Posted:
Golden Globes' triumphs, snubs and surprise wins: The five most exciting head-to-head battles in the Oscars race
VANI KA PARTNER 24.1
AR GETS PENDRIVE 25.1
🏏WPL 2026: Match 15: RCB W vs DC W at Vadodara on 24/01/26🏏
Gomzi come back
🏏New Zealand vs India 3rd T20I in Guwahati @ 7 PM IST🏏
Sara Ali Khan Unfollows Orry On Instagram
Which OG Cast Member Would You Like To See Returning Next?
Anupamaa 24 Jan 2026 Written Update & Daily Discussions Thread
Republic Rhythms: Aazadi Quest SEASON 2 ~ Round 1
KRK Arrested
Palash was caught in bed
Border 2 is a huge blockbuster
Gadar Was Offered To Govinda
Parenthood
What movie would you like Ranveer Singh to do after Dhurandhar 2?
Padma Awards - Dharmendra Satish Shah Alka Yagnik Mammootty
Arshad Warsi Vs Prabhas
3 years of Pathaan
Golden Globes' triumphs, snubs and surprise wins: The five most exciting head-to-head battles in the Oscars race
What’s Happening in Iran Right Now, Explained
Iranians have taken to the streets repeatedly over the past 17 years to protest their authoritarian government, but the demonstrations now unfolding appear to be the largest yet.
As in previous crackdowns, security forces have responded with riot police, tear gas, and live ammunition. Hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters have been killed.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the United States would intervene on behalf of the protesters. So far, it has not.
Why are the Iran protests happening?
Iran's economy has gone into free fall. On Dec. 28, the rial plunged to 1.48 million to the dollar, triggering protests by merchants in Tehran’s central bazaar who said they could no longer conduct business. Ordinary Iranians, watching their purchasing power evaporate by the hour, soon joined them. Within a week, demonstrations had spread to all 31 provinces.
As the protests grew, demands shifted from economic relief to calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Iran’s theocratic regime, in power since 1979, is deeply unpopular among much of the country’s population of roughly 90 million. Analysts point to years of mismanagement and corruption, but say the economic collapse accelerated sharply after the United Nations reimposed sanctions in September over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The unrest has also been shaped by long-standing anger over social restrictions enforced by the state, including strict rules governing dress and personal behavior. Those policies sparked nationwide protests in 2022 following the death of a young woman while in custody.
Is what's happening now related to the attack by Israel and the United States last June?
Not directly. Israel, which Iran’s leaders have vowed to destroy, targeted military facilities and—with assistance from U.S. bombers—severely degraded Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Israel also killed senior Iranian commanders and struck symbolic regime targets.
But the 12-day conflict compounded other setbacks for Tehran, including major blows to Iran-backed militias in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Gaza (Hamas). Together, those losses left the regime politically weakened, even as it moved to project strength at home.
Trump’s decision to deploy B-2 bombers, meanwhile, established a precedent for U.S. intervention beyond the Western Hemisphere, raising expectations among some Iranians that Washington might act again.
How many protestors have died in Iran?
Estimates now reach into the thousands. An exact figure remains impossible to confirm.
Iran shut down the internet and phone networks on the evening of Thursday, Jan. 8, as the largest demonstrations were underway and security forces moved to confront crowds. During a similar shutdown amid economic protests in 2019, authorities subsequently used live fire against demonstrators.
That pattern appears to have repeated. By Friday morning, six hospitals in Tehran alone had received the bodies of at least 217 protesters, a doctor told TIME. Tehran has many more hospitals, but with no additional leaks, the full toll from that night and those that followed remains unknown.
Images smuggled out of the country showed a Tehran-area morgue packed with hundreds of bodies from Thursday night alone. A volunteer group of analysts, working from the Tehran hospital reports, calculated the death toll nationwide from Jan. 8 throught 10 could be 6,000. Iran International, a satellite news station that opposes the regime, posted an estimate of 12,000. Meanwhile, the New York Times on Jan. 13 quoted two unamed official from Iran's government as saying the at least 3,000 people had been killed. As of Jan. 12, a respected human rights group operating amid the communications blackout said it had confirmed 646 deaths.
Is anyone leading the protests?
There is no indication the protests were organized by a single group. As with nationwide demonstrations in 2017, 2019, and 2022, the current unrest appears to have erupted spontaneously in response to government actions. In 2019, for example, it was the rise in gas prices. The absence of formal leadership reflects, in part, the state’s systematic arrest of civil society figures.
As the protests gained momentum, Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, began posting messages calling for a general uprising. Some demonstrators appeared receptive: the largest gatherings coincided with the times and locations he suggested, and crowds in several cities chanted his name.
Pahlavi, 65, has lived in the United States for most of his life since his father, Mohammad Reza Shah, was deposed during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In social media messages, he has said he does not seek to restore the monarchy, but wants to serve as a unifying figure during a transition to a secular democracy.
Other prominent dissidents, including Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, remain inside Iran as political prisoners.
Who runs Iran now? Could he be abducted, like Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro?
The title carried by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sums things up pretty neatly: Supreme Leader of the Revolution. Now 86, Khamenei has had the final say on what happens in the Islamic Republic of Iran since being promoted by a panel of fellow clerics in 1989.
Long rumored to be in declining health, he has kept a low profile since the 12-day war, during which Israel’s prime minister said Khamenei could have been targeted but was waved off by Trump. Khamenei is known to live modestly, and sometimes deep underground.
Unlike Venezuela’s former president, Khamenei is not named in U.S. criminal indictments. But according to Justice Department filings in 2024, intelligence units of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps— which report directly to the Supreme Leader—were involved in plots to assassinate Trump.
Why is the U.S. against Iran?
Before 1979, Iran and the United States were close allies, as was Israel. That relationship ended with the Islamic Revolution, whose leaders defined the new Islamic Republic in opposition to what they saw as Western domination, embodied by the U.S. and its support for the Pahlavi monarchy. American hostility hardened after Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats hostage for 444 days.
The two countries did make tentative overtures in the late 1990s, when Iranians were electing politicians on promises of greater personal freedom and openness. But Khamenei and fellow conservatives used the powerful levers of clerical rule to derail the Reform movement. Its last gasp was in 2009, when a Reformist president who had clearly won the election was placed under house arrest instead of sworn into office. In protest, hundreds of thousands of Iranians went into the streets and were confronted by security forces with batons and shotguns.
I went inside the Great Pyramid of Giza – it was magical, but I'd never do it again
In medieval France, murderous pigs faced trial and execution Animal trials helped to restore order when the unspeakable happened.
How to cope with disruptive change
You can’t stop life from throwing changes your way, big and small. But you can get a lot better at dealing with them
by David A Clark, clinical psychologist
Many of us have a natural resistance to change. We take comfort in following our morning rituals, going to the same job and performing tasks we know well, working or socialising with the people we’ve known for years, pursuing the same fulfilling hobby, and so on. In these routines we find predictability, a sense of control, and progress toward cherished goals and aspirations. We find peace and psychological balance. Anything that threatens our routines can feel like an unwanted intrusion, eliciting a surge of distressing uncertainty, a sense of losing control.
Over the years, I’ve treated hundreds of people with anxiety, depression and worry. Invariably, change played a defining role in their difficulties. Whether it was the loss or break-up of a loving relationship, a decline in physical health, a job loss or demotion, financial hardship, childrearing problems, or other unwanted changes, for them, change was a disruptive force that overwhelmed their capacity to cope.
Yet change can be disruptive even when it doesn’t involve a major loss or burden. Examples might include spending time in an unfamiliar place, starting a new relationship, or changing your place of worship. Although experiences like these are an expected part of living, they still involve a level of change that can be unsettling. The experience of change itself is a big part of what feels distressing for so many people. This means that even changes associated with desirable outcomes can be unnerving when they occur. Starting a new job with better pay, introducing physical exercise into your daily routine, getting your child ready for a new school year, or starting house renovations are examples of positive experiences that can feel highly uncomfortable because they increase uncertainty and put pressure on your coping resources.
You can learn to respond differently to change
If you’ve ever experienced change as an unwanted force that threatens your emotional equilibrium – maybe you’re facing such change even now – this Guide will share some ways for you to handle it differently. Change is an unavoidable part of life, whether it involves a major disruption or a steady onslaught of minor ones. Acceptance and adaptation are the answer.
Acceptance is not simply throwing up your hands in the face of change. What it means is knowing which aspects of a change experience are within your control and which are beyond your control. It’s focusing your efforts on the controllable and learning to live with the new reality that has been imposed on you. Learning to live with whatever change you face requires adaptation, whether that involves acquiring new skills or reintroducing a long-forgotten approach to daily living. Acceptance and adaptation are well known to psychologists: both are pillars of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and are repeatedly emphasised in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), especially for the treatment of anxiety. In my work as a clinical psychologist, I have found that acceptance and adaptation ultimately help to minimise the emotional toil of a change, so that one can continue to thrive even in the face of new difficulties and challenges.
Often, a change that begins as a threat to wellbeing can even become a catalyst for growth. I once treated a man who experienced intense anxiety. He had spent much of his adult life building up a thriving business in software development. In his mid-50s, he was able to sell the business and retire early. But shortly after he retired, his anxiety intensified to almost unbearable levels. As part of his therapy journey, my client realised he needed to ‘reinvent’ himself. He became much more focused on building relationships, especially with his family, and embarked on a series of ambitious, community-based charitable projects to help disadvantaged youth. Retirement was a seismic change for him, but it caused him to discover a new meaning in life – to realign his activities with core values that had lain dormant during his years of driving to succeed.
Whatever changes might lie ahead for you, I offer the following recommendations to help you sharpen your coping skills and discover how you, too, can adapt in the face of change.
Key points
Change can feel like an unwanted intrusion. Whether it’s a major loss, a disruption you’ve been expecting, or even a positive change, the experience of change itself can be distressing.
You can learn to respond differently to change. Change is an unavoidable part of life, but the principles of acceptance and adaptation can help you cope.
Evaluate what’s controllable. Ask yourself: which aspects of this change experience might I have some power over, and which ones are out of my hands?
Take a problem-focused approach. Rather than focusing only on your feelings about a change, identify specific steps, within your sphere of control, that could reduce its negative effects.
Use critical thinking and values to steer your decisions. Change often requires you to make tough choices. Gathering information, carefully weighing the options, and considering your values can help you decide well.
What to do
Evaluate what’s controllable
When confronted with a disruptive change, the first step is to recognise what is under your control and what is not. We do not have complete control over most of the change experiences we encounter, whether they are major or minor in scope. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and feel helpless if you are trying to control that which is beyond your control. So, when you face a stressful change, ask yourself: which aspects of this situation might I have some control over, and which ones are out of my hands?
Consider, for example, some of the typical changes that many of us face as we grow up. Someone who is entering adulthood is required to take dramatic steps toward independence and make decisions about work and relationships that often lead to destabilising changes – such as moving to a new place at a distance from family and old friends, or breaking up with a romantic partner. To handle these changes well, it helps to recognise what is inevitable or out of one’s control. This might include accepting that a change in location is often necessary for a fulfilling career, or that break-ups are an expected part of navigating mature relationships. One must also identify what, in a given change experience, can be controlled: eg, the decision to pursue specific job opportunities or places to live, or to explore new romantic relationships and learn from previous ones. Focusing on elements such as these will go much further toward helping a person meet critical changes.
Likewise, we face life-changing challenges in our senior years. Retirement, declining health, loss of valued relationships, and restricted freedom and independence are just some of the dramatic changes associated with this time of life. Ageing itself is inevitable and uncontrollable, despite any attempts we might make to arrest it. For those dismayed by the changes brought on by ageing, it is much better to turn toward the aspects of daily life over which we have some power, such as how active we are, how well we eat, and how often we communicate with friends, neighbours or other people in our lives. Focusing on the controllable can help us maximise our quality of life as we live through the uncontrollable reality of ageing.
Take a problem-focused approach
We are emotional beings. So, when it comes to unwanted or disruptive change, it’s natural for us to focus on how it makes us feel. Let’s say you are facing some big changes at work: an increased workload, the introduction of new technology, and a downsizing of the workforce. Some of your closest co-workers lost their jobs and there’s a realisation that you could be next. You would probably experience a surge of anxiety and worry. You might have difficulty sleeping and feel on edge. Under these circumstances, it would be all too easy to spend all your time dealing with your distress. Of course, you can’t ignore how you feel – and you’d want to take steps to acknowledge and manage those feelings, such as sharing your burden with a confidante or seeking help from a mental health professional. But focusing on your feelings will only go so far to address the changes at work.
A problem-focused approach to change is about discovering practical adaptations that improve your ability to cope. It involves taking specific steps that are within your sphere of control. In this scenario, you might start by learning about how others have dealt with increased workloads and trying out some strategies that might be relevant to your own work. You could seek out tutorials and online instructions, or ask a knowledgeable co-worker about how to improve your skills with the new technology. Downsizing is a tougher part of the problem because so much of it is outside your control. But you could focus on activities that strengthen your preparedness for a job lay-off, such as revising your resume, engaging in job searches, and seeking out opportunities at related companies. The mantra of the problem-focused approach is: what can I do that is under my control to reduce the negative effects of a change?
Taking a problem-focused approach to change is not always easy. When you’re hurting, frightened or demoralised, it’s especially hard to look beyond the feelings to the disruptive change that has caused your distress. But a problem-focused approach is the best way to accept and adapt to change, no matter how devastating it may feel. And this approach can be helpful for any type of change, from more common ones such as moving to a new neighbourhood, adopting a healthier diet or seeking new friends, to more threatening changes such as being diagnosed with a serious illness or losing a close relationship.
If shifting to a more controlled, practical style of coping feels difficult, you can start by simply sitting with the change and deciding to think it through before reacting. Reflect on the impact of the change for you, being careful to avoid catastrophising, or assuming that the worst-case scenario will happen. Consider what is the most likely outcome associated with the change. Then find out more about how others have coped with similar changes, perhaps by consulting family members or friends who’ve gone through such changes, or by reading what others have shared online or in books.
Finally, list two or three practical, specific responses you could take that might reduce the negative effects of the change. Focusing on these concrete steps will help you grapple with what’s controllable (rather than what isn’t) so that you can adapt accordingly.
Use critical thinking and values to steer your decisions
Change often brings with it the need for some degree of decision-making. If you recently started dating again and posted an online profile, but you’ve been disappointed with the results, you might wonder whether to remove it. Or, if there’s been a change in your financial situation, you might have to make some hard decisions around financial management. If your ageing parent is no longer able to live independently, you may be deciding how best to support their wellbeing. What’s more, the problem-focused approach discussed above might require a series of choices, or might bring you to a point where a major decision is needed.
If you’re indecisive, or if you sometimes make decisions impulsively, you might struggle with this aspect of change. So, it can help to practice efficient and effective decision-making by exercising your critical thinking skills. This begins with realising the negative effects of not deciding. Delaying a decision is a decision in its own right – one that can lead to missed opportunities, prolong distress, and feed into doubts you might have about your ability to choose wisely.
Instead, when you have a decision to make amid the change happening in your life, here’s a general plan to keep you focused:
Be clear and specific about what you need to decide.
Gather information relevant to the issue at hand, giving higher priority to information that is evidence-based and being more cautious with information that may be more speculative in nature.
Generate options and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each, based on the evidence you’ve gathered.
Choose a course of action, and sketch out a step-by-step plan that you’ll follow to carry out what you’ve decided.
Set a time when you’ll review your decision and make any necessary adjustments to the plan.
Importantly, the best decisions are also guided by values: your freely chosen and deeply held convictions about what is right, important, or worthy of your actions. Deciding based on values stands in contrast to deciding based on, say, what seems most expedient or least effortful.
Imagine that you have moved to an unfamiliar city. Unrooted from friends and family, and feeling lonely, bored and apprehensive, you take a problem-focused approach, part of which is deciding how you will spend your alone time. If two of your core values are ‘spirituality’ and ‘empathy’, you might decide to find a local faith community with opportunities to volunteer in community-based activities, such as staffing a food bank. Or, if ‘respect for others’ and ‘knowledge’ are core values for you, you might seek a way to work with and inform others in your community, perhaps through the local public library. Using your values to guide your decision would provide a meaningful way to cope with a disruptive change.
Now, let’s apply all of this to another common life change. In this example, you’re in a serious romantic relationship and your partner wants to move to a deeper level of commitment, but you have misgivings. In fact, you’re contemplating whether a break-up would be best for you. You feel overwhelmed by the gravity of the decision and fret that you’ll regret whatever decision you make. You feel stuck. So, how would a critical thinker who embraces value-based decision-making approach this situation?
The first step, again, is to define the problem: whether to remain in the relationship or not. You give yourself a deadline, let’s say three months, to gather as much information as possible. You might read about the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships, seek consultation from trusted friends who know you both, have open and honest conversations with your partner about your concerns in the relationship, and/or do a deep dive into compatibility – how you compare in terms of values, interests, goals and priorities. You focus on the information that is most important in making the right decision for you.
You then look at your options – stay in the relationship and devote yourself to making it work, or end the relationship and move on with your life – and you consider the pros and cons of each. You can even give a weight to each advantage and disadvantage (eg, ‘very important’, ‘somewhat important’, ‘not very important’). You keep your core values in mind as you evaluate the pros and cons of each option. For example, if ‘curiosity’ and ‘learning’ are among your core values, you might weight evidence that your partner does or does not share these values as very important to you.
Through this process, you arrive at a decision. Then, you create a step-by-step plan for how you’ll execute it. If the decision is to stay together, what steps will you take to strengthen the relationship? If it’s to break up, how will you carry that out? At some point afterwards, you take some time to evaluate your decision to determine how you might strengthen your future decision-making.
Can you see how decision-making becomes more efficient with this approach, as compared with getting frozen by the fears and doubts of the moment? By taking control of the situation to the extent possible, and then adopting a critical-thinking approach to any decisions you need to make, you can improve the chances of adapting well to even difficult and disruptive changes.
David A Clark is a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. He is the author of multiple books on depression and anxiety, including The Anxious Thoughts Workbook (2018), The Negative Thoughts Workbook (2020) and This Is What Anxiety Looks Like (2024). His newest book is Overcoming Paralyzing Doubt and Indecision (2026).
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260113-hello-hiya-aloha-what-our-greetings-reveal
'Hullo, hillo, holla': The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'
Do the tiny, boring exercises: how to really look after your hips
From the best exercise moves to how many steps you really need to aim for a day, experts weigh in on how to maintain hip health
Top miracles of the world within each!!!!!!
10 Special Reasons to Thank God
1. Tyres wear out as they run, but the soles of our feet remain almost the same even after a lifetime of walking and running.
2. The human body is about 75% water, yet despite millions of pores, not a single drop leaks out.
3. No object can stand without support, yet the human body balances itself naturally.
4. No battery works without recharging, but the heart keeps beating nonstop from birth to death.
5. No pump can run forever, yet blood flows continuously through the body for an entire lifetime.
6. Even the world’s most expensive cameras have limits, but our eyes capture every scene with a quality equal to thousands of megapixels.
7. No laboratory can test every taste, yet the tongue identifies thousands of flavors without any instruments.
8. Even the most advanced sensors are limited, but our skin can feel the slightest touch and sensation.
9. No machine can produce every sound, but the human voice can create thousands of frequencies.
10. No device can fully decode all sounds, yet our ears understand and interpret every sound meaningfully.
For these priceless gifts given by God, we should be grateful and we truly have no right to complain.
Waking up every morning itself is a miracle.
So thank the Almighty every single day. 🙏
https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/theres-a-cost-to-your-chatgpt-query-the-water-you-drink/
AI is powered by physical hardware in giant data centres — and those data centres are thirsty
