Erika Lust: We need a wider debate about porn and sex

US President Biden’s agenda will do an enormous amount of good, congressman Ritchie Torres says.

With growing concerns about a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the authorities in Turkey have stepped up security on their border and warned they won’t accept an influx of Afghan migrants and refugees. Turkey already has the world’s largest refugee population of around 4 million people – 3.6 million of whom are Syrians – but there…

The Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai is urging the Taliban to lift their ban on girls’ education in Afghanistan. The Pakistani activist for female education told BBC World News the current temporary ban might last for years. She said: “It happened a month ago they announced explicitly that boys can go to their schools. So…

Hundreds of Afghan children – some as young as seven or eight years old – are risking their lives to smuggle sweets and cigarettes into neighbouring countries. They’re hiding under lorries to cross national borders in the hope they’ll be able to get money for their families in exchange for these and other small, saleable…

Nine Catalan separatists convicted over a failed independence bid in 2017 have been formally pardoned by the Spanish government. President of the government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, told BBC World News that the priority now was to have an agreed referendum as this was the best way to achieve independence. In Spain tens of thousands…

Scientists are using Iceland as a testbed for deploying drone technology that they hope may one day feature on missions exploring Mars. The project equips drones with a range of devices from laser scanning Lidar which can help inform the thickness and volume of lava, to thermal imaging cameras and drills capable of taking core…