TIME.com

TALK TO US ONLINE

Each week TIME writers and editors chat on AOL about the news and answer your questions. Just go to AOL, Keyword: Live--and ask whatever you want.

--JAMES PONIEWOZIK is TIME's TV and media critic, and in recent weeks he's been writing for both the magazine and TIME.com on how the pop-culture landscape has changed since 9/11. He's also managed to find time to write about the fall TV season. Chat with him on Monday at 8 p.m. E.T.

--LISA BEYER has been editing our foreign coverage in recent weeks. In the current issue she writes about the women of Islam. It's a subject she knows well, having been based in the Middle East from 1991 to 2000. Talk to her on Tuesday at 8 p.m. E.T.

--RICHARD SCHICKEL is a veteran TIME film critic who this week reviews Kandahar, a film that explores the routine anarchy of daily life in Afghanistan, and Behind Enemy Lines, a war movie about a Navy flyer who is shot down in Serbia. Talk to him on Wednesday at 8 p.m. E.T.

--MARK THOMPSON is TIME's military correspondent, and in recent weeks he's been scurrying around Washington trying to glean the war's directions by talking with tight-lipped military officers. "I've been reduced to interpreting their grunts, groans, grimaces and grins for TIME's readers," says Thompson. Chat with him on Thursday at 8 p.m. E.T.

PHOTO ESSAY

KABUL UNVEILED

TIME photographer John Stanmeyer's experience as a fashion photographer served him well in his work on the cover story about Afghan women. His images of a Taliban-free Kabul show women shopping for burkas, as well as feminists who have tossed their burkas aside. His photo essay on TIME.com is a striking look at the changing circumstances of women in Afghanistan. Go to time.com/stanmeyer

WEB LORE

NO ONE EVER SAID THE TALIBAN HAD A SENSE OF HUMOR

Last week journalists from the Times of London and the BBC breathlessly reported discovering documents about making nuclear weapons at an abandoned "al-Qaeda safe house" in Kabul. But it's likely that the journalists--as well as the al-Qaeda members--were fooled by a satirical 1979 article that the would-be terrorists found on the Web. A sharp-eyed editor at a site called the Daily Rotten noticed similarities between a facetious article titled "Let's Make a Thermonuclear Device!" which appeared in a now defunct humor publication called Journal of Irreproducible Results, and the language in the Times story, as well as the images on the BBC. A sample passage from the article: "Please remember that Plutonium is somewhat dangerous. Wash your hands with soap and warm water after handling the material, and don't allow your children or pets to play in it or eat it." To read more on this, go to wired.com/news/culture

VIEWPOINT

HILLARY ON WOMEN

"Women's rights are human rights," says Senator Hillary Clinton in an essay for TIME.com "They are universal values that we have the right--and the responsibility--to promote every place in the world, and especially in a place like Afghanistan." With the Taliban's retreat giving fresh hope to the country's women, Clinton says the U.S. should make sure that women play a prominent role in a new Afghanistan. "It is not only the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do." Read the rest at time.com/clinton

ONLINE DISPATCHES

BURKA FASHIONS

"This year's trendy color for burkas is a pale sky blue," reports TIME's Tim McGirk from Afghanistan. This week on TIME.com McGirk writes about Afghan women, their complicated relationship to their signature head-to-toe garment and how their lives are changing: time.com/mcgirk

REFUGEE DILEMMA

TIME's Alex Perry reports on the humanitarian crisis in northern Afghanistan and the difficult, sometimes painful position of a reporter in a refugee camp. In the camps, says Perry, "I have been asked again and again why the aid isn't coming." For more, go to time.com/perry