Interviewing the Taliban: 'Still now I am terrified'

The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature says he thought the phone call telling him he’d won was a cold caller. Luckily, Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was persuaded not to hang up. Speaking to the BBC’s Ros Atkins, he says he was making a cup of tea when the phone rang, telling the…

Coldplay put a pause on touring in 2019 due to concerns about the environmental impact of concerts. Four years after their A Head Full of Dreams tour, which saw them stage 122 shows across five continents, the band have announced a new tour, with an eco-friendly focus. The band have pledged to make their upcoming…

Ros Atkins look at how India is trying to balance banishing poverty with meeting its climate commitments. More on the climate summit The COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow in November is seen as crucial if climate change is to be brought under control. Almost 200 countries are being asked for their plans to cut…

The Biden-Putin Geneva summit was prompted by a phone call when the US president called the Russian leader telling him to “back off” over Ukraine, the former acting US ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, has said. He told BBC World News that President Biden had told President Putin he would face sanctions over his actions,…

Armed forces minister James Heappey has said that British soldiers in Afghanistan are facing “extraordinary circumstances” at Kabul airport. UK troops were deployed to Kabul airport to aid the evacuation of people from the country, following the Taliban’s total takeover of Afghanistan. Mr Heappey told the BBC that while soldiers are helping with the evacuation,…

The head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has said it will not divest the billions of dollars invested in oil and gas companies. Selling these companies would not solve the problem of transitioning to greener energy, Nicolai Tangen told BBC News’s Hardtalk programme’s Stephen Sackur. And it was “much more powerful to be an active…