SRINAGAR, India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to make his first visit to contested Kashmir since a conflict between India and Pakistan last month, inaugurating a strategic railway to the mountainous region, his office said Wednesday.

The Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir is at the center of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, divided between them since independence from British rule in 1947.

Modi is set to visit on Friday to open the Chenab Bridge, a 1,315-meter-long (4,314-foot-long) steel and concrete span that connects two mountains with an arch 359 meters above the river below.

“The project establishes all-weather, seamless rail connectivity between the Kashmir Valley and the rest of the country,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

Modi is expected to flag off a special train.

Last month, nuclear-armed India and Pakistan fought an intense four-day conflict, their worst standoff since 1999, before a ceasefire was agreed on May 10.

More than 70 people were killed in missile, drone and artillery fire on both sides.

The conflict was triggered by an April 22 attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing – a charge Islamabad denies.

Rebel groups in Indian-run Kashmir have waged a 35-year-long insurgency demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

The 272-kilometer (169-mile) Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla railway – with 36 tunnels and 943 bridges – has been constructed “aiming to transform regional mobility and driving socio-economic integration,” the statement added.

Its dramatic centerpiece is the Chenab Bridge, which India calls the “world’s highest railway arch bridge.”

While several road and pipeline bridges are higher, Guinness World Records confirmed that Chenab trumps the previous highest railway bridge, the Najiehe in China.

Indian Railways calls the $24-million bridge “arguably the biggest civil engineering challenge faced by any railway project in India in recent history.”

The bridge will facilitate the movement of people and goods – as well as troops – that was previously possible only via treacherous mountain roads and air.

The train line could slash travel time between the town of Katra and Srinagar, the region’s key city, by half, taking around three hours.

The bridge will also revolutionize logistics in Ladakh, the icy region in India bordering China.

India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence across South Asia.

Their troops clashed in 2020, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, and forces from both sides today face off across contested high-altitude borderlands.

The railway begins in the garrison city of Udhampur, headquarters of the army’s northern command, and runs north to Srinagar.

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has revoked a Biden-era health guideline that protected emergency abortions when medically required, even in states that ban the procedure.

The Biden-era memo was issued in July 2022, weeks after the US Supreme Court struck down the constitutionally enshrined right to abortion.

As health providers suddenly found themselves embroiled in legal uncertainty over abortion, the memo provided an interpretation of the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), arguing it supersedes state abortion laws when needed to stabilize a pregnant patient.

The directive was fiercely contested by anti-abortion advocates.

In a letter Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the EMTALA guidance did not reflect the current administration’s policy.

“CMS is rescinding this memo ... effective May 29, 2025, consistent with Administration policy,” it said.

Offering its own interpretation, CMS said EMTALA provides the right for any hospital patient to receive “either stabilizing treatment or an appropriate transfer to another hospital.”

It said the US Health and Human Services would no longer enforce the Biden-era guidance.

The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute said the Trump administration’s revocation of the EMTALA guidelines showed “callous disregard for the law and people’s lives.”

Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, wrote in the New York Times that the CMS letter “basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril.”

According to Guttmacher, 13 US states, mostly in the south and east of the country, have “a total abortion ban” as of May 28.

While these states generally provide narrow exceptions in the event of a threat to the mother’s life, it is unclear what constitutes a life-threatening condition in the eyes of the law.

Since returning to office, US President Donald Trump has taken a series of moves to restrict abortion access.

In his first week back in the White House, Trump revoked two executive orders protecting access to a pill widely used to terminate pregnancies and the ability to travel to states where the procedure is not banned.