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I am a 21-year-old woman who was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder five years ago. I have been taking medicines since and though my condition has improved, I still have a problem with my abandonment issues, one of the BPD’s symptoms. I constantly feel like my loved ones are abandoning me, when that is patently untrue. Even if someone does not pick up my call, I start thinking that I am being ignored. This constant need for attention and validation is annoying. Despite being fully aware of this, I am still unable to shake it off. How do I convince myself? —R.M 

Answered by Tashi Gurung, Counseling Psychologist, Happy Minds

I appreciate the fact that you are aware about what is happening to you. Not all are able to identify, let alone accept, what is happening to them. Many are in denial. So you should give yourself some credit for being aware.

Now about you feeling abandoned, I suggest you validate your emotions. Most of the time we try to suppress our feelings and avoid addressing them. So when you feel this way next time, ask yourself this: Would you ignore someone who is feeling terrible and tell them their emotions aren’t valid? You wouldn’t. Rather, you would sit them down and have a deep conversation, show them kindness and compassion. It is necessary for you to treat yourself the same way. Be kind to yourself the way you would be to others. 

You have mentioned how even a small issue makes you feel anxious and abandoned. In this case, have a conversation with your loved one. Rather than being vague about it, be precise. Tell them what you want. For instance, I believe the reason you panic when someone does not pick up your call is because of the uncertainty involved. You are not certain about when you will get a call back, or why your call isn’t being answered. In such a case, you can explain to your loved ones about how you feel and maybe find a common ground that is comfortable to both of you. Perhaps you can ask them to leave a text message saying when they will be free, or when they can accept your call—something to give you a sense of certainty. 

Another thing, rather than blaming others for ignoring you, explain to them how their actions or lack thereof make you feel. It could be a way to start a meaningful conversation, rather than turning into an argument. 

If you find it difficult to employ these practices, you can seek professional help. Make an appointment with a counselor who can instruct you. There are also mindfulness exercises and cognitive behavioral therapy that could help you. 

The price of gold has dropped by Rs 500 per tola in the domestic market on Thursday.

According to the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers' Association, the yellow bullion is being traded at Rs 96, 600 per tola today.

The yellow metal was traded at Rs 97, 000 per tola on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, tejabi gold is being traded at Rs 96, 100 per tola.

Similarly, the price of silver has dropped by Rs 5 and is being traded at Rs 1,225 per tola today.

Five women heading to the UAE from the Immigration Office of the Tribhuvan International Airport have been arrested.

The Immigration Office apprehended the women heading to the UAE via Kuwait after the officials found the documents submitted to the office fake. They have been handed over to the police.

According to a source, the detainees have been identified as Maya Tamang Parbati Sarki,  Anju Bohara, Karuna Singh Thakuri and Somi Dhimal.

"The plus 2 certificates submitted by them are found to be fake. They even did not have travel history," an official at the Immigration Office said.

The women were preparing to go to the UAE via Kuwait by Jazeera Air.

The Home Ministry has been discouraging the people from working in Gulf countries on tourist visas.

It has been learnt that the human trafficking racket were preparing to take the women to UAE with false promises of lucrative jobs.

Three soldiers were killed in action in a pre-dawn suicide attack on an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri. Two terrorists were shot dead, NDTV reported.

Two soldiers were also injured in the attack.

This is the first terror attack on an army camp in four years; terrorists had attacked Sunjwan camp in February in 2018.

The terrorists were trying to scale the fence of the camp when an army sentry spotted them and opened fire, leading to a gunfight.

"Someone (terrorists) tried to cross the fence of Army camp at Pargal. Sentry challenged and exchange of fire took place," Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Mukesh Singh said.

Rajouri district and other parts of the Jammu region have largely been free from terrorism but over the last six months there have been a series of terrorist-related incidents in Jammu.

Police said the Lashkar-e-Toiba terror group is behind the attack.

Recently, police busted a major Lashkar module in the area after the arrest of Talib Hussain Shah, a BJP leader who was eventually disowned by the party.

Shah, according to police, was involved in series of attacks in the area and large cache of arms and ammunition was recovered from him.

The attack comes just a day after police averted a major tragedy by recovering 25 kg improvised explosive device (IED) in Pulwama district of the union territory, according to NDTV.

In a similar terror attack in 2016, at least 18 soldiers were killed in action in Uri in the union territory.

Disney will launch a new ad-supported streaming service in the US in December, as it overtakes Netflix in the race for paid subscribers, BBC reported.

The firm reported 221.1 million subscribers across its three streaming platforms at the start of July.

That put it just ahead of Netflix, which has been losing accounts.

But Disney warned that its loss of streaming rights for cricket in India would reduce its subscriber growth compared to previous forecasts. 

The firm, which also owns adult television streaming platform Hulu and the sports-focused ESPN+, said demand for its Disney+ product remained strong.

Pandemic lockdowns provided a boost to streaming services like Disney, but the easing of Covid restrictions doesn't seem to be preventing it attracting new customers.

The company added 14.4 million Disney+ subscribers in the quarter, many of them outside of the US - far more than analysts had expected.

Later this year it will launch a new ad-funded service, which will still be charged at the current subscription rate of $7.99. The charge for the ad-free service will rise to $10.99 per month.

The firm plans to launch its ad-funded service outside the US next year.

Executives said they do not expect the rise in prices to put off customers over the long term. The firm is also seeing strong interest from companies hoping to advertise on the new service, they said, according to BBC.

"We are in a position of strength with record upfront advertising commitment," chief executive Bob Chapek told analysts in a conference call to discuss the firm's financial results.

Disney's subscriber gains have come at a hefty cost, with its streaming business losing $1.1bn in the quarter.

Executives said they expect losses to peak this year, In the meantime, a strong rebound in attendance at its theme parks since the worst of the pandemic has provided the firm with a large financial cushion.

Total revenues in the April-June period jumped 26% from last year, pushing profits to $1.5bn.

Shares in the company jumped more than 6% in after-hours trade after the firm shared its results.

Paolo Pescatore, analyst at PP Foresight, called it a "pivotal moment in the streaming wars" saying Disney had more room to grow than arch-rival Netflix.

Netflix lost nearly one million accounts in the most recent quarter, putting its subscriber total at 220.67 million, BBC reported.

The results "firmly underline my belief that Disney is at a different phase of growth to Netflix", said Mr Pescatore. "There are still millions of users to acquire as it continues to expand into new markets and rolls out new blockbuster shows".

China’s battle video games round Taiwan have led officers from the administration of US President Joe Biden to recalibrate their pondering on whether or not to scrap some tariffs or probably impose others on Beijing, setting these choices apart for now, in response to sources conversant in the deliberations, Reuters reported.

Biden’s workforce has been wrestling for months with varied methods to ease the prices of duties imposed on Chinese language imports throughout predecessor Donald Trump’s tenure, because it tries to tamp down skyrocketing inflation.

Ukraine said Wednesday that nine Russian warplanes were destroyed in a deadly string of explosions at an air base in Crimea that appeared to be the result of a Ukrainian attack, which would represent a significant escalation in the war, Associated Press reported.

Russia denied any aircraft were damaged in Tuesday’s blasts — or that any attack took place. But satellite photos clearly showed at least seven fighter planes at the base had been blown up and others probably damaged.

Ukrainian officials stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility for the explosions, while mocking Russia’s explanation that a careless smoker might have caused ammunition at the Saki air base to catch fire and blow up. Analysts also said that explanation doesn’t make sense and that the Ukrainians could have used anti-ship missiles to strike the base.

If Ukrainian forces were, in fact, responsible for the blasts, it would be the first known major attack on a Russian military site on the Crimean Peninsula, which was seized from Ukraine by the Kremlin in 2014. Russian warplanes have used Saki to strike areas in Ukraine’s south.

Crimea holds huge strategic and symbolic significance for both sides. The Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia has been one of its key conditions for ending the fighting, while Ukraine has vowed to drive the Russians from the peninsula and all other occupied territories.

The explosions, which killed one person and wounded 14, sent tourists fleeing in panic as plumes of smoke rose over the coastline nearby. Video showed shattered windows and holes in the brickwork of some buildings.

One tourist, Natalia Lipovaya, said that “the earth was gone from under my feet” after the powerful blasts. “I was so scared,” she said.

Sergey Milochinsky, a local resident, recalled hearing a roar and seeing a mushroom cloud from his window. “Everything began to fall around, collapse,” he said.

Crimea’s regional leader, Sergei Aksyonov, said some 250 residents were moved to temporary housing after dozens of apartment buildings were damaged.

Russian authorities sought to downplay the explosions, saying Wednesday that all hotels and beaches were unaffected on the peninsula, which is a popular tourist destination for many Russians. But video posted on social media showed long lines of slowly moving cars on the road to Russia as tourists headed for home. 

A Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, cryptically said that the blasts were either caused by Ukrainian-made long-range weapons or the work of Ukrainian guerrillas operating in Crimea, according to Associated Press.

A Ukrainian parliament member, Oleksandr Zavitnevich, said the airfield was rendered unusable. He reported on Facebook that it housed fighter jets, tactical reconnaissance aircraft and military transport planes.

Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC taken at midafternoon Wednesday showed some 2 square kilometers (0.75 square mile) of grassland burned at the Saki base. Several craters marked the ground near the tarmac — typically the sign of a powerful explosion. The two runways bore no apparent damage and appeared to still be operational. Some of the fighter jets on the flight line had been moved farther down the runway, compared to images taken Tuesday before the blast.

The base has been home to the Russian 43rd Independent Naval Assault Air Squadron since Moscow seized Crimea. The squadron flies Sukhoi Su-24s and Sukhoi Su-30s. The base also includes a number of earth-covered bunkers and hangars around its periphery — typically used to house munitions in case of a fire. None appeared damaged.

“Official Kyiv has kept mum about it, but unofficially the military acknowledges that it was a Ukrainian strike,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said.

The base is at least 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) from the closest Ukrainian position. Zhdanov suggested that Ukrainian forces could have struck it with Ukrainian or Western-supplied anti-ship missiles that have the necessary range.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said it couldn’t independently determine what caused the explosions but noted that simultaneous blasts in two places at the base probably rule out an accidental fire but not sabotage or a missile attack, Associated Press reported.

It added: “The Kremlin has little incentive to accuse Ukraine of conducting strikes that caused the damage since such strikes would demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defense systems.”

During the war, the Kremlin has reported numerous fires and explosions on Russian territory near the Ukrainian border, blaming some of them on Ukrainian strikes. Ukrainian authorities have mostly kept silent about the incidents, preferring to keep the world guessing.

Neither side has released much information about their own casualties. In his nightly video address Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed nearly 43,000 Russian soldiers had been killed, according to Associated Press.

When she left a bad marriage, Sania Khan said some members of her South Asian Muslim community made her feel like she had "failed at life". Through TikTok, she found support and comfort in strangers - until her ex returned and murdered her, BBC reported.

This story contains details that may be upsetting to some readers.

Her bags were packed. She was ready to be free.

The 21st of July was to be the day Sania Khan, 29, left Chicago, Illinois - and the trauma of a relationship gone wrong - to begin a new solo chapter in her native Chattanooga.

Instead, that day, she returned home to Tennessee in a casket.

Three days earlier, officers had found Khan unresponsive near the front door of the Chicago condominium she had once shared with her estranged husband, Raheel Ahmad, 36. She had a gunshot wound to the back of her head and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Upon arrival of the police, Ahmad had turned the gun on himself, taking his own life. 

According to police reports shared with the Chicago Sun-Times, the pair were "going through a divorce", and Ahmad, who had gone to live in a different state while separated from Khan, had travelled some 700 miles back to their former home "to salvage the marriage".

The grisly murder-suicide was the tragic final chapter in the life of Khan, a young Pakistani-American photographer who had recently found recognition on the social-media platform TikTok as a voice for women fighting marriage trauma and divorce stigma in the South Asian community.

Her death has left her friends shaken, and has reverberated with her online followers and other South Asian women who say they have felt the pressure to stay in unhealthy relationships for the sake of appearances.

"She said 29 is going to be her year and it's going to be a new beginning," said BriAnna Williams, a university friend. "She was so excited."

To her friends, Khan was a joy to be around - authentic, positive and selfless almost to a fault.

"She was someone who would give you the shirt off her back," said Mehru Sheikh, 31, who called Khan her best friend.

"Even when she was going through some really tough times in her life, she would be the first to call you and ask you how your day is going."

On Instagram, where she first built a public platform, she described her passion for photography with a biographic line that read: "I help people fall in love with themselves and with each other in front of the camera."

Khan photographed weddings, maternity shoots, baby showers and other milestones, often for big-paying clients but also for many of her friends.

"Behind the camera is where she came alive," said Ms Sheikh. "She had a knack for making people comfortable in front of the camera, for capturing raw emotion and joy."

Meanwhile she sought the same kind of joy in her own life. After dating Ahmad for about five years, she married him in June 2021 and they moved to Chicago together, according to BBC.

"They had a fabulous, big, fat Pakistani wedding,"a childhood friend recalled. "But the marriage was built on a foundation of lies and manipulation."

Khan's friends claim Ahmad had long-standing mental health issues. The couple had been mostly in a long distance relationship before marrying, which her friends say likely obscured the extent of their incompatibility.

The problems came to a head last December when, her friend said, Khan told her that Ahmad had a mental-health crisis and she felt unsafe. The BBC was unable to reach the Ahmad family for comment.

Members of the Khan family declined, through Khan's friends, to comment for this story.

About a dozen murder-suicides take place in the US every week, about two-thirds of which involve intimate partners, according to the Violence Policy Center.

Mental illness and relationship troubles are often identified among the top risk factors for women facing abuse by their partners. Domestic violence experts say women are most at risk of being killed by an intimate partner when they are leaving the relationship. 

The December episode convinced Khan - who had until then kept details of the relationship private - to open up about her unhappy marriage, friends said.

They said Khan discussed the struggles in her marriage, telling them that her husband wasn't sleeping and often acted strangely, that he was refusing her pleas to seek help or go to therapy, and that she felt his mental health struggles had become her burden.

But friends allege that, while they told Khan to leave the marriage, others counselled her to stay in it.

Ms Williams, 26, said her old friend broke down when they last met in Chicago in May.

"She told me that divorce was considered shameful and she was extremely lonely," she told the BBC - recounting how Khan used the phrase "what will people say", more commonly known in Urdu and Hindi as log kya kahenge.

Herself a child of divorce, Khan said she had witnessed first-hand the stigma some South Asian communities attach to women who leave their marriages.

"There's a lot of cultural pressure around the impacted family and how it looks to the outside world," said Neha Gill, executive director of Apna Ghar, a Chicago-based organisation that offers culturally sensitive services to predominantly South Asian women facing intimate partner abuse.

Many South Asian communities continue to see women as inferior and needing to be controlled, Ms Gill said, adding: "The cultures are very communal, so it's about prioritising family or community over a person's safety and well-being".

But with the support of her friends, Khan filed for divorce and secured an August hearing to finalise the split, BBC reported.

She also filed a restraining order and changed the locks on her doors, friends said.

And she began sharing her story on TikTok, describing herself as "the black sheep" in her community.

One post reads: "Going through a divorce as a South Asian woman feels like you failed at life sometimes."

"My family members told me if I left my husband I would be letting Shaytan [the devil in Arabic] 'win', that I dress like a prostitute and if I move back to my hometown they'll kill themselves," says another.

Another university friend, Naty, 28, who asked that her surname not be published, vividly remembers the first time Khan went viral on the platform.

"She was blowing up my phone and she said this is what I'm meant to do: To spread the word about my relationship and be a leader for women leaving their toxic marriages."

With each post, Khan found solace and strength, even as she "received backlash" for airing out the breakdown of her marriage, according to Naty.

At the time of her death, more than 20,000 people were following Khan on TikTok.

Bisma Parvez, 35, a fellow Pakistani-American Muslim woman, was one of them.

"I remember, [after] the first video that I saw of hers, I just prayed for her," she said.

"Women in these situations are told to have 'sabr' [patience in Arabic] and, in an abusive relationship, patience is not the answer."

She lamented Khan's death in a TikTok video of her own that has been among many shared across the platform.

The conversation has only swelled since then.

Apna Ghar, the Chicago domestic violence organisation, said it plans to hold a virtual panel discussion to commemorate Khan's one-month death anniversary later this month.

And amid the outpouring of love from friends and followers on social media, former classmates at Khan's high school - the Chattanooga School for Arts and Sciences - established a memorial scholarship in her name.

"Everyone's hush-hush, but social media helps you realise what a worldwide problem this is," said Ms Parvez, according to BBC.

"We're always telling women to protect themselves, but it's important to also raise sons who respect women. That training starts at home and each household has to make that change."