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Afghan and Pakistani negotiators are to meet in Istanbul Saturday to address security issues and establish a lasting ceasefire along their shared border after an outbreak of unexpectedly intense bloody clashes. The confrontation — which resulted in dozens of deaths, among them civilians — began two weeks ago following explosions in central Kabul, which the Taliban government blamed on its Pakistani neighbour, launching a retaliatory offensive at the border. Vowing a strong response, Islamabad then carried out “precision strikes” against armed groups on Afghan soil which are at the heart of the dispute, security sources said. After further clashes that left soldiers and civilians dead, both sides declared an initial 48-hour ceasefire which collapsed two days later, with Kabul blaming Islamabad. A second truce took shape on Sunday following talks in Doha thanks to mediation by Qatar and Turkey, which appears to have held, although the terms remained unclear. At Saturday’s talks, negotiators are expected to detail the “mechanisms” for ensuring the return to stability that were announced in Doha. It was not clear when the talks would begin nor where they were meeting in Istanbul. The Afghan delegation, which left for Turkey on Friday, will be led by its deputy Interior Minister Haji Najib. Islamabad has not said who it is sending for the talks. For the Taliban government, the goal is to ensure Afghanistan’s territorial integrity. For Islamabad, the negotiations must address “the menace of terrorism emanating from Afghan soil towards Pakistan,” its foreign ministry spokesman Tahir Hussain Andrabi said on Friday. – An essential meeting -Security issues are at the heart of recurring bilateral tensions. Facing a resurgence of attacks against its security forces, Islamabad has repeatedly accused its Afghan neighbour of “harbouring” groups it views as “terrorist”, primarily the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) — a charge Kabul denies. Throughout the confrontation, Islamabad demanded that the Taliban authorities “regain control” over fighters present on Afghan soil.From the Pakistani perspective, this would be key to the Istanbul talks, explained Ibraheem Bahiss, an International Crisis Group analyst in Afghanistan. “The meeting in Istanbul is going to be quite essential because that’s where the so-called mechanism would be agreed on in terms of when Pakistan has concerns that anti-Pakistan elements inside Afghanistan are doing things against Pakistan,” he told AFP. He said such “mechanisms” could involve intelligence sharing on armed groups. “For example, Pakistan would give coordinates of where they suspect TTP fighters or commanders are, and instead of carrying out strikes, Afghanistan would be expected to carry out action against them,” he said.But it was unclear if that would end the problem. “I’m not so hopeful that a technical mechanism will really address the fundamental drivers of this escalatory cycle,” he admitted.Before the latest skirmishes, Pakistan had long been the Taliban’s biggest supporter, bolstering them in Afghanistan for so-called strategic depth against arch-rival India.Two weeks ago, the initial explosions in Kabul — which triggered the escalation — took place as the Taliban foreign minister was making an unprecedented visit to India.Turkey has not confirmed any details about Saturday’s meeting beyond hailing their joint decision in Doha “to establish mechanisms to strengthen peace and stability” and pledging to “continue to support the efforts” to achieve that. 

Paceman Harshit Rana grabbed four wickets to bowl out Australia for 236 in the final one-day international as India strive to prevent a whitewash of the three-match series.The hosts were ticking along nicely at 183-3 in front of a sold-out Sydney Cricket Ground but lost their last seven wickets for just 53 to be all out with 3.2 overs left.Rana did the damage with 4-39 while Matt Renshaw top-scored on 56 after Mitchell Marsh won the toss and opted to bat.Australia have already clinched the series after a two-wicket win in Adelaide followed a seven-wicket victory at Perth, with India playing for pride.Marsh and Travis Head made a watchful start, with the visitors finding some early swing.But once they got their eye in, the runs started flowing with both going on the attack, picking off boundaries.Head looked dangerous, hitting six fours in reaching 29 off 25 balls, passing 3,000 one-day runs en route. But he failed to control a cut shot off Mohammed Siraj and was caught at backward point.Matt Short should have been run out without scoring in the same over but Shubman Gill missed a sitter with the throw and he survived.Marsh was bowled for 41, confounded by the spin of Axar Patel, and when Short (30) was well caught by Virat Kohli off Washington Sundar Australia were 124-3 after 23 overs.Shreyas Iyer pulled off a sensational backpeddling catch to remove Alex Carey (24), but hurt himself after falling heavily, casting doubt on whether he will bat.It sparked a collapse.Renshaw reached a maiden ODI half-century after being called up for the series following more than two years in the international wilderness.But with the runs drying up, he charged at Sundar and was trapped lbw, and when Mitchell Owen departed for one and Mitchell Starc for two Australia were in trouble at 201-7.Cooper Connolly made a late 23 but the tail failed to wag as India turned the screws.

India trialled cloud seeding over its smog-filled capital for the first time, spraying a chemical from an aeroplane to encourage rain and wash deadly particles out of the air.      Cloud seeding is the practice of using aeroplanes to fire salt or other chemicals into clouds to induce rain.New Delhi city authorities, working with the government’s Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, launched a test run on Thursday afternoon using a Cessna light aeroplane over the city’s northern Burari area.”A trial seeding flight was done… in which cloud seeding flares were fired”, Delhi Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said in a statement late Thursday.”This flight was the proving flight for checking the capabilities for cloud seeding, the readiness and endurance of the aircraft, the capability assessment of the cloud seeding fitments and flares, and coordination among all involved agencies.”It comes ahead of a planned rollout of the scheme.Delhi’s Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that “if conditions remain favourable, Delhi will experience its first artificial rain on October 29.”It was not immediately clear what chemical was used in the test to encourage the rain.New Delhi and its sprawling metropolitan region of 30 million people are regularly ranked among the world’s most polluted capitals, with acrid smog blanketing the skyline each winter.Cooler air traps pollutants close to the ground, creating a deadly mix of emissions from crop burning, factories and heavy traffic.Levels of PM2.5 — cancer-causing microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream — at times rise to as much as 60 times UN daily health limits.Pollution rose this week after days of fireworks launched to mark Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, shooting PM2.5 levels to more than 56 times the limit.That came after the Supreme Court this month eased a blanket ban on fireworks to allow the use of the less-polluting “green” crackers — developed to reduce particulate emission.At dawn on Thursday, PM 2.5 levels were 154 micrograms per cubic metre in parts of New Delhi, according to monitoring organisation IQAir, just more than 10 times World Health Organization limits.A study found in September that the noxious air is even turning Delhi’s iconic 17th-century Red Fort black.Scientists warned that the UNESCO World Heritage Site is being steadily disfigured by a black crust, according to a study published in the Heritage journal by a joint team of Indian and Italian researchers.Invented in the 1940s, countries have been seeding clouds for decades to alleviate drought, fight forest fires and even to disperse fog at airports.China used it in 2008 to try to stop rain from falling on Beijing’s Olympic stadium.But research on the effects of cloud seeding on neighbouring regions is mixed — and some evidence suggests it does not work very well even in the target area.

South Africa beat Pakistan by eight wickets in the second Test in Rawalpindi on Thursday to draw the series 1-1 with Simon Harmer taking a maiden five-wicket haul.The 36-year-old off-spinner finished with 6-50, taking his 1,000th first-class wicket in the process, on a deteriorating Rawalpindi stadium pitch.South Africa eased to the 68-run target for the loss of captain Aiden Markram (42) and Tristan Stubbs (nought), both to spinner Noman Ali, who finished with 2-40.Ryan Rickelton, who scored 25 not out, hit Sajid Khan for a six to seal an emphatic win minutes before the lunch break for the World Test Championship holders. Markram was delighted by his side’s display after losing the first Test by 93 runs.”It was a great response after Lahore,” said Markram, standing in for regular skipper Temba Bavuma, who missed the tour with a calf injury.Like Lahore — where spinners took 34 of the 40 wickets to fall — it was a battle of the slow bowlers.Pakistan made 333 in their first innings before the South African tail wagged to help them pile up 404 for a crucial 71-run lead.Thursday’s morning session saw Pakistan’s batters fold, adding just 44 runs after resuming the fourth day on 94-4.Harmer torpedoed Pakistan’s hopes of saving the Test when he trapped Babar Azam leg-before with the fifth ball of the day after the batsman had reached his 30th Test half-century.Markram said the performance of the South African spinners, especially Harmer and Keshav Maharaj, gave them a big boost with two Tests in India next month.”In South Africa you’d think just seamers and some spinners, but we are a work in progress heading to India,” he said.Pakistan captain Shan Masood said some of his side’s batting was “not up to the mark”.”You have to give credit to South Africa,” he said.”They have kept fighting and our lower-order batting, finishing innings off, third-innings collapses are not up to the mark.”- Azam drought goes on -Pakistan’s hopes had rested on Azam ending his century drought, having not scored a ton since December 2022.His lean spell goes on.Nine runs later Harmer had Mohammad Rizwan caught by close-in fielder Tony de Zorzi for 18.In his next over the spinner dismissed Noman for nought, caught behind for Harmer’s 1,000 wicket in his 235th first-class match.Harmer is the fourth South African to take 1,000 or more first-class wickets, behind Mike Procter (1,417), Allan Donald (1,216) and Charlie Llewellyn (1013).Harmer’s previous best figures of 4-51 came in the first Test in Lahore.Unlike South Africa, Pakistan’s tail did not last long as they lost their last five wickets for 33 runs in their second innings, just their latest batting slump in the series.Shaheen Shah Afridi was run out without scoring while Maharaj dismissed Salman Agha for 28 and Sajid Khan for 13 to swiftly wrap up the innings.Maharaj finished with 2-34 to follow up his 7-102 in the first innings.

The verdict in the crimes against humanity case against ousted Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina will be delivered on November 13, the attorney general said, as the trial ended on Thursday.Hasina, 78, has defied court orders to return from India to face charges of ordering a deadly crackdown in a failed attempt to crush a student-led uprising.”If she believed in the justice system, she should have returned,” Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman said in his closing speech of the nearly five-month-long trial in Dhaka.”She was the prime minister but fled, leaving behind the entire nation — her fleeing corroborates the allegations.”Her trial in absentia, which opened on June 1, heard months of testimony alleging Hasina ordered mass killings.Up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024, according to the United Nations.Prosecutors have filed five charges, including failure to prevent murder, amounting to crimes against humanity under Bangladeshi law.They have demanded the death penalty if she is found guilty.Chief prosecutor Tajul Islam has accused Hasina of being “the nucleus around whom all the crimes were committed” during the uprising.Her co-accused are former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, also a fugitive, and ex-police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who is in custody and has pleaded guilty.- ‘We want justice’ -Witnesses included a man whose face was ripped apart by gunfire.The prosecution also played audio tapes — verified by police — that suggested Hasina directly ordered security forces to “use lethal weapons” against protesters.Hasina, assigned a state-appointed lawyer, has refused to recognise the court’s authority.Defence lawyer Md Amir Hossain said she was “forced to flee” Bangladesh, claiming that she “preferred death and a burial within her residence compound”.Her now-banned Awami League says she “categorically denies” all charges and has denounced the proceedings as “little more than a show trial”.Asaduzzaman, the attorney general, said it had been a fair trial that sought justice for all victims.”We want justice for both sides of the crimes against humanity case, that claimed 1,400 lives,” he said, listing several of those killed, including children.The verdict will come three months ahead of elections expected in early February 2026, the first since Hasina’s overthrow.

Bangladesh’s interim leader has sought to calm rival political parties questioning the impartiality of his cabinet as they jostle for power ahead of the first elections since a 2024 uprising.The polls, expected in February 2026, will be the first in the South Asian nation of 170 million people since a student-led revolt ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, ending her 15-year hardline rule.Muhammad Yunus, the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner serving as the country’s “chief adviser”, had “taken measures to hold free, impartial, and fair elections”, his press team said Thursday.But Nahid Islam, convener of the National Citizen Party (NCP) — made up of many students who spearheaded the uprising — alleged some advisers were collaborating with parties to secure their “safe exit” in the future administration.”Major political parties are appointing party loyalists to various administrative posts ahead of the elections,” Islam told reporters late Wednesday.”Some advisers within the government are helping them.”He did not give further details, but those and similar accusations from other parties have sent political tensions soaring.Yunus met late Wednesday with leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the Muslim-majority nation’s largest Islamist party, in the latest of a series of talks aimed at easing tensions.Senior Jamaat leader Abdullah Muhammad Taher said they had told Yunus that some of his advisors had been “misleading” him, by “working on behalf of a certain political party”, without giving further details.”You should be aware of them,” Taher said in a message to Yunus, speaking to reporters.That followed meetings on October 21 with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), seen as among the election front-runners.Senior BNP official Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, speaking to reporters after that meeting, said he had “requested the government remove any adviser found siding with political parties”.Almagir did not give further details, although Dhaka’s Prothom Alo newspaper reported the BNP had submitted two names.Hasina, 78, fled last year to New Delhi, where she has defied court orders to return to attend her ongoing crimes against humanity trial for ordering the deadly crackdown.Her Awami League has been outlawed and is barred from taking part in elections.

Brandishing bamboo sticks and chanting patriotic hymns, thousands of uniformed men parade in central India, a striking show of strength by the country’s millions-strong Hindu ultranationalist group. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — the National Volunteer Organisation, or RSS — marked its 100th anniversary this month with a grand ceremony at its headquarters in Nagpur. AFP was one of a handful of foreign media outlets granted rare access to the group, which forms the ideological and organisational backbone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power since 2014.Like the 75-year-old prime minister, critics accuse it of eroding the rights of India’s Muslim minority and undermining the secular constitutionAt the parade, RSS volunteers in white shirts, brown trousers and black hats marched, boxed and stretched in time to shrill whistles and barked orders.”Forever I bow to thee, loving Motherland! Motherland of us Hindus!” they sang, in a scene that evoked paramilitary drills of the past.”May my life… be laid down in thy cause!”- ‘Proud’ -Hindus make up around 80 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people.Founded in 1925, the RSS calls itself “the world’s largest organisation”, though it does not give membership figures.At the heart of its vision is “Hindutva” — the belief that Hindus represent not only a religious group but are India’s true national identity.”They are willing to fight against those who will come in their way… that means minorities, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and other Hindus who do not subscribe to the idea,” historian Mridula Mukherjee said.RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat uses softer language, saying that minorities were accepted but that they “should not cause division”.Anant Pophali, 53, said three generations of his family had been involved with the group.”The RSS made me proud to be an Indian,” the insurance company worker said.- Bloody origins -The RSS was formed during the imperial rule of the British.But it diverged sharply from that of independence efforts by Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party, whose leader Jawaharlal Nehru considered them “fascist by nature”.Mukherjee said archives showed “a link between the RSS and fascist movements in Europe”.”They have said, very clearly, that the way the Nazis were treating the Jews should be the way our own minorities should be treated,” she told AFP. The RSS does not comment directly on such parallels, but Bhagwat insisted that “today we are more acceptable”.The RSS was an armed Hindu militia during the bloody 1947 partition of India and the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan.Hindu extremists blamed Gandhi for breaking India apart.A former RSS member assassinated him in 1948, and the group was banned for nearly two years.But the RSS rebuilt quietly, focusing on local units known as “shakhas” to recruit.Today, it claims 83,000 of them nationwide, as well as over 50,000 schools and 120,000 social welfare projects.At a shakha in Nagpur, Alhad Sadachar, 49, said the unit was “meant to develop togetherness”.”You can get a lot of good energy, a lot of good values, like helping those in need”, he said.At a shaka that AFP was allowed to attend, dozens of members –- many middle-aged or elderly, and not in uniform –- gathered for an hour of calisthenics and song.But in a show of symbolism, they congregated beneath a saffron flag — the colour of Hinduism — rather than India’s tricolour.- ‘A country that is one’  -The RSS remains deeply political.The group re-emerged in the late 1980s, spearheading a movement that ended with a violent mob demolishing a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya -– now replaced by a gleaming temple to the Hindu god Rama.”That was the turning point,” said Mukherjee, the historian, adding that the RSS was “able to create a mass mobilisation on religious issues, that became at its heart clearly anti-Muslim”.The group helped deliver Modi’s BJP party an electoral landslide in 2014.Since then, Modi -– a former RSS “pracharak”, or organiser —  has pursued policies that critics say marginalise India’s estimated 220 million Muslims, 15 percent of the population.”There has been a clear increase in terms of violence, lynching and hate speech since Modi has taken over,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, director of the US-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate.RSS leaders deny it has participated in atrocities.”Those allegations are baseless,” Bhagwat said.”Atrocities were never done by the RSS. And if it happens anyway, I condemn that.”Under Modi, it has expanded its reach.”The RSS has been able to stir Indian society in a direction that is more nationalistic, less liberal in a Western sense,” said Swapan Dasgupta, a former nationalist parliamentarian.But volunteer Vyankatesh Somalwar, 44, said the group only pushed “good values”. “The most important thing is to contribute to your country,” he said. “A country that is one, above all.”

SpaceX has cut service to more than 2,500 Starlink internet devices at Myanmar scam centres, a company executive said Wednesday, after AFP revealed that their use had exploded in the illicit industry.Sprawling compounds where internet tricksters target foreigners with romance and business cons have thrived along Myanmar’s loosely governed border during its civil war, sparked by a 2021 coup.A highly publicised crackdown starting in February saw around 7,000 workers repatriated and Thailand enact a cross-border internet blockade.But an AFP investigation this month revealed construction has continued apace, while Starlink receivers have been installed en masse, seeming to connect the hubs to the Elon Musk-owned satellite internet network.SpaceX’s vice-president of Starlink business operations, Lauren Dreyer, said the company “disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers'” in Myanmar.Her post on X did not say when the terminals were disconnected. The online scam industry has boomed across Southeast Asia, conning victims out of up to $37 billion in 2023, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report.Cambodia deported 64 South Koreans last week accused of links to scam networks, with police seeking arrest warrants for most on their return.Thailand’s deputy finance minister Vorapak Tanyawong resigned on Wednesday following allegations linking him to Cambodia-based cyberscam networks.Myanmar’s border regions with Thailand and China have become particularly fertile ground for the fraud factories where some workers are lured or trafficked, while others go willingly.Starlink did not have enough traffic to register as one of the country’s internet providers before February, but ranked top every day from July 3 until October 1, according to the Asian regional internet registry, APNIC.The powerful US Congress Joint Economic Committee says it has begun an investigation into Starlink’s involvement with the centres.- ‘Leaving in chaos’ -Myanmar’s junta said this week it had raided KK Park — one of the country’s most notorious scam centres — and seized Starlink terminals.People there said raids were continuing on Wednesday, and an AFP reporter saw more than 1,000 people travelling north away from the site by foot, on motorbikes and crammed into pickup trucks.”Around 10:00 am Myanmar military soldiers in four trucks arrived to our site,” said one employee leaving KK Park, who declined to give his name for security reasons.”Workers are leaving in chaos,” he added.Experts say Myanmar’s military turns a blind eye to scam centres which profit its militia allies in the region who are crucial in the civil war.But the junta has also faced pressure to shut down the scam operations from its military backer China, irked at the number of its citizens both participating in and being targeted by the scams.The haul of Starlink terminals the junta said it seized this week numbered only 30, a fraction of the thousands which independent analysts have documented at KK Park.Nathan Ruser, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the Myanmar military is attempting a “balancing act” to please both China and the militias aligned with the junta  — “tokenistically” taking action “while actually not doing anything”.But as night fell on Wednesday, a resident of Mae Sot, just over the border in Thailand, said KK Park appeared largely abandoned.”Usually at this time in the evening it is lit up brightly,” they told AFP, speaking anonymously for security reasons.”Today I only see some lights,” they added. “I don’t see the lights on in the dormitory buildings.”Erin West, a longtime US cybercrime prosecutor who resigned last year to campaign full-time against scam centres, said its closure would be “a drop in the ocean”.”If there is a crackdown at KK Park, this is a small portion of what’s happening at KK Park,” she told AFP. “And KK Park is a small portion of the number of compounds in the world that are doing this dirty business.”

In Pakistan, where gender affirmation surgery was recently legalised, Bunty is one of the few trans women who could afford to get it done safely.Despite winning the right to medically transition in 2018, many transgender people in the Muslim-majority nation still turn to unqualified surgeons because of a lack of trained doctors, high costs and cultural taboos.Bunty, who no longer uses her family name since her transition, said she went to the only doctor in the northeastern city of Lahore who performs breast augmentation surgery for trans women — a qualified, experienced professional.While the procedure was successful, she said it took place in an “underground” manner and cost twice the normal rate for a cisgender woman.”I was kept at the hospital for only two hours and then I was forced to leave so that no one would find out,” she told AFP.”I was in extreme pain.”It was the latest ignominy for Bunty, who said she was shunned by her family over her gender identity, then sacked from the job that funded her hospital bills, pushing her into sex work.She said the hospital did not want news of her procedure to spread among doctors and patients who might disapprove.”Gender transitioning is still controversial. Doctors fear they will be judged,” said Mudassir Mahboob, a doctor who carries out legal gender-affirmation surgeries.Mahboob said he chose to work in the capital, Islamabad, to avoid causing controversy in his deeply conservative home province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.He has operated on patients who have asked him to repair damage done to them by unscrupulous backstreet “doctors”.One of them, “who got castrated by a so-called practitioner, came to me and asked me to fix what went wrong”, he said.- ‘Have fear of God’ -Reem Sharif, a member of a communal household known as a “dera” for trans people, said there were only two doctors in Pakistan openly offering legal, safe gender affirmation procedures.Public hospitals often turn away those who enquire about such services, citing religion, Sharif said.”They would say: ‘Have fear of God, how can you try to do this?'” she told AFP, surrounded by other trans women putting on make-up and fixing their hair. “Gender transition is legal according to the law, but practically it is not, and (it) is not accepted in society.”No reliable data exists on the number of transgender people in Pakistan.The country has long recognised a third sex, known as “khawaja sira”, who for centuries have played a spiritual role in society, offering blessings at weddings and births.The 2018 law aimed to strengthen political and social rights for transgender people, whose wider integration was being met with increasing violence.Despite being lauded around the world, the law drew domestic backlash from right-wing religious groups, which spread disinformation that it would lead to same-sex marriage in a country where homosexuality is illegal.The law remains in force but is subject to court challenges, including a review of whether it complies with Islamic law, which coexists with Pakistan’s secular legal code.Psychiatrist Sana Yasir said “the most visits and follow-ups I have had” came in the three years since those challenges began, as transgender clients grappled with the potential repercussions of any legal change.Rights groups say trans people who are helped to transition report better quality of life, while those not given support are more likely to report mental health issues, including suicidal ideation.According to Pakistan’s religious and cultural norms, having surgery to change gender characteristics is “a sin”, even if it aligns one’s body and gender identity, said Mehleb Sheikh, an independent trans rights researcher and activist.Gender affirmation surgery is available in some other Muslim countries, such as Egypt, where the procedure is legal but only with approval from doctors and religious officials. In practice, access remains extremely limited.In Iran, gender affirmation care is legal and even subsidised by the government, but according to activists, transgender people face discrimination on a daily basis. – Threats, violence, and pride -Activists say Pakistan is seeing a rise in violence against trans people, although exact figures are not available due to severe underreporting.The Gender Interactive Alliance in Pakistan says 56 people have been killed since 2022.They include three trans women whose bullet-ridden bodies were found on a roadside in the megacity of Karachi last month.”My brother threatened to kill me and demanded that either I be thrown out of the house, or he would hurt me, blaming me for ruining their honour and their reputation,” said Zarun Ishaque, a 29-year-old transgender man in Islamabad.Despite the hardship, he told AFP that “this happiness after my transition is the dearest (thing)”.”My inner self has come out, and I am very happy with my life like this.”Haroon — a pseudonym to protect his identity — said his transformation had allowed him to finally feel “very comfortable with myself”.He has managed to have breast removal and bottom surgery despite being shunned by family and some doctors.”If you have the capability, if you’ve taken this step and made the decision, then you don’t step back,” he told AFP.

Toxic air in India’s capital hit more than 56 times the UN health limit early Tuesday, after fireworks for the Hindu festival of Diwali worsened air pollution.This month, the Supreme Court relaxed a ban on fireworks during the festival of lights, allowing the use of less-polluting “green firecrackers” — designed to emit fewer particulates.The ban was widely ignored in past years, however, and environmental groups have expressed doubts about the efficacy of the supposedly greener explosives.In the early hours of Tuesday morning, just after the peak of the bursting fireworks, levels of cancer-causing PM 2.5 microparticles hit 846 micrograms per cubic metre in parts of New Delhi, according to monitoring organisation IQAir.That is more than 56 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum.By Tuesday morning, PM2.5 concentrations had eased to around 320 micrograms per cubic metre — roughly 23 times WHO limits, but relatively typical for New Delhi in winter.The city regularly ranks as among the most polluted capitals.A study in The Lancet Planetary Health last year estimated that 3.8 million deaths in India between 2009 and 2019 were linked to air pollution.The UN children’s agency warns that polluted air puts children at heightened risk of acute respiratory infections.