‘EC should hoist BJP’s flag’: Akhilesh Yadav slams poll body over Form 7 ‘misuse’

​​​​​Alleging a coalition between the BJP and the poll body, the former Uttar Pradesh CM said that Form 7 was being completed and printed at the locations where the Samajwadi Party had won, and "disturbances have occurred at many of them." The SP chief further alleged that BJP won the ​​Bihar election through use of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and is "trying" the same in poll-bound West Bengal.

The sneeze secret: how much should you worry about this explosive reflex?

It is one of the most powerful involuntary actions the human body can perform. But is a big sneeze a sign of illness, pollution or something else entirely?

How worried should we be about a sneeze? It depends who you ask. In the Odyssey, Telemachus sneezes after Penelope’s prayer that her husband will soon be home to sort out her house-sitting suitors – which she sees as a good omen for team Odysseus, and very bad news for the suitors. In the Anabasis, Xenophon takes a sneeze from a soldier as godly confirmation that his army can fight their way back to their own territory – great news for them – while St Augustine notes, somewhat disapprovingly, that people of his era tend to go back to bed if they sneeze while putting on their slippers. But is a sneeze an omen of anything apart from pathogens, pollen or – possibly – air pollution?

“It’s a physical response to get rid of something that’s irritating your body,” says Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist and professor at the University of Manchester. “Alongside the obvious nasal hairs that a few people choose to trim, all of us have cilia, or microscopic hairs in our noses that can move and sense things of their own accord. And so if anything gets trapped by the cilia, that triggers a reaction to your nerve endings that says: ‘Right, let’s get rid of this.’ And that triggers a sneeze.”

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‘Retirement from work will never happen’: Mohan Bhagwat says RSS asked him to continue after turning 75

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat will continue in his role beyond 75 years, as directed by the organization, stating retirement from work is not an option. He emphasized that the RSS chief must be a Hindu, chosen based on merit, not caste. The Sangh focuses on instilling values rather than campaigning, and supports anti-corruption efforts.

Failure to compensate pelvic mesh implant victims ‘morally unacceptable’, say campaigners

Thousands of women with life-changing complications still in limbo two years after call for financial redress

The government’s failure to respond to calls for a compensation scheme for women harmed by pelvic mesh has been described as “morally unacceptable” by campaigners.

Thousands of women were left with life-changing complications after receiving transvaginal mesh implants, with some unable to walk or work again.

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‘I don’t have to create his legacy, I just have to protect it’: Chadwick Boseman’s widow Simone on grieving a global star – and guarding his secrets

Black Panther made him a megastar, but in private the actor and his wife Simone Ledward Boseman were dealing with his terminal cancer diagnosis. In a rare interview, she talks about the shock of losing him, and how a revival of one of his plays has helped her heal

Simone Ledward Boseman is reflecting on the five years that have passed since the death of her husband, actor and writer Chadwick Boseman. “The edges of grief get less sharp over time,” she says. “Five years definitely feels like a marker. I’ve had to gradually figure out how I talk about Chad. What do I want to share, and what do I feel comfortable sharing? Can I find something that I might want to share in the midst of something I don’t want to share?” We meet on a video call across time zones – it’s 9am in California, where she lives. “Except for my mom, I’m not talking to anybody before 10am,” she laughs. She’s made an exception to give a rare interview ahead of the UK premiere of her late husband’s play Deep Azure, which is currently in previews in London at Shakespeare’s Globe.

When Boseman’s death was announced at the end of August 2020, the shock reverberated across the globe. He was devastatingly young – only 43 – and the world was just getting to know him. The release of the movie Black Panther two years earlier, in which he played the eponymous character also known as T’Challa, had skyrocketed his fame. Before then, he had been a successful Hollywood actor. Now? He was a global megastar – the first Black superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The news was doubly shocking because the family had not previously revealed that he had been suffering with colorectal cancer.

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Ma vie après un AVC : « Pourquoi je sais que le rose est rose »

« Hémiplévie ». La journaliste et écrivaine Isabelle Monnin, victime d’un AVC en 2023, explique chaque semaine comment elle a apprivoisé cette nouvelle existence, avec un corps « à moitié fichu ». Durant ses huit mois d’hospitalisation, il lui a bien fallu bien tuer le temps. Et donc se poser des questions existentielles.