The UN made the "biggest ever appeal" for humanitarian aid for a single country on Tuesday. It wants $4.4 billion (€3.9 billion) for Afghanistan to prevent the "world's most rapidly growing humanitarian crises" from deteriorating further.

Thousands of journalists have lost their jobs in Afghanistan over the past few months, with many media outlets ceasing operations due to increasing security and financial challenges.

A total of 150 Taliban soldiers on Thursday graduated from the first brigade of the 203rd Mansoori Corps in the southeastern zone after three months of training in the southeastern Khost province. Officials at the brigade say the graduates are well-trained and will strongly defend Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is the world's top producer of opium and the illegal drug trade has helped finance the ruling Taliban. Over the past decades, millions of Afghans have fallen into drug addiction. The Taliban now claim they want to eradicate the use of narcotics. When they were in power from 1996 to 2001, the fundamentalists had banned poppy cultivation. But the intervention of US-led troops in 2001 relaunched opium production. Today, it remains permitted and is even intensifying in a country on the brink of economic collapse. Our team on the ground reports.

Afghanistan is the world's top producer of opium and the illegal drug trade has helped finance the ruling Taliban. Over the past decades, millions of Afghans have fallen into drug addiction. The Taliban now claim they want to eradicate the use of narcotics. When they were in power from 1996 to 2001, the fundamentalists had banned poppy cultivation. But the intervention of US-led troops in 2001 relaunched opium production. Today, it remains permitted and is even intensifying in a country on the brink of economic collapse. Our team on the ground reports.

The United Nations is seeking more than $5 billion from international donors this year to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. It's the largest ever UN appeal for a single country, to avert what it describes as a "catastrophe". More than half of Afghanistan's population will need emergency assistance this year, with the UN estimating that 55 percent of Afghans are suffering from acute hunger. FRANCE 24's Business Editor Stephen Carroll has the details.

Thousands of journalists have lost their jobs in Afghanistan over the past few months as many media outlets ceased operations due to increasing security and financial challenges.

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan on Sunday gave new guidance to taxi drivers, advising them against taking fares from women who do not follow a strict Islamic dress code by wearing the hijab, or Islamic headscarf.

The German foreign minister said more needs to be done to help Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover. Some 15,000 people which Germany vowed to take in are still stranded there.

What's it really like inside the new Afghanistan? Four months after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, FRANCE 24 went to the capital and beyond to speak to citizens from all walks of life. What they heard was a mix: relief that the guns have gone quiet but worry over the prospect of a bleak winter, with more than half the population facing acute food shortages. Meanwhile, Afghanistan remains isolated on the world stage and its new rulers have yet to let women return to school and work. The Taliban also still have to prove that they can run a country.

It's been four months since the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, something they did faster than anyone anticipated. Since August, they have had to make a rapid transition to running the day-to-day business of a struggling state. From Kabul to the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and the mountainous Wardak province, our team have witnessed the grim reality of Taliban rule. FRANCE 24's senior reporters Catherine Norris Trent and Roméo Langlois bring us this exclusive full-length documentary.

A new report by Amnesty international has documented war crimes and atrocities committed during the fall of the internationally backed Afghan government in August.