#ThrowbackToday: About 25 years ago today, the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan

History is constantly repeating itself. We say this because the Taliban took over Afghanistan on September 27, 1996, and reigned over it until a US-led invasion ousted it in 2001. And on August 15, 2021, the Islamic fundamentalist group took over the reins of the capital of this landlocked country, Kabul. This was after reorganising forces in Pakistan. For now, let's go back to 1996.

Burhanuddin Rabbani was the President of Afghanistan, the Taliban termed him as anti-Pashtun and corrupt and it is from him that the capital was seized. Declaring the country as an Islamic emirate, the cleric Mullah Mohammed Omar was established as Amir al-Mu’minin or ‘Commander of the Faithful’.

Call of the orcas
The tear-jerker movie Free Willy is what comes to mind when one says killer whale, also known as orca. But it's time to shed more tears now because a study published on September 27, 2018, in the journal Science stated that half of the world's orcas could die. How? Because of all the toxic pollutants floating around in the ocean.

Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), found mostly in electrical equipment, is an organic chlorine and a highly toxic industrial compound. And if all goes the way it's going now, within 30-50 years, about half of these black-and-white patterned body creatures will vanish.