Ashley Collins pushed for three hours when she gave birth to her first baby in 2013, but the pushing wasn’t the hardest part.

The hardest part was trying to block out the nurse — who had her hands inside Collins’ vagina — who kept scolding her.

“She was telling me ‘You aren’t pushing right,’” recalled Collins, now a 34-year-old mother of two. “And then would say to the other staff, ‘She’s not pushing right!’ as if I wasn’t there—in an annoyed tone.”

Collins’ baby required a forceps delivery and he spent five days in the NICU, an experience that was challenging, physically and emotionally. The nurse’s behavior toward Collins only added to her load. “I found her to be incredibly rude,” she said.

Like Collins, nearly one in six women in the United States believe they have been mistreated in childbirth, according to a new survey recently published in the journal Reproductive Health.  

Of more than 2,000 women who responded, roughly 17 percent said they’d been yelled at, believed they’d been scolded, or threatened; ignored or denied some kind of help; or they’d experienced a mix of those things. And women of color were far more likely than white women to say they’d experienced mistreatment, as were low-income women. 

“I was surprised to find that the top two forms of mistreatment during childbirth were shouting and scolding,” Monica McLemore, an assistant professor of family health care nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, and an author on the study, told HuffPost. “I find that to be unacceptable.”

Notably, the survey received funding from the Transforming Birth Fund, which provides grants to projects that support its aim of lowering medical intervention during birth. 

Jessica Illuzzi, an OB-GYN and section chief of Yale School of Medicine’s Obstetric and Midwifery section and who sits on the board of the American Association of Birth Centers, told HuffPost she has some concerns about the study’s inability to fully tease out the relative contributions of women’s race and where they delivered to mistreatment. 

“I worry there are many consumers who grab onto studies like this and use them to say, ‘See? See! We shouldn’t give birth in hospitals,’” said Illuzzi. “We need to put this in context. Not all hospital birth leads to mistreatment. Not all hospital birth leads to the use of over-intervention.”

But the findings nonetheless draw attention to the fact that many women believe they are being unnecessarily scolded, yelled at, and more during labor. 

“I was told I was hurting my children and being selfish because I wanted to have a vaginal delivery,” said one study respondent who said she was “forced” into a C-section by her OB-GYN. “I hated being shouted at and lied to by the midwife,” said another.

HuffPost Parenting posted a callout on our Facebook page looking for stories of women who’d been mistreated during labor, and we were inundated with hundreds of emails and comments detailing experiences that ran the gamut from perceived snide comments to physical abuse. 

“My experience was traumatic, and my husband and I are expecting again,” Meghan Antosh, a mother of three, told HuffPost. She says she was bullied when she opted not to get an epidural, and then ignored after delivery, which led her to hemorrhage. “I am very scared to give birth again because this taught me that I cannot trust the nurses and I must be my own advocate.”

The challenge in addressing this problem is that there are many contributing factors, and at least some of this is subjective.

Childbirth can be a pressure-filled experience — the stakes are always high, as it is — and doctors, midwives and nurses might speak to women in ways that come across as unintentionally rough, even demeaning. Illuzzi said sometimes when she is working with medical students who are relatively new to labor and delivery, they’ll express surprise at hearing an OB-GYN speak in a way they feel is stern. “You do have these difficult situations, where a provider might say ‘You have to roll over now because of your baby’s heart rate,’” she said. “And a patient might think, ‘I’ve been yelled at.’” Illuzzi offered that example not to let providers off the hook, but to show how miscommunication and misperception frequently coexist. 

But there is also ample evidence that maternity care in the United States is in crisis. Women have higher rates of death and serious complications than women in other developed countries — and major health groups like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the majority of those deaths are preventable. And while mistreatment may not always be a contributing factor, it — at a minimum — points to a system that could be doing better for women. 

“You know, I’m a nurse by training and hearing a lot of these stories was hard for me to manage,” McLemore said. “It’s hard to know that people are doing and saying these things.”

For now, McLemore says women can take steps to protect themselves against potential mistreatment in the delivery room by making sure they have a support system with them. 

“Your job is to give birth,” she said, suggesting women consider hiring a doula who can advocate for them as needed.

Illuzzi also believes women can be well-served by giving births in hospitals that embrace what she calls a “collaborative model of care,” which often means midwives and doctors work closely together, and where the nurses are on board with helping women give birth how they would like, to the extent that is possible. 

“All women need to be able to give birth with dignity, to be able to make informed decisions, and to have access to high-quality, evidence-based care, no matter their race, age, or socioeconomic status,” said Illuzzi. “I believe that is what the authors of this study are saying, that is what women are saying, and I believe all OBs and nurses would agree. We all agree. So we have to come together to make it happen.”

LUCKNOW — BSP president Mayawati Monday asserted that her party will contest all elections in the future on its own, indicating an end of its much talked-about alliance with the Samajwadi Party.

The announcement comes a day after the BSP supremo held a meeting with party workers to review her outfit’s showing in the recent Lok Sabha polls.

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“Everyone is aware that forgetting everything of the past as also the anti-BSP and anti-Dalit decisions like reservation in promotions and bad law and order during the SP rule in 2012-2017, BSP adhered to the ‘gatbandhan dharma’ with the Samajwadi Party in the interest of the country,” she tweeted in Hindi.

“But SP’s behaviour after the elections has forced the BSP to think, will it be possible to defeat the BJP in future, which is not possible,” she said.

“Therefore, in the interest of the party and movement, the party will contest all small and big elections on its own strength,” Mayawati said in a series of tweets.

The BSP entered into an electoral alliance with Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) and Chaudhary Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha polls. The alliance, however, failed to make an impact in the politically crucial state.

While the BSP managed to win ten seats, SP got five seats and RLD drew a blank.

With the explosion of mobile gaming courtesy the PUBG Mobile wave, where does the serious gamer go for more than the standard gaming fare that flagships have to offer? There’s the Razer Phone 2 or the Asus ROG Phone, and a brand-new entrant in the Black Shark 2.

BlackShark is a Chinese firm in which Xiaomi owns 47 percent, ensuring a good supply chain. The phone has turned out to be a performance gaming beast that doubles up quite well as an everyday carry as well, at a price that is simply too good to ignore.

The Shadow Black variant of the Black Shark 2 (6GB/128GB) is available on Flipkart for Rs. 39,999 and the Frozen Silver variant (12GB/256GB) retails at INR 49,999.

Black Shark 2 – Pros

Design: Gaming devices tend to go all out, massive vents and more flashy lights than your favorite club, just to look the part. The Black Shark 2 is a little more subtle, with an illuminated rear ‘S’ logo along with two RGB light strips on the side that fire up when the phone is on charge or a notification comes in.

You can pick between a breathing or flashing pattern, or cycle through the spectrum of 16 million colors, or keep them off via the software. This means you can have the toned-down flagship for work, and all-out gaming device during downtime. Harder to hide is the aggressively sculpted metal body with the stylish glass elements on the back, plus the additional thickness that the dedicated cooling components necessitate.

This is a big phone, and the look may not be for everyone, but if you’re considering this phone, there’s a fair chance you’re on board with a bit of a gaming gear look.

Black Shark hasn’t boarded the notch train, so you get reasonably sized but dated-looking bezels both above and below the display, which give the phone enough purchase while gaming in landscape orientation. Plus, there are dual front-facing speakers, which is always a bonus.

The in-display fingerprint scanner is reasonably fast and doesn’t mar the design with a physical scanner. A unique toggle button fires up Shark Space, a dedicated gaming interface, which is a nice touch for its target audience. The vented design does mean that this phone doesn’t have an IP rating mentioned, so be careful with the phone because this shark can’t swim.

Performance and specifications: No surprises here, the Black Shark 2 come with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chip coupled with the latest Adreno 640 GPU with Snapdragon Elite Gaming graphics processing and Liquid Cool 3.0 liquid-cooling tech.

With a whopping 12GB of memory on the Frozen Silver variant, it is likely the most kitted out phone out there … and the performance shows in every game we threw at the Black Shark 2. Despite all the cooling tech inside, the phone did run hot after 30-45 minutes of intense gaming, something for Black Shark to address.

Software: Thanks to a largely stock Android interface with no fancy interface customizations, the phone is as snappy as you’d expect on this hardware. What Black Shark have focused on is making the gaming experience as uninterrupted as possible, ergo Shark Space. Not only does Shark Space organize and launch all your games from one place, it lets you manage incoming notifications and dedicate more of your phone network and processing performance to the game. Oh, and there’s also a Ludicrous Mode to push things to the absolute max.

Display: Black Shark has used a 6.4-inch AMOLED display on the Shark 2, and while the Full HD resolution display doesn’t have the sharpest or the most fluid display around, it’s super vivid, so much so that it may need to be reined in via the color temperature settings, and one often wished the display was a tad brighter while using it outdoors.

Instead of targeting a 90/120Hz output a la the Razer Phone 2 or the OnePlus 7 Pro, Black Shark has upped the touch sensitivity to 240Hz, which makes a discernable difference in first person shooter games or racing games where that split-second advantage matters. The phone also has a pressure sensitive display, much like 3D Touch on an iPhone, where you can map two extra virtual buttons on the screen to have available to you during gameplay—a great example of a software customization being delivered in an intuitive, easy-to-use format.

Controllers: Additional on-screen controls are all very well, but it’s when you slip on the rear case and attach the add-on controllers that the ‘mini-console’ nature of the device truly comes to life. Thumbstick and buttons on the left controller and touchpad and buttons on the right, the controllers pair over Bluetooth seamlessly and give the Black Shark 2 a very Nintendo Switch like feel to it. With the physical game controls, the entire screen is available for your gameplay. You can even clip the two controllers together, plug the Black Shark 2 into a TV monitor via the optional USB-to-HDMI adapter and play on the big screen.

The only downer? Local availability of these controllers. While the left gamepad and holder (the Rookie Kit) is being offered free to Black Shark 2 buyers, the right controller needs to be picked up separately from the Black Shark global website, although the firm is adding a discount coupon to sweeten the deal. If you’re picking up the Black Shark 2, the additional outlay for the controllers is so worth it.

Battery Life: There’s a capacious 4,000mAh battery with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge, but the Indian variant charges at 18W fast charging instead of the 27W global variant. Manages a good hour or more of intensive gaming, alongside the daily duties of Whatsapp, browsing and streaming music and ends the day with 15-20% to spare.

Black Shark 2 – Cons

Hardware: When you’re going all out to make a gamer’s phone, you’re bound to tick someone or the other off. So, you’re going to have some folks picketing about the lack of the 2K screen while others demand a 90Hz/120Hz display, but we suspect most are going to miss the headphone jack. It’s a significant omission for those with existing gaming headphones. There’s also no storage expandability via microSD, so you’re going to have to settle for the 128GB/256GB onboard storage. In our opinion, the controllers should really have been included in the package, but maybe that’s asking for a little too much.

Camera: With so much going for the Black Shark 2 as a great everyday use device, even for many non-gamers, the cameras are a bit disappointing. You get a  high-res 48MP main camera (f/1.8) and a secondary 2x-telephoto 12MP camera (f/2.2) and while images are pleasing (good details, accurate colors) and the sensor is quick to focus, there is a noticeable shutter lag while taking images and the quality takes a real hit in low-light. The selfie camera was a real winner, though - the 20MP sensor took detailed, natural looking photos and the portrait mode was spot on with the edges.

The newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre has announced the launch of Nal Se Jal (Water From Tap), a poll-promise from its 2019 manifesto, to ensure piped water to every household by 2024. How big is the task?

In India, only 32 percent of households have tap water supply from treated sources, as per Census 2011. About 18 percent or 6,25,000 households in the capital city, Delhi, do not have piped water supply. Yet, this city has one of the highest percentages of households with piped water among all of India’s states and union territories. Only seven of India’s states and union territories have tap water supply in over 80 percent households.

“Jab source mein paani nahin hain, toh nal mein jal apna aap thode banega (When the source has no water, how will the tap produce water by itself),” says Rajendra Singh, award-winning water-conservationist whose 35-year stint with four colleagues in arid Rajasthan has made 1,000 villages water sufficient.

In six months from now, by the year 2020, 21 Indian cities, including Delhi, are feared to run out of groundwater. “They’ve built Akshardham temple and Commonwealth Games Village on Delhi’s water bank, so there’s no recharge of groundwater,” says the conservationist, referring to the Yamuna floodplain, the area surrounding the river that absorbs the most water to recharge groundwater.

Extent of loss 

That’s not the only loss of opportunity in recharging groundwater.

A 2014-report by Delhi Parks and Gardens Society states that at least 200 among more than a thousand water bodies in Delhi — lakes, ponds, moats that existed far back in the 20^th century — have been encroached upon and lost due to inaction and possible connivance of multiple agencies that owned the land that these water bodies existed on. These include Delhi Development Authority, Block District Officers or BDOs (in Delhi’s urban villages), Archaeological Survey of India, Forest department, and municipal corporations (five in Delhi: East, South, North, and New Delhi Municipal Corporations and Delhi Cantonment Board), notes the report.

The lost water bodies have illegally been turned into cremation grounds, temples, a government school, stadium, and even a bus terminal of the Delhi Transport Corporation. “We had these water bodies giving recharge to ground water, but they have become extinct now,” said Veena Khanduri, executive secretary of the non-profit India Water Partnership. “Restoration of these bodies is needed.”

Even though the Delhi government recently announced starting work on rejuvenation of 200 lakes, with Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and Flood and Irrigation Department, the path to recovery is a long one. The remaining water bodies exist in poor condition, filled with sewage and garbage dumped by residents and also deliberately by land sharks, or developers who want to encroach the land.

The DJB owns the land on which these waters exist and the five municipal bodies (North, South, East, and New DMCs and Delhi Cantonment Board) are responsible for sewage and garbage management.

Unchecked groundwater use

This is not the only part of Delhi’s water bankruptcy. There are more than 5,000 bore-wells and tube-wells drawing groundwater in Delhi, as per DJB records from 2014. India’s laws are ambiguous in regulating groundwater, largely giving the owner of the land the right to the water beneath it, according to The Indian Easements Act, 1882. It is no surprise that India is the world’s largest user of groundwater, drawing one-fourth of the global reserves every year. “We have withdrawn 25 percent more groundwater than the natural recharge rate in Delhi, meaning there’s been overdrafting,” said Khanduri.

However, the state also has a duty to protect groundwater against excessive exploitation, as per the Supreme Court’s interpretations of Article 21 (right to life) and Article 48A (directing the state to “endeavour to protect and improve the environment”). “It was the job of the Central Ground Water Board to stop extraction and exploitation of groundwater,” said Rajendra Singh. But clearly, action from all agencies — of the Centre as well as the state — has been deficient, which is why Delhi is facing this unprecedented water crisis.

Campaigning for the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections passed by with hardly any mention of this water emergency by Delhi’s MP candidates, the debate only limited to personal attacks. It remains to be seen whether the seven winning MPs from the BJP will catalyse any transformative, corrective action for Delhi’s situation, or do more than myopic acts like protesting before the DJB, without acknowledging the enormity of the problem.

“When Delhi was battling severe air pollution, the government stepped in to sensitise city residents; that’s what the approach also has to be for tackling ground-water depletion” said Arvind Nema, professor of water and waste-water management at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Damage, in need of control 

Like every summer, this time too Delhi faces severe water shortage. “Sixty percent of the water supplied by Delhi Jal Board comes from the Yamuna, around 34 percent from Ganga, and the rest is from groundwater,” said Dinesh Mohaniya, Delhi Jal Board vice chairperson and Sangam Vihar MLA.

Yamuna river, the major provider of the city’s drinking water, runs heavy with pollutants and is thick with toxic waste after a nearly clear-water Yamuna enters Delhi. Moreover, 40 percent of DJB’s water supply is non-revenue water (NRW), meaning it’s a black hole with no revenue in return, said Dinesh Mohaniya. This NRW goes to illegal connections, a kinder term for water theft, and to the community taps that DJB installs in Delhi’s unauthorised colonies.

It is also the unauthorised colonies and slum settlements that bear the brunt worst, left at the mercy of a ‘water mafia’ that’s an accepted illegality. Poorly connected to sewage networks, they also discharge waste water and sewage directly into nearby river bodies and the Yamuna, thus being one of the major causes of pollution.

Despite this, efforts to tackle NRWs and to improve sewage networks have been limited. “We can’t be too stiff and stop illegal water connections, because water is essential,” said Mohaniya. “We’re on to narrow down to identify areas of NRW by installing a meter after every 500-600 houses,” he said. This strategy is called creation of District Metering Areas (DMA). Presently, he says, DJB has started this work in “nearly 100 DMAs while about 400 DMAs are needed to cover all of Delhi.”

To the DJB’s management of Delhi’s water needs, Rajendra Singh says, “Delhi Jal Board is only functioning as a contractor, not focused on maintaining the sustainability of the sources of water.”

“Rainwater harvesting is compulsory but there are no compliance checks,” said Nema. Indeed, Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) was made compulsory 19 years ago, in 2001, but has little presence in Delhi with no solid data about effective implementation. Authorities have gone on passing the buck, and municipal corporations allege a loophole in the law that lets new buildings be constructed without the mandatory rainwater harvesting systems.

This loophole relates to the practice of builders, who get their building plans (that include RWH systems) approved from the municipal corporations, but don’t actually get the RWH systems installed; nor do they apply for a ‘completion certificate’ for the building after construction has been done. While getting a completion certificate is mandatory on paper, there is no penalty in case the builder does not obtain one. In effect, therefore, municipal corporations would never know if the RWH system was actually built or not.

Procedural complexity adds to the problem. Even with DJB’s financial incentives for those adopting RWH, a resident has to approach multiple agencies for approvals – municipal corporation, DJB, and district commissioner of the ground water authority, CGWB. Cutting red tape and ensuring easy implementation, along with sensitisation can be the push that the policy needs.

It’s everybody’s problem

Nema insists that consumers also have to do more to check their water-usage practices. “Households are using RO filters that remove minerals and cause 40 percent of the water to be wasted,” he says, “Just a UV-based water-filter is needed, to only remove microbes.”

Veena, too, insists on minimising wastage. “Individuals and residential clusters need to be incentivised for water-recharge and preventing waste, big institutions have to be encouraged towards ‘zero liquid discharge’ policy, meaning treating and re-using water.”

Stressing on political will, efforts and decision making, Rajendra Singh offers hope, citing promising outcomes of his work in Rajasthan: “We have one-third of the rainfall that Delhi gets.” If aggressive pace of recovery is done, Delhi can be saved from being “bepaani,” waterless, he states.

This was first published in Mongabay-India.

Post two weddings, Auli in Uttarakhand is struggling to deal with the copious amounts of waste left behind.

The town hosted two weddings of the controversial Gupta family from 18-22 June, which amounted to Rs 200 crore, the Indian Express reported.

The weddings of Ajay Gupta’s sons Suryakant and Shashank has left the local municipal corporation cleaning out nearly 40 quintals of garbage every day since the weddings, Express said.

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 “Usually, dry and wet waste collected daily from all of Joshimath amounts to 20 quintal. Since the weddings, it’s crossed 40 quintal daily. Most of it is from the wedding venue,” Nagar Palika Parishad chairman Shailendra Singh Pawar told the daily.

“The wedding has created a waste problem in the hill station,” a member of the team tasked with dealing with the waste told ANI.

The India-born Gupta family is based in South Africa and is known for its corrupt links to former president Jacob Zuma.

While the wedding events were attended by celebrities like Katrina Kaif, rapper Badshah, and singers Kailash Kher, Abhijeet Sawant and Javed Ali, also seen participating were Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, state BJP president and Nainital MP Ajay Bhatt and Baba Ramdev, according to Economic Times.

“There’s so much plastic here, all the food and other goods that have come from Delhi or around have come wrapped in plastic sheets. The wind makes it harder to control the plastic… it keeps flying away. It’s distressing,” a worker at the wedding told Express.

In 2013, the Guptas had landed a family plane carrying wedding guests at the military base Waterkloof Air Base near Pretoria in South Africa.

South Africa is investigating the family for corrupt dealings to advances its business interests in the country. The Guptas fled to Dubai in April 2016 after allegations of corruption surfaced against them.

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover spotted a strange glowing object that seemed to hover just above the surface of the Red Planet earlier this month. 

While the glint on Mars has captured the imagination of folks on social media, it was likely just sunlight, a cosmic ray or a camera artifact. But in an unrelated development days later, the rover detected something else ― and it could be a long-sought signal of possible microbial life on or inside the planet. 

The glowing object was captured on camera ― look at the right side of this raw image which was taken from the NASA website on June 16:

Here it is zoomed in:  

It doesn’t appear on any of the images snapped before or after, taken about 13 seconds apart, so if it was an object of some kind it moved quickly. More likely, however, it was nothing too out of the ordinary.

“In the thousands of images we’ve received from Curiosity, we see ones with bright spots nearly every week,” Justin Maki of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in 2014 when a similar flash of light made headlines. “These can be caused by cosmic-ray hits or sunlight glinting from rock surfaces, as the most likely explanations.” 

So the flash of light was unlikely to be a sign of activity on the planet. 

But something else was detected on Mars last week that just might be a sign of life: methane. The New York Times reported that Curiosity detected a spike in methane, which if confirmed, could be a hint of microbial life hidden beneath the surface of Mars. 

There were other possible explanations: 

The rover spent the weekend conducting follow-up tests in an attempt to confirm the results, with more analysis ongoing. NASA said the rover had detected methane in the past, and the planet seemed to have seasonal peaks and dips. 

Definitive answers could be tough to come by. 

“With our current measurements, we have no way of telling if the methane source is biology or geology, or even ancient or modern,” Paul Mahaffy of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center said in a news release. 

NASA is coordinating with the scientists working with the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter, which is orbiting Mars, to find the origin of the gas. 

NEW DELHI — External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar formally joined the BJP on Monday in the presence of party working president JP Nadda.

Jaishankar, a career diplomat and a former foreign secretary, was inducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his government as external affairs minister.

He was sworn in as a Cabinet minister along with other members of the government on 30 May.

The BJP is likely to field him from Gujarat as its Rajya Sabha candidate.

He has to be a Member of Parliament within six months of his swearing in.

At just 8 years old, twins Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti landed the roles of a lifetime: They would play Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgård’s sons, Josh and Max Wright, respectively, on the highly anticipated HBO limited series “Big Little Lies,” produced by Kidman and her co-star Reese Witherspoon. 

“Big Little Lies,” also starring Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz, follows five troubled mothers who get embroiled in a murder investigation in their highfalutin town of Monterey, California. By the end of Season 1, it becomes clear that the investigation is centered on the death of Skarsgård’s character, Perry Wright, who abused his wife Celeste (Kidman) and sexually assaulted Jane (Woodley).

When the show debuted in February 2017, it garnered rave reviews and critical praise, eventually earning 16 Emmy nominations and eight wins, including Outstanding Limited Series and acting awards for Kidman and Skarsgård. And although it was originally slated to run for just one season, the series was picked up for Season 2 following its Emmys success. The latest installment, which premiered earlier this month, explores the emotional trauma the Monterey Five and their children continue to face after the death of Perry. And with the addition of Meryl Streep, who plays Perry’s mother Mary Louise, the stakes are higher than ever. 

In terms of their personal experiences, the Crovetti twins understand the darker sides of the show thanks to guidance from their mother, Denise, who was a Broadway actress and family therapist before she started coaching Cameron, Nicholas and her daughter Isabella full time. Denise is on set with the twins for all of their scenes to explain the mature content of the show in an age-appropriate manner. 

“As an actor you need to know the part you are playing and why your character is feeling what they are feeling, so the boys knew what Perry did and what he was doing to Celeste,” Denise Crovetti told HuffPost. “It was explained in a matter suited for an 8-year-old for the first season and when they filmed the second season, they were 10, so I was able to explain even more of the family dynamics and abuse, and how being from that type of family would affect their characters.”

That being said, it’s of course not easy for her to watch her sons play out these scenarios, especially when she considers the severity of their characters’ situation. “I cry every time I watch those scenes,” she admitted, “partly because it is my boys and partly by just watching Josh and Max go through what they are going through.” 

Denise Crovetti reiterated how proud she is of Cameron and Nicholas, who, like the other child actors on the show, work just as hard as their “incredible” adult counterparts with not as much recognition. “I sit behind the cameras and watch and really see some great acting,” she said. “I am proud of their ability to emote and be so honest and real.”

That’s probably why she lets them turn on “Big Little Lies” every now and then.

“The first season we weren’t allowed to watch because it was inappropriate for kids,” Nicholas told HuffPost in an interview last week. “But for the second season, we’re allowed to watch now because we’re a little bit older.”

“Our mom watches beforehand,” Cameron chimed in, “and covers our eyes for any inappropriate parts.” 

Below, Cameron and Nicholas excitedly chat about working with Kidman and Streep, and further explain how their mom helps them get into character for those emotionally charged scenes.

For Season 2, you get to work with Meryl Streep. How’s that been?

Cameron Crovetti: It was awesome. I mean, she was so nice!

Nicholas Crovetti: I thought it was amazing working with all those women. Nicole and Meryl are super duper nice people.

Cameron: Yeah, it was an amazing experience. They were such giving actors, and it really helped me with my acting.

Did you know who Meryl Streep was before shooting this season, or did you have to do some research?

Nicholas: Well, at first I didn’t even know who Meryl was. My mom was like, “You’re going to get to work with Meryl Streep!” And I was like, “Wait, who’s Meryl?” And then my mom showed us “Devil Wears Prada” and then “Death Becomes Her” and we were like, “Oh, it’s so exciting to work with her!” We really loved those movies — they’re really good.

Did you watch any other Meryl movies?

Cameron: We saw “Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again.”

Nicholas: We loved the movies after we watched them so we were excited to meet her. 

How did you all bond, knowing she’d be playing your on-screen grandma? Did you get to spend quality time together?

Nicholas: Yes. Right when we met her she walked in and we didn’t even know who she was because she was wearing a wig and she had the fake teeth in, so we were like, “Oh, who’s that?” She sat down and introduced herself, and she brought us a Jenga set and we all played together and talked and we really bonded over that.

Was Nicole Kidman there, too?

Both: Just us!

Nicholas: Meryl had fake teeth but we had fake teeth too, so we were all talking about that and it was really funny.

How was it to act with fake teeth?

Nicholas: It was hard at first. We had to practice talking, and eating, because the first scene we did we were eating pizza, so we had to eat with the fake teeth and it all got stuck in there and it was really, like, gross. But, yeah, we worked with it. And then we had to talk — at first you’re whistling when you’re talking!

The life of an actor, right?

Both: [Laughs]

Of course, you also get to work with Nicole, who is another wonderful actress. Have you seen any of her movies?

Cameron: Yeah, “Paddington.” We also saw “The Others.”

That’s a scary one!

Cameron: Yeah, that was scary. [Laughs]

Did you see “Aquaman”?

Both: Yeah.

Nicholas: We were invited to the premiere and saw the movie with her. That was really fun. But when we first met her, I was like, “Wait a second, I feel like I know you from somewhere!” And then I was like, “Ohhh, you’re in ‘Paddington.’ You play the bad person!” And she was like, “Mmm hmm!”

How did you all get to know each other before Season 1?

Cameron: For the first season, she invited us over to her house to get to know her before we started filming and we met her daughters [Sunday and Faith Urban]. We’re still in touch with her. She invites us over to her house to play with her daughters. And when she went to the Emmys, she had an Emmy party and invited all of the kids from “Big Little Lies,” and, yeah, she’s amazing.

Nicole said her daughters actually have cameos in Season 2, is that true?

Cameron: They do! In the classroom scene where I say, “What about a dead father?” and we’re sitting down in a circle, Faith was sitting next to me. And they did some other scenes, yeah!

Nicholas: That was really fun.

Cameron: Yeah, so we get to talk to them during filming and hang out with them.

Nicholas: We’re still in touch with them because we go over to their house all the time and have play dates. When Nicole has parties and stuff, she invites us over and we play games with Sunday and Faith.

That sounds like so much fun. I’m sure they loved seeing familiar faces on set when they shot their cameos.

Nicholas: The first time at the school we were like, “Oh my gosh, they’re here!” And we got to talk with them and have fun with them and we’d play games and stuff. It was really fun when they were on set with us.

It’s nice that you all get to relax and enjoy the experience, because I’m sure you both know that the show touches on some dark, adult topics.

Nicholas: Yeah, everyone is super duper nice and Nicole and Meryl are the nicest people we’ve ever met and everyone on set, everyone there, is incredibly nice to us and everyone else.

Cameron: Everyone there is always in a good mood and so nice and know when to get serious to do the scene. It was a really good experience for us. Everyone was just so amazing, and we got to work with those amazing actors.

Yeah, it’s such a privilege to work opposite those actors. What did you learn by being in scenes with them?

Cameron: That first episode, in the scene where Meryl screams, she taught us that even when the camera is not on you, you should still always give to the other actors. When the camera was on her, she did her scream and she gave it her best, but when the camera wasn’t on her, she also gave it her best. So she taught us even when the camera is not on you, you should still do your best because you can help the other actors with their performances.

Yes, it’s important to always stay in character during a scene. Did she teach you that lesson when portraying Max and Josh?

Nicholas: Definitely. I remember one time when we got to the house, Meryl was all in character, so when she said hi, she was like, “Oh, hi, Max and Josh!” It was really, really funny. So we were acting in character too when we were getting ready to film the scenes. We would talk how Max and Josh would talk to each other, and Meryl was talking like how Mary Louise would talk to them.

Cameron: Yeah, even before we started filming, she was talking to us like we were Max and Josh. And for the scene where she met Ziggy for the first time, she didn’t ever meet [the actor, Iain Armitage] before that. She met him the day they did that scene together.

She probably didn’t want to meet Iain, who plays Ziggy, beforehand so the moment would feel authentic.

Nicholas: Yeah she hadn’t met him and she didn’t want to meet him because she wanted to meet him for the first time when they were filming so it would be super real.

How was it for you guys to act in that scene, when you find out Ziggy is your half-brother and you go over to his house?

Cameron: We didn’t talk to Iain when we did that scene. My mom pulled us aside, because she was an actress and helps us with our acting and all of our scenes, and she told us, “How would you feel if you actually had another brother? It’d be really emotional because you’re just finding this out.” So that really helped us with our acting. And when we see Iain for the first time in the scene, it came off pretty real. 

Does your mom help you through a lot of the scenes that are more complicated, so you understand the scenarios you’re trying to react to or portray?

Cameron: Yeah. When we did the scene where me and my brother were fighting in [Season 2, Episode 2], our mom pulled us aside to be like, “You lost your dad and everybody else has their dad and you don’t have your dad, so you’re really sad.” And that got us really sad and emotional. And when we did that scene, we were actually fighting with each other. He hit my arm really bad that it hurt throughout the scene, but we just kept rolling. And yeah, when Nicole hugged us, we were feeling really emotional. If you watch it again, I was holding my arm because Nicky hit my arm really bad [laughs], but we just kept rolling! That really helped me with my acting. 

Did you feel the same way, Nicky? Fighting with Cameron in that moment was probably hard, but you have to remember it’s just acting.

Nicholas: Yeah. Our mom pulled us aside and talked to both of us about [Max and Josh’s] dad being dead, so we just got really sad and got to fighting. And then Nicole tried to calm me, and then she pushed me on the ground. For that, we had a mat there, but it looks so real when I watch it over again. But I actually fell on a mat! 

Yeah, that scene was definitely intense. Did you talk it out with Nicole, too, so you understood what was going on in that moment for the characters?

Nicholas: Yeah, definitely. She said she’s just going to push me onto the mat and it’s not going to hurt at all. And I did my own stunts for that scene.

Impressive! Even though you’re both twins, Max and Josh’s relationship is probably different from yours in real life. Is it hard to play them sometimes?

Nicholas: I think Max and Josh are somewhat like us in real life because they fight with each other a lot like normal twins. And they’re funny and nice…

Cameron: I mean, they’re like us because obviously they’re twins and we’re twins and they fight with each other like normal siblings do, but they’re different.

They also don’t have siblings but you guys have a sister, right?

Cameron: Yeah, we have a sister [Isabella Cramp] who’s also an actor. She was Vampirina on the Disney TV show. She’s also in “Shimmer and Shine.”

Does she help you play Max and Josh, or has she given you good advice?

Cameron: She did help us with our scenes when she was on set with us and helped our mom with going over things with us.

Do you hope there will be another season of “Big Little Lies”? 

Nicholas: Yeah, definitely. There might be! We really want there to be.

Cameron: We would get to see everybody again and hang out with each other and do another season. I mean, it’d be awesome!

I’m sure you’re all really close now after being on the show together?

Cameron: Yeah, all the kids are friends and we see Ivy [George]’s family a lot because they live close to us, actually. We see Chloe [Coleman] and Darby [Camp] when they’re in town. We were in New York and we saw Iain. That was fun!

Nicholas: After we filmed the first season, we saw Iain again because we were doing a Ralph Lauren shoot and Iain was in New York filming other things. So we visited him and went all around the city.

What are your goals for the future, in terms of acting. I heard you also do gymnastics and play soccer, so are you interested in pursuing careers as athletes or actors?

Nicholas: I want to stay in acting for a little while longer, but when I grow up I want to go to medical school and become a neurosurgeon.

Wow! 

Nicholas: Mmm hmm.

Cameron: And yeah, I want to stay in the business. I want to be a director and producer, and still act.

Well, you should talk to Nicole and Reese and get some tips on producing and acting.

Cameron: Yeah! [Laughs]

Five people have been arrested and two police officers have been suspended for the lynching of 24-year-old Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand’s  Saraikela-Kharsawan, reported NDTV. 

On 18 June, Ansari and his friends were returning home from Jamshedpur to Saraikela-Kharsawan when they were accosted by a mob. Ansari was tied to a pole and beaten mercilessly on suspicion of having stolen a motorbike, while his friends managed to escape. He succumbed to his injuries on 22 June. 

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In a video of the incident that went viral, Ansari is seen being forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman. 

A Special Investigation Team has been set up to look into his death. Ansari was declared brought dead to the Tata Main Hospital in Jamshedpur on 22 June, Saturday, police said.

“We have formed an SIT to probe into the matter... and it has already conducted raids in the area on Sunday night,” Superintendent of Police Karthik S said.

Asked about the purported video of the incident, which is being circulated widely on social media and in which a mob is heard forcing Ansari to chant the slogans, Karthik S said a case has been lodged against an accused for inciting “communal sentiments”.

“Papu Mandal has been arrested and an inquiry into the incident is on,” the SP added.

HuffPost India had earlier reported that Tabrez was handed over to the police after being beaten up and was in judicial custody since 18 June.

PTI reported that the recently married Ansari was rushed to the Saraikela Sadar (district) Hospital after he complained of uneasiness on 21 June. On 22 June, he was referred to the Tata Hospital in Jamshedpur, where he was declared brought dead. 

His family had demanded justice and asked for compensation from the government. 

Ansari’s wife has filed a complaint in which she has named several people, a police officer said.

“The police should have taken him to a hospital, instead of arresting and sending him to jail,” Shaista Praveen  said in her complaint.

(With PTI inputs)

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.

NEW DELHI — Tearing into the BJP-led, government, Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad Monday said under the ‘New India’, humans are afraid of humans, those glorifying killers of Mahatma Gandhi are in the ruling party and hatred and lynchings are at its peak.

Speaking on the motion of thanks to the President’s address in Rajya Sabha, leader of the opposition, Azad, said unemployment is at all time high and henious crime like rape on minors are abnormally on the rise.

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Launching a scathing attack on the government and its policies, Azad said a party could win elections on divisive policies but the “Nation stood defeated”.

He demanded: “Keep your New India to yourself but return our old India where there was a culture of love and ...where there was no lynching and no hatred...Where Hindu and Muslims used to feel the pain of each other.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present in the House during Azad’s address.

Referring to the President’s speech on Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th anniversary celebrations, Azad said unfortunately a candidate of the ruling party called the killer of the Father of the Nation a patriot and no action was taken and the candidate was a parliamentarian now.

“My tongue will burn...I cannot repeat the remarks...I have a complaint to the Prime Minister, why didnt you take action. Mahatma Gandhi may be Congress President but he was Father of the Nation...I would not have mentioned it here but President’s speech mentions his birth anniversary celebrations...BJP should take action...It still has time till October...,” Azad said.

Azad while attackhing BJP for defending 2008 Malegaon blast accused Pragya Thankur, however did not mention her by name and said: “How is this possible and how someone can defend this? Though it doesn’t make any difference to us, this is a blot on the face of the ruling party which cannot be wiped out.”

He also referred to how former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on complaints about a Congress candidate in 1952 had instead urged people to vote for an Independent candidate who had a clean impage.

On New India, he said it was full of hatred where people were afraid of people and not afraid while being in Jungle.

“In old India, there was no hatred, anger or lynching.

New India is one where humans are enemies of each other. You won’t be scared of animals in a jungle but you’ll be scared of humans here. Give us India where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians live for each other.”

He added: “I request you to keep the ‘New India’ to yourself and give us our old India where there was a culture of love. Hindus used to feel the pain when Muslims and Dalits used to get hurt. When something used to get into the eyes of Hindus, Muslims and Dalits used to shed tears for them,” he said.

About Jharkhand, he said it has become a lynching factory where Muslims and Dalits were lynched and attacked routinely.

Reacting to a recent case of lynching in the state, he said, “Jharkhand has become a factory of lynching and violence. Dalits and Muslims are being killed there every week. PM Modi, we are with you in the fight of ‘Sabka saath sabka vikas’ but it should be there for people to see it. We can’t see it anywhere.”

He said rapes were at an all time high including henious crimes like rapes on minor and that “Beti Padhao and Beti Bachao” was just plain talks.

Azad said crime against women have risen manifold and urged government to ensure 50 per cent reservation to women in Parliament as it was having absolute majority.

He said Congress’s attempts were thwarted last time though the Women’s reservation Bill was passed in Rajya Sabha.

Unemployment, he said was at its peak with government trying to curb reports by various agencies and that the youth who voted for BJP needed justice.

In the addictive thriller You, Joe Goldberg, a young man who works at a bookstore, becomes obsessed with a woman, who he chases, stalks, gags and locks up, all under the guise of ‘passionate love.’ While the woman falls for the man - she doesn’t know yet he’s her stalker and potentially a murderer - the director’s gaze doesn’t ever justify the man’s stalking. Instead, it looks at it with a critical lens, treating him as a troubled mind that needs help.

In short, we don’t root for him. We root for her to escape.

Kabir Singh may not be a murderer (although he isn’t too far from becoming one) but his actions are arguably worse than the male character in You. In the American show, Goldberg goes to great lengths to conceal his actions. He’s aware of his own creepiness but not concerned enough to do anything to fix it. Unlike Goldberg, who knows that the minute the woman finds out about his sickening behaviour, it’s going to be over, Singh and the film treats those patterns as a wooing mechanism.

In Singh’s mind, the stalking and harassment serve as a badge of honour—a reinforcement of his twisted notions of masculinity. What’s worse, the film’s celebratory tone romanticises this entitlement by packaging it as love. Over the weekend, if you hung around Film Twitter, you’d have seen several people from the industry saying things such as “Films aren’t an HR manual” and “Cinema isn’t a class on moral science” and “Relax, it’s cinema; it’s meant to entertain. For every #KabirSingh, there is a #Tanu ! You won’t find either in real life. Be entertained, Just!”

It’s kind of like telling the audience to be okay with a film justifying casteism, or maybe having a cow-vigilante as a superhero in a sci-fi film. His superpower? Lynching, obviously.

Landing some months after a wave of #MeToo allegations exposed men guilty of sexual crimes across industries, and started important conversations on consent and agency, the tone-deafness of Kabir Singh is particularly startling. And its success — the film opened to over Rs 20 crore, one of the highest this year — is dangerous. Bollywood’s tendencies to replicate a successful template means that more Kabir Singhs are likely to be made. Don’t be surprised if the industry, which has turned a blind eye to known abusers, rolls out a film about male victimhood before confronting the monsters that lurk within.

A film cannot be removed from its societal context, it’s inevitably tied to it; That there is even a debate around Kabir Singh being problematic is laughable. But then, this is a town that was long in denial about nepotism being a fact. This is also the industry that counts Salman Khan as its most successful superstar, a damning indictment of the ticket-paying audience’s misplaced sympathies. That we’ve accepted Khan or Kabir Singh or Raanjhanaa show that despite an illusion of heightened gender consciousness, we remain a deeply patriarchal society still hungover on misogynistic ideas of romance. Films capture a moment in time and years later, when we look back at 2019 and what it signified culturally, Kabir Singh would be an appropriate barometer of Bollywood’s apathy towards #MeToo and the troubling lens with which it looked at women. 

The argument that ‘it’s just a movie’ is lazy. That it’s made by those in the entertainment business is even worse because what they are effectively doing is infantilising the power and influence of their own medium. We gauge the success of a movie not by the money it makes but by the cultural footprint it leaves behind. Nobody remembers how much Tere Naam made at the box-office but everybody remembers the Tere Naam middle-partition haircut, which many dudes adapted (unintentionally great because it was a visible red flag for women to stay away).

The subliminal effect that cinema has on people often manifests itself beyond a haircut. It’s in the wit you absorb from a sitcom or mannerisms you pick up from a character who’s projected as charming. Which is why the filmmaker’s gaze and treatment of the subject is so important.

Reflecting reality is one thing, celebrating it as acceptable, or even laudatory, is quite another. It’s important to make that distinction—the primary problem with Kabir Singh is that its makers romanticise their lead character’s anger issues and despicable treatment of people around him, especially his girlfriend (whose character, our review pointed out, is a misogynist’s dream).

In the last three years alone, over 18,000 cases of stalking were registered in India. Thousands of women are made to feel uncomfortable, harassed, assaulted and, many times, killed by men who couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. The last thing filmmakers should do is bolster their entitlement and violence with glamour.

Kabir Singh could remain exactly the film that it is. Only if its leading man was shown as what he is—a sick man in need of immediate help.

EAST CHAMPARAN, Bihar — On June 15, Kabootri Devi woke up to find Suganti, her seven-year-old daughter, sick and convulsing violently at 5:00 AM.

By the evening, Suganti had died of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), a deadly brain inflammation that has killed at least 152 children in Bihar thus far this year. The young mother buried her daughter near a stream, a kilometre away from her village.

The next morning Kabootri awoke up to find Rupanti, her five-year-old daughter sick and convulsing violently. Rupanti died of AES the same evening, and was buried next to her sister.

In 24 hours, Kabootri had lost both her daughters even though a government hospital, with five beds for AES patients, is located three kilometres from Jitora Gopalpur village in Chakia Block, a fifteen minute drive from Kabootri’s mud hut.

India’s Parliament is in session for the first time since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a second term; but the deaths of hundreds of children in Bihar, where the BJP is running the government in alliance with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janta Dal (United), may well have happened on a different planet. Neither the government nor the opposition appear particularly concerned.

“These are poor children of poor people. No one else cares about them,” said Budhan Manjhi, whose three year old daughter, Neha, has also succumbed to the disease in the same village.

The hospital in Chakia, near the Jitora Gopalpur village where Suganti, Rupanti and Neha died within a day of each other, used to be a Referral Hospital, which is meant to provide complex clinical care. It was elevated from a Referral Hospital to an even bigger Sub-Divisional Hospital (SDH) in 2017, but it still only gets a handful of AES cases.

And of the cases that it gets, it refers almost all to the Shri Krishan Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), an overcrowded tertiary facility, 60 kilometres away in Muzaffarpur.

While SKMCH has had to convert a prisoner ward into a temporary ward to deal with the influx of AES-affected children, the five beds at the SDH in Chakia are empty.

A social worker, who works with the Bihar government, was at a loss of words.

“This is Bihar,” he said by way of explanation.

Kabootri Devi said nothing.

She sat motionless as her neighbours and relatives tried piecing together the two worst days of her life.

She said nothing as they argued with each other over the hour that the girls were rushed to the SDH, about who accompanied their mother to the “big” hospital in Muzaffarpur, and the time that the girls passed away.

When everyone else was done talking, the grief-stricken mother said, “It all happened so fast that I cannot remember anything. Both my children are dead. No one is left.”   

A mounting death toll

At 152 and rising, the AES death toll this year is the highest in Bihar since 2014, when the number of dead reached 355.

The  causes and symptoms are varied, but in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, AES is prevalent in communities where children don’t have access to nutritious food, clean drinking water, and sanitation. It hits harder when there are long spells of hot weather.

Ensuring that these poor and vulnerable communities take basic precautions — keeping children from playing in the sun, ensuring that they eat before sleeping, boiling drinking water— is essential to preventing AES.

The Bihar government’s efforts to educate the rural populace about combating AES is far from adequate in any year, but it was practically non-existent, this year. Preparation for the general election, social workers say, took precedence over conducting awareness drives in the months running up to the summer.

Government health care workers, who are tasked with carrying out awareness campaigns in the hinterlands, were deployed on election duty, Arun Shah, head of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAPs) in Bihar, told The Economic Times.

Malnutrition

In Kabootri’s backyard, a steel plate, with rice grains floating in a thin colourless gruel, was attracting flies.  

It was last night’s dinner, Kabootri Devi said. Dal with rice or roti is the standard fare in her house. Her family does not starve, but she never had “good food” for her daughters.

Her husband, Sandhu Manjhi, was away in Bengaluru, working a construction job for Rs 200 to Rs 300 per day, when his daughters died. He has since returned.

“We cannot afford eggs and milk,” he said.

Budhan Manjhi, Neha’s father, who is also a labourer, agreed. “We cannot afford it,” he said.

Children with distended bellies, a sign of malnutrition, stood around listening to the grown ups.

What about the village anganwadi, a rural child care centre, where children between the ages of 0 to 6 are meant to get nutritious food?

“Anganwadis have been set up, but the protein that is needed to remove malnutrition is not there,” said Ranjit Kumar, a government doctor, who is the head of the Bihar Health Services Association. “We are also not being able to do health education.”

The social worker, who works with the government, said that the district administration had temporarily closed anganwadis on account of the extremely hot weather.

Another problem, this social worker said, are lengthy power cuts in these parts, which means that children go to sleep early, often without eating.

The villagers of Jitora Gopalpur said that Saturday was the second straight day without electricity.

Jitora Gopalpur is also a village without toilets. Villagers have to relieve themselves in nearby fields.

What’s the use?

The government hospital next to Kabootri’s village used to be a Primary Healthcare Centre (PHCs)  before it was elevated to a Referral Hospital, and then a Sub Divisional Hospital in 2017.

Until Saturday, this hospital had only  nine AES cases - all of which were referred to SKMCH in Muzaffarpur district, which is struggling to cope.

Ten days into the AES outbreak, SKHMC only had 34 beds. A prisoner ward at the hospital has been converted into temporary ward for AES-hit children.

Last week, HuffPost India reported that the PHCs located in each district block — meant to be the first port of call for the rural populace — don’t have enough doctors and have been under-utilised in this health crisis.

PHCs, doctors say, were under-resourced for so long that people still don’t believe that they will get proper treatment for something as serious as AES.

Amongst those who come to PHCs, there are few who are treated and discharged. Most are stabilised and then referred to SKMCH.

It is unclear why a SDH like the one in Chakia, which is more sophisticated than a PHC, cannot treat AES patient instead of contributing to the bottleneck at SKMCH.

One doctor here said that the AES ward does not have a ventilator, which rules out keeping critically ill-patients for more than a few hours.

“The government should provide us with these facilities. Only then can we work properly. Only then can we serve the public,” the doctor said.

Senior officials, this doctor said, had instructed them to refer severe cases to SKMCH.

Another doctor pointed out that it had only one ambulance at its disposal.

Others said that some of the worst-hit villages in East Champaran are near the highway, and villagers prefer to head directly to SKMCH.

This SDH is dirty, with garbage and stagnant water in its premises, almost all of which covered in stains and dust. In the ladies’ toilet, there are no doors on the stalls, and water comes out of only two of the three taps in the sinks.

It is also understaffed.

This sub-divisional hospital has vacancies for 27 doctors, hospital official said. It presently has eight including two AYUSH (Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) doctors.

“There are only around 2,700 regular doctors working against a sanctioned strength of 11,393 in health services,” Kumar, general secretary of the Bihar Health Services Association, told the Hindustan Times in January this year.

The SDH has two “A grade” nurses against the 50 vacancies, according to hospital officials. Of the 40 ANM (Auxiliary Nurse Midwifery) personnel, who are deployed to administer vaccines in the countryside, it has 26.

Hospital officials say that of the 198 ASHA (accredited social health activist) workers it should have, it has 192, but hospital officials say that 264 are needed for a block with a population of two lakh.

In Chakia, there are eight doctors for over two lakh people.

A doctor at the SDH said, “Do you not know how it is? Why do you look surprised?” 

Ambulance not working

After she found Suganti sick and convulsing on 15 June, Kabootri rushed to wake the men folk who live next door.

Mohan Manjhi, a relative on Sandhu’s side of the family, took charge of the situation on the mornings of 15 and 16 June. Mohan said that both sisters were taken to the sub-divisional hospital, where they were treated for an hour or two before getting referred to SKMCH.

Mohan said that he did not know whether taking Suganti and Rupanti to the sub-divisional hospital was a good idea. He is debating whether it had helped the girls or they had lost precious time.

Budhan, who also took his daughter Neha to the sub-divisional hospital, had similar doubts. “I don’t know if we did the right thing by taking her there instead of Muzaffarpur,” he said.

What Mohan does recall clearly is that on 16 June, when the villagers were calling the sub-divisional hospital for an ambulance to pick Rupanti up from Jitora Gopalpur village, they were told that the ambulance was not available, having broken in another part of the district.

There was no second ambulance at the sub-divisional hospital.

The villagers then rushed to the house of their local ASHA worker, Seema Devi, for help. As she was sick and getting treatment in Muzaffarpur, Mohan asked her husband Dalip Singh to ferry them on his motorcycle to the hospital.  

Singh, who was riding the motorcycle, said that Rupanti was convulsing so badly that he could feel her kicking his back as they made their way to the hospital.  

“It is horrible to see small children in so much pain,” he said.

The US government has removed most of the children from a remote Border Patrol station in Texas following reports that more than 300 kids were detained there and caring for each other with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

Rep. Veronica Escobar said 30 children were at the facility near El Paso as of Monday. Her office was briefed on the situation by an official with Customs and Border Protection.

Attorneys who visited the station in Clint, Texas last week said older children were trying to take care of infants and toddlers, The Associated Press first reported Thursday. Some had been detained for three weeks, and 15 children were sick with the flu.

It’s unclear where all the children have been moved. But Escobar said some were sent to another facility in El Paso.

President Donald Trump on Monday reiterated his denial of the rape allegations described by E. Jean Carroll, this time by saying the journalist and advice columnist was “not his type.”

“I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” the president said in an interview with The Hill.

In an excerpt from her upcoming book, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” published Friday by New York Magazine, Carroll detailed an alleged attack by Trump in the 1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.

The columnist said she encountered Trump at the Manhattan store and that he asked for her help buying lingerie for an unnamed woman. Once inside the dressing room, Carroll alleged, Trump pinned her against a wall and forced “his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”

The president denied the allegation in a statement on Friday, claiming he had “never met this person” in his life. He also accused Carroll of inventing the story to help her sell her book.

In a photo captured at an NBC party in 1987, Trump appears to stand in front of Carroll and beside his then-wife, Ivana Trump.

Carroll is the 16th woman who has publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct. The president’s remark that Carroll isn’t his “type” echoes similar comments he’s made about other women who have accused him.

In 2016, Trump suggested he wouldn’t have assaulted accuser Jessica Leeds because he didn’t find her attractive enough.

“Believe me, she would not be my first choice,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. “That I can tell you. You don’t know. That would not be my first choice.”

This article has been updated with details on Trump’s history of denying allegations of sexual misconduct.

A selfie is worth a thousand words — especially when you can learn something about the person who posted it.

That’s what Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow proved when they shared vastly different selfies of themselves with Jennifer Aniston while the three former “Friends” co-stars had a “girls night” together over the weekend.

Kudrow decided to be more of a traditionalist and posted a nice, flattering photo of the three of them.

She also had a clever caption to boot:

“Halfway there …” she wrote, most likely referencing the absence of their three male co-stars — David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry.

Cox, on the other hand, took a more kooky approach and posted this selfie.

She also posted an equally quirky caption: “Trying to figure out what to say on Instagram...” Cox wrote.

And we have no idea if Aniston, who cherishes her privacy, posted anything because she does not have a public Instagram account.

But it’s fun to see how two people having the same experience could post vastly different photos. Not to mention that Kudrow, who played the zany Phoebe on “Friends,” seemed to take more of Monica approach to posting a selfie, while Cox, who played Monica, acted a bit more like Phoebe.

It’s also pretty clear that the three co-stars are sincerely friends. Cox shared another sweet selfie with Kudrow and Aniston earlier this month in honor of her 55th birthday.

Keep doing you, ladies.

New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet has admitted that the newspaper was “overly cautious” in how it handled a new rape accusation last week against US President Donald Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll.

The Times “should have played it bigger,” he conceded in an interview in the newspaper Monday as he responded to complaints about the tepid coverage.

Carroll, a well-known advice columnist, detailed the alleged assault in the mid-1990s in New York Magazine last week. Carroll said that she and Trump struck up a conversation in Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store before he pinned her against a wall in a dressing room and raped her. With Carroll’s allegation, 23 women have now accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

Trump has denied the allegation and claims he has never met Carroll — though she provided a photo that included the two of them for the magazine piece.

Carroll’s accusation was reported in the Times’ Book section because her account was an excerpt in the writer’s upcoming book.

Times readers wondered why “we didn’t give the allegations more attention,” Reader Center staff editor Lara Takenaga noted in the newspaper Monday. “Some questioned whether the lack of prominence showed too much deference to the president’s denials.”

Baquet conceded to Takenaga that the critics were “right that The Times had underplayed the article — though he said it had not been because of deference to the president,“ she wrote.

Baquet explained that the Times typically reports on sexual assault accusations only if it can locate witnesses who are willing to go on the record. The paper did speak to Carroll and to two friends who were told by Carroll of the alleged assault at the time, but they did not want their names revealed.

But Carroll’s case should have merited more attention because her accusation was widely covered in the press last week — and it involved the president. “In retrospect ... the fact that a well-known person was making a very public allegation against a sitting president ‘should’ve compelled us to play it bigger,’” Baquet conceded in Takenaga’s article.

The Times is “continuing to report” on Carroll’s accusations, Takenaga noted.

Carroll’s startling account also attracted almost no attention on the Sunday morning talk shows on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Fox News. The writer did, however, recount the accusation with more detail in an interview Monday on CNN.

Lawyer George Conway, husband of White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, warned last week in a scathing op-ed piece in The Washington Post that Republicans should take Carroll’s accusation “seriously.” He said it was far more credible than an accusation of rape against Bill Clinton by Juanita Broaddrick that the GOP made much of.

Conway said Carroll’s allegation is particularly credible because 22 other women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Conway also cited Trump’s “depraved” remarks on an “Access Hollywood” tape that he could “grab” women by their genitals whenever he wanted. “When you’re a star ... you can do anything,” he boasted.

Taylor Swift’s relentlessly sunny video for her new single “You Need to Calm Down” is getting shade from members and supporters of the same LGBTQ community the song champions.

The superstar’s pitch for GLAAD in the video release for the second song in her new album “Lover” triggered a spike in donations to the advocacy group. And Swift backed her stepped up activism with a surprise performance at the Stonewall Inn to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the New York uprising that launched the fight for Pride equality.

But Swift is now getting ripped by some who accuse her of profiting from pain and violence she knows nothing about, and turning the fight for equality into music sales.

Her video begins with Swift in a pink trailer complaining — with relatively good humor — about her online haters. But then it morphs into concern for her “friends.” Why are “you mad when you could be GLAAD?” she sings in an inflatable pool in a technicolor trailer park popping with rainbow flags and paint jobs.

The easy slide from her struggles with fame to what the LGBTQ community faces angered some. 

“It’s a breathtaking argument: that famous people are persecuted in a way meaningfully comparable to queer people,” Spencer Kornhaber wrote in The Atlantic. He calls the song Swift’s “grand LGBTQ-rights statement” that falls short.

Online digs are very different from “a parent who disowns a trans kid, or a lawmaker who tries to nullify same-sex marriages,” Kornhaber noted. 

Critics also expressed annoyance that Swift’s video depicts homophobes as dumb country bumpkins. They said the stereotype alienates a class of people — and fails to recognize the vicious, targeted attacks of, say, politicians. Besides, many LGBTG people are from “the very communities Swift is mocking,” wrote Nathan Ma of the Independent. 

Others have been more measured in their criticism and Swift’s “allyship.”

“Feels to me like a version of straight cis white girl pop star advocacy — not the most effective thing, but not as calculated and hollow as the other branded opportunist pride campaigns of late,” trans filmmaker Rhys Ernst told IndieWire

“Do I love it? No, but it’s not really for me. Doing a takedown of it doesn’t seem like it would be productive in this moment in history.”

Over the past three days, the news in UK has been dominated by male Tory MPs and their interactions with women. 

From Mark Field’s manhandling of a Greenpeace protester at a black-tie dinner on Thursday, to police being called to Boris Johnson’s home with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds over a domestic row, it has been a tense few days. 

Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, told HuffPost UK on Monday that the fact some Tory MPs had leapt to defend both Field and Johnson “shows an unforgivable disregard for gendered violence, amounting to apologism”. 

“We don’t know what occurred between Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds on Thursday night but by downplaying that incident Tory MPs are reinforcing the dangerous idea that we don’t have a collective responsibility to challenge male aggression when it occurs,” she said, adding that we live in a society that “normalises male violence”. 

But what exactly happened this weekend – and how did some Tory MPs react? 

Thursday 

Late on Thursday night, footage emerged of Tory MP Mark Field grabbing a female Greenpeace protester who had interrupted a speech by Chancellor Philip Hammond at a black-tie City dinner. 

The video – filmed at the annual Mansion House speech – showed Field shoving the climate change activist against a pillar before holding her by the neck and pushing her out of the room. 

A call of “Jeez... what?” could be heard on the video as the woman – later identified as 38-year-old Janet Barker – was removed from the banquet hall. 

Friday 

As you might expect, the news on Friday morning was dominated by discussion of the incident, with Labour calling for Field to resign. 

While the party’s equalities minister Dawn Butler described the moment as “horrific”, calling for the Tory MP to be sacked “due to violence against women”, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted: “Violence against women is endemic in our society and this behaviour is unacceptable. He should consider his position.”  

But a number of Conservative MPs jumped to Field’s defence, echoing his argument that he was “genuinely worried she might have been armed”.

Further footage from the event also suggested the Greenpeace campaigners had been in the room for a while before Field – who has been the MP for the Cities of London and Westminster since 2001 – reacted to Barker’s presence near his table. 

Former Army officer Johnny Mercer tweeted: “Honestly? Try being in our shoes in the current environment.

“He panicked, he’s not trained in restraint and arrest, and if you think this is ‘serious violence’, you may need to recalibrate your sensitivities. Calm down, move on, and be thankful this wasn’t worse.”

Meanwhile, Conservative Bob Stewart suggested Field had no choice but to push the protester by the neck because “she wasn’t wearing a collar”.

“How the heck, as a man, how do you hold a woman that is not in an inappropriate way?” he said.

“You can’t hold her by the wrist, you can’t hold her by the waist, you can’t hold her by lower down, you can’t hold her by the chest,” Stewart continued. “The only way you can really control someone in those circumstances is possibly by the collar. But she wasn’t wearing a collar.

“So that’s why his hand was probably round her neck. If he’d have touched her anywhere else he’d have probably been deemed highly inappropriate and he was trying to stop something.”

However, Field was later suspended from his role as a Foreign Office minister pending investigation, with Theresa May calling footage of the incident “very concerning”. 

Field also apologised to Barker and referred himself to the Cabinet Office and Tory Party. 

Friday... continued 

Having suspended one minister (and another MP having been removed by recall petition on Friday), Conservative Party bosses were probably hoping for a quiet weekend.

But any such ambitions were dashed on Friday evening after the Guardian revealed that police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds in the early hours of that morning after neighbours “heard a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging”.

According to the newspaper, a neighbour heard Symonds tell Johnson to “get off me” and “get out of my flat”.

In a statement, the Met Police told the Guardian that officers attended the address, where everyone was “safe and well”.

“There were no offenses or concerns apparent to the officers and there was no cause for police action,” they said.

Saturday 

It was on Saturday that the row over the incident at Johnson and Symonds’ home really escalated, with a number of Tory MPs coming out in defence of the Tory leadership frontrunner. 

In a now-deleted tweet, security minister Ben Wallace said: “What a non story ‘couple have row.’ Lefty neighbours give recording to Guardian. Newspaper reaches new low is a better news story”. 

Meanwhile, Brexit minister James Cleverly – who has backed Johnson in the leadership race – suggested that the decision by neighbours to call the police was politically-motivated. 

“The big element in the Boris story isn’t that there was a heated argument, it’s that the police were called,” he wrote on Twitter. 

“The police were called by the same person who recorded Boris and gave the story to the Guardian.”  

Since then, Priti Patel has likened the decision by Johnson’s neighbour to tape the argument to “the type of behaviour associated with the old Eastern bloc”, while Jacob Rees-Mogg called it “absolutely dreadful”. 

“I think the idea that snooping neighbours are recording what is going on for political advantage and then Class War protesters are coming to politicians’ front doors – which happened to me as well – is not a good place for politics to be,” he told LBC on Monday. 

But SafeLives, a domestic abuse charity, encouraged people to call the police if they thought someone’s safety was at risk. 

“The weekend has been full of comment about the relationship we have with our neighbours,” the group said in a statement. 

“It’s not for us to judge what happens in anyone’s relationship, but it is for us all to take action if we are concerned about someone’s safety. That’s a natural human instinct. Let’s support it rather than challenge it.

“Don’t walk on by if you are worried. Ask if they are ok. Tell someone. Call the police.”

During a leadership hustings in Birmingham on Saturday, Johnson refused to answer questions about the incident. 

Repeatedly ducking queries about the row, the contender for PM said: “People are entitled to ask me what I want to do for the country”, later adding that he had made it “pretty obvious from the foregoing” he would not be commenting. 

Labour MP Jess Philips – who worked for a domestic abuse charity for a number of years before joining parliament – criticised Johnson for passing on the opportunity “to give an explanation and to say to the nation that it was the right thing for the neighbours to call the police and the right thing for them to try to gather evidence”. 

“This is what everyone should do,” she told LBC. “But instead his very poor character has picked himself over the safety of women in this country, and the line that he is putting out is this is a private family matter.” 

NEW DELHI — India and the United States are closing in on an industrial security agreement that will allow the transfer of defence technology, sources said on Monday, ahead of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s talks in New Delhi this week to promote strategic ties.

Disputes over trade and protectionist moves have escalated between the two countries in recent months, but defence ties remain strong with Washington seeking to build Indian capabilities as a counterweight to China.

India has bought weapons worth more than $15 billion from the United States over the past decade as it seeks to replace its Russian-origin military and is in talks for helicopters, armed drones and a bigger Indian plan for local production of combat planes together worth billions of dollars.

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To allow for transfer of technology for building combat jets locally and other joint ventures, the United States had sought guarantees for the protection of classified information and technology.

A draft of the agreement called Industrial Security Annex is now ready and will go up before the Union cabinet for approval in the next few weeks, sources aware of the India-US defence negotiations said.

It would be the first time New Delhi has entered into such a pact with any country, although the United States has such agreements in place with several countries, one of the sources said.

Lockheed Martin and Boeing are both in the race for a deal estimated at over $15 billion to supply the Indian Air Force with 114 fighter planes to replace its ageing fleet of Mig 21 jets.

The planes have to be built in the country as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India drive to cut expensive imports and build a domestic industry.