FSNN | Free Speech News Network https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html Institutional crypto trading hits a record 72% as Wall Street calms crypto’s wild swings World Cup Prediction Markets Hit $20B as NFT Trading Reached $24M Coinbase Q2 Earnings Miss Estimates as Crypto Trading Slows The Real Cost of Turning Away Foreign Talent Ethereum enters its second decade after a year of upheaval at the foundation Bhutan’s Gelephu taps 3iQ to manage part of Bitcoin treasury Fauci Pleads the Fifth, Pluribus, Ross Douthat’s New CBS Gig What 20 Million Bans Reveal About The Stress On Wikipedia’s Volunteers Chicago Homeowner Sues Border Cops for Warrantless Raid Coinbase (COIN) sinks 5% after missing Q2 revenue estimates US Senators Sent Revised Ethics Rules to White House for CLARITY Act Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest Sells Bitmine While Adding to Coinbase and Circle Holdings ACLU of Iowa Report Finds Police in Schools Led to Harsher Discipline for Minor Offenses, Disparate Enforcement Bitcoin’s (BTC) second-quarter decline leads to $8.2 billion loss Strategy posts $8.2B Q2 loss as Bitcoin slump drives unrealized losses Coinbase Misses on Q2 Earnings as Crypto Trading Activity Slows Advisers under fire spark student press freedom concerns Axon Insists Its AI Makes Police Reports Easier. Nothing Suggests It Makes Them Any *Better* New NYU Brennan Center Article on “Using State Constitutions to Combat Exclusionary Zoning” books $8.2 billion in Q2 loss amid bitcoin (BTC) price decline Telegram CEO Says Russia Labeled Him a Terrorist Researchers Tried Letting AI Do Science. It Failed What Anthony Fauci’s Defenders (and Critics) Get Wrong JPMorgan warns crypto risks losing out as Clarity Act stalls Hyperscale Data sells 100 BTC to fund Michigan AI data center Treasury Secretary Invokes Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto in Plea for Clarity Act What student journalists need to know about social media The Worst Person You Know Just Filed A Good First Amendment Lawsuit Against A Very Badly Drafted Nudify App Ban A Bill To Crack Down on Chinese Cars Could Shut Mercedes-Benz Out of American Markets Why Aave proposes quitting 6 blockchains that earn under $5,000 a quarter Aviva Debuts XRPL Tokenized Fund with Irish Approval Your ‘Sexual Wellness’ Pills Order Info From Hims Got Shared With Meta, Says FTC Todd Blanche’s Nomination Is in Trouble. It Should Have Been Doomed From the Beginning. JPMorgan, Citi, UBS test tokenized cross-border payments in BIS pilot Canadians’ Ownership of Crypto Increases to 25%: OSC Survey Bitcoin Quantum Threat Inches Closer as IBM Claims ‘Trusted Quantum Advantage’ In The Middle Of A War, The Trump Administration Has Cut National Security Staffing In Half Zohran Mamdani hides the truth about democratic socialism CPJ urges Tanzania to commit to press freedom at UN rights review Afghan journalist and director of Rukhshana Media, Zahra Joya. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo Nearly five years after the Taliban took control of her country and she fled Kabul, Afghan journalist Zahra Joya is telling her story. Her book The Vanishing Girl of Kabul, written with British-American journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman, is a mirror not just for Joya’s life, but for millions of other Afghan women and girls, who she describes as currently living in “home prisons”. The book tells the story of the Taliban’s brutal silencing of women and Joya’s own life of resistance. How she pretended to be a boy in the 1990s so she could go to school. How her family quickly packed up her grandfather’s handwritten Persian epic while the Taliban raided local villages for banned books. And how she feared for her life when the Taliban returned five years ago. Being a Hazara woman  – Hazaras are a persecuted minority in Afghanistan – she grew up with extreme violence levelled at her people. “It was important for me to record it, for people to understand, for the next generation and the history of Afghanistan,” Joya told Index. The day before the Taliban returned, she recounts in her book, she had the freedom to go the beauty salon. The next day offered a stark contrast. “Everything collapsed, including my own freedom,” she said. As the Taliban drew further into Kabul, she and her colleagues at the women-led publication which she had founded, Rukhshana Media, continued reporting. As Joya saw it, she was standing up for her rights and for freedom of expression, and was making sure the world knew about what was unfolding. “We never imagined that the Taliban would come to power so quickly, and everything would vanish very soon. We never thought that one day journalism would be a huge risk for the whole team,” she said. Joya had set up Rukhshana Media only a year before, and even then she was doing something courageous. In Afghanistan’s patriarchal society, the media space was dominated by men, who often held leadership positions. Now, Joya continues to run Rukhshana Media from London. Her journalists across Afghanistan work underground, protecting their identities by remaining anonymous and never meeting each other. Joya feels she has a heavy responsibility on her shoulders. Just before she spoke with Index, she received a voice message from one of her journalists describing how she wakes up every morning afraid of what she is going to lose on that particular day. Women and girls are banned from secondary and university education, and most jobs are closed to them. They must cover their bodies completely and even visiting a doctor requires a male chaperone. “The reality of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime is a complete gender apartheid system,” Joya said. Since she’s been in the UK, Joya has received a vast number of direct messages on social media from Taliban supporters, threatening her directly for her work and sending her videos of sexual abuse. But she has received supportive messages too. Now, she hopes readers of her book will reflect on the story, perhaps even take a photo of themselves with it and send her a message. Writing about her own life has been a difficult experience, and she has had to be careful around details of her relatives who are still in Afghanistan. But Joya said that remaining silent is not a solution. “It is part of my struggle against the misogyny, discrimination and injustice that is ongoing in Afghanistan,” she said. “The Vanishing Girl of Kabul. Maybe it’s me because I have had to disappear many times and find myself again, but I feel like she could just as easily be the millions of women of Afghanistan.” The Vanishing Girl of Kabul was published by Robinson on 23 July 2026 READ MORE Ondo Finance explores deal valued at up to $500 million Bitcoin Joins Risk-Asset Relief As PCE Inflation Follows Expectations Elon Musk’s xAI Sues Minnesota to Kill the US’s First AI Nudification Law New FIRE study finds record low number of restrictive campus speech codes Scammers stole millions of XRP tokens from dozens of investors via a fake Flare Network site Some More Or Less Tentative Thoughts on Substack Is the Clarity Act dead? AI Fund With Bitcoin Miner Bets Seeks Capital After Rout: FT Australia Sues Telegram for $38M Over ‘Pro-Terror’ Videos Homepage