unbearable heat turbat

Unbearable heat in Turbat

Hani Rasheed

Through the columns of your esteemed newspaper, I wish to highlight the unbearable heat in Turbat. Every summer, temperatures rise to dangerous levels, making life extremely difficult for residents. Students, labourers, elderly people, and patients suffer the most. Long hours of load shedding and water shortages make the situation even more unbearable.

The authorities should take urgent measures to ensure an uninterrupted electricity supply, improve water availability, and plant more trees to reduce the effects of extreme heat. Public awareness about staying safe during heatwaves should also be promoted.

The people of Turbat deserve timely action before this severe weather causes more health problems. I hope the concerned authorities will address this issue without delay

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  • Dogs can read human emotions

    Dogs may understand more than just the words we say. A new scientific study suggests that they can also notice human facial expressions and may recognize different emotions such as happiness, anger fear and sadness. Researchers from the  University of Vienna in Austria studied dogs’ brains to understand how they react to human faces.  Their findings were published in the scientific journal iScience. How the study was done In the first part of the study researchers used MRI scans to study the brains of eight dogs. The group included six Border Collies, one Labrador and one Golden Retriever. The dogs were shown pictures of unfamiliar people with happy or neutral facial expressions. When the dogs saw happy faces certain areas of their brains became more active. These areas are linked to thinking rewards and positive experiences. Researchers found strong activity in areas such as the temporal cortex and caudate nucleus.  The caudate nucleus is connected with the brain’s reward system and may also respond to social rewards. According to senior researcher Laura Cuaya, this suggests that a happy human face may have a positive emotional meaning for dogs even when the person is a stranger. Dogs may tell different emotions apart The researchers then wanted to know whether dogs could also recognize negative emotions. Twelve dogs were shown human faces expressing happiness anger, fear and sadness. Their brain activity was recorded and studied using machine learning methods. The results showed that dogs’ brains reacted differently to angry fearful and sad faces compared with happy faces. The researchers also found different brain activity patterns for each negative emotion. This suggests that dogs may be able to tell these emotions apart rather than seeing all negative expressions as the same. Dogs notice small changes First author Raul Hernandez Perez explained that humans can often understand emotions from very small changes in a person’s face.  Dogs may also pay close attention to these small changes. This ability may help explain why dogs are so good at understanding people. Unlike humans and monkeys dogs did not develop these social skills through the same evolutionary path. Instead thousands of years of living closely with humans may have helped dogs become highly sensitive to our behavior and signals. Interestingly both researchers are not only professional colleagues but also life partners. Their own two dogs, Odin and Kunkun were also part of the study. It is not only about the face The researchers say dogs do not depend on facial expressions alone. They can also notice changes in our voice body movements, behavior and even smell. So when a dog seems to know that its owner is happy worried or upset it may be combining many different signals at the same time. Training dogs for MRI scans The dogs had to receive special training before taking part in the research.  They learned to stay still inside an MRI scanner for short periods. At first they were trained to remain still for only one or two seconds.  The time was slowly increased as they became more comfortable. They were also introduced to the scanner the equipment and the sounds it made.  One of the hardest parts was teaching the dogs that doing nothing was actually their job. The dogs took part voluntarily and could leave whenever they wanted. The study has some limits The study was small and most of the dogs were Border Collies. This breed is known for being intelligent and good at understanding human social signals. Because of this the results may not be the same for every dog breed. More research is needed to find out whether different breeds understand human emotions in different ways. Scientists also want to learn how dogs use these emotional signals in everyday life. The study does not prove that dogs experience happiness sadness or fear in exactly the same way humans do. Scientists cannot directly know what a dog is thinking or feeling. However the brain activity does suggest that human facial expressions carry emotional information for dogs. The bond between humans and dogs goes far beyond simple commands. Dogs can pick up signals from our faces voices movements and behavior. This ability may be one of the reasons why the relationship between people and dogs is so strong.

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    Modern fiction Is turning to non-human storytellers

    In contemporary literature, narrative perspective is being handed over to dogs, octopuses, whales, birds, and endangered wildlife. Talking animals have long been a fixture of children’s fables and folklore.  However, today’s literary fiction is doing something far more ambitious. Authors are adopting animal vantage points to grasp  profound existential questions, ecological grief, and the bewildering complexity of human society. Why readers and writers alike are suddenly captivated by animal narrators? This interest reveals much about our current cultural moment and the unique psychological role that fiction plays in times of global crisis. One of the most compelling reasons for the rise of animal storytellers is their ability to cut through human cynicism. We live in a world saturated with social media fatigue, and moral ambiguity. So, human characters often arrive with heavy psychological baggage. Readers may instantly judge a human narrator based on their socio-economic background, political leanings, or lifestyle choices. An animal narrator, by contrast, operates outside these human constructs. Whether it is a rescue dog observing a broken family or a pelican observing coastal transformation, an animal offers a clean perception. Their observations are rooted in immediate sensory experience: hunger, instinct, weather, fear, affection, and loyalty. Non-human narrators re-open channels of emotional honesty by stripping away political pretense. They allow readers to engage with burdening themes like grief, isolation and love. In literary theory, the concept of defamiliarization refers to the art of making the familiar look strange so that readers can see it clearly for the first time. Human beings have become accustomed to concrete jungles, light pollution, plastic waste, and digital distraction. To us, these phenomena are simply the backdrop of daily life. When we view through the eyes of a non-human entity, modern human habits suddenly appear bizarre. A bird that’s trying to navigate glass skyscrapers. Whale interpreting the deafening sonar of industrial ships. Forest mammal trying to cross a highway. They all illuminate the bizarre artificiality of human civilization. By shifting the vantage point, authors force readers to step outside their anthropocentric bubble. Thus, readers recognize how dramatically human choices disrupt the living ecosystem. We live in an era marked by accelerating biodiversity loss and climate instability. We own a reality that frequently induces emotional paralysis or denial in human populations. Directly reading about ecological devastation in news reports can lead to apathy or fatigue. Fiction narrated by animals offers a way to process ecological mourning on a deeply personal level. The abstract concept of climate change transforms into an immediate tragedy when the perspective is of an animal suffering habitat destruction. The non-human perspectives give dignity to  creatures that are seen as collateral damage in human progress. It transforms passive statistics into active, feeling individuals whose survival matters to the reader. At its core, the novel has always been an engine for cultivating empathy. For centuries, that empathy was restricted to other human beings of different cultures, genders, or eras. Modern fiction is taking the logical next step by stretching the boundaries of empathy beyond our own species. How do you depict a mind that experiences the world primarily through smell, echolocation, or instinct rather than human logic? Successful books navigate this by taking an imaginative leap with scientific understanding. Thereby, resisting the urge to turn animals into simple humans in fur or feathers. In doing so, they remind us that human intelligence is not the only valid way of experiencing reality. The surge in animal-led fiction reflects a growing realization that human stories do not exist in a vacuum. Our reluctance to listen to non-human perspectives has come at a high cost. Modern literature is not retreating from reality into fantasy. It is confronting our reality with clarity. It is reminding us of the wild world we share and the urgent need to preserve it.  

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    Mill’s “On Liberty” in the era of censorship

    In his 1859 political treatise On Liberty, Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill issued this timeless warning. The greatest threat to humanity is not monarchical despotism, but the tyranny of the majority enforced through state power. The Harm Principle At the heart of Mill’s philosophy lies the Harm Principle. The radical assertion that authority can only be legitimately exercised over a member of a civilized community against their will to prevent harm to others. Beyond this minimal threshold, individual autonomy over mind, body, and speech must remain absolute. Re-reading Mill today reveals a truth. His warnings are no longer abstract political theory. They provide a precise mirror for contemporary state overreach. This overreach is illustrated by the erosion of civil liberties in Indian-administered Kashmir and the systemic suppression of media outlets like Al Jazeera. The Harm Principle and the Disfranchisement of Kashmir Mill argued that suppressing individual self-determination degrades both the citizen and the state. In Kashmir, the unilateral revocation of constitutional autonomy, prolonged blackouts, and detentions of political leaders represent a case of majoritarian coercion. A state strips millions of their basic political rights under the justification of order or national integration. So, it violates the core of Millian liberty: consent and self-governance. Mill cautioned against treating entire populations as passive subjects incapable of directing their own political destiny. By denying Kashmiris the freedom to assembly, political self-expression, and uninhibited digital communication, state machinery replaces organic democratic engagement with enforced compliance. In Mill’s framework, a government that fears the peaceful political expression of its people reveals the fragility of its own moral authority. Ban on Al Jazeera Mill’s second chapter, dedicated to freedom of thought provides the intellectual critique of state censorship. He argued that silencing an opinion is a unique crime against humanity because it presumes the state possesses infallibility. Even if an perspective is deemed antagonistic, banning it deprives the public of testing truth against error. This principle directly challenges the recent enforcement of the Al Jazeera Law, under which the Israeli government shut down the Qatari broadcaster’s local operations, confiscated equipment, and blocked access to its platforms. Citing national security threats, state authorities effectively declared themselves the sole arbiters of acceptable news coverage. Mill would argue that invoking national security to silence reporting—especially during conflicts where independent oversight is most vital—is a classic instrument of state self-protection, not public safety. When a state decides which facts citizens and the international community are allowed to hear, it undermines the very foundation of a free society. Why Mill Matters Today   On Liberty remains an indispensable framework because it demonstrates that liberty is not a luxury granted by governments, but an essential condition for truth and justice. Whether in the militarized silence enforced upon Kashmir or the legislative bans silencing journalists, the modern state increasingly employs legal mechanisms to enforce conformity. Mill reminds us that a society that trades fundamental liberties for state-defined security ultimately preserves neither.

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