Let’s say you’re working toward a goal. Maybe it’s to cut out junk food, budget better or stop looking at your phone so much. Chances are, the first thing you think to yourself is something along the lines of, “OK, I just really need to eat more vegetables/save $10,000/put down the damn phone after 8 p.m.”

In other words, you think willpower will help you to achieve the goal. A unwavering determination will get you to the finish line.

But what if willpower wasn’t all that you needed? In fact, what if you didn’t actually need willpower at all? As it turns out, willpower is far from positive panacea we often see it as. It doesn’t always work. And what’s more, we often run out of it sooner rather than later.

Often interchangeable with the term “self-control,” willpower can be thought of as “mental strength or energy,” explained Denise Cummins, a cognitive scientist who researches decision-making and thinking. Like physical strength or energy, willpower can be built up ― but it also can be depleted.

Trying to commit to a drastic change and relying on willpower alone won’t work out, Cummins said. (This helps explain why only 8% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions.) That’s because we often view it as something we don’t have much of in the first place, which sets us up for failure. One 2010 study found that working adults and college students who believed that willpower was a limited resource were more likely to give into temptation under stress. 

On top of that, willpower only works well when your motivation is high, so basically when you’re just starting out, Cummins said. But as you come across more and more temptations that work against your goals as time goes on ― i.e., the free pizza at work, a new purse or the lure of Instagram ― your willpower rapidly starts to dissipate.

Plus, temptation is literally everywhere these days. “There’s no way around the fact that as humans in today’s world, we’re constantly swimming upstream against countless distractions,” explained Brad Stulberg, a researcher, wellness coach and author of ”The Passion Paradox.” “There’s an ongoing onslaught of junk food and junk content, and if you’re constantly flexing your willpower muscle against all those things, it’s going to constantly deplete.”

The bottom line: While willpower can certainly play a helpful role in reaching a goal ― at least when we’re highly motivated ― it’s just not enough on its own. “Self-control” isn’t the answer. Instead, there are a few ways to “hack” yourself so you can better achieve your goals, whatever they might be.

1. Adjust your environment.

“What I suggest to my clients and do in my own life is to look to see which distractions and temptations you can eliminate completely,” Stulberg said. Ask yourself: Where can you automate good decisions? How can you eliminate the option to make a bad decision at all?

For instance, if you’re trying to eat healthier, it’s time to toss all the chips and candy from your kitchen. Instead stock it with healthy foods that you actually want to eat ― not just carrots and celery, Cummins noted.

Want to look at your phone less often? Turn it off, and place on the other side of the room. Or delete your most tempting apps from your phone altogether, as Stulberg has done with Twitter, his social media vice of choice.

Trying to save money? Set up an automatic transfer from your checking to your savings account every month so you don’t have to think about it. Want to work out in the morning? Sleep in your workout gear and sign up a class you’ll be charged for missing.

2. Take a break — a real break.

If you don’t give yourself a chance to rest and recharge, you will run out of willpower.

“Just as your muscles need rest in order to recover and grow stronger, your willpower needs time to recover as well,” Stulberg explained. Especially in our world that’s so full of distractions, it’s essential to schedule in time away from it all, he said.

Take a real vacation where you can unplug and disconnect, or even just a daylong staycation somewhere peaceful. “Research shows that after spending a day in nature or doing something you enjoy, willpower tends to replenish,” Stulberg said. 

This doesn’t just apply to taking a trip, either. You can take a break by taking it easy in another area of your life by easing up on ambitious goals. For example, if you’re trying to eat healthier or save money, it’s probably not the time to start training for a triathlon, Stulberg explained.

In other words, cut yourself some slack in areas of your life where you’re not trying to exert your willpower. “Pick one or two things to work on, but then give yourself some space ― don’t take on multiple challenges,” Stulberg said.

3. Revisit your “why.”

If you feel like you’ve lost sight of your overarching goal, consider it a sign that it’s time to reset, Cummins said. If you can’t remember why you really want to save money or why working out is important to you, you won’t be nearly as motivated to do it.

Practicing visualization can help here. Essentially, you should imagine, in specific detail, those bigger goals. “This allows you to reinitialize your motivation and crystallize those goals again, so they become very clear and real again,” Cummins said. If you have an active imagination, you may be able to just conjure up those goals in a real, detailed way in your head.

If that doesn’t sound like you, Cummins suggests this technique: Google the things you have in mind ― a stronger deadlift, a fancy vacation, whatever it might be. “You can simply immerse yourself in those images that come up; you don’t have to generate them yourself,” she said.

4. Find a support team.

You’ve probably heard tips like “set a due date,” “mark it in your calendar” or “share your goal with others.” But the real trick to staying accountable is to have people alongside you, supporting you along the way.

“Whatever your goal is, doing it with people who you can get vulnerable with and who you trust will hold you accountable can make a huge difference,” Stulberg said.

This can obviously be done with people you know IRL. But if you can’t rely on a support team in person, look online to find free support groups, and go from there, Stulberg suggested.

5. Be kind to yourself, especially when you slip up.

The old adage “To err is human” holds true. You’re going to fail sometimes, and it’s important to be nice to yourself when you do.

“You’re still human, you’re still going to struggle,” Stulberg said. If you mess up or give into temptation, don’t beat yourself up about it ― just forgive yourself and move on. “Research shows that the more you judge yourself, the more likely you are to engage in that same behavior again, creating a vicious cycle,” he added.

A famous advice columnist has come forward to allege that US President Donald Trump attacked her in the 1990s in a dressing room. The alleged actions ― as described by columnist E. Jean Carroll in graphic detail ― would clearly constitute rape.

Carroll is the 16th woman to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct. New York Magazine on Friday published an excerpt from her upcoming book, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” in which she described her encounter with the real estate mogul.

Carroll wrote that in the mid-1990s, she was in Bergdorf Goodman when she ran into Trump. Trump, recognizing her as a famous advice columnist, asked for her help to buy lingerie for an unnamed woman. Carroll, then 52, obliged and followed Trump to the lingerie department. Once there, the exchange turned violent.

The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.

I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.

The now 75-year-old goes on to say it was a “colossal struggle” before she finally was able to “push him out and off,” and escape the department store.

The White House’s statement to New York Magazine on the alleged assault is that Carroll’s story “is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad.”

Carroll told two friends about the attack. Both told New York they remember the incident.

Carroll wrote that she didn’t come forward sooner because “receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun.”

Carroll and the White House did not respond to additional requests for comment, though Trump responded to the rape allegations in a statement to Bloomberg reporter Laura Litvan on Friday afternoon, claiming he’s “never met this person in my life” in reference to Carroll.

His response lambasted the Democratic Party, made reference to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the sexual assault allegations waged against him by Julie Swetnick, and said that Carroll’s book belonged in the “fiction section.”

You can read the entire excerpt of Carroll’s book here.

This has been updated with Trump’s response.

Like your summers scary?

The third season of “Stranger Things” has you covered ― if its latest trailer is any indication.

The hit Netflix horror series dropped the preview Thursday, suggesting that when Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) closed the gate to the Upside Down last season, it didn’t quite take.

“You let us in and now you are going to have to let us stay,” a creepy voice intones.

Among the “us” is apparently one imposing monster that leaves the petrified gang hiding at the end of the clip.

“Eleven and her friends are reminded that evil never ends; it evolves,” Netflix wrote of the upcoming season, per Variety. “Now they’ll have to band together to survive, and remember that friendship is always stronger than fear.”

“Stranger Things” premieres on July 4. We’ll just wait for the end of summer to open our eyes again.

Check out the trailer above.

Donald Trump has said the US was “cocked and loaded” to strike Iran on Thursday night but aborted a military attack with just 10 minutes to spare after being told of the potential death toll.

In a series of characteristically bombastic tweets posted on Friday, the president said he was ready to “retaliate last night on 3 different sights (sic) when I asked, how many will die”.

He said a general told him 150 people, and he cancelled the strikes as “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone”.

Trump also took the opportunity to attack Barack Obama and the nuclear deal which he pulled out of in 2018.

Ongoing tensions between the US and Iran escalated with the downing of an American surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday.

Trump suggested that shooting down the drone – which has a wingspan wider than a Boeing 737 – was a foolish error rather than an intentional escalation, suggesting he may have been looking for some way to avoid a crisis.

The swift reversal was a stark reminder of the serious risk of military conflict between US and Iranian forces as the Trump administration combines a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions with a build-up of American forces in the region.

Earlier on Friday, Iranian officials told Reuters that Tehran had received a message from Trump warning that a US attack on Iran was imminent but saying that he was against war and wanted talks on a range of issues.

News of that message, delivered through Oman overnight, came shortly after the New York Times reported that Trump had called off air strikes targeting Iranian radar and missile batteries at the last minute.

“In his message, Trump said he was against any war with Iran and wanted to talk to Tehran about various issues,” one of the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“He gave a short period of time to get our response but Iran’s immediate response was that it is up to Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei to decide about this issue.”

A second Iranian official said: “We made it clear that the leader is against any talks, but the message will be conveyed to him to make a decision.

“However, we told the Omani official that any attack against Iran will have regional and international consequences.”

Khamenei has the last say on all state matters and has ruled out any talks with Washington while Tehran is under sanctions.

Iran shot down the drone after weeks of festering tension amidst a spate of attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf region.

In his initial response on Thursday, Trump said he was not eager to escalate a stand-off with Iran over its nuclear and ballistic missile activities and support for proxies in various Middle East conflicts.

He said the unmanned drone might have been shot down in error by someone who was acting “loose and stupid”, though added: “This country will not stand for it.”

When I tell Amitav Ghosh that the only reason I read The Hungry Tide was because it was among the rare literary novels that always seemed to be in large supply on roadside pavements, he laughs. “What books are they selling nowadays?” he asks.

Ghosh’s innate curiosity about the world and the ways in which people inhabit geographic spaces in certain points of history have fuelled a series of novels that meld history, forgotten oral narratives and folklore, and yet feel revelatory about the contemporary world. His new book, Gun Island, is a dreamlike ecological fable. Dinanath ‘Deen’ Dutta, an Indian-American rare books seller, finds himself entranced by the tale of the mysterious Bonduki Sadagar, the Gun Merchant whose legend is commemorated with a hidden shrine in the Sundarbans. The novel weaves together the folk tales of Manasa Devi, the goddess who set snakes and storms to besiege the mortals who refuse to kowtow to her, the destruction of ecosystems from Bangladesh to Los Angeles, and the great migration—of labourers who flock to the shores of Italy and schools of dolphins in its waters. Fans of The Hungry Tide will also be glad to know that the novel revisits its protagonist, the resolute marine biologist, Piyali Roy. Above all, Gun Island soars because of its earnest empathy for everyone in its orbit (even vengeful goddesses). Whether or not one is intoxicated by Gun Island’s unique blend of globetrotting historical mystery, ecological realities and fantastical elements, it is yet another work by Ghosh that encapsulates debates about the Anthropocene, yet defies facile categorisations.  

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Excerpts from a conversation with Ghosh.

Could you talk about the research process behind Gun Island? Manasa Devi’s folklore plays a big role in it as does the migrants who turn up on Italian shores. How did you incorporate these diverse oral narratives into the novel?  

Gun Island relates to my readings of the lore of Manasa Devi. Those stories are presented in a way that are very abrupt and they played an important part in influencing my writing of the book. I also spent a lot of time in Italy meeting migrants and trying to understand the contemporary migrant phenomenon. Every one of their stories was fascinating. People were told they are going to work in Dubai and end up in Sharjah, unable to leave the airport. They call the Dalal and are presented with two choices. Come back or go to Libya. They get off the airplane in the Tripoli International Airport and half of it is rubble after being destroyed by cannon fire. These men are surrounded by people with guns and then taken to a darkened minivan. After driving for days, they are made to work as construction workers and are constantly sold from one contractor to the other. These stories are so horrifying, you can barely believe them. We buy into all these narratives of progress and yet these stories evoke indenture and slavery. I heard so many narratives of this kind in Italy.

However, in the final chapter of the book, you characterise this migration differently from the indentured labour during colonialism. It almost feels like a positive spin. Deen notes that these migrants are conversant with the laws of the West and it’s the West that doesn’t know the people flocking into its borders.

You have to interpret it as you will. The reality is that there is genuine difference. It isn’t like slavery. These kids start their journeys of their own volition. Of course, what really arises is the question of volition. Technology plays such a profound role in this movement. Human-machine interactions which we tend to think of in other contexts is very much present here. It raises profound questions about agency. Imagine a boy in rural India who works in the rice fields but has a mobile phone of his own decides to start moving. He looks at these images of the world outside his village with intense awareness and longing. He can’t move if there isn’t a system or what can be called an invisible production chain. It’s up to you whether it constitutes his own desires.

Memory seems to be a common refrain in your novels. In Gun Island, it’s the tale of Bonduki Sadagar, the Gun Merchant, whose largely forgotten legend resurfaces only because of a shrine built to commemorate Manasa Devi, the folk goddess of snakes. In your second novel, The Shadow Lines (1988), it’s Tridib recounting his tale to the narrator, his adoring nephew. Why do you return to it repeatedly?

Hmm...I don’t know. I suppose at the end of the day it’s always been interesting to me. History is collective memory, isn’t it? In fact, it’s collective memory in ways we don’t perceive. It’s what motivates people and gets them to do things.

It’s interesting that you note it gets people to do things. In your previous book, The Great Derangement, you write about moving past literature as personal narratives or chronicles of the individual to emphasise its ability to drive collective action. Do you believe literature has a purposiveness?

I don’t think it has a purpose, necessarily. In many ways literature can be a galvaniser but not always in the best ways. In the 19th Century, a lot of literature was very racist, imperialist, and warmongering. We can’t ignore that it had a profound basis in the literature that was produced. Literature is rarely a benign influence. That said, I’m not writing a novel as propaganda or to get readers to believe in a certain vision. My personal mission is to write about the realities we see around us. The very curious thing about literature in recent times has been the exclusion of this reality. Let me give you one example. Hurricane Sandy completely devastated New York in 2012. Strangely, there are many novels about the future destruction of New York—whether it is the city’s flooding or rising sea levels, every possible dystopian scenario—but there’s not a single novel about Hurricane Sandy. It seems that we prefer a fantastical vision of dystopia but the real dystopia that surrounds us seems to escape our vision.

So is it safe to presume you’re not a fan of dystopian fiction then?  

I’m absolutely not a huge fan of it. It’s a Western genre, a very peculiar one. Look, sometimes they can be enjoyable but they are a kind of fantasy.   

Should we then be focusing on a literature of ideas as opposed to a literature of feelings? The reason I make that simplistic binary is because literature is a very individual project that evokes different emotional reactions and actions in others, but ideas can drive this collaboration.

I don’t think that binary holds. It’s a mistake to think ideas and feelings can be separated. It’s reasonable to make that distinction but we have to realise that the literature being an individual pursuit or speaking only to the individual is a very recent phenomenon. Even reading silently is something that has occurred very recently. It’s not even 200 years old. Until the 18th century, people interacted very differently with literature. They didn’t read silently. They read aloud and to each other. People would gather in the evenings and read stories and poems. Even Dickens was being read together within the family. It was common even from my mother’s accounts of her childhood. That kind of individuation has taken place only recently and with a tremendous speed. All our technology is individuating. Everyone has their own music playlists now. It’s no longer possible to know what is being read. You enter a bus and you can’t tell what people are reading. Everything has become more secret and private because we have this constant regress to individuated spaces. These are the ways in which we are trapped in a descending spiral and everything in our lives and worlds makes it accelerate. If you speak to anyone in activism, we all know the only way to fight and resist is through collective action of which literature is a part.

In the book, Deen tells his friend Cinta that he prides himself on being “secular, rational and scientifically minded”, which is why he doesn’t believe in the supernatural. She points out the contradiction, emphasising that the natural can’t exist without the supernatural. I was particularly reminded of that binary in the final chapter when all the characters witness a “storm of living beings” where nature and magic, reality and lore collide.

All the ideas we have about natural and supernatural derive from a religious discourse. They have their origins in The Inquisition by the Catholic Church. Complaints would be brought to the inquisitors and they would interrogate and come to a conclusion whether an event had a natural cause. Anything they couldn’t explain was deemed supernatural. This had negative connotations obviously, because anything not natural should be under the purview of the church and so it was condemned as magic. But they also had another term—preternatural. That’s what we might call today as uncanny. That’s an area that interests me more and more. If you read writers who are documenting our world today, you will note that we are within that field of the uncanny. You can see the weird spins people put on events, the strange logic they employ, and you also see it in natural phenomena. One example I have cited several times is the scene in the book set in a Los Angeles museum as wildfire is advancing towards it. That actually happened last year during the California Fires but I had already written the scene long before. It’s eerie because fact outpaces fiction and we no longer know which is which.  

That feeling of being untethered to reality is something you evoke in the novel especially through the idea of coincidence. Does fiction have a greater ability to connect events that seem disparate and give us a better perception of our place in a certain sense of reality?

Last night, during our talk, T.M. Krishna said something very perceptive. What the book is really about is a sense of connection. That everything is connected and there are no disconnections. I was so struck by that. In a sense, that’s the opposite of a modernist lens of looking at the world where everything is discontinuous and one element happens to have a relation with another only in the realm of probability. I think the only way we can make sense of our world today is by realising that everything is connected. These intricate linkages exist on multiple levels. We don’t consume without creating waste, for example but we are rarely curious about where our waste goes till it comes back to haunt us. The Chennai floods are one such example.

Deen’s childhood tales of Manasa Devi re-emerge in his life because of his turbulent personal life. He notes that her folklore seems to have periodic revivals during times of historical upheaval and disruption. We ourselves exist during what could be called a tumultuous period of history. Is folklore one of the modes through which we can make sense of our reality?

It’s certainly not coincidental. What modernity calls folklore is actually a form of devotional literature. Calling it folklore was a way of suppressing it. If you look at the dominant genres of storytelling in the world today, so much of it has to do with superheroes. People have an endless appetite for men in capes. These superhero movies are not very different from our mythical tales, except that they have a technological armouring. The actual mechanics of the stories are completely folkloristic. Also, look at the great interest in vampires and zombies. It feels like all the biggest smash hits are about superheroes, vampires, and zombies. We are seeing the return of the repressed, if you’d like. It corresponds to extreme anxieties among people at large, especially among the young. 

In the book, Tipu asks Deen about the word bhuta, which Deen notes means a being existing in the present or past, in effect a spectre that haunts both the past and present. What does that word mean with regards to the ways in which we tend to favour narratives of acceleration and live through periods of history?

This Sanskrit word bhu is a very intriguing and shrouded in mystery. It means to manifest. We say of Lord Shiva, swayambhu. He manifests himself. Bhutakal means past tense and we use it all the time. If you look at the sense of being in the context of Heideggerian philosophy, it seems to mirror the connotations of bhu. Bhut in our daily usage refers to a ghost, a manifested presence from the past but it also refers to time in a way that’s very different from our modern notions of a linear sense of progression. As Tipu says in the book, how can it be said of something that it existed and is existing? What the word talks about is the sense of kaal, not forward progression but a cyclical one. In Bengali, when you say kaal, you have to qualify if it is yesterday or tomorrow. What these words are essentially pointing to is a different idea of temporality. The idea of being inside history has come to the fore in recent years. There are virtual realities in museums that allow you to relive a moment in the past. We are in a strange sort of moment at this point of time.

In your influential 1995 essay in The New Yorker, The Ghosts of Mrs Gandhi, you spoke about this juxtaposition between being a writer and being a citizen. How do you manage to bridge that gap, especially as a transnational citizen? Will climate change continue to be the primary mode through which you dissect our world?   

That essay was one of the first discursive ones written about the 1984 Sikh riots. If you remember in the essay, I’m interrogating Naipaul’s idea of the difference between the writer and the citizen where a writer is a dispassionate onlooker and the citizen is the engaged subject. I say that’s not the only way of inhabiting the world as a writer. For me, the reality of climate change, once you start informing yourself about it, is so overwhelming and present that it can’t be put out of your head. It will weigh on everything I write but I will approach it in different ways. I will certainly return to it.  

As cute and lovable as seals are, their contributions to the musical canon have, frankly, been minimal at best.

But that could theoretically change now that researchers in Scotland have taught three gray seals to actually sing songs like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and the “Star Wars” theme.

Scientists at the University of St. Andrews raised the seals from birth in order to study how successful the animals might be at vocal learning, a skill crucial for learning a language but one that is relatively rare in animals.

According to a new report published in the scientific journal Current Biology, researchers wanted to see whether the seals could be taught to copy melodies and human formants, the parts of speech sounds humans use to encode information.

“For example, different vowels only differ in their formants,” researcher Vincent Janik explained to New Scientist.

The seals were trained to copy sequences of their own sounds, and then to turn those into melodies.

The animals also learned to copy human vowel sounds, Janik said. 

It wasn’t easy at first, but the seals eventually caught on.

“It takes hundreds of trials to teach the seal what we want it to do, but once they get the idea they can copy a new sound pretty well at the first attempt,” he said.

One seal, named Zola, learned to bark out both “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and the theme to “Star Wars,” as the video here demonstrates.

To be fair, Zola’s voice sounds more like a setting on a cheap Casio keyboard than, say, Rihanna, Beyoncé or Ariana Grande. 

Nonetheless, her vocal prowess gets a thumbs-up from lead researcher Amanda Stansbury. 

“I was amazed how well the seals copied the model sounds we played to them. Copies were not perfect but given that these are not typical seal sounds it is pretty impressive,” she told the BBC.

“Our study really demonstrates how flexible seal vocalizations are,” she added. “Previous studies just provided anecdotal evidence for this.”

But while seals might be able to learn to make vocal sounds resembling singing, Janik pointed out there’s a big difference between copying language and understanding it.

“Our study suggests that [seals] have the production skills to produce human language. Whether they can make sense of it would be the next question,” he said, according to the Evening Standard. “We would have to investigate whether they are able to label objects vocally, which is a key requirement for actually talking about things.”

So while these seals have a long way to go to match the musical efforts of the Beatles, the Eagles or even the Arctic Monkeys, Janik does think their work will help scientists better understand human speech disorders.

“Since seals use the same neural and anatomical structures as humans to produce these sounds, they provide a good model system in which to study how speech sounds are learned,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Pakistan has failed to complete its action plan on terror financing, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said Friday, warning Islamabad to meet its commitment by October or face action, which could possibly lead to the country getting blacklisted.

The Paris-based global body is working to curb terrorism financing and money laundering and has asked Pakistan to reassess the operation of banned terrorist outfits in the country.

In June last year, the FATF placed Pakistan on the grey list of countries whose domestic laws are considered weak to tackle the challenges of money laundering and terrorism financing.

In a statement issued at the conclusion of its Plenary meeting in Orlando, Florida, the FATF expressed concern “that not only did Pakistan fail to complete its action plan items with January deadlines, it also failed to complete its action plan items due May 2019”. 

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The FATF “strongly” urges Pakistan to swiftly complete its action plan by October 2019 when the last set of action plan items are set to expire.

“Otherwise, the FATF will decide the next step at that time for insufficient progress,” the international financial body said leaving a strong warning to Pakistan.

The FATF said Pakistan had taken steps towards improving its AML/CFT (anti-money laundering/combating the financial terrorism) regime, including the recent development of its terror funding risk assessment addendum.

However, it does not demonstrate a proper understanding of Pakistan’s transnational terror funding risk.

Reacting to the FATF’s warning, Pakistan on Friday said it was committed to taking measures needed to implement the action plan agreed with the FATF to come out of the grey list.

“The Government of Pakistan reiterates its commitment to take all necessary measures to ensure completion of the Action Plan in a timely manner,” the Ministry of Finance said in a statement.

Noting that the Plenary meeting of the FATF took place at Orlando from 16 to 21 June, it said the meeting reviewed the compliance of a number of countries, including Pakistan with the international standards on Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism (AML-CFT).

FATF reviewed progress made by Pakistan towards the implementation of the Action Plan and acknowledged the steps taken by Pakistan to improve its AML/CFT regime and highlighted the need for further actions for implementing the Action Plan, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said that the FATF will undertake the next review of Pakistan’s Progress in October 2019.

Pakistan should continue to work on implementing its action plan to address its strategic deficiencies, including by adequately demonstrating its proper understanding of the terror funding risks posed by the terrorist groups and conducting supervision on a risk-sensitive basis, the FATF said.

It should demonstrate that remedial actions and sanctions are applied in cases of AML/CFT violations, and that these actions have an effect on AML/CFT compliance by financial institution, it said.

It asked Pakistan to demonstrate that competent authorities are cooperating and taking action to identify and take enforcement action against illegal money or value transfer services (MVTS).

It also asked Pakistan to show that authorities are identifying cash couriers and enforcing controls on illicit movement of currency and understanding the risk of cash couriers being used for terror funding.

Pakistan should improve inter-agency coordination including between provincial and federal authorities on combating terror funding risks and demonstrate that law enforcement agencies are identifying and investigating the widest range of terror funding activity, it said.

It should demonstrate that terror funding investigations and prosecutions target designated persons and entities, and persons and entities acting on behalf or at the direction of the designated persons or entities, it said.

The FATF asked Pakistan to demonstrate terror funding prosecutions result in effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions and enhancing the capacity and support for prosecutors and the judiciary.

Pakistan need to effectively implement targeted financial sanctions (supported by a comprehensive legal obligation) against all 1267 and 1373 designated terrorists and those acting for or on their behalf, including preventing the raising and moving of funds, identifying and freezing assets (movable and immovable), and prohibiting access to funds and financial services, it said.

The FATF said Pakistan needed to demonstrate enforcement against TFS violations, including administrative and criminal penalties and provincial and federal authorities cooperating on enforcement cases.

It should demonstrate that facilities and services owned or controlled by designated person are deprived of their resources and the usage of the resources, it said.

The FATF currently has 36 members with voting powers and two regional organisations, representing most of the major financial centres in all parts of the globe.

On 3 May last year, former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said India will ask the FATF to put Pakistan on a blacklist of countries that fail to meet international standards in stopping financial crime.

China is set to secure FATF presidency next year while Saudi Arabia representing the Gulf Cooperation Council is to become a full FATF member.

Turkey was the only member that stood by Pakistan despite a strong campaign launched by the US, the UK, India and Europe.

Just because it’s over really does mean it’s over between between Orlando Bloom and his ex Miranda Kerr. 

In fact, the former husband and wife are so chill that Bloom’s new fiancée Katy Perry came out to support the launch of the supermodel’s skincare line, Kora Organics. 

The two posed for a photo together at the event on Friday, which was also attended by famous types like Sophia Richie and former Kardashian assistant Stephanie Shepherd. 

“Thanks for shining bright with me @katyperry & Angela,” Kerr captioned a photo of the two and her sister, Angela, on Instagram.

Perry, never one to turn down an opportunity to turn a look, rocked a peach-colored blazer and matching dress with dramatic earrings, while Kerr opted for a bright pink minidress. 

“Cutie patooties fresh n fruity!” the pop star added in the comments. 

The photo op also scored points from fans of the two women, who praised the duo in the comments for not letting a past relationship get in the way of a friendship.

“Adults acting like adults,” one follower wrote. “THAT’S WHAT THIS IS and that’s why they’re GLOWING.” 

“Orlando must be so happy,” another added.

Kerr and Bloom began dating back in 2007 and tied the knot three years later in an intimate ceremony only a month after getting engaged. The couple welcomed their son, Flynn, not long after, but called it quits three years into their marriage in 2013. 

But the two committed to co-parenting their son and have kept things amicable in the years since. 

“There’s no question that, you know, for the sake of our son and everything else, we’re going to support one another and love each other as parents to Flynn,” Bloom said in interview with Katie Couric after the split. “You know, life sometimes doesn’t work out exactly as we plan or hope for. But fortunately, we’re both adults, and we’re professionals, and we love and care about each other. And we, most of all, love our son.”

Kerr has since wed Snapchat co-founder/CEO Evan Spiegel and the two share a son together with another baby on the way. 

Wedding bells are also in Bloom and Perry’s future after the actor proposed to the “American Idol” judge this past Valentine’s Day.

But the two aren’t rushing down the aisle anytime soon. 

“We’re taking things one step at a time,” Perry explained about her wedding plans. “We’re definitely trying to lay a good emotional foundation for the lifetime of commitment, which is a big deal to me.”

SOUTHAMPTON — India are not underestimating the threat Rashid Khan poses even after he was mauled by England in his previous outing, all-rounder Vijay Shankar said ahead of Saturday’s World Cup match against Afghanistan.

Rashid returned 9-0-110-0, the worst bowling figures in World Cup history, against England after home captain Eoin Morgan clobbered him for seven sixes at Old Trafford.

“Every day is different, and every wicket is different. You cannot take things for granted,” all-rounder Shankar told reporters at the Hampshire Bowl on Friday.

“Tomorrow (Saturday) might be a completely different scenario where we’ll have to target him, or we might have to play off. So it is just about adapting ourselves to different situations as quickly as we can.” 

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Most of the Indian batsmen are comfortable against the turning ball and will hope to dominate the spin-heavy Afghan attack led by leg-spinner Rashid.

Shankar, who shares the Sunrisers Hyderabad dressing room with Rashid in the Indian Premier League, said he had tried to read the wily 20-year-old spinner at nets.

“He’s definitely one of the best bowlers right now in limited overs, and he has done well,” Shankar said about the poster boy of Afghan cricket, who tops the list of T20 bowlers and is ranked third in the ODI list.

“Having played with him for a couple of years, it’s very important for me to pick things from him, like whenever I bat against him in the nets, I try and pick his variations.

“He’s a good bowler. Anyone can go for runs any day. It is about how we come back strong. So for me, it is about how I play against him tomorrow (Saturday). That will be the key.”

Shankar was picked to bat at number four but Hardik Pandya’s better ball-striking ability earned him a promotion against Pakistan.

Shankar denied feeling under pressure to match Pandya’s power-hitting.

“The pressure will always be to deliver whatever the situation demands. So it’s not about how powerful,” he said.

“I’ve also played down the order. I’ve also got runs playing at number six or seven. It’s not about taking that extra pressure. It’s about taking extra responsibility and delivering it at the right time for the team.”

Shankar made a memorable World Cup debut against Pakistan, claiming the first of his two wickets with his maiden delivery and scoring 15 not out. 

The best is yet to come, he said.

“The last game gave me some confidence, and especially playing against Pakistan, making my debut against them,” he said.

“I always look to get better in all three aspects of the game as I know I can keep getting better. I know I can bowl a lot better than what I am bowling even now, so I’m just working on my bowling.”

Ran out of K-dramas to watch on Netflix? Maybe it’s time to set your sights a little darker. How about navigating a train crawling with zombies or trying to outwit a crazed colleague beating people to death inside your office? If that sounds like your thing, here’s a list of 5 Korean thrillers you can watch on Netflix.

1. The Chase (2017)

Every day, an ageing landlord (Baek Yoon-sik) makes the rounds of the houses he owns in a middle-class residential area to ask for the rents he’s owed. Most of the tenants hate his sharp tongue, but that doesn’t bother him. He has no friends or family, and lives alone in a sparse apartment. But he has no time to feel lonely, because there’s a serial killer who targets on the loose. When a former detective (Sung Dong-il) asks the landlord to help him solve a 30-year-old cold case, a strange friendship develops between the two, resulting in hijinks and some heartwarming moments.

2. Joint Security Area (2000)

This movie, made by Park Chan-wook, the director of modern classics like Oldboy and The Handmaiden, at the turn of the century, is centred on the border between South and North Korea. Indians and Pakistanis would probably find it easy to relate to the tensions between two nations whose cultures are more or less the same.

Major Sophie E. Jean (Lee Young-ae), who works with the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission and is investigating the killings of two North Korean soldiers at the border, soon finds that this is no routine job. Joint Security Area shifts in tone between a buddy comedy and a mystery thriller, even as it raises some weighty ethical questions.

3. Forgotten (2017)

It can be really hard to let go of bad memories sometimes. But in this tricky thriller, it’s almost impossible, as our protagonist discovers. Jin-seok (Kang Ha-neul) thinks that his older brother, Yoo-seok (Kim Mu-yeol), has changed in disturbing ways since he was kidnapped and later released by unknown people.

His brother’s newfound behavioural traits puzzle him; so, he follows him through the dark alleys that Yoo-seok travels in the dead of night. The quaint opening scenes soon make way for a gritty flashback where there is no black or white, just shades of grey. Forgotten is an addictive thriller that gives you no time to collect your wits. Every time you think you’ve cracked the code, the movie shifts to land you in yet another maze.

4. Office (2015)

This is a creepy thriller, especially if you work in an office yourself. White-collar worker Kim Byeong-gook (Bae Seong-woo) goes back home from office one fine day and slaughters his family members. Why, we don’t know, but as the film progresses, we realise exactly what drove him to the edge. When detective Jong-hoon (Park Sung-woong) tries to make sense of the crime, Kim’s co-workers don’t cooperate. But Jong-hoon knows that they’re all hiding something from him.

5. Train to Busan (2016)

Zombies can be terrifying creatures, with their gaunt faces, godawful screams and propensity to try and turn you into one of them, but they’re also really stupid. That and other life lessons from this enjoyable thriller, about how to survive when unexpected tragedies hit you. Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) is such a distracted father that he buys his daughter the same gift twice. To young Su-an (Kim Su-an), her father comes across as too busy and full of himself. When father and daughter take a train to Busan to meet her mother on her birthday (the couple is separated), they find themselves trapped amidst a zombie outbreak. As passengers turn against each other, they run out of ideas to keep themselves safe from the undead.

From the pavilion of the Toucan Rescue Ranch on the outskirts of San Jose, Costa Rica, tourists can sip coffee and contemplate a cornucopia of abuse. The leafy green sanctuary is filled with about 200 injured and rescued wild animals. There’s a spider monkey whose previous owner cut off part of its tail so it couldn’t get around as easily and another who had been tied to a tree with a chain. There’s a baby sloth rescued from someone who thought it would be a great plaything for her children (for the record: it wasn’t).

On a recent afternoon, one could hear the distinct chirping of a black-faced solitaire, one of 11 songbirds confiscated by wildlife officers from “horrible, disgusting cages” in a home about 50 kilometers east of San Jose, where they were likely being held for illegal sale, according to the ranch’s co-founder, Leslie Howle. Endemic to Costa Rica and Panama, the black-faced solitaire is prized by collectors who will pay about $700 for one because each has a different song based on the region where it lives. “That’s why collectors collect them,’’ explained Howle, an American by birth who lives in Costa Rica. “They want to have one that makes the bell sound and one that has the squeaky door sound.”

Howle, who grew up in Costa Rica, returned after having a midlife crisis, and in 2004 opened the rescue ranch, fulfilling a lifelong dream of running a refuge for wild birds. Her success caught the attention of wildlife officials, who began bringing her all kinds of rescued animals, at a time when the country was strengthening rules to protect wildlife and preserve habitat. Hers is one of a network of conservation nonprofits the government relies on to meet its ambitious commitments to protect biodiversity.

As a global extinction crisis grips the world, Costa Rica has answered nature’s cry by enacting detailed and targeted regulations to limit how humans interact with the nation’s richest assets, from singing birds to slow-moving sloths, leaping monkeys, and the verdant wilderness that is their home. Incorporating efforts by multiple government agencies, NGOs, private landowners and local communities, Costa Rica’s strict animal protection laws and comprehensive land conservation strategies have made it a model of what a country can do to reverse devastating trends and build a promising future for nature.  

“It has definitely been an example to the world,” said Zdenka Piskulich, the executive director of the nonprofit Forever Costa Rica Association, which works with the government to help meet the country’s commitments under the United Nations’ 1992 global Convention on Biological Diversity — a key driver of the nation’s conservation efforts. (The U.S. signed the agreement, along with nearly 200 other countries, but never ratified it.)

Costa Rica’s attention to wildlife makes sense, culturally and financially. The Central American country of about 5 million people has some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Slightly smaller than the state of West Virginia, the tropical nation has only 0.03% of the Earth’s surface area but hosts more than 5% of all known plant and animal species, according to Forever Costa Rica.   

Straddling the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, it’s made up of rainforests, dry forests, mountaintop cloud forests, mangroves and wetlands containing more than 250 species of mammals (14 threatened with extinction in Costa Rica), over 100 bat species, more than 900 species of birds, and well over 1,000 different orchids. There are rare animals that occur nowhere else, such as the endangered variable harlequin frog once common in Costa Rica and Panama and the Cocos finch, found only on an island by the same name.

More than 3 million visitors traveled to Costa Rica last year, many to tour the nation’s extensive national parks and reserves. Eco-tourism there is a $3.8 billion per year industry, according to Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, the country’s minister of environment and energy and a former vice president at the nonprofit Conservation International.

It hasn’t always been this way. After decades of deforestation for agriculture, Costa Rica became a patchwork of forest pimples by the 1980s. But it began building a massive park system that — after 40 years of consolidation — now covers 27.6% of the country’s landmass as a protected area, compared to 13% in the United States, according to the World Bank. Many politicians and successive regimes worked with nonprofits to achieve such a massive reversal of deforestation, recognizing the value of Costa Rica’s sizable natural resources.

“There is more political stability in support of environmental policies than many other countries,” said Rodriguez. The population has supported the government’s work. Forever Costa Rica surveys have found that more than 90% of residents say that the environment is one of their top three concerns, Piskulich said.

With that support, Costa Rica began an ambitious program starting in the 1990s to pay landowners to preserve forests and protect clean water. The government funds the payments with $30 million annually from a gasoline tax and about $6 million annually from a tax on water users, Rodriguez said. Now, more than half of the country’s landmass is forest, much of it privately owned. But Costa Rica is not stopping there. Recently, the country announced a plan to increase forest cover to 60 percent of its landmass by 2030.

Parks and biological corridors, some of them on private land, help migratory animals travel throughout their natural habitats and that has helped stem the loss of wildlife. Thanks to these protected corridors, populations of the scarlet and great green macaws, as well as the jaguar, have increased in the last few decades, according to Forever Costa Rica program officer Adolfo Artavia. 

But not all corridors are safe from development — not even development for the sake of ecological progress. Thanks in part to the huge Reventazón hydroelectric dam, Costa Rica’s electricity needs are supplied almost entirely by renewable sources — a crucial part of the country’s lofty commitment to go carbon neutral by 2050. But completion of the dam in 2016 cut off an important migratory pathway for jaguars and other animals.

In tandem with habitat regulations, Costa Rica boasts strict stewardship of its animals and plants — and it’s only getting stricter. People can’t keep wild animals or plants without a special permit. Recreational hunting on land was banned in 2012. Wild animal “selfies,” the popular social media phenomenon where unscrupulous operators pose tourists with captive animals that often have been drugged or abused into submission, were banned as part of sweeping wildlife legislation in 2013.

Zoos in Costa Rica only house injured animals or those that can’t be released in the wild because they have spent too much time in captivity, said Ronald Mora, an officer with SINAC, the National System of Conservation Areas, speaking through a translator. The country also imposes stringent regulations on rescue centers such as Toucan Rescue Ranch, conducting regular visits to make sure they comply with the laws and don’t allow visitors to touch or handle the animals.

But the country often struggles to follow its own rules. A lack of financial resources consistently hampers enforcement of existing land use laws. Piskulich said that in a few areas, the government has allocated no money for management of forests and nonprofits have to step in and provide funding.

And despite decades of reforestation efforts, “there’s constantly destruction of the forest,’’ according to Sam Trull, cofounder of The Sloth Institute Costa Rica, which does research on sloths and releases the injured animals back into the wild. Many sloths are victims of deforestation, as well as dog attacks and electrocutions from power lines running between trees, she said. (The Sloth Institute works closely with Toucan Rescue Ranch; neither receives government funding.) “There are definitely protected areas, but the law does not protect other areas and there are plenty of other areas being destroyed,” she said.

Conservationists also say that Costa Rica’s marine habitats are largely neglected. Less than 3% of the country’s territorial waters are protected from fishing and other uses, according to Forever Costa Rica, which was founded in 2010 by the national parks administration and international trusts for “the conservation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems in perpetuity.” The government did recently take measures to try to protect coral reefs.

In the few marine areas that are protected, illegal fishing is common, said Jorge Cortés, a researcher and expert on coral reefs with the University of Costa Rica, explaining the country commits little funding to enforcement.

“You realize there’s no boat for patrolling, there’s no fuel, or there’s no one who knows how to pilot a boat,” Cortés said. With regard to marine habitat protections, “we are like Costa Rica in the ’70s when they started with the parks,” he added, noting that “it took 30 or 40 years to really consolidate that.’’ He hopes it doesn’t take that long to protect the oceans.

A sign over a recessed doorway at Toucan Rescue Ranch points the way to the “sloth nursery” and here, plastic buckets are literally overflowing with baby sloths. A few slowly reach out to fetch a cooked green bean or carrot. Like human babies, they make quite a mess, dropping much of it on the floor. And, like human babies, they instill a sense of hope for the future. 

Costa Rica may be strained for resources, but its success in saving and restoring its wilderness and wildlife shows the rest of the world what’s possible. “We might not be huge in terms of our size but from a moral standpoint [Costa Rica] has a huge value,” Piskulich said.

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NAGPUR, Maharashtra — The Maharashtra state unit of the Congress party has demanded an immediate inquiry into the Maharashtra fodder scam and action against the Shiv Sena-BJP leaders involved in it.

Ashok Chavan, president of Maharashtra Congress Committee, cited numbers and facts from a HuffPost India’s exclusive report on how fraudulent NGOs set up by BJP and Shiv Sena workers are siphoning off drought-relief funds meant for cattle camps. 

“Are these fodder camps or arrangement to feed BJP-Shiv Sena workers? Do an audit of all the fodder camps and take action against those involved in this scam,” Chavan said in a press statement.

Citing facts and figures from the HuffPost India’s report, Chavan said, “The BJP-Shiv Sena workers are appropriating the grant meant for cattle in drought-hit areas by showing bogus numbers in these fodder camps.”

“The Shiv Sena-BJP workers managed to get sanctions to run fodder camps in the name of various NGOs and opened a large number of fodder camps in drought-hit Marathwada region of Maharashtra. They are now cornering crores of rupees of the grant which is being given by the government to these fodder camps by showing an inflated number of cattle than the actual present number,” he added.

Chavan cited excerpts from the HuffPost India’s report on how 16000 inflated animals were being shown in fodder camps in Beed district before an official inspection ordered by Beed collector Astik Kumar Pandey.

“If a proper audit is done of all the fodder camps in Beed district itself, this will turn out to be a far bigger scam. We demand that there should be an immediate inquiry and action in this scam,” the Maharashtra Congress chief said in the statement.

CHENNAI — Water starved Chennai is all set to get some relief as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Friday said 10 million litres would be transported from Jolarpet in Vellore district by train to augment supply.

This initiative will be carried on for six months and Rs 65 crore has been set apart for the purpose, he said.

Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board has been allocated Rs 158.42 crore for water distribution, he said.

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Other state agencies, including the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board, have been provided Rs 108.32 crore to ensure water supply in other parts of the state, he said addressing a press conference here at the Secretariat.

On the water shortage here and steps to augment supplies, he said that despite the Poondi, Chembarambakkam, Sholavaram and Red Hills reservoirs having dried up, supplies were being made through multiple avenues like groundwater sources, abandoned quarries and desalination plants.

A total of 525 MLD was being supplied every day, he said.

Senior officials have been assigned to monitor all zones in the city to ensure adequate supply and 800 tankers were making 9,800 trips daily to various areas, he said.

Also, Veeranam lake (Cuddalore District) water is also being brought to Chennai, he added. 

“As far as Chennai is concerned, the government is providing water as quickly as possible,” he said.

Steps have been taken to ensure water supply to villages and other regions too and funds were also allocated well before the start of Lok Sabha elections to ensure proper water distribution. Also, work was followed up post polls, he noted.

On work to repair and strengthen water bodies to increase storage, he said work was already on.

As regards 39,202 lakes in Tamil Nadu, he reeled out statistics to say that desilting work was being undertaken periodically under the “Kudimaramathu,” (participation of local people scheme) plan to increase storage level in such water bodies. 

Strengthening work, including desilting initiatives have already begun in three of the four reservoirs work here.

As regards Poondi reservoir, he said an individual has moved the court and desiliting work would begin after getting environmental clearance

A government press release, meanwhile, said the Chief Minister ordered an additional Rs 200 crore for drinking water related initiatives following a review meeting held to assess the water shortage situation.

Donald Trump raised eyebrows on Twitter Friday when he shared this doctored video that showed him running for president for all of eternity:

The 30-second clip reportedly created by a pro-Trump meme maker was based on a Time magazine article from 2018 that made the case for why “Trumpism will outlast Trump.”

It ended with Trump stood behind a podium bearing the sign “Trump 4Eva.”

Time tweeted its original version to the president in response:

Trump’s decision to post the clip amid escalating U.S. tensions with Iran and a new historic allegation of rape, which the president has denied, did not go over well with many other tweeters:

KOLKATA — A three-member BJP delegation, led by former Union minister SS Ahluwalia, arrived at trouble-torn Bhatpara on Saturday, where two people were killed and seven injured in clashes between two groups believed to be affiliated to the TMC and the saffron party.

The BJP central leadership had asked the team led by Ahluwalia, an MP from West Bengal, to visit Bhatpara in North 24 Pargana district. He is accompanied by MPs Satya Pal Singh and BD Ram, besides other state leaders.

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Singh and Ram are former police officers and MPs from Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand respectively. Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh is also accompanying them.

The delegation will meet family members of the deceased and talk to the locals. It will submit a report to party president and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Two people had died and seven others injured in clashes in Bhatpara between the groups suspected to be attached to TMC and BJP on Thursday. Section 144 has been imposed by the administration in the wake of the clashes.

Earlier in the day, a joint delegation of CPI(M) and Congress headed by Leader of Opposition Abdul Mannan and CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty visited the troubled areas of Baruipara, Jagaddal, Bhatpara. They demanded a CBI inquiry into the killings.

On Friday, the BJP leadership had also demanded a CBI inquiry into the incident to bring out the truth.

A TMC citadel for long, Bhatpara has been witnessing frequent post-poll violence between the rival parties.

The fight intensified ever since TMC MLA Arjun Singh crossed over to the BJP and was elected to Lok Sabha from Barrackpore. Bhatpara comes under the Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituency.

In the bypoll to the Bhatpara Assembly seat that were held along with the Lok Sabha elections, Arjun Singh’s son Pawan Singh had defeated TMC candidate and former state minister Madan Mitra.

A black bear created a stir in the US when it somehow locked itself inside a Montana home and then nestled in to a wardrobe for a nap.

On Friday, Missoula County sheriff’s officials said the bear just yawned when deputies knocked on the window and unlocked the door in an attempt to coax it to leave earlier that morning.

They had to call Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department officials, who tranquillised the bear so it could be moved to more natural territory.

Sheriff’s officials said in a Facebook post that deputies responded at 5.45am to a call that a bear had opened the door to the Butler Creek’s utility room and somehow shut the bolt once inside.

They say the bear ‘began ripping the room apart’ before climbing up on to a wardrobe shelf for a nap.

Much like life or a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get on “The Graham Norton Show,” which seemingly pairs up celebrity guests at random.

But a truly impressive group of famous types, including Tom Hanks and Tom Holland, assembled for an episode of the British talk show this week, gifting us with a master class in acting we never knew we needed. 

Hanks, who’s busy promoting the latest movie in the “Toy Story” franchise, was asked about the challenges of voice-acting, which is usually considered the cushiest gig in Hollywood.

The Oscar winner, however, had nothing positive to say about the experience, which requires long hours in a recording booth repeating the same phrases ad nauseam. 

“I have never begun a recording session without wishing it was already over, because understand, Woody is clenched all the time, he’s clenched,” Hanks said before mimicking his alter ego Woody. “There’s something he’s gotta explain. Or, ‘Come on guys!’ Or, ‘No, no, no, no, look out! Look out! Look out! This way!’”

To prove his point, he turned his attention toward Holland and put the “Spider-Man” star’s acting abilities to the test.

Holland was a bit taken aback, as he recited Hanks’ prompt back to him in a number of ways, but his performance wasn’t exactly cutting it.

“Could you try it with a bit more something to it because this is a big, important scene,” the 62-year-old actor asked, to which Holland replied, “Yes, Tom Hanks.”

Of course, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal were on the couch next to the Toms enjoying every second of the young actor’s time in the hot seat. 

But Holland eventually pulled it out, impressing his much-older audience and proving he might have a future in voice-acting after all. 

NEW DELHI — Amid rising geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran, India’s aviation regulator DGCA Saturday said Indian airlines have decided to avoid the “affected part of the Iranian airspace” and reroute their flight “suitably”.

On Friday, the American aviation regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) prohibiting US-registered aircraft from operating “in the overwater area of the Tehran Flight Information Region until further notice, due to heightened military activities and increased political tensions”.

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“All Indian operators in consultation with DGCA have decided to avoid the affected part of Iranian Airspace to ensure safe travel for the passengers. They will re-route flights suitably,” the DGCA said on Twitter.

On Thursday, Iran shot down a US military drone in its airspace, following which the FAA had warned that there is a possibility that commercial aircraft can be mistakenly targeted in Iranian airspace.

Consequently, major airlines around the world have already rerouted their aircraft.

In a clip from a TV show that has garnered over 120,000 views since it was first posted on Instagram, model Erika Packard is seen showing a shirt with patterned patches on it to her co-host Gabriella Demetriades and explaining how she is upcycled her ‘uncle’s shirt’ using her mother’s ‘old bandhni saree’.

Harmless, right?

Only, the patches Packard points at are ikat, not bandhni and the shirt is not a hand-me-down from the model’s uncle but a design created by Mumbai-based brand Ikat Story, which the channel sourced for the show. Chances are, the blatant appropriation of a designer’s work on a show put together by powerful businesses like AXN, Sony and Conde Nast would remain as another piece of gossip in Mumbai’s sequestered fashion circles had it not been for a Instagram handle called Diet Sabya (DS). The handle, then just a few months old, posted a clip, tagged the model in question, the show’s producers and directed its thousands of followers to the designer Chandni Sareen who deserved actual credits.  

Packard later confessed on Instagram that the she was simply following a script given to her by the makers of the show. The post was hashtagged ‘gandi’ (dirty) like a few of Diet Sabya’s previous posts and it seemed appropriate since it was targeted at corporate houses making money off stealing a designer’s works.

Indian fashion has a massive plagiarism problem. That boutique “designers” make bulk purchases at Bangkok to sell under their own labels at astronomical prices back home has long been one of the industry’s worst-kept secret. Sabyasachi Couture makes sure to register its designs before they enter the market and Tarun Tahiliani battled pattern infringement in court.

Diet Sabya’s snark therefore seemed like a legitimate way to have designers copying from other brands and selling clothes for obscene amounts of money, actually develop some sort of a conscience. Or fear of being called out.

However, as Diet Sabya’s followers swelled, people started pointing out that the handle’s snark was often misdirected and at times, plain uncalled for.

FASHION POLICING AND FEMINISM

Despite the occasional knock, the account gets it mostly right, ensuring that chronic plagiarists have to at least face public scrutiny and the shame of exposure, if not legal action. It’s the reason why Diet Sabya finds support from many stakeholders in the fashion industry. Designer Nachiket Barve, who was featured as someone whose work has been copied in the past, fashion entrepreneur Pernia Qureshi, and celebrity stylist Ami Patel, who has been called out by the account on several occasions, all believe that Diet Sabya serves the important purpose of making designers, brands, stylists, and photographers conscious of the originality of their work.

When actress Sanya Malhotra wore a jumpsuit from Madison boutique, the account was the first to point out that it was a complete rip-off  — colour, cut, and design — of Australian brand Sheike. 

Similarly, when a lehenga from Suneet Verma’s 2018/19 couture collection very closely resembled the one designed by Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla in 2015, Diet Sabya was quick to note, and poke fun at, the glaring similarities.  

It’s a form of criticism that’s new to the Indian fashion industry, which itself is an infant in the global scheme of things. India’s first fashion week was in 2000, 53 long years after the first New York Fashion Week. “For a long time, the only kind of fashion criticism we knew in India was the criticism of omission. If we didn’t like a brand or a designer, we didn’t cover it. You couldn’t waste precious print space on negativity,” says Nonita Kalra, editor of Harper’s Bazaar India who believes Diet Sabya signals a ‘democratisation in the process of giving opinions’.

With 167K followers, Diet Sabya said they started out as a platform to “call out copies and fakes, but has evolved into a larger platform to highlight issues like workplace injustice, bullying, worker safety, photoshop in media…” and the list is growing. But to many, including this writer, it looks a lot like Internet bullying, albeit with an impressive knowledge of fashion. 

FUN VERSUS KINDNESS

The “gandi” hashtag (a constant in Diet Sabya’s posts) has a lot to do with my perception of Diet Sabya’s particular brand of fashion criticism as being little more than a glorified version of online bullying. The language of fashion and beauty commentary is evolving, thanks to all the voices advocating for inclusivity and kindness in the way people — especially women — are spoken to.

Using a descriptor like gandi (dirty), which has historically been used as a pejorative to describe women and their characters, is primitive and problematic at best, and derogatory at worst. It is tough to overlook the association when used by an account that mostly traffics in the criticism of women’s fashion. To be fair, Diet Sabya does use the hashtag on posts related to male fashion as well, but compared to the women, male fashion or celebrities rarely ever get called out.

Diet Sabya describes its tone as “simple, sharp, and a direct antithesis of the self-congratulatory nature the fashion world is so proud of,” and defends “#gandi” as “not for the women (or men) in question, but for the choice of fashion they’d want to associate themselves with,” in an email interview with HuffPost India. But the link between taking potshots at the women who didn’t even design the clothes and holding up a mirror to the fashion industry is tenuous at best.

One post features television actress Mouni Roy alongside Hollywood actress Blake Lively Both women are in similar-looking yellow dresses. The caption takes a swipe at Roy’s inability to land the original Oscar De La Renta original that Lively is wearing — it loosely translates into a chant that maybe she’ll wear an original in her next life.

Another one, this one featuring Bollywood actress Yami Gautam alongside Bella Hadid, calls Gautam “Bella Hadid from Bandra”. Chronicled within its highlighted stories is a poll that Diet Sabya ran in its early days — “Is Tanya Patni Ridhi Mehra with bad photoshop?”

In October last year, when television actor Yuvika Chaudhry wore a lime green lehenga, similar to Sabyasachi ensemble Alia Bhatt wore to Sonam Kapoor’s wedding, for her own mehendi ceremony, DS posted a photo from Chaudhry’s wedding celebrations captioning it ‘It’s a mess’.

The owners of the account believe that it is the celebrity’s “job to enquire before seamlessly sliding into knock-off gowns,” but that still doesn’t explain how making cruel jibes at actresses and television stars — who probably cannot afford the styling and wardrobe budget of a top Bollywood actress — makes fashion accountable.

When asked why the account has only ever called out a handful of male celebrities, they claim it’s because “male celebrity fashion is (mostly) so bland, there’s nothing to call out.” They don’t subscribe to “ANY biases,” the owners emphasise, in their response. 

UN-FOLLOWERS

For some, like former fan and fashion commentator Varun Rana, and celebrity stylist Nitasha Gaurav, the constant stream of negativity isn’t worth the service Diet Sabya offers, and have chosen to unfollow the account. Both believe that the owners took a much-needed and good idea, and ruined it with the execution. “If it was meant to be about fashion, their knowledge and research would speak for itself. They wouldn’t need a “gandi” hashtag or poop emojis,” says Rana.

Gaurav describes Diet Sabya’s way or expression “catty and bitchy, with overtones of bullying”, and doesn’t agree with its penchant for targeting smaller stars like TV actresses, Bollywood newbies, or models. “They’re not very snarky when the stars are big, but are particularly nasty about smaller stars. Which is worse, because they have access to fewer things. It is common knowledge that the bigger the star, the wider their access to designers within the country and internationally.”

But for others, like stylist Ami Patel, as long as the process is unbiased, the means justify the end. The account may be doing nothing to moderate the gleefully nasty, sometimes even abusive comments that its more dedicated followers often leave on the account’s posts; but it also doesn’t stop designers, brands, celebrities or stylists from vehemently refuting them, or putting forward their side of the story. While Kalra defends Diet Sabya’s right to stay true to its voice. “You can’t call yourself liberal and force someone to self-censor. The freedom of expression is sacrosanct to creativity,” she says. “Personally, I believe that people having a voice is better than them not having a voice, even if you don’t always agree with what they’re saying, or how they’re saying it. It’s forced me to be more liberal and less old-fashioned in the way I think.”

ANONYMOUS WATCHDOG

Anonymity is another important variable in the ‘critic or bully?’ debate. Anyone who has ever spent any length of time on the Internet can attest to this: it’s a lot easier to say cruel, hurtful things online when you don’t have to suffer the consequences of those words in the real world. In the case of Diet Sabya, where its acerbic tone is fast becoming the very fabric of its identity, anonymity helps cushion its owners as much as it enables them. If nothing else, it is hypocritical for an anonymous account to demand that the fashion industry be accountable for their work, while being answerable to no one for their own. Is concealing the owners’ identity important to the account’s purpose of exposing design thieves, or is it a convenient way of subverting accountability? Perhaps, a bit of both.  

Gaurav and Barve believe that anonymity is fine, as long as the focus is firmly on fashion. But Qureshi and Rana feel otherwise. “Without anonymity, they wouldn’t have the courage to say one-tenth of what they do,” says Qureshi.  

Diet Sabya might believe itself to be an “unbiased” platform that “calls out stuff that needs to be called out” in all their “unfiltered glory”, but even they aren’t completely immune to public and celebrity pressure.

In January this year, Diet Sabya called out Anamika Khanna for the conceptual similarity in her AK-OK lehenga and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour’s AWOK Air Jordan sneakers. Sonam and Rhea Kapoor immediately rushed to defend Khanna, writing lengthy social media posts about how AK-OK was an inside joke between Khanna and her son while she battled a medical emergency. Eventually, the post was taken down. Diet Sabya claimed that it was decision spurred by “empathy, not intimidation” and apologised to their followers for “failing them”. In our email interview, the owners of the account, without mentioning this specific incident, claimed they “Possibly regretted a call-out one time, but also regretted taking it down.”  

Anamika Khanna, on her part, categorically denies having asked for the post to be taken down. “Neither I, nor anyone from my brand reached out to Diet Sabya. I think it was Sonam and Rhea’s posts that made them reach out to us and after hearing our side, they made the decision to take it down.”  

Diet Sabya is modelled after Diet Prada, an Instagram platform that calls out ripoffs and imitations long international designers. But Diet Prada’s focus is squarely about educating fashion enthusiasts and starting important conversations about the difference between inspiration and imitation, even as it continues to name and shame designers for pirating; Diet Sabya’s “growth” in the last year can be chalked down to this: it’s even more cocky and toxic than it was when it started a year ago.

Stephen Colbert is less than impressed with most of the Democratic 2020 candidates’ favorite comfort foods.

“The Late Show” host on Friday responded to their claims in The New York Times’ “Meet the Candidates” survey ― that they turn to things like vegetables, mocha coffee and mints ― with some all-American advice.

“Oh, they are doomed,” Colbert joked.

“Mints? Iced tea? Come on. You’re in America. Just say burgers. Or pizza. Or nachos. Or French fries. Or just chugging Alfredo sauce straight from the jar,” he added.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) choice did get Colbert’s vote, however.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is well known to be a fan of fast food.

Check out the clip here:

And see Colbert’s fact-check of Trump’s Time magazine cover boast here: