of a school in Kapisa province, 80 km north of the Afghan capital Kabul, mysteriously fell unconscious on Tuesday, spokesman of Public Health Ministry Ahmad Farid Rahed said. "A possible poisonous gas attack in Qazak Girl School this morning in Kohistan district has sickened 90 students and seven teachers," Rahed told Xinhua.      Full news...

Xinhua: Three dozen girl students were poisoned in Parwan province 70 km north of Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, Ahmad Farid Rahid a spokesman of Public Health Ministry said. "There was a ceremony at the compound of Sadiqi Padshah Girl School in Charikar, the capital of Parwan province, today and suddenly 36 students, one police and one teacher got unconscious, all of whom were taken to hospital," Rahid told Xinhua.      Full news...

Xinhua: Unknown armed men set fire on a girl school in Ghor province, in northwestern Afghanistan, a local newspaper reported Sunday. "Unidentified men dynamited a girl school in Tiwara district Friday night and destroyed it," a security official was quoted by the daily Arman-e-Millie. The report put the attack on Taliban militants, but the outfit has yet to claim responsibility.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Millions of new textbooks promised and paid for by the U.S. and other foreign donors have not been delivered to schools in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has found. Other books were so poorly made they are already falling apart. The faltering effort is testimony to how much can be lost to corruption, inefficiency and bureaucracy in this tumultuous country, where it is difficult to get even the most straightforward aid project done.      Full news...

IRIN: Razia, aged 10, cannot go to school because doing so is deemed too risky for girls in the southern province of Kandahar, and because her father believes only boys should attend school. “My father says schools are not for girls and that girls should work at home,” she told IRIN in Kandahar, adding that she had always wanted to go to school and become a doctor.      Full news...

Quqnoos: According to UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNESCO and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF in Kabul, 66 per cent of Afghans are illiterate but the figure is remarkably higher for women, nearly 90 per cent. UNICEF estimates that more than 80 per cent of females and around 50 per cent of males lack accessing to education centres, mostly in the rural areas of the country. UNESCO Director for Afghanistan, Shigeru Ayoagi, marked this country with a highest rate of illiteracy in the world.      Full news...

PAN: A mass grave of civil war era was found in Karta-i-Chahar locality of capital Kabul when a private construction company's workers started digging the base for a new building near the education department's compound, officials said on Sunday.      Full news...

PAN: Suspected militants last night blew up two schools with powerful explosives in Nadir Shahkot district of southeastern Khost province, education officials said Thursday.Provincial education director Mosa Majroh told Pajhwok Afghan News on Thursday that some unidentified miscreants last night entered the schools and detonated powerful explosives inside the schools' buildings, destroying the buildings badly.      Full news...

PAN: US forces in southeastern Khost province killed a principal of a middle school and injured his wife and a child, an official said Saturday. He said that the school principal Qabol Khan was traveling along with his wife and a child when came under fire by the US forces. Qabol, his wife and the child sustained bullet injuries, he added. The spokesman said that the troops shifted all the injured to Bagram Air Base for treatment, but Qabol died of his wounds.      Full news...

SOS Children's Villages: Every day, as they go to school, girls in Afghanistan run a gauntlet of intimidation and harassment by youths carrying knives. From acid attacks, murder, torching of schools and sexual assault, violence against girl students is crushing the dreams of thousands of Afghan girls and women hungry to learn. In spite of the police presence near every school boys manage to tease girls and even kidnap them and sexually abuse them. In the past eight months, 138 students and teachers have died and 172 have been wounded in criminal and terror attacks, according to the Ministry of Education. About 651 schools have closed and another 122 school buildings have been blown up or burned down.      Full news...

Quqnoos: This year 173000 students could not go to schools, says Ministry of Education. The number of teachers and students killed in the past 10 months has nearly doubled the total casualties of last year, authorities in the ministry of education said. This year 651 schools were closed in southern provinces; 141 teachers and students were killed since beginning of the year; and 173000 students dropped off schools, spokesman for ministry of education said.      Full news...

IWPR: The Mirwais Meena girls’school used to be a bustling place with over 1300 students. But now the halls and grounds are nearly empty, the swings hang motionless on the recreation field. On a late November morning, there were only a dozen or so girls and three female teachers to be seen. The rest, traumatised by a vicious attack on November 12 that left several girls disfigured and two blinded, have chosen to stay at home.      Full news...

IRIN: The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called on all warring parties in Afghanistan to consider children as "zones of peace" to help protect them against the ravages of war. UNICEF says children are among the most vulnerable groups in the conflict; they do not have the capacity to influence the decisions of warring parties and should not be affected by the conflict.      Full news...

IRIN: Drought, poverty and lack of food have adversely affected the life of many children in Chemtal and elsewhere, forcing some to work instead of going to school. Eight-year-old Ahmad Shafi and his younger brother spend many hours a day fetching drinking water for their family in the drought-stricken Chemtal District of Balkh Province, northern Afghanistan. They have been unable to attend school as a result. "We start around eight in the morning and finish by midday," Ahmad told IRIN, adding that their job was "difficult" and "long".      Full news...

AFP: Afghan children are being recruited as suicide bombers, drawn into the military and used for sex by armed groups, a senior official with the UN children's agency said on Sunday. But the conflict means that children in more than 60% of the country cannot not be reached by Unicef workers, the agency's deputy executive director Hilde F Johnson said on a visit to Kabul.      Full news...

BBC: Although millions of Afghan children have gone back to school since the fall of the Taliban, full time education remains a distant dream for many. Continuing poverty means many children, including some as young as six, are forced to work to help their families. Twelve-year-old Izatullah was pushing a cart containing heavy sacks of flour. "I take this load to another shopkeeper. They will give me 10 or 20 Afghanis (21 pence or 42pence). I am poor, I don't have bread. My father is an old man. I earn our living," he said.      Full news...

Independent.co.uk: There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay, grimacing in pain, her leg amputated, her life destroyed after her foot was torn to pieces. In another ward, two girls lie on their backs, a tent above their limbs. One has lost an arm, another – a 16-year-old – a leg. The black turbans are everywhere. So are the blue burkhas which we Westerners confidently – stupidly – believed would vanish from Afghan society.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): In the common border of Torkham between Pakistan and Afghanistan about 4000 children engage in harsh work everyday. Besides being beaten by the border patrols of Pakistan they are also imprisoned. Rana, a 12-year old girl belonging to the Sarkhrud District of Ningarhar province, told PAN on 20 November that her father has Hepatitis and she is forced to work in Torkham. She added that everyday she has to bring a small bag of flour from the other side of the border to earn 10 rupees.      Full news...

PAN: Unknown armed men kidnapped three students of two high schools students in Baraki Barak district of Logar province, on Wednesday. Deputy Director of Logar province, Mohammad Yasin Ahmadi told Pajhwok Afghan News that the students of two different high schools in the district were residents of Chalozai village.      Full news...

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Afghan education authorities say they are facing a difficult task of convincing parents to send their daughters to school as attacks on female students have increased in recent months. Three girls sustained severe burns in the southern town of Kandahar earlier in the week when unknown men sprayed acid on up to 15 girls. One of the girls might permanently lose her sight.      Full news...

BBC News: Attackers in Afghanistan have sprayed acid in the faces of at least 15 girls near a school in Kandahar, police say. They say the attack happened shortly before at least six people were killed in a bomb blast near a government building in the city.      Full news...

IRIN: There are at least 200,000 children in Afghanistan living with permanent disability (physical, sensory and/or mental impairment), according to a 2005 survey by Handicap International - a non-governmental organisation supporting people with disability. Three decades of conflict have left the country strewn with landmines and other explosive remnants of war which kill and/or maim about 60 people, mostly children, each month, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported.      Full news...

The Sunday Times: Nobody seriously thinks the Taliban could take Kabul. The capital is surrounded by mountains, has only a few routes in and remained almost untouched during the Russian occupation. Afghanistan has more than 71,000 foreign troops under the leadership of Nato and the US, neither of which can contemplate defeat. It is hard to find any Afghan families who hanker after a Taliban regime that banned everything from girls’ schools to television and regarded public amputations and executions as entertainment. However, the fear among Kabulis is palpable. “There is a sense of dread of return to the dark days of the past,” said a western diplomat.      Full news...

IRIN: More than 600 primary, secondary and high schools are closed, mostly in the volatile southern provinces, because of prevalent insecurity and attacks on formal education, the MoE said. Consequently, more than 300,000 students have been deprived of an education in 12 provinces, according to MoE officials.      Full news...

AHN: Suspected Taliban militants "punished" a schoolteacher for working for the government by dragging him out of a mosque and cutting off his ears in Afghanistan. Zabul provincial education chief Mohammad Nabi Khushal said the armed rebels barged into the mosque while worshippers were at a late night prayer, and took another dozen people and beat them up on similar chargers.      Full news...