Ahmed, the hotels association official, said

The bull race creates a festive atmosphere, complete with dancing and banknotes thrown into the air — a celebratory practice normally seen at weddings.The scent of freshly fried sweets rises from hot pans to lure the crowds. Stallholders prepare roasted chickpeas and other delicacies. The hustle and bustle becomes a source of income for enterprising locals, who benefit from the cultural event.

More than 100 bulls competed in the event that Haseeb hosted, with people traveling from across Pakistan to be part of the race.Among the competitors was farmer Muhammad Ramzan.“My bull came in fifth place and I’m thrilled,” he said. “It left 95 others behind.”

This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.whose “Fool” trilogy is beloved for the characters he created to populate a fictional upstate New York town, freely admits he’s always pulled from his real life to write his novels. “I was born in exactly the right place at exactly the right time,” he writes in one of 12 essays that make up his slim new volume “Life and Art.”

Russo scholars — there must be some in American literature departments somewhere, right? — will devour this book. Russo writes lovingly of both his father and mother, draws explicit connections between his characters and people from his real life, takes a road trip back to his hometown Gloversville, and even throws in an homage to

whose portrayal of Sully in his “Nobody’s Fool” helped Russo’s work find an audience well beyond readers.Bergoglio didn’t publicly confront the junta and was accused of effectively allowing two slum priests to be kidnapped and tortured by not publicly endorsing their work.

He refused for decades to counter that version of events. Only in a 2010 authorized biography did he finally recount the lengths he used to save them, persuading the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so he could celebrate Mass instead. Once in the junta leader’s home, Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy. Both priests were eventually released, among the few to have survived prison.As pope, accounts began to emerge of the many people — priests, seminarians and political dissidents —whom Bergoglio actually saved during the “dirty war,” letting them stay incognito at the seminary or helping them escape the country.

Bergoglio went to Germany in 1986 to research a never-finished thesis. Returning to Argentina, he was stationed in Cordoba during a period he described as a time of “great interior crisis.” Out of favor with more progressive Jesuit leaders, he was eventually rescued from obscurity in 1992 by St. John Paul II, who named him an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He became archbishop six years later, and was made a cardinal in 2001.He came close to becoming pope in 2005 when Benedict was elected, gaining the second-most votes in several rounds before bowing out.