You are bound to devote yourself to the long conflict between the light and the dark.

The dark is rising, an immersive audio adventure, adapting Susan Cooper's classic fantasy novel

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The dark is rising. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Janet Jalil, and in the early hours of Wednesday, 21 December, these are our main stories.

The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have banned women from university education.

Jaina is changing the way it counts COVID deaths, a skepticism mounts about the reliability of official figures.

A sea of people has massed in the centre of Buenos Aires to salute Argentina's World Cup winning football team during their victory parade.

Also in this podcast, it's a common problem.

You're dunking your biscuit into your cup of tea when all of a sudden half of it has fallen in.

The burning question for tea drinkers, which biscuit is best for dunking?

But first we begin in Afghanistan.

When the Taliban seized back power in the country last year, they promised they would not repress and terrorise women the way they had done in the past.

But women and girls have seen basic rights that most of us take for granted stripped away, one by one.

They're already barred from most jobs, from going to secondary school, from travelling on their own, even from going to a parking car ball with their families.

Now in the latest twist, all Afghan universities have been ordered to stop teaching women.

Tim Frank spoke to one young woman in Kabul who is not going to identify who recently graduated from university.

She told him how she'd learned of the new Taliban edict.

At first I was a bit shocked.

Rumors were a few months ago that the Taliban are going to ban women from going to universities as well.

...