Taliban detain Afghan educator

Afghanistan's Taliban authorities have "beaten and detained" an academic who voiced outrage on live television against their ban on women's university education, his aide said yesterday. Veteran journalism lecturer Ismail Mashal caused a storm by tearing his degree certificates to shreds on TV in December, protesting the edict ending women's higher education. In recent days, domestic channels showed Mashal carting books around Kabul and offering them to passers-by. "Mashal was mercilessly beaten and taken away in a very disrespectful manner by members of the Islamic Emirate," Mashal's aide Farid Ahmad Fazli told AFP, referring to the Taliban government.