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

I'm Danny Cox and in the early hours of Sunday 25 December,

these are our main stories.

The UN criticises a ruling by the Taliban to bar Afghan women from working for aid agencies.

For a lot of me as Alentaki says,

deadly Russian shelling of the city of Hurson shows the evil that Ukraine is fighting against.

Also, in this podcast...

We've never had sub-zero temperatures like this.

Never. It just doesn't happen.

You know, we have a pretty moderate climate here.

Boy, it's not moderate this winter.

Blizzard and icy winds wreck havoc across North America as temperatures hit minus 40.

And police clash with protesters in Paris after a shooting at a Kurdish community centre.

We start in Afghanistan where women's rights have suffered a further setback.

They're now prevented from working for local and international non-governmental organisations by the Taliban.

It comes just days after women were banned from studying at university.

It hasn't stopped women from protesting in the streets of her at demanding education.

But their efforts were shut down by water cannon.

The United Nations condemned the ban saying the move would violate the most fundamental rights of women,

as well as breaching humanitarian principles.

Wasma throw is a prominent Afghan activist who's been campaigning for women's rights in her country

for two decades. She also runs a local NGO in Afghanistan and has been reacting to the latest

...