1. Violent rally in Pakistan leaves 4 police, 2 Islamists dead

Violence at an anti-France Islamist rally Wednesday in eastern Pakistan left at least four police officers and two demonstrators dead, officials said. The government deployed paramilitary troops to restore order. Thousands of supporters of an outlawed radical Islamist party rallied on a highway in the town of Sadhuke as they marched toward the capital Islamabad.

Supporters of the banned Islamist political party Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) run amid the smoke of tear gas during a protest in Lahore, Pakistan, Oct 23, 2021. (Reuters)

They demanded the expulsion of France’s envoy to Pakistan over publication of caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad in France. The violence erupted a day after the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan said it would not accept the Islamists’ demand to close the French Embassy and expel the French envoy.

2. Biden calls out China’s Taiwan actions as ‘coercive’

US President Joe Biden told leaders at the East Asia Summit on Wednesday that China’s recent actions in the Taiwan Straits are “coercive” and undermined peace and stability in the region. The comments by Biden, who participated by video in the annual meeting of 18 Asia-Pacific nations, come during a surge in Chinese military activity near the island that China regards as a renegade province and has vowed to reclaim by force if necessary.

US president Joe Biden. (AP/File)

“The president also reiterated the US commitment to the international rules-based order and expressed concern over threats to that order,” the White House said in a statement. “He made clear that the United States will continue to stand with allies and partners in support of democracy, human rights, rule of law, and freedom of the seas.”

3. EU court tells Poland to pay $1.2M a day in judicial dispute

The European Union raised the stakes Wednesday in a standoff with Poland over judicial independence and the primacy of EU law, with the bloc’s top court fining Poland $1.2 million a day to prevent what it called “serious and irreparable harm” to the EU’s legal order and values.

The European Court of Justice imposed the penalty after a weeklong war of words in which Poland told the EU to stay out of its judicial affairs while other EU nations insisted that Warsaw could not continue to get huge EU subsidies while disregarding the bloc’s democratic principles at will.

4. United States issues its first passport with ‘X’ gender marker

The United States has issued its first passport with an “X” gender designation, marking a milestone in the recognition of the rights of people who do not identify as male or female, and expects to be able to offer the option more broadly next year, the State Department said Wednesday.

The department did not identify the passport recipient, but Dana Zzyym, an intersex activist from Fort Collins, Colorado, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that they received it. Since 2015, Zzyym, who prefers a gender-neutral pronoun, has been in a legal battle with the State Department to obtain a passport that did not require Zzyym to lie about gender by picking either male or female.

5. Afghan girls learn, code ‘underground’ to bypass Taliban curbs

Cooped up at home in Herat, Afghanistan, Zainab Muhammadi reminisces about hanging out with her friends in the cafeteria after coding class. Now she logs on every day to secret online lessons. Her school shut down after the Taliban took control of the country in August. But that did not stop Muhammadi from learning.

She is one of an estimated hundreds of Afghan girls and women who are continuing to learn — some online and others in hidden makeshift classrooms — despite the Taliban’s closure of their schools. Fereshteh Forough, the CEO and founder of Code to Inspire (CTI) — Afghanistan’s first all-female coding academy — created encrypted virtual classrooms, uploaded course content online, and gave laptops and internet packages to about 100 of her students, including Muhammadi.