Gill took to Instagram on Tuesday to share her thoughts on a news report about a man in Gujranwala who allegedly assaulted his pregnant wife after an ultrasound report revealed the couple were expecting a daughter.

“To educate all such men out there, a child’s biological sex is determined by the father’s sperm, not the mother,” Gill wrote.

The actor went on to suggest that “basic manners, empathy, humanity and morality” should be a mandatory part of curriculum in schools.

“Because clearly, something is failing us. I don’t know whether it’s our legal system, our society, our upbringing or a combination of all but these horrendous acts continue to happen,” she continued, before pointing out religious teachings, if interpreted correctly, could also help nurture children, so they grow up to be compassionate.

The incident Gill referred to took place on September 27. Gujranwala police have arrested the man accused of assaulting his pregnant wife in the WAPDA Town area. The case has been registered under sections 337 (shajjah) and 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

According to the FIR, the accused, Tayyab Mannan, had been coercing his wife, who is five months pregnant, to get an abortion because he wasn’t happy about the possibility of having a second daughter, which was indicated in an ultrasound.

The FIR claims that during a fight over the same issue, Mannan beat up his wife so badly that had to be taken to Gujranwala Civil Hospital for treatment.

In a video circulating on social media, the woman revealed details about the incident and how her husband’s anger over having a second daughter turned into violence.

“We need to shape minds from a young age so that cruelty is never normalised, violence is never mistaken for authority, and another human being’s dignity is never considered negotiable,” Gill wrote in her story, that features the video.

Going back to the reported incident, the actor, who is known for being vocal about women’s and animal’s rights, reiterated her outrage.

“A woman being beaten for carrying a daughter? Astaghfirullah,” she said, adding the mother is not responsible for “choosing the sex of that child”.

Gill, who is know for her vocal support for women’s rights, touched upon an important issue that, to this day, plagues women in South Asia. Family pressure to produce male heirs is a deeply entrenched cultural norm. It’s rooted in and driven by patriarchal social structures as well as a false sense of economic security.

This harmful belief devalues the lives of women and in many cases endangers their lives as well. In 2011, several United Nations agencies, including the World Health Organisation, released a joint statement to address this issue, stating ‘son preference’ perpetuates discrimination and violates women’s rights.

Add to this a severe lack of sex education, and you get a society where women not only suffer abuse for something they have absolutely no control over but also wrongly get blamed for it.

Gill is right to call out systemic issues that contribute to prenatal violence against women. “We desperately need to do better. As parents. As schools. As communities. As a society. Period,” she said.

With additional reporting by Iqbal Mirza

The music that used to flow constantly out of restaurants, cafes and shops in the capital Kabul has been muted for five years, replaced only by religious or patriotic songs supported by the Taliban authorities in power since 2021.

But taxi drivers such as Roeen have started playing Afghan and regional folk or pop music, which they quickly turn off when security forces may be around.

“At every checkpoint we pass, we lower the volume of the music or even turn it off completely… so I don’t get into trouble with them,” said Roeen, who gave only his first name for security reasons.

The ban on music in public places is imposed by the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) Ministry, whose morality police roam the city wearing long white coats.

PVPV regulations state that “since music is forbidden and causes annoyance to passengers, drivers must refrain from playing or listening to it”.

The ministry did not respond when asked to comment on punishments Afghans face for playing music, but those breaching their various other rules risk being jailed.

Roeen said PVPV officials have “a lot of authority”.

“We’re definitely too afraid of them to be able to listen to music at a higher volume,” he told AFP in his sky blue-and-white taxi.

Driving through the heavy traffic and noisy roads of Kabul, Roeen said he has “become 10 times more interested in music” since the ban.

“I have to make sure that even if I can’t listen in the early morning, by eight o’clock my music is on,” he said.

In a country where various forms of entertainment including cinema are outlawed, listening to music constantly is a “form of protest” for the 28-year-old driver.

‘Stress’ and no headphones

Another taxi driver, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told AFP he only listens to music when he is alone in his car and surrounded by the noise of other vehicles.

“Before, whenever a person wanted, they could listen without any worry or stress. But now… personally I listen — but with some stress,” he said in his car that had a radio player with a USB slot.

The 32-year-old has been stopped twice at checkpoints for having a USB stick and a memory card.

“I didn’t lie — I said it has music, and they broke it,” he said.

“Afghan culture should not vanish, and music is one of the cultures of our people. Personally, I don’t want this culture to disappear.”

As part of their crackdown on banned music, the PVPV’s provincial departments occasionally report burning instruments. No figures are available on how many they have seized, according to ministry spokesman Saiful Islam Khyber.

Across the capital, residents use shared taxis as an affordable way to get around a city which lacks a proper public transport system.

Often, two passengers sit alongside the driver in the front, three are in the back, and sometimes someone rides in the open boot.

Shamsullah Ahmad, a master’s student, spoke to AFP while waiting for a taxi near his university.

“I prefer to listen to music every day; whenever I go to any destination, I try to check if the taxi has a music player,” said the 29-year-old.

“I prefer music in the car, because wearing headphones would be noticed, but in the car, even with lower volume is better than nothing,” Ahmad said.

The morality police have been known to take headphones out of Afghans’ ears to check if they are listening to music.

Roeen, the driver, misses the days when “we could listen to songs, dance, and celebrate, and no one would stop us”.

But now the city is “shrouded in darkness — a darkness devoid of any light”, he said, above the din of growling engines.

Posting a video statement to her account on X, Butt said TikTok content creator Jannat Mirza had “highlighted a very important issue” by reacting publicly to an AI-generated video of herself.

Butt, who is the chairperson of the Punjab Women Protection Authority (PWPA), said AI was an important part of people’s lives nowadays, “But the misuse of technology should not become a means of harming anyone’s dignity, respect, or privacy.”

The legislator said content made using women’s pictures and faces without their consent was “extremely concerning”.

Butt said her PWPA was there to assist women whose pictures and videos had been used to make AI-generated content and asked authorities to act against such incidents.

“There should be no compromise on the dignity, respect, and protection of women,” she said.

In her video statement, the legislator shared screenshots of Mirza’s reaction to her AI-generated video. The content creator cautioned her followers, saying, “Today it may be my face being used, but tomorrow it could be any girl’s face and her dignity could be put at risk.”

Mirza said that, even though she had a very public presence on the internet, the video made her “extremely uncomfortable”. She said there were girls who weren’t on social media at all and their pictures could be used without them even finding out about it.

The content creator said AI was a powerful tool, “but using it to create inappropriate or misleading videos of people is not something that should be taken lightly”.

Incidents of AI-enabled image manipulation have been popping up recently, with an account on Instagram posting deepfakes of popular Pakistani and foreign actors.

The account’s videos often showed a likeness of its owner with these celebrities, sometimes engaging in violence against them. One video in particular of the owner’s deepfake hitting one of Hania Aamir sparked calls for action.

Another case in May also attracted celebrity attention. Addressing a video which called out a YouTube “drama analyst” for manipulating images of actors and using them as thumbnails for his videos, actors Romaisa Khan, Imran Abbas and Ushna Shah commended Rija Rafique, the Instagram content creator who made the reel, for raising an important issue.

In her video, she pointed out that such actions were crimes under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Act (Peca), 2025.

According to Sahil, a welfare organisation, 3,172 cases of violence against women were reported in the first half of 2026 in Pakistan — that’s about 17.52 cases a day, and this number doesn’t count what goes unreported. In 884 cases, the perpetrators of violence are relatives; in 405, husbands. Over half the incidents took place at home.

In the drama Aap Ki Izzat, we watch yet another husband, Tabish (Ahsan Khan), plot the murder of his wife, Beena (Urwa Hocane), after years of subjecting her to emotional and physical abuse.

Debate about femicide tends to fixate on the individual man who murders a woman. Here, using Aap Ki Izzat as a case study, I want to look instead at how the people and systems around Tabish produce and sustain conditions that make women’s murders thinkable by enabling, permitting and legitimising patriarchal violence.

Two scenes in Aap Ki Izzat do this work most clearly: Chaudhry suggesting Tabish have Beena killed, and Tabish asking his mother’s permission to do it.

Tabish and Beena, who come from a modest background, get married at a young age. Tabish sees Beena for the first time when he is with his friend, Hafiz (who, 14 years later, also becomes the only person dissuading him from killing his wife), sends a rishta and then marries her.

Deeply in love, young Beena transforms herself into an embodiment of service, selfless love and familial devotion both for Tabish and his family. Beena, who has a complicated relationship with her mother-in-law, never flinches at any of the disparaging comments or instructions from the matriarch; instead, Beena assures her that she’ll treat her as though she were her own mother.

When Tabish’s sister gets married, Tabish doesn’t have any money for the wedding. Newlywed Beena gives her own dowry to his sister. He struggles to start his business; she not only encourages him through all his failures, but also borrows money from her own family to help him. He appreciates the sacrifices that Beena makes — till he becomes rich.

He starts receiving Beena’s care not as her love, but something that he is entitled to, something that she owes him. He turns from a loving husband and non-threatening man to an entitled male chauvinist and the potential murderer of his own wife.

Tabish — even when he was poor — lives within patriarchal entitlement. Beena’s sacrifices are her wifely duties, whereas Tabish’s rare reciprocities are evidence of his generosity. When Beena sacrifices what she owns — her dowry, her time, her labour — and even what she doesn’t own — borrowed money from her family — it is understood as her duty as a devoted wife. But when Tabish gives Beena what she does not even need or want and what he can conveniently afford — expensive gifts — everyone, including Beena’s own mother, instructs her to be grateful for it.

Tabish’s newfound sense of masculinity and power is due to the devotion of his wife and his access to money. He has money, that is why he is powerful; he has a reliable and loyal wife, that is the source of his masculinity. His wealth gives him material power, but Beena’s devotion legitimises his power and determines the extent of the cultural value of his wealth. The fallacious perception is that his wife is loyal and devoted because he has control over her.

But in the patriarchy — a system that creates the conditions where women have limited choices and can’t exercise their agency — Beena’s power in the relationship remains hidden and underestimated.

Women choose safety over exercising their agency — for Beena, Tabish provides all the financial luxuries of life and the safety of a home. She is undereducated, professionally unskilled and socially vulnerable — she has only one friend who is relatively poor and her maika (own family) will not support her emotionally or financially.

Tabish mistakes Beena’s compliance as his inherent authority, though it is co-produced by the limited choices available to her.

Her choice to leave Tabish, although rationally unsound within her sociocultural context, is an attempt to protest the disabling and debilitating patriarchal conditions that disempower her; she leaves her husband and shows him that she will choose dignity over the illusion of safety. She asserts the power that everyone confidently assumed that she did not have in a traditional marriage. She strips Tabish of his power by making a choice that he, and everyone else around Beena, had made impossible for her.

Tabish assumes she has nowhere to go and nobody to turn to, which assures him there will no accountability for how he treats his wife and hence, he becomes emboldened. Tabish’s confidence stems less from his own power than it does from his belief in Beena’s powerlessness.

Tabish, his mother, and his sisters start mocking her weight and appearance around the same time he acquires the resources and status to exercise greater control over her and everyone else in his household. In their exchange of marital value, her labour as a wife and the mother of his children becomes disposable once he gains the wealth to afford other means of wifely and motherly labour in the form of a younger wife and better schools for his kids.

Due to patriarchal norms, everyone trusts that Beena, due to her lack of options, will stay compliant and continue to play her assigned role even at a much-decreased value of her work as a wife, mother, and daughter-in-law.

Everyone sees her unhappiness and the devaluation of her labour but treats it as irrelevant and insignificant. Everyone knows, but nobody intervenes because everyone trusts the marriage in a violent patriarchy to work as intended: Tabish has power, so he does what he wants; Beena puts up with it because the social cost of any other choice is too high.

But when Beena chooses to leave Tabish with the help of a vegetable vendor, she reverses the power hierarchy which Tabish relies on as a Pakistani man. She exercises a form of power that was not allowed to her as a traditional, good wife belonging to a shareef (respected) family.

Tabish, and everyone else’s anger, then, is not only due to a marital betrayal — rather, they’re all enraged by the fact that Beena undoes all their power through her single act of refusal to put up with humiliation.

This hurt is visible in everyone’s shock and repetition of “Beena sabzi walay k sath bhag gai (Beena ran away with a vegetable vendor)?”

Honour is another name for control; Tabish loses control over his wife, hence he loses honour. Since he loses honour, his money also declines in its social value. Despite his riches, his wife still chose a sabzi wala over him. It challenges the hierarchies his masculinity and power depend on. His wife, whom he regards as a possession, rejected him for a much ‘inferior’ man. Eventually, it is not his money that gives him power, it is the control over his wife’s body that makes him powerful in his community.

This resentment over loss of control over Beena shows in Tabish’s language of ownership, for example, when he says, “Uski auqaat se zyada diya usko ([I] gave her her more than she was worth).” He, as a man, enjoyed economic, social and patriarchal power throughout his marriage. Later, his wealth gives him more options and less accountability. His financial protection becomes a debt that Beena must repay through her obedience and humiliation. By leaving him, Beena refuses to take on the debt and pay its emotional cost.

Beena, when leaving him, did not take his money. She did not take his kids. She did not take anything he owned. She did not even fight or dishonour him in words. She just stopped allowing him to control her. He does not lose honour; he just loses control over his wife’s body. Emotionally, Beena had already left. It is the dispossession, loss of control over Beena’s body that creates a crisis for Tabish.

Honour, instead of loss of control, becomes the language that rationalises the wife’s murder. It gives Tabish the licence to commit violence to regain his control and repair his bruised masculinity. By killing Beena, Tabish would show that he still controls her body and what happens to it. The wife’s murder returns the gender hierarchy to its violent normal by making the man in charge again.

Chaudhry, and Tabish’s mother — the only two people who have power over him — both explicitly and implicitly support his decision to kill his wife because his loss of masculinity threatens the hierarchy that they all benefit from.

Chaudhry has invested money in Tabish’s political career, and he needs to restore the impression that he has control over his marriage and family. Chaudhry suggests that Tabish get Beena killed in a police encounter. Chaudhry does not simply suggest murdering her, he proposes a form of socially and institutionally disguised violence.

Tabish has the grievance; Chaudhry as someone with greater power teaches him how to avenge the damage to his masculinity, his power. He tells Tabish that murdering Beena is the only way to save his honour. The police encounter makes the murder appear legitimate or accidental rather than an act of domestic violence.

This murder in a police encounter exonerates and protects Tabish. It eliminates Beena’s body and thereby eliminates the sign of Tabish’s wounded masculinity and loss of control. It reframes the narrative so that his masculinity is intact because it hides the fact that his wife left him. It also erases the relationship between Tabish’s masculinity and Beena’s body.

This murder plot exposes the patriarchal influences within social pressure, showcasing how other men and women validate the idea that violence is an appropriate response to female disobedience.

Hafiz, Tabish’s childhood friend, fails because he is the only person trying to dissuade him from killing Beena. Rather, Tabish reminds Hafiz of his social role by calling him beghairat (dishonourable) when Hafiz calls Beena his sister: “Yaar, tu kitna beghairat hai, ek ghar se bhagi hui larki ko behan keh raha hai (How dishonourable you are, calling a woman who ran away your sister).”

The systemic conditions that empower men to murder their wives prioritise men’s — especially affluent men’s — safety and sense of control, with honour-based violence enabled by existing state and cultural institutions.

The problem is not simply that one man is violent. Rather, peers provide the man with socially recognisable mechanisms through which he can carry out violence. His peers help protect him from any formal and informal forms of accountability.

Tabish’s mother allows him to go ahead with the murder through her silence. She prides herself on Tabish never disobeying her, but never puts Tabish in a position where he might disobey her; she never challenges him, never tells him if or when he is wrong. Underlying this choice is the concern that if she challenges him, he could potentially still do what he wants and she will lose the illusion of her power. Since Tabish obeys her, everyone else in the family must obey her too.

Her power rests on the illusion of her power over Tabish. By challenging Tabish’s power, she fears losing her own power. Tabish asks her “Aap mujhay rok tau nahi rahin (You aren’t stopping me, are you)?” In response, she asks Tabish, “Mere roknay se ruk jao gay tum (Would you stop if I tell you to)?”

Would he stop if she chose to stop him? We would never know. But we have seen enough women’s murders to know that family members often choose to please and protect their sons instead of their daughters-in-law. The same is true for Beena. The mother chooses distance from Tabish’s decision to kill Beena, instead of telling him not to commit the sin of murder.

She recognises Beena’s humanity and history. She knows that Beena is not simply an adulterous wife. She knows as well as everyone else that Beena was slowly pushed to her limits and everyone trusted her to expand her tolerance.

Though she actively benefits from Beena’s service and domestic labour, she tells Tabish, “You married her, you chose her, she’s the mother of your kids, you decide.“

She refuses to reciprocate the care that Beena provided her, essentially betraying her daughter-in-law.

This scene between Tabish and his mother avoids the simplistic idea that women are merely victims of patriarchy.

Instead, it shows how patriarchal systems can be reproduced by women — especially women in positions of power — who gain access to social capital (such as respect for mothers) by legitimising male authority instead of challenging it.

She can challenge the patriarchal logic guiding her son, but she chooses not to exercise that authority. She protects two things at once: his authority in the house as a man and her authority over him as a mother. Her silence in the face of a murder that partially rests on her permission is an abdication of moral responsibility.

At the end, Tabish asks his mother to let him commit the sin, even though she has not stopped him. Though Chaudhry has given Tabish the plan to commit the murder without consequences, Hafiz makes Tabish see his wife’s murder as a sin. Tabish, however, reframes it as a necessary sin. The husband who initially only wanted to punish his wife’s transgression via divorce starts believing her murder to be an inevitable sin that he must commit.

In two to three scenes in these episodes, Chaudhry and Tabish’s mother aid in Tabish’s transformation from toxic husband into wife murderer.

Beena eventually lives. But had she been killed, who would have been responsible for her murder? Tabish, because he made the decision to get her killed? Police officers, because they offered and executed the murder for him? Chaudhry, because he showed Tabish that killing his wife was the only way to restore his honour and repair his masculinity? Or Tabish’s mother, whom he never disobeys but who still chose not to tell him not to kill his wife?

A husband like Tabish may ultimately be the person who chooses to kill his wife. But that choice becomes possible only within a system that teaches him that he is completely entitled to the wife’s unconditional love and labour, that turns the wife’s disobedience into injury to his masculinity, that gives him the language through which he understands his hurt as dishonour and that establishes institutions that help avenge his injury at the cost of a woman’s life and show him that there is no accountability of the murder.

In an emotional Instagram story, Aamir wrote: “There is something deeply frightening about how quickly we are being forced to move from one tragedy, one injustice, to the next.”

The comments accompanied a video purportedly showing police disrupting a sit-in held at Karachi’s Sharea Faisal on Sunday for the recovery of Pakistani sailors who had been taken hostage by Somali pirates in April this year.

Before Pakistanis can grieve one tragedy, there is another, Aamir wrote, adding that “somewhere in that cycle, accountability disappears”.

“How much more are we expected to witness before something actually changes?“ she questioned.

Aamir shared the story a day after some family members of the hostages claimed to have been briefly detained by police on the morning of a planned march. Police, however, asserted they had “engaged” with the protestors and tried to get them to vacate their protest site near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs liaison office. They also denied dispersing protestors with force.

Alongside the family members of the Pakistani sailors, prominent celebrities such as Mahira Khan, Sabeena Farooq and Talha Anjum have also called for the safe recovery of the hostages.

Despite numerous protests over the past five months, however, no significant progress has been made as yet.

Since the sailors were taken hostage, the crew has appeared in several videos, appealing to the government of Pakistan for their release and reporting that they have run out of necessities like clean water, food as well as medicine.

Their abductors have demanded a $3 million ransom to release the crew and cargo.

Co-founded by Ezzaldeen Shalah and Mai Masri, the initiative aims to facilitate film education, training and production in Gaza, which has witnessed catastrophic levels of destruction and a severe humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the genocide in October 2023.

It’s a platform created and supported by a group of Palestinian, Arab and international filmmakers and industry heavyweights, including names like Palestinian actor and director Hiam Abbas, American comedian Ramy Youssef and Kaouther Ben Hania, who directed The Voice of Hind Rajab. She also serves as a Venice jury member.

“In Gaza, cinema is not merely an art form; it is a means of preserving memory, reclaiming our right to shape our own image, and giving a new generation the tools to tell its own story,” Shalah said in a statement, according to Variety.

“We want the academy to open a window for young people and women in Gaza to learn, create and make their own films, and for their voices and images to reach the world. We invite our partners in institutions, universities and the international film community to be part of building this space,” Shalah said.

Following the launch of the new academy, a short film showcased Shalah in the classroom with aspiring women filmmakers sharing their dreams of bringing their stories to the big screen, according to Deadline.

The Venice Film Festival this year highlights two important Palestinian films in its official lineup: Citizen Osama, directed by Ahmed Hassouna and Conversation With the Sea directed by Muayad Alayan.

The co-founder and consulting editor of Ms. Magazine championed the feminist movement from the late 1960s onwards and inspired generations of women.

She died on Wednesday, her foundation said in ​an Instagram post on Thursday.

“From reluctant spokesperson to a beacon of positive change, hers is a singular journey — an American leader who can speak to us all,” film and theatre ‌director Julie Taymor said of Steinem in a 2017 New York Times interview.

Taymor directed the 2020 film The Glorias, depicting Steinem’s life across the years and based on her 2015 best-selling autobiography My Life on the Road. She was also the subject of a 2018 play, Gloria: A Life, and a 2011 HBO documentary Gloria: In Her Own Words.

Steinem said she considered herself “an entrepreneur of social change”.

“I want to do justice to the women I meet, to tell their stories,” she told the New Yorker magazine in 2015. “It’s ​making connections, and using myself to listen, because we can’t empower women without listening to their stories.”

Steinem founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 with former US Representatives Bella Abzug and ​Shirley Chisholm and writer Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique ushered in the second wave of feminism.

Among other groups, she also created the Coalition of Labor ⁠Union Women, the Women’s Media Centre, Voters for Choice, and the Ms Foundation for Women.

In 2013 then-president Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honour.

With her signature long, blonde-streaked, centre-parted ​hair and aviator glasses, Steinem was the glamorous, hip symbol of the feminist movement, which she emphasised should embrace women of every race.

“If you’ve suffered discrimination, you’re sensitive to it on every level. I learned feminism ​largely from Black women. Women of colour basically invented feminism,” she told the New Yorker.

‘A Bunny’s Tale’

Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, the younger of two daughters. Her father was a traveling antique dealer. Because the family moved frequently she did not attend school regularly until about seventh grade.

Her parents separated when she was 11, following which Steinem lived with and took care of her mother, who had a mental breakdown and suffered from depression.

The experience impacted Steinem’s views ​on social injustice and marriage, which she believed robbed women of choices and many of their civil rights.

“I’d already been the very small parent of a very big child, my mother. I didn’t want to end ​up taking care of someone else,” she was quoted as saying.

After graduating from Smith College, Steinem began freelancing as a journalist.

In 1963, she worked as a Playboy bunny for 11 days for a story for Show magazine. Her two-part ‌groundbreaking expose, A Bunny’s ⁠Tale, detailed the poor pay and sexist treatment Playboy bunnies — originally waitstaff — endured. The story was made into a 1985 TV movie starring Kirstie Alley.

The new Meta Smart Glasses were launched on June 23, 2026 with a 63 per cent price reduction from the original 2025 model, from $799 or over Rs221,000 to a far more affordable $299 or Rs83,000 through Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company. Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, described affordability as central to the company’s strategy: “You really want to be able to be in many places in the market… it’s also about the price point.” As competitors like Apple and Google develop their own smart eyewear, wearable cameras are rapidly moving from novelty to mass consumer technology, with lower prices making them accessible to increasingly diverse markets, like Pakistan.

Meta’s smart glasses are ordinary-looking Ray-Bans fitted with a camera, microphones, speakers and Meta’s AI assistant. Visually, they’re almost indistinguishable from the “first copy” your neighbourhood vendor sells off a cart for Rs600. Except his pair can’t quietly record strangers, capture private conversations or livestream footage with a tap.

Around the world, Meta’s smart glasses have become known by another name: “pervert glasses”, an unsurprising yet rather apt label given the technology’s incredible potential for misuse. Unlike a smartphone, which makes recording obvious, smart glasses make it easy to capture footage discreetly while appearing to do nothing more than wear an ordinary pair of spectacles.

Of course, not every recording made through these glasses is sinister. Someone might wear them to record a birthday, film their children playing, capture a friend’s reaction at a dinner or document a holiday. The person in the background may simply happen to be there. That is exactly what makes the technology difficult to dismiss as a problem: the person wearing the glasses may have no malicious intent at all, while the person being recorded may have no idea that a camera is pointed at them.

Meta has built a small recording light into the glasses that illuminates when the camera is in use. But for someone who does not know what that light signifies, a tiny LED on the side of an otherwise ordinary pair of glasses is hardly an obvious indication that they are being recorded. Unlike a phone held up in front of you, there is no unmistakable gesture that says: I am recording you.

And, the internet is full of ‘hacks’ to disable or cover-up the light with many, many users interested in no one knowing they’re recording.

Privacy advocates have warned that the glasses blur the line between public and private space, making covert filming easier in places where people reasonably expect not to be recorded. Child safety advocates have also raised concerns about the implications for children and minors, while women’s rights advocates have pointed to a growing online culture in which men secretly film interactions with women and upload the footage to TikTok or other social media platforms without their knowledge or consent. Wearable cameras do not create these behaviours, but they make them significantly easier to carry out unnoticed.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Pakistan is safe from this technology. After all, Meta hasn’t officially launched its smart glasses here. However, a quick search reveals the glasses are already being sold online in Pakistan. One website lists them for Rs126,899, while another offers them at a ‘discounted’ price of Rs121,999. No official launch. No PTA fuss. Free delivery.

The only thing missing from this package is a conversation about what happens when the technology lands in a country that isn’t remotely prepared for it.

Unfortunately, Pakistan’s archives are filled with the names of women whose lives have been dictated by the fragile currency of ‘izzat’ and the impossible expectations placed upon them. Some cases are reported but countless others are never documented.

In a country where a woman’s image can be weaponised against her, the ability to secretly capture that image is not merely a technological feature; it’s a perilous instrument of control. The threat posed by wearable cameras extends far beyond the loss of privacy. It’s the loss of agency over who gets to see you, record you, circulate your image and ultimately decide what it means. The wearer knows when the camera is on, the person being recorded may not even know there is a camera. In Pakistan, that loss can become blackmail, extortion, harassment, social ostracisation or, in the most extreme cases, violence committed in the name of ‘honour’.

We do not have to imagine what happens when a woman’s image becomes a source of shame or accusation. Pakistan has seen it before — long before wearable cameras existed. In the 2011 Kohistan honour killings, five women, Bazeegha, Sereen Jan, Begum Jan and Amina, were reportedly killed by male relatives after a video of them singing and clapping at a wedding surfaced. The Supreme Court was told in 2019 that all evidence pointed to them having been killed. In 2020, two teenage girls were killed in North Waziristan a video of them with a man went viral on social media. And in 2023, one girl was killed while another was saved by the police after a jirga ordered their murders for appearing in a video with two boys from their village.

While honour-based violence and cybercrimes are widespread in Pakistan, so is blackmail, doxxing and the non-consensual circulation of intimate images. The 2021 Usman Mirza case, which later inspired the Kashf Foundation’s drama Aik Aur Pakeezah, exposed the devastating consequences of covert recordings. In the real case, a young couple was assaulted, filmed and threatened inside a guesthouse in Islamabad, with the footage allegedly used to blackmail and humiliate them.

What Aik Aur Pakeezah captured so powerfully is something our public discourse often ignores: while a leaked or viral video may implicate both a man and a woman, the burden of shame rarely falls equally. The woman’s reputation, character and izzat are placed on trial long before anyone asks what happened to her. That is precisely why technologies that make covert recording effortless pose a disproportionate threat to women in Pakistan. They do not simply invade privacy, they amplify a culture in which a woman’s image can be weaponised against her.

And when that image is weaponised, where does she turn?

Think about how ordinary moments could become recordings without anyone thinking twice. A woman dancing at a wedding. A group of women sitting together at a restaurant. Someone adjusting her dupatta on the street. A woman speaking to a man who is not her husband or relative. A stranger walking through the background of a family video. On a phone, recording these moments usually involves someone raising a device, pointing it at the scene and making their intention visible. With smart glasses, the camera can be sitting at eye level while the wearer appears to be doing nothing at all.

None of these moments are inherently compromising, but in a society where a photograph or video can be taken out of context and used to question a woman’s character, izzat or relationships, the distinction matters. The danger is not that every recording will be weaponised. It is that the person being recorded may never know that the recording exists until someone else decides what to do with it.

Over the past five years, approximately 1.8 million women in Pakistan have been victims of cybercrimes such as harassment and blackmail, yet only around 225 perpetrators have been convicted. A conviction rate of just 3.5 per cent does more than deny individual women justice — it creates a cycle in which perpetrators have little reason to believe they will be held accountable.

This is where Meta’s smart glasses raise a question that goes beyond privacy and into jurisdiction.

Meta has not officially launched the product in Pakistan. The glasses arrive through online retailers and importers, outside any formal commercial presence by the company. If a woman in Pakistan is secretly recorded through a pair bought from an Instagram seller, who answers for it beyond the first FIR? The reseller? The wearer? Meta? The platform that hosts the video? Or does responsibility just disappear somewhere between California and Karachi?

Pakistan may be importing Meta’s smart glasses, but it isn’t importing the legal ecosystem that accompanies them. We are making a highly sophisticated recording technology accessible in a society where the consequences of being recorded without consent can be devastating, while still struggling to hold perpetrators accountable for the technologies we already have.

In the United States, Meta has already faced legal scrutiny over the privacy practices surrounding its smart glasses. There, questions of consent, data handling and corporate responsibility can be taken to court with the expectation that the company manufacturing these glasses could be held to account.

If the next woman in Pakistan is secretly recorded through a pair of Meta glasses bought online, who can she hold responsible? Who will she sue? Which law will protect her? Who will remove the footage? Who will restore her reputation? And who will be held accountable when the consequences cannot be undone?

Until those questions have answers, Pakistan is not merely importing a new gadget. It is importing a risk it has yet to reckon with.

Among the star-studded roster of acts was Chappel Roan, Mitski, Garbage and KATSEYE, who worked to raise the $10 million the festival donated to a number of welfare organisations.

This donation was matched by Melinda Gates, who made a surprise appearance on stage with Rodrigo and promised another $10m through her Pivotal Ventures. Gates commended the singer for “showing a new generation how much their voices matter”.

Partner organisations set to receive funding from the festival’s proceeds include Baby2Baby — which provides underprivileged children with essentials such as formula, diapers and clothes — the National Women’s Law Centre, the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Institute for Reproductive Health.

While the event was organised to benefit US charities, Rodrigo has also previously shown her support for children abroad — in March, she appeared on a charity album to support children impacted by wars in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen.

That cause received a subtle nod at the press meet before the Daisy Chain Fields festival as well, where the singer wore a dress from Palestinian fashion brand Nol Collective featuring traditional tatreez embroidery at the hem.

A more overt tribute was given to the late country singer and philanthropist Dolly Parton, who died on Tuesday at the age of 80.

Rodrigo joined Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan on stage for a duet of her songs ‘Building a Mystery’ and ‘Angel’, dedicating the latter to Parton.

“I want to dedicate this song tonight to the OG matriarch, beautiful goddess of country music,” McLachlan said on stage. “The biggest philanthropist in the history of country music, Dolly Parton.”

“I wish I could, I wish it was that easy. I wish that was a solution but it’s not. You’ll go abroad and you’ll need a job, to get that you’ll need to be educated, we don’t have education rights here, we have no education here, certainly not for women, whom we hide away, and if they do go out, they murder or rape them. Does that make any sense?” she asked in an impassioned video shared on her Instagram on Thursday afternoon.

“And if someone does study and get out of here, man or woman, will they be able to leave their families behind in a country like this where every day there’s a new hashtag, where every day a boy, girl, young woman, or young man is murdered or raped. Will you leave them like this?” she asked, echoing the sentiments of many, many young people across the country.

As instances of rape, murder and official negligence pile up, people across Pakistan have spoken up about how helpless and disillusioned they feel. Khan isn’t even the first celebrity to talk about the state of affairs in Pakistan — many have posted about the horror and disgust they’re feeling right now at a time when 14 babies were burned to death at Pims hospital in Islamabad, the body of a young girl was found days after she went missing in Peshawar, and a 45-year-old woman was killed in Islamabad.

“We all have anxiety, our minds are done for. For us, it’s an achievement to have made it through the day alive. Going from one place to another has become a battle for us, how can we achieve something for ourselves, come up with out-of-the-box ideas or make this country proud when all our energies are spent on this nonsense?” she asked.

For most mothers, their minds are riddled with worries, both for their children — whether they’re okay right now, whether they got home okay, whether anything happened to them — and for themselves — whether their phone will get stolen, whether they will get raped, kidnapped or murdered. “All our energies are spent on this,” said Khan. “What can you even achieve or what good can you do? Just getting through this alive is an achievement.”

She also highlighted how boys in Pakistan aren’t raised in a way to respectfully engage with women. “You can respect their boundaries and your own, take no for an answer, and create a safe space for women,” she said. “If you see a woman walking on the road, you don’t have to sexualise her or fantasise about her or do something to her. If that isn’t enough for you, you do it to small children in your own families, children who are so young they don’t even know what’s being done to them or you see a little child on the road, a little one so young they don’t even know how to talk yet and you don’t spare them either,” she said.

“It’s because you haven’t been taught how to exist, how to live respectfully with others around you, you aren’t an animal, but you don’t spare animals either,” Khan said. She also highlighted one of the biggest problems in Pakistani society — not being able to discuss these issues rationally and without men taking them personally. “If we say something, if we say that this is happening in our society, you men take it as an attack on your ego, as if someone said something to you directly. You should be the ones saying something! You say men are there to ‘protect’ women, then say something, why does your ego get hurt?” she demanded.

The actor urged people to get to the root cause of the issue.

“If a woman gets married, her husband murders her. If a girl goes to study, they kill her. If a child is going to a madrassa, they rape him. People get kidnapped and then only their bodies are found,” she said. “It may not have happened to you, but let me tell you if it does happen to a child in your family, your trust is shattered. All parents across Pakistan, their trust is shattered.”

She asked which mother can sleep peacefully at night, knowing that when they send their children to school, there are so many chances that something could happen to them.

“Then there’s the incidents — fires, floods. The fire at Gul Plaza. The fire at Pims, children who haven’t seen anything of the world died. In any other country, even if they were dogs who died, people would have lost their minds.”

“There are no precautions, no preventions and no justice. You can’t say anything, you just keep talking and there’s no one to listen to you, no one to ask,” she said.

After all this, she asked why people then blame Pakistanis for being hopeless.

In a story posted on her Instagram account on Sunday, she said things were so bad “not because we are seeing rape and murder everywhere; but because there is no example being made out of something done so often and easily”.

She said it does look easy to commit these horrific crimes because they’re “happening all the time”. So much so, that the issue was no longer even gendered.

The actor asked how someone was to save their children in such times, questioning whether it would be okay to take the law into one’s own hands. The law, she said, “does seem to behave like a sixth grader”.

“Let’s dig the grave again because the first time we didn’t get it right,” wrote the actor, possibly referring to the recent exhumation of the body of young business owner, Mir Raza Ali. His body was autopsied for a second time after a court order.

While investigators initially focused on the possibility of his death being a suicide, the second autopsy confirmed he had been shot in the back and subjected to torture.

Abbas also talked about the suggestion that the suspect in a recent rape and murder of a child in Karachi should receive counselling and support for his mental health because he was 17 years old and not an adult.

“But then what do I do?” she asked. “How do I protect my children?”

The actor is the latest of many celebrities reacting to two horrific tragedies that have shaken Karachi in the last few days. Ali, who had gone missing on July 28, was found dead two days later in the city’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar area.

The case gained even more attention when reports of a flawed autopsy were used by the victim’s family to request a second post-mortem examination.

On Tuesday, a young girl died after being raped in Qayyumabad. Her parents registered a case with the police after which the primary suspect — a teenage relative of the girl who had taken her out to buy something before bringing her back unconscious — was arrested on Wednesday.

Appearing on the podcast The Street Talks Back on Friday, Afgan said Pakistanis were okay with killing dogs en masse and taught their children to fear the animals based on “colonial” ideas.

“We are taught to love things that are good and pretty. For dogs, we are told they are filthy, that they bite, we are taught to fear them from when we are children.”

Host Huma Haq — who founded the Jaandar Animal Welfare Organisation — said the way dogs walk on the streets of Pakistan as opposed to somewhere like Turkiye showed how cruelly society treats the voiceless animals. Afgan said these weren’t the same streets she grew up on.

“I don’t think the streets are safe for children, I don’t think they’re safe for animals, for dogs, for women, anyone really. Maybe they’re safe for men? And even then, maybe they’re not safe for a lot of men as well.”

She said she had a house and the area inside the walls of the house was hers. She could decide who to let in and who to keep out. But the street outside her house wasn’t hers in the same way — it belonged more to the animals that lived on it.

“They lived here long before we did, we built our cities [on their land]. Dogs, we brought them here, domesticated them and then left them. We are the ones who bring dogs home and then abandon them. Where will they go?”

The actor said she had been asked by people in her neighbourhood not to walk her dogs — a Labrador retriever and a husky — outside for fear that they might hurt kids. She said she responded by telling the neighbourhood that the dogs don’t hurt children — or anyone — and she has made it a point to introduce her dogs to kids whenever they’re out.

Afgan said trying to “fix the problem of rabies, which doesn’t affect every dog, maybe one in every 100” by culling them was teaching children that “violence is the answer to everything”.

The actor said those in power had misplaced priorities when it came to animal welfare, where they were willing to pay for poison and bullets to kill dogs, but refused to sponsor programmes to control the spread of rabies with vaccinations.

Instead, she said, the streets would be safer if we took care of stray dogs.

“Dogs, have territories, they protect their territories and they protect your children. The man on a bike who touches your kids while they’re playing in the streets… the one who kidnaps young boys; you feed these stray dogs, give them water and see how anyone dares to approach your kids.”

Talking about her own childhood, Afgan said she had a dog growing up in the 80s and her mother was fond of rescuing animals. That, she said, was a generational trait, because her grandmother also had a lot of animals at her house.

She also dismissed the notion that loving animals was a luxury only the well-off could afford. She said her mother’s family in Quetta was not rich, but her grandmother had love in her heart for all sorts of animals.

“My mother grew up with nine siblings and a lot of animals. Ducks, chickens, cows, buffaloes, goats and dogs and cats and birds. She grew up loving animals, which she passed on to us.”

In an Instagram post on Sunday, the group said they were “detained by the police, isolated and separately questioned” with some of their members even being “subjected to hotel room searches and temporary passport confiscation”.

The band said their audience had been chanting “Free Palestine” from before they even stepped on stage and continued to do so at the end of the show. They said the fans were “presumably aware but undeterred” by the government’s strict censorship laws.

Massive Attack said they “did not imagine that merely holding up the flag of a sovereign state recognised by 157 countries (Palestine) would violate any law”.

Nonetheless, the group said they were “proud” to have expressed solidarity with Palestine alongside their fans in Singapore “who clearly felt a moral imperative” to do so as Palestinians lived through a “reality of illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide”.

Massive Attack called their experience “surreal” and said it underscored “defending universal human rights and freedom of expression, wherever those rights are threatened”.

That, in the group’s words, included the UK, “where, extraordinarily, we still see protesters arrested under terrorism laws for holding up handwritten signs protesting genocide”.

The group thanked the people of Singapore for welcoming them into their country and hoped the government will “allow their citizens expressions of conscience without fear of state persecution”.

“As we were saying… Free Palestine,” the group wrote at the end of their message.

Singapore bans the display of foreign flags and emblems without permits and the unpermitted display of a foreign flag is punishable with a fine of up to 500 Singapore dollars ($389), a maximum prison term of six months, or both.

Authorities said the band were investigated for their “actions of support for a political cause and unfurling of a foreign flag” during their concert and will no longer be allowed to perform in Singapore.

“The police take a serious view of acts which could potentially harm the racial and religious harmony in Singapore and urge the public, including foreigners, to refrain from importing foreign politics as this can undermine our social cohesion and the rule of law,” the police and media authority said in a joint statement.

Massive Attack, meanwhile, have a long history of support for “foreign politics”, speaking up on wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. The band’s frontman, Robert Del Naja, was even arrested in London in April for protesting in support of Palestine Action, an activist group banned by British authorities.

Cover photo: Simran Panaech via Reuters

In an Instagram story posted on Thursday, Anjum said, “[The] Pakistani government cannot protect [its citizens], whether it’s at home or in another country.”

The rapper lamented that “the media forgot about these families and sadly, so did the people of Pakistan.”

He was joined by his longtime collaborator Umair Tahir — known mononymously as Umair — in calling for a rescue. Tahir posted a story early on Friday, calling for all 17 crew members who were aboard the MT Honour 25 to be recovered.

The vessel was hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia in April, resulting in national outcry and calls for the government to work towards the rescue of the Pakistani sailors onboard.

Anjum was one of the first to speak up, saying he knew one of the crew members personally, adding that he was “like a brother” to him.

At the time, the rapper had said he was “ashamed” as a Pakistani at the government’s “non seriousness” and “under the rug policy” when it came to its citizens trapped abroad. He pleaded for authorities to “wake up and bring them home”.

In June, Anjum appealed for action again, this time urging the Foreign Office to set up a dedicated, constantly-manned helpline to liaise with the families of the hostages, who deserved answers beyond the “generic, occasional statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claiming they are ‘in touch with Somali Maritime forces’”.

Other celebrities who have spoken up on the issue include Mahira Khan, Sabeena Farooq and, most recently, Bushra Ansari.

The scene captures the reality that disabled Pakistanis know all too well: our cities and their infrastructures — schools, workplaces, and public spaces — are often inaccessible. A simple outing can require careful planning, transportation arrangements, and the hope that there will be a ramp, an accessible entrance, or even a functioning washroom.

Yet, during my research on and interviews of disabled women across Pakistan, I learned that accessibility is about far more than physical infrastructure. It’s about attitudinal and societal barriers as well, which are informed by the complex socio-cultural context of Pakistan. Despite being invisible, they are just as effective in hindering accessibility as a flight of stairs or lack of sign language interpretation.

As a disabled researcher myself, I spent more than six months in 2025 interviewing 21 disabled women across Pakistan to understand what disability advocacy meant to them, the challenges they faced in pursuing it, and the social and cultural norms that shaped their participation in public life.

One finding in particular surprised me. When I asked participants about the greatest barriers they faced, I expected to hear them talk about inaccessible buildings, discrimination, or lack of employment opportunities. Instead, shifting — or transferring between surfaces — emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing women with physical disabilities.

Shabana*, a 49-year-old wheelchair user with muscular dystrophy who is an associate professor and disability advocate of more than a decade, explained that for her, the greatest barrier was not education, employment, or even the wheelchair itself. It was shifting: getting from a wheelchair into a car, from a car into a classroom, or navigating staircases and other inaccessible environments. These everyday transitions, often taken for granted by others, required constant planning, physical effort, and emotional vulnerability.

For years, she was able to continue her education because friends helped her transfer between wheelchairs and vehicles. Looking back, she reflected that without those friends, completing her master’s degree — which ultimately opened up a world of professional opportunities — would have been nearly impossible.

Shabana also told me about another disabled woman who was able to attend college only because her brother carried her onto his motorcycle every day. When they arrived on campus, he would transfer her into a wheelchair and help her get to her classes. She completed her education this way. But then her brother got married and his responsibilities changed. He became less available and there was no replacement support system on which she could rely to further her education or career.

She also felt hesitant to ask for her brother’s help now that he had, in her words, “a family of his own”. As a result, despite being educated and capable of working, she remains largely confined to her home because she has no reliable way to travel independently.

These lived experiences of disabled women in Pakistan reveal a dimension of accessibility that is rarely discussed in public debates. When policymakers think about disability inclusion, they often think about visible infrastructure: ramps, elevators, accessible buses, and designated parking spaces. These investments are important and long overdue.

Several women I interviewed spoke about being invited to television studios, advocacy events, or cultural centres only to encounter inaccessible entrances, missing ramps or the absence of elevators.

But disabled Pakistani women frequently depend on another form of infrastructure that remains almost entirely invisible — female relatives, sisters, friends, attendants, and caregivers who make mobility possible. For many women, this support is not simply a matter of convenience. It is shaped by deeply held religious and cultural norms regarding modesty, privacy, and physical contact.

Jannat*, who is also a wheelchair user, explained that if a disabled man needs help getting into a vehicle, a driver or stranger may be willing to lift him. For a disabled woman, the situation is often more complicated. Assistance with transferring between a wheelchair and a vehicle or navigating inaccessible spaces may require physical contact and many families are uncomfortable with such assistance being provided by a na-mehram (unrelated) man. As a result, women often require a female companion or family member to accompany them whenever they leave home.

This reality is rarely reflected in accessibility planning.

The challenge becomes even more apparent in a society where women’s mobility is already shaped by concerns surrounding safety and family honour. Many women repeatedly described how the families of disabled women worried, in the words of Batool*, “double or triple times more” about their movements than those of disabled men. Batool is an experienced disability rights advocate who regularly travels internationally for advocacy work, yet she observed that concerns about accompaniment, safety, and reputation continued to shape how disabled women’s mobility was viewed. Questions about who would accompany them, who would help them transfer between spaces, and whether they would be safe in public were constant considerations.

Fauzia*, a disability rights advocate in her thirties who uses crutches after being disabled by polio during childhood, summarised these attitudes bluntly: if people doubt a disabled woman’s ability to navigate the world independently, they also question her ability to protect herself. These concerns are not entirely unfounded. Women with disabilities face significantly higher risks of harassment, abuse, and exploitation than many other groups.

The women I spoke to described carefully selecting ride-hailing app drivers, travelling with trusted female companions, avoiding certain spaces, and sometimes concealing aspects of their disabilities to reduce vulnerability.

The result is that mobility becomes a complex negotiation involving accessibility, gender, safety, religion, economics, and family support. And economics matters. Several women described spending substantial portions of their income on drivers, attendants, and transportation.

Shabana, who has high support needs, explained that more than half of her salary goes toward mobility-related expenses. She maintains multiple attendants because if one is unavailable, she risks missing work altogether. For women from lower-income households, such arrangements are often impossible. Jane*, a blind educator and disability rights advocate, shared stories of disabled women who had to turn down advocacy opportunities because they simply could not afford the cost of travel. The result was not only a loss for those women personally but also for the broader disability movement, which lost valuable voices, perspectives, and leadership.

This raises an important question: what would accessibility look like if it were designed with disabled women in mind?

The answer is not to dismiss cultural or religious values that many families consider important. Nor is it to frame these values as obstacles that must be removed. Rather, it is to recognise the realities they create and design services accordingly.

Imagine trained female accessibility assistants at hospitals, universities, transport hubs, and government offices. Imagine subsidised attendant services for disabled women seeking education or employment. Imagine accessible transport systems that recognise the additional support some women require in order to travel safely and with dignity. Such initiatives would not replace ramps, elevators, or accessible transport, rather, they would complement them.

Accessibility is often treated as a technical issue that can be solved through architecture and engineering alone. My research suggests otherwise.

For many disabled women in Pakistan, the question is not simply whether a building has a ramp. It is whether they can reach that building, enter it, navigate it, and return home with dignity. For many, the barrier is not the wheelchair, it is everything that must happen before and after the wheelchair moves. Until our understanding of accessibility reflects that reality, inclusion will remain more aspiration than achievement.

*Names have been changed to maintain anonymity

The actor was speaking to journalist Mehdi Hasan early on Monday morning in the aftermath of Spain’s victory when the topic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his cabinet rooting for Argentina came up. Argentine President Javier Milei, meanwhile, was quoted as saying he was the “proudest Zionist president in the world”.

Hasan said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had, in contrast, been an outspoken critic of Israel and had led his country to join the genocide trial against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Bardem said the notion of the two competitors representing Israel and Palestine was right, but with the caveat that leaders don’t necessarily represent the will of their people.

“But it’s true that at this high level of encountering and conflict, it’s true that when a president is supporting so openly a person who is a war criminal like Netanyahu, then you want to really support the other team,” the actor said.

Bardem said Milei proudly supporting what the actor referred to as “a full genocide” and people like Netanyahu and Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir associating themselves with Argentina was “not fair” to the South American country.

“I don’t think it’s fair because there are many people from Argentina that really don’t support Milei, as many people in the States that don’t support [US President Donald] Trump.”

Both Bardem and Hasan shared a laugh over visuals from the trophy presentation, where Spanish players seemed to be awkwardly waiting for President Trump to leave the stage so they could get their team picture.

“He wanted to be in the picture, but it was great how these players who were looking at him like, ‘no, we have to make the picture without you.’ And as soon as you leave, we’re taking the picture. So he had to leave. And I was very proud of that as well,” the Spaniard said of his national team.

Bardem said he was surprised to see so many people around the world support his country, but could understand why.

“I am glad that the shift is happening in the people’s reaction towards, in this case, genocide and war crimes. And I think it’s because the actions that we’ve been witnessing through all these years towards the Palestinian population are so atrocious, they are so horrible to understand or make sense of, that anybody with minimal common sense understands that this is wrong.”

The actor said that just like Milei and Trump didn’t represent their nations as a whole, “extreme leaders like Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir and all his cabinet are also not a representation of the Jewish community”.

In a collaborative effort with the charitable organisation War Child UK, Tucci posted a video saying war was “tearing little lives apart”.

“Drones aren’t lullabies. Rubble isn’t a playground. War is not a childhood,” the actor said, adding that children were “paying with their lives for wars they didn’t start”.

Tucci said the horrors of armed conflict were the “reality for millions of children around the world, from Gaza to Ukraine to Sudan”.

He urged followers to support War Child’s mission to “reach vulnerable children in some of the most dangerous places in the world with life-saving supplies and mental health first aid”.

The Devil Wears Prada star has worked with the charity since 2022 as part of an impressive record of philanthropy, especially when it comes to causes focusing on children. He has been working with UNHCR for refugee rights since 2017.

An earlier project he did with War Child in 2023 raised £60,000 for children in war-torn areas by selling specially designed t-shirts.

The organisation has been involved in a number of high-profile celebrity fundraising initiatives, especially with musicians under its in-house record label War Child Records.

Their recent charity album, HELP(2), had acts including Arooj Aftab and Olivia Rodrigo come together for their cause. It released via their store and on streaming platforms in March.

The album had 23 tracks and a special bonus recording donated by Oasis of their performance of ‘Acquiesce’ from last year. The album’s first track, ‘Opening Night’, was the first track from the Arctic Monkeys after an almost four-year hiatus following their 2022 release The Car.

India’s strategic northern border state of East Punjab is currently witnessing one such structural shift. What began as an administrative and creative dispute over the Punjabi feature film Satluj has rapidly broken past the boundaries of cinema, censorship, and artistic freedom. Within days of the film’s abrupt removal from a prominent digital platform following federal interventions under Section 69A of the IT Act citing public order risks, this has triggered a cascade of political reactions that extend far beyond the entertainment industry.

The development has systematically reopened deep-seated historical wounds, bringing competing ideological narratives directly into the mainstream discourse as the state begins its long, volatile transition towards the crucial 2027 Assembly elections.

The immediate flashpoint centers on the radical shift from creative license to legal and historical accountability. Federal Minister of State Ravneet Singh Bittu, a prominent leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the grandson of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, who was assassinated by an insurgent car bomb in 1995, has aggressively fronted the state’s counter-narrative. By directly challenging the filmmakers to produce official judicial records, authenticated findings, and verified institutional evidence to substantiate the film’s central depiction of 25,000 missing or illegally cremated individuals during the counter-insurgency era, Bittu has shifted the debate from simple censorship to strict evidentiary proof. Warning the producers of impending structural legal action for propagating unauthenticated and inflammatory claims as settled history, Bittu effectively questioned the deliberate omission of the systemic, targeted massacres of thousands of innocent civilians and minority Hindu families by militant groups during the state’s darkest years of terrorism.

This aggressive intervention has effectively shattered a fragile, three-decade-old political consensus in East Punjab, rapidly escalating into highly synchronised ground mobilisations by right-wing organisations. This escalating street mobilisation has revived severe financial and political questions regarding state accountability toward the victims of terrorism. According to Gupta, during the peak of the militancy era, over 35,000 Punjabi Hindus were systematically massacred. While the then Congress government led by Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh had formally approved an initial rehabilitation grant of 781 crore for the riot-affected Hindu families, successive administrations, including the subsequent Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP coalition, later Congress regimes, and the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, have consistently failed to disburse the funds.

“Over 35,000 Hindus were slaughtered during the dark days of terrorism in Punjab. While the then Captain Amarinder Singh government had officially approved a package of 781 crore for these victim families, successive regimes have played cruel politics with their grief,” Gupta asserted. “Whether it was the Akali Dal, the subsequent Congress governments, or the current AAP administration, nobody fulfilled the promise. With accumulated interest, this legal relief has now swelled to 5,100 crore. We will take to the streets with our Trishul March on July 26 to force this state government to clear its multi-decadal debt to the minority community.”

The rapid institutionalisation of these historical and financial claims over the past weeks indicates that history itself is being weaponised as a primary political tool to reshape the electoral landscape before 2027. For decades after the militancy ended in the mid-1990s, the state’s mainstream political ecosystem consciously attempted to steer public discourse away from historical trauma, choosing instead to anchor electoral campaigns on secular, developmental themes such as agriculture, fiscal management, federal water disputes, unemployment, and drug abuse. The current geopolitical friction is, however, being swiftly exploited by external extremist elements seeking to internationalise the regional debate. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the leader of the banned overseas secessionist outfit Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), who has been designated a terrorist by the Indian government under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), recently released a highly provocative digital video message timed precisely with an upcoming proposed visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging local sympathisers to display secessionist flags.

This highly volatile environment has forced East Punjab’s major political entities into distinct, heavily defensive ideological corners ahead of the upcoming polls. The regional Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has slammed the central restrictions on Satluj, demanding an honest confrontation with the past, yet the party faces the complex task of consolidating its core panthic Sikh religious identity without alienating broader sections of the electorate that demand social harmony. The Congress Party finds itself questioning the selective parameters of state censorship while striving to avoid being portrayed as insensitive toward the victims of past terrorism. The ruling AAP government faces the immediate administrative burden of maintaining law and order on the ground while desperately trying to ensure that these explosive identity debates and impending street marches do not completely eclipse its governance track record on health, education, and welfare. Conversely, the BJP is anchoring its strategy firmly on national security, judicial discipline, and factual accuracy, seeking to frame the discourse around verified evidence to consolidate institutional and minority votes across urban and semi-urban centers.

The primary operational risk of this communal polarisation lies in Punjab’s transformed digital information ecosystem. Unlike the information environment of the 1980s and 1990s, today’s political messaging travels instantly through encrypted chat platforms, short-video applications, and global diaspora networks. A highly charged political statement delivered in Amritsar, Moga, or Chandigarh can polarise and mobilise communities across Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States within minutes, internationalising local domestic friction instantaneously and deploying out-of-context digital clips to cultivate mutual distrust between the Hindu and Sikh communities. This global circulation transforms what used to be localized grievances into permanent digital divides that could significantly pollute the broader electoral environment.

Ultimately, ground-level observers emphasise that East Punjab’s fundamental social fabric remains uniquely resilient against total communal polarisation. Unlike other regions where communal lines are deeply entrenched, Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab share deep familial, cultural, and commercial ties; they have collectively endured the violence of the militancy era, and their integrated social reality acts as a powerful barrier against lasting divisions. However, the current debate surrounding Satluj and the shifting demands for multi-crore compensations demonstrate that the contest is increasingly about legitimacy – who possesses the moral authority to narrate East Punjab’s complex history. If the public and political discourse completely abandons verified factual and judicial parameters in favor of short-term electoral expediency, history will cease to be a tool for collective reconciliation and instead become a fresh arena for severe political confrontation.

Originally published in Dawn, July 13th, 2026

This story was originally published in The Statesman, an ANN partner of Dawn

“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public ​content could be referenced in this way,” Meta said in a statement.

“We’ve ​heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so ⁠it’s no longer available,” it said.

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, had launched Muse ​Image on Tuesday, its first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. The feature, ​integrated into its Meta AI chatbot, can use photos as input and lets users edit generated images directly through sketches.

The feature soon faced backlash over privacy concerns and being an ​automatic opt-in for users.

Emmy-winning actor Hannah Einbinder, known for Hacks, criticised the feature ​on Instagram, saying it had been turned on automatically and urging users to turn it ‌off.

SAG-AFTRA, the ⁠union representing actors and other media professionals, also urged members and other Instagram users on Thursday to opt out of the feature.

“Anything other than a clear and conspicuous opt-in for these types of uses of Instagram users’ images ​is unacceptable, and an ​utter miscalculation of ⁠public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use,” SAG-AFTRA said.

Following Meta’s decision to remove the ​feature, SAG-AFTRA welcomed the move.

“With the dangers of nonconsensual digital ​replicas well ⁠known to all, a feature that encouraged that behaviour is unwise. We appreciate its discontinuance. It is the responsible thing to do,” a union spokesperson said.

The reversal ⁠reflects ​increasing pressure on technology companies to give users ​clear control over how their publicly shared content is used by AI features.

The tool was announced on Tuesday and has since garnered widespread condemnation for making social media an even more dangerous place.

Meta issued a statement outlining some safety protocols it has implemented when rolling out Muse Image.

“Private accounts and those belonging to users under 18 are automatically excluded and adult users with public accounts can opt out with just a couple clicks. We will take action against any content that violates our Community Standards,” the Los Angeles Times quoted the company as saying.

Muse Image has been launched on Instagram and WhatsApp so far, with plans to bring it to Facebook and Messenger soon.

How to opt-out

For anyone who doesn’t want their likeness to become part of the palette for Meta’s new AI, there is a way out. Users can choose to opt out by digging into account settings on Instagram.

The settings can be accessed by tapping the three lines on the top right of the profile screen.

From the list of sub-settings, go to “Sharing and Reuse” under “How others can interact with you”.

From there, scroll to find the options allowing people to reuse posts, reels and original audio with Meta AI and turn the permissions off.

The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists issued a statement decrying the development on Friday.

“Anything other than a clear and conspicuous opt-in for these types of uses of Instagram users’ images is unacceptable and an utter miscalculation of public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use,” the union said, referring to the fact many accounts have been included in the programme without having explicitly agreed to it.

This outrage follows the misuse of other AI image generation tools on social media, like X’s Grok, which used people’s pictures to create images of them in revealing clothing at the request of other users.

The immense backlash to the AI tool digitally undressing women and children led to X restricting Grok’s image generation abilities to paid subscribers only. Later, the company geo-blocked the tool’s ability to create revealing images in places where doing so is against the law.

Mbappe’s penalty proved the difference in a bruising and ill-tempered match as France won 1-0 in Philadelphia on Saturday to advance to the quarter-finals.

Celeste Amarilla wrote a long, racist tirade on X, describing Mbappe as a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to pass himself off as French,” and as a “brute” who had not learned to write.

Paraguay’s players should have slapped him after the match, she added.

Mbappe, the France captain, responded with a strongly worded statement defending not only himself but also the Paraguay players.

“Madame Celeste Amarilla, you are a despicable woman and unworthy of your position. You do not represent Paraguay, that country which has sweated passion and honour throughout the competition,” he wrote.

“Through your recklessness and your brazen racism, the entire world has already forgotten the journey and the historic effort that your players accomplished during this World Cup, making way for an incompetent woman who gives the worst possible image of her country. I will never allow people like her the freedom to spread their hatred and racism across the world.”

Criminal complaint

The French Football Federation (FFF) escalated the matter, announcing plans to file a criminal complaint, describing her remarks as “utterly abhorrent and unacceptable”.

“These remarks are criminal and reprehensible. They must be prosecuted here as elsewhere. The FFF is reporting the matter to the public prosecutor’s office with a view to legal proceedings,” it said.

“These remarks bring shame upon those who make them and those who disseminate them. The players of the French national team represent France; it is our country that is being insulted.”

The Paraguayan government said it “deplores and rejects the statements” made by Amarilla, saying they are “contrary to the values ​​and principles that inspire peaceful coexistence and respect for human dignity that our country promotes.”

“The statements of the aforementioned legislator correspond exclusively to the exercise of her individual responsibility as a member of the Legislative Branch and in no way represent the position of the Government of the Republic of Paraguay or the Paraguayan people,” it said in a statement.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said the Paraguayan president had written to him to express support and condemned the remarks.

Macron on Tuesday offered words of support for the captain. “Another goal for Kylian Mbappe. Against racism this time. All my support. When words smear, our values ​​respond: dignity, respect, fraternity,” he said in a post on X.

Basilio Nunez, the leader of the South American country’s legislature, said the comments do not represent the “genuine values” of Paraguayans.

“As President of the National Congress, I strongly reject racist, xenophobic messages and those that incite violence against any person,” Nunez said.

“The Paraguayan national team gave their all with honour and grit at the World Cup. Politics and sports should be kept separate.”

France’s assistant coach Guy Stephan said: “We haven’t spoken with Kylian yet, haven’t had the opportunity.”

“But in three words: it’s disgraceful, vile, outrageous.”

Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, world football’s governing body, also condemned Amarilla.

“All of football and society stand in solidarity with the France captain — we need to fight racism and defeat it all together,” Infantino wrote in a statement on Instagram.

It was a contract that gives a company the right to give birth to — and own — someone’s digital doppelgänger.

“I don’t usually make videos like this,” Tareen said, explaining that she had initially raised the matter within the Actors Collective of Pakistan (ACT), Pakistan’s actors’ association, after carefully reading her contract. Within weeks, she said, other actors received similar agreements. And here’s the scary part: some had already signed them.

“This is not just one bad contract,” she warned in the video. “It’s already becoming an industry-wide norm,” she pointed out. She should have added the words “If we don’t stop it!”

Artificial Intelligence’s role in Pakistan’s television industry remains modest — for now. But contracts granting extensive rights over actors’ digital likenesses have sparked fears that performers may be signing away control of their future selves

The reason Tareen felt the responsibility to speak publicly points to another major, widespread issue within the entertainment industry. Most actors do not read their contracts — period — forget the fine print. Those who do manage to trudge through the repetitive clauses and long-winded language often assume — quite erroneously — that paragraphs relating to AI are mere legal jargon that allow the use of one’s visage for visual effects or promotional work.

Others, who are adept in English (the de facto language of contracts) — and most aren’t — do not speak out for fear that they may lose work in an already highly competitive industry. That very fear forces some actors to sign first and ask questions later. Later, when one casually inquires and gets a wishy-washy answer, there’s little choice but to leave everything in the Almighty’s hands.

Reading between the lines

According to a copy of the agreement obtained by Icon, the clauses extend well beyond the routine use of AI-assisted editing or publicity artwork. They grant the company extensive and perpetual worldwide rights over an actor’s image, voice and likeness.

The language cagily points out that the training is for the particular drama series one is signing for, but one can infer leeway, allowing those digital replicas to be reused without seeking further approval. These rights extend across current and future media platforms and empower the company to train other models and create derivative works from the AI dataset.

And, as if that weren’t enough, for their (willing or unwilling) contributions, artists receive zero financial compensation or royalties for that, or any future shows.

One actor who declined to sign over her digital soul was Faiza Hasan. She raised her concerns directly with the production house and requested amendments. Her request was flatly denied.

So far, the agreement reviewed by Icon originates from one broadcaster: Hum Network, through Hum Network FZ LLC — the Dubai-based arm of the network. The location raises another question: if rights over an actor’s digital identity are assigned to an overseas corporate entity, what legal recourse does a performer have if those rights are later disputed or licensed elsewhere?

Under conventional contracts, an actor is paid for the days they spend on set. If additional reaction shots, continuity inserts or establishing moments are required, the performer is generally called back and compensated accordingly. While these few days of extra work do not matter to a big-name actor, for a supporting actor or a day player (an extra with lines of dialogue), it makes a world of difference. AI has the potential to alter that equation.

Hum’s side of the story

Mahesh Waswani, the Head of Productions at MD Productions, a subsidiary of Hum Network — and the go-to man when it comes to contracts and production, according to actors Icon spoke with — tells a different story.

“Everything is smooth, it’s going fine,” he said during a phone call. “There was some misunderstanding, which has been cleared up.”

Waswani said the controversy stems from an early draft that should never have reached actors. The AI used on his end, as he describes it, is mostly for editing titles and posters rather than unrestricted ownership of performers’ digital identities. He blames the sweeping clauses on a misstep by the legal department.

An “immature person”, he said, added pages of AI language that were never meant to go out. The contract, he insists, has since been fixed. Waswani promised Icon a copy of the contract they use for comparison against the old one. As of this writing, despite multiple requests, their routine contract has not arrived.

Losing livelihood to your digital self

At present, no other production house contacted by Icon appears to have introduced comparable AI clauses. Actors — who understandably do not want their names to appear in print — anonymously affirmed this. For now, AI’s most visible use in Pakistan’s television industry remains relatively modest, yet still concerning.

Production houses routinely use AI-generated content to manipulate promotional artwork, posters and marketing materials, often without seeking separate permission from performers. Most actors accept the practice, deeming it little different from using Photoshop and failing to see the bigger picture.

They are allowing someone to use their likeness to create new images, even after they have done separate photoshoots for promotional purposes.

Perhaps the widespread use of AI through free services that are embedded within social media apps has something to do with this acceptance.

Today, one can simply take their — or anyone else’s — picture and change the time of day, body weight, clothes, background or even the people in it within seconds. Those who have never met a celebrity delude themselves into a fantasy by standing next to Shah Rukh Khan or — and this happens quite often — reincarnate dead superstars in infantile videos that are fake, forgettable or offer a sense of pride or achievement. After all, they just prompted a celebrity into existence while sitting on a couch, not striving to meet one.

But, one can argue, if everyone is doing it without any checks and balances, why can’t a production company do the same? Because, in the simplest terms, livelihoods are at stake. And producers and corporations have a duty to safeguard the industry.

This debate surrounding AI was always an eventuality. Some (mostly from production houses) say it has emerged at a very bad time. But then again, when is it ever a good time? Pakistan’s television industry is always grappling with — and putting off — longstanding problems. Actors have spent years raising concerns about delayed payments and the absence of royalties. They haven’t gained an inch of success.

Today, dramas are rebroadcast, dubbed and monetised on digital platforms.

The pay-outs are handsome but — and there’s always a ‘but’ — as one producer made it very clear to this writer, the returns count for little because dramas have become increasingly expensive to make.

If that were not enough, one has noticed a genuine lack of opportunities, especially for emerging talent, as advertisers use digital characters instead of real people in commercials and print advertisements. As mentioned above: livelihoods are at stake.

Frustrations of production houses

Now, it would be unfair to present just one side of the argument because production houses have frustrations of their own.

Producers are fed up with actors’ tardiness. Most actors (especially the big names) arrive late in the afternoon, or even in the evening, after promising to be on time (as this writer has witnessed time and again). Then there are the overlapping commitments, with shoots extending beyond their allotted days.

Under conventional contracts, an actor is paid for the days they spend on set. If additional reaction shots, continuity inserts or establishing moments are required, the performer is generally called back and compensated accordingly. While these few days of extra work do not matter to a big-name actor, for a supporting actor or a day player (an extra with lines of dialogue), it makes a world of difference.

AI has the potential to alter that equation. If a production house has already acquired the contractual right to generate digital performances from an actor’s existing footage, some of those additional shoot days are no longer necessary.

That’s money saved from the producer’s perspective, and compensation lost from the artist’s point of view.

That concern sits at the heart of actor, director and producer Shamoon Abbasi’s argument.

Acting classes

According to Abbasi, the issue is not whether AI should be used — it already is, he tells Icon. Rather, the question is whether performers understand what rights they are giving away when broad AI clauses are included in a standard acting contract.

A digital likeness, once created and trained, could theoretically be reused not just to complete scenes for the drama in question but also for other dramas, shows or films.

Abbasi also points to another often-overlooked distinction: conventional contracts govern performance and AI clauses govern the data created from that performance. The two, he argues, are not the same. That distinction is precisely what Hollywood spent months negotiating.

When the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-Aftra) concluded its 2023 strike, one of the central outcomes was the inclusion of guardrails around AI. The agreement requires actors’ consent before studios create or use digital replicas of performers and provides compensation when those digital replicas are employed.

The terms do not prohibit AI, but rather regulate its use. They certify that a performer’s digital likeness has value independent of the original performance.

That approach is worth noting because it mirrors the points of view of many Pakistani actors.

Very few argue that AI should be banned. In fact, most accept that the technology will quickly become part of modern production. The objections — especially those raised by Abbasi and ACT — concern permissions that provide clarity on duration, purpose, ownership and compensation.

A tangible solution?

Abbasi and Hasan believe any AI use should be governed by a separate agreement altogether. If a production intends to use digital doubles, AI-generated sequences or voice synthesis, those uses should be disclosed in advance, be limited to a specific project and be accompanied by appropriate remuneration. Actors should know precisely what is being created, how long it may be used and under what conditions.

A dedicated group within ACT has been examining the implications of AI on performers’ rights. Their objective is to establish a framework that can be applied across the industry before AI practices become standard. Among the proposals under discussion is a broader initiative designed by Abbasi, tentatively titled the Pakistani Actors Guild-Pakistani Artists Film, Television and Radio Association (PAG-Paftra).

While the body does not yet exist, the idea reflects a growing belief that Pakistan’s performers require a dedicated institution. One capable of negotiating AI standards, advising artists on emerging technologies and protecting their digital rights in the same way professional guilds and unions do internationally.

The pressing question is whether the rules governing its use will be written before or after the technology becomes commonplace. Speaking from experience, one can guess that it is bound to happen afterwards — no matter how much one wishes otherwise.

For Hasan, the issue extends beyond a single contract, she tells Icon. It is about recognising a pattern before it becomes an industry practice. She draws a comparison with the lingering, unheeded issue of royalties. By the time performers recognise the commercial value of their digital likeness, the rights may already have been lost, she fears.

But lost to whom and where? The questions are inevitable. For example: where is the data stored? Who has access to it? Can it be licensed to another company? Can it be transferred to another jurisdiction? If ownership changes hands, does the performer retain any practical control over how their likeness is used in the future?

Hasan says this was one of the principal reasons she refused to sign the contract. She was uncomfortable granting unrestricted rights over her digital likeness without knowing where that data might ultimately end up, or who might use it later.

Beyond commercial concerns, she also sees a reputational risk. If an AI-generated performance or voice is misused years from now, determining responsibility may prove considerably more difficult.

Reading the fine print

The recommendations being contemplated by the artists’ community may be incorporated into a bill by the Government of Punjab that would establish minimum standards for AI use in Pakistan’s entertainment industry.

Among its guiding principles are informed consent (ie one must obtain permission from the artist, even if one has the dataset), project-specific agreements, transparency and fair compensation. There are even murmurs that the bill might become part of federal legislation.

Anyone familiar with law and legislation can attest to how difficult that may be — especially when matters involve provincial and federal jurisdictions.

However, the bill addresses only one part of the problem.

In Hollywood, actors rarely negotiate these issues alone. Agencies routinely manage licensing, merchandising and digital rights on behalf of their performers. Pakistan has no comparable system. That leaves many actors individually negotiating highly technical contracts against organisations with considerably greater legal and commercial resources.

Maybe the industry needs to consider a different model altogether. Perhaps it can take the form of an independent agency — one dedicated exclusively to safeguarding and commercialising performers’ digital likenesses.

Such an agency — akin to an actor’s management agency but entirely transparent — could be governed by actors and legal specialists. It could license AI rights, maintain secure repositories of performers’ digital assets and negotiate standard terms with production houses. Companies would have access to the technology they require through this organisation, while performers would retain meaningful control over one of their most valuable digital assets.

It could very well be a simpler solution to a greater looming problem.

Artificial intelligence will continue to play a role in film and television production — that much is increasingly clear. However, once standards and practices are in place, AI can function as just another production tool.

Without standards, though, the industry risks repeating a familiar story — recognising the value of an artist’s rights only after they have been signed away, willingly, forcefully, through fear or simple obliviousness.

Perhaps it’s time people actually read what they sign.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, July 5th, 2026

In a reel posted to her Instagram account on Wednesday, Kazim told her followers to take care of animals as the country faces record-breaking temperatures this summer.

In the video, she fawns over her dog Max and tells her son Hassan and a lady holding a container of water that they shouldn’t have taken him out in the heat — Max, for his part, enjoyed getting wiped down by a wet cloth.

“Jokes aside,” the host said looking into the camera, “I had a request for you all”.

She said she would deliver this request softly after receiving some flak for being too harsh with her last one.

“If you want to keep animals, then take care of them like you would yourself,” Kazim said as her son tried his hand at being a dog masseuse in the background.

She asked people to provide their pets and even strays water to drink and shade to sit under. This, she said, was treating them “like you should treat any living being”.

In her caption, she asked readers to consider how hard the intense heat must be for animals “who have no fan, no shade, no way to ask for help”.

“Kindness doesn’t always require grand gestures. Sometimes it is just remembering that we share this world with others too. Please be gentle. Please be mindful,” she wrote.

She’s not wrong; as global temperatures continue to rise, animals are suffering the result of a man-made ecological disaster and giving them a drink and shading them from the raging sun is the least we can do.

Now, with the release of a report from the UN-formed Independent International Commission of Inquiry saying Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces, she has just one question for world leaders: “Where have you been?”

“Did you not see these kids as kids because of where they were born? Did you not think the 20,000 kids that were killed and the countless others under the rubble who died of starvation and other causes that would be so simple to treat,” asked a visibly upset Accurso in a video shared to her Instagram page.

She questioned whether those in positions of power realised the children of Gaza “had beating hearts like your kids”. She quoted parts of the report saying 151 children had died of starvation and mentioned “the deliberate targeting of children”, including an incident in which a breastfeeding baby was killed by quadcopter while inside a tent.

She wondered aloud what the leaders of the world had to lose by speaking up for what is right and asked how they were able to “go to sleep at night knowing you didn’t say anything”.

Accurso has been extremely vocal about the dire conditions facing children living through Israel’s barbaric war on Gaza. Her online advocacy has landed her in trouble with pro-Israel groups who have accused her of anti-semitism.

The YouTuber is a global ambassador for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) and supports their activities in the United States with donations and by spending time with children the PCRF brings to the US for treatment. She’s developed a particularly strong friendship with Rahaf, a four-year-old double amputee from Gaza.

Mahnoor is the fourth Pakistani to be granted the honour and only the second Pakistani woman. Her win comes six years after the last time Pakistan won, Mahwari Justice said in a press release.

The awards, which are meant to celebrate young people’s contributions to development, are given out annually. One winner is selected from each of the five participating geographical regions and out of the five winners one is named Young Person of the Year.

As a regional winner, Mahnoor will receive a grant of £3,000 to help her organisation achieve its objectives. The Young Person of the Year — Ugandan solar-energy pioneer Shifra Ainomugisha for 2026 — will receive £5,000.

Mahnoor’s Mahwari Justice has made it a mission to spread awareness and education on menstrual issues and improve access to care for menstruating women.

The organisation was founded in 2022 in response to devastating floods and focused initially on providing feminine hygiene kits to flood-hit communities.

Since then, Mahnoor has worked on period education, developing a disability-inclusive guide on menstruation and having it translated into braille. The guide is now being produced in sign language.

She was also a strong advocate for the removal of taxes on feminine hygiene products, mobilising 10,000 signatures for the cause.

Her efforts and those of legal activists like Mahnoor Omer and Alisha Shabbir came to fruition earlier this month when taxes were withdrawn as part of the Federal Budget 2026-27.

Weinstein’s third trial in New York state court over an allegation that he raped aspiring actress Jessica Mann ended in a mistrial in May after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

Mann accused Weinstein of raping her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 while Mann resisted and repeatedly said, No. Weinstein, 74, had pleaded not guilty to one count of third-degree rape and has denied assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex.

A representative on Thursday said Weinstein was relieved by the outcome and believes the charge never should have been brought. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said on Thursday that testifying before two grand juries and three trial juries had been an “extraordinarily taxing ordeal for Mann and that she did not wish to take the stand again”.

Bragg’s office also said it asked the court to sentence Weinstein to 20 years in prison for sexually assaulting one-time production assistant Miriam Haley. Weinstein was convicted of raping Mann and assaulting Haley at his first trial in New York in 2020, but the state’s highest court overturned the conviction after concluding that he did not get a fair trial.

Weinstein, an Oscar-winning film producer and Miramax studio co-founder, has remained behind bars since his conviction was overturned due to his conviction in another case. More than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual harassment or misconduct, allegations Weinstein denies.

Originally published in Dawn, June 26 , 2026

The two posted a reel on Instagram on Friday, talking about the virus and how freely available treatment can help patients and society.

In the clip, Munawar tells viewers that people infected by HIV can opt for free treatment in Pakistan. He said getting treated can bring patients to a point where the disease becomes “undetectable”.

He explained that this meant individuals who get treated can’t transmit the disease to others. “In three months, the viral load in your blood can drop to zero and a large portion of your blood can effectively be cleaned.”

Bhutto said the safest person, from a medical point of view, isn’t the one who’s never been tested, it’s the one whose viral load is suppressed.

Munawar said people stayed away from testing and treatment out of a fear of society and their ignorance. He said people often die because this fear prevents them from getting diagnosed.

“If this disease is not treated in a timely manner, a patient can die within 10 years,” the actor said.

Bhutto said, “The more you know about HIV, the safer you are.”

HIV and the stigma around the condition remain a serious problem in Pakistan, with the health ministry saying in May that nearly 20,000 patients had “gone missing” after discontinuing treatment.

The ministry said an estimated 369,000 people were living with HIV in Pakistan, while only 84,000 cases were currently registered, highlighting a significant detection gap. In 2025 alone, 14,000 new cases were reported.

The country reeled in horror in April, when an exposé from the BBC revealed severe medical malpractice in Punjab’s Taunsa which led to a surge in HIV infections among the area’s children.

At the time, Bhutto said medical malpractice “accounted for the majority of major outbreaks” and the victims were “victims are almost always children”.

“Prejudice against the disease must stop so these children can live full and happy lives,” the activist said.

Khan, who is a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) goodwill ambassador, urged people to remember that “When one family finds safety, we all share in a more hopeful future.”

The star, while undertaking her duties with the UNHCR, said she had met Afghan refugees “who were forced to leave their homes and rebuild their lives from nothing”.

Seeking asylum is “not an abstract idea”, she said. “It is the moment everything changes for a family.”

She said there were refugee parents she had interacted with who were “working every day to give their children a future” and young people “determined to continue their education”.

Despite losing everything, she said, refugee families continued to hold onto hope.

The actor said she had “seen resilience in places where life has been incredibly hard” and how “safety can change what tomorrow looks like”.

Khan was appointed UNHCR’s Goodwill Ambassador to Pakistan in 2019, when she said she was proud to have come from a country that had a long history of hosting refugees.

She joins a handful of Pakistani celebrities who serve as goodwill ambassadors for different UN organs; Saba Qamar works with the UN agency for children while Shehzad Roy works with the Office on Drugs and Crime. Fawad Khan is the goodwill ambassador for the UN Development Programme and Hania Aamir recently joined the list last October with UN Women.

Afghan refugees who sought asylum in Iran and Pakistan have been returning to Afghanistan. According to figures from the UNHCR, over 5.5 million refugees had returned between October 2023 and February 2026.

In a reel on her Instagram account, Ansari said, “I’ve been hearing for about two months now that Somali pirates had captured our compatriots along with some Indians and Bangladeshis. These men who left their homes to work hard for their families are in dire straits.”

The actor said she had seen a few clips on the internet and thought the seamen must have been rescued by now, “Obviously, all their countries must be making efforts for their safe return, but how do we actually save their lives? Their children, their families are so worried.”

Talking about the squalid conditions the hostages are kept in, Ansari said she had seen videos of them drinking visibly unsafe water and was worried if they were able to charge their phones to maintain contact with their loved ones.

“Please, take this seriously. It’s a matter of life or death… I was under the impression this had been resolved, but then I saw a clip of this little girl who was missing her dad, my heart hurts so much [for her],” the actor said.

Ansari said these men had gone to sea to earn an honest living; they weren’t trying to break the law or immigrate illegally.

She requested the Foreign Office to “please do something for them” because it didn’t seem fair to these hard-working men and the families they left behind at home. “Maybe one of them is sick, God forbid… We don’t know” she worried.

Eleven Pakistani sailors were part of the crew of the MT Honour 25 which was hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia in April. Foreign office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said that Islamabad had been in touch with the vessel’s owners and the government of Somalia to secure the crew’s release during a press briefing last week.

He recalled that the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar had been in touch with the Somali Foreign Minister Abdisalam Abdi Ali over the issue.

A statement from the Ministry of Maritime Affairs on June 8 also said they remained in touch with the foreign ministry and the embassy of Somalia to facilitate rescue efforts.

Cover photo: Fahim Siddiqi/White Star

In an Instagram story posted on Tuesday, the actor asked why people began to call for dog culling whenever they heard of a dog with rabies.

“When we don’t punish all people for the sins of any one person, we shouldn’t punish all dogs because a few carry rabies. Only people with thoughtfulness and compassion will understand this,” Farooq said.

Addressing the haters, she said she prayed for “God to soften your hearts one day”.

On Monday, the actor had put up a post from Lahore-based animal rights activist Uswa Ahmed on her story. In the video, Ahmed can be heard asking sanitation workers from the Suthra Punjab project why they had killed dogs.

They were moving a trailer full of dog corpses which sparked the activist’s reaction. The workers denied having killed them and drove away with Ahmed in pursuit.

The comments under the post were largely supportive, but some questioned the activist’s priorities for speaking up for animals. Others made fun of her for referring to strays she cares for as her “children”.

The Lahore High Court has barred authorities from culling dogs, instead directing them to use more humane methods of controlling stray animal populations as prescribed under the Punjab Animal Birth Control Policy 2021.

Despite the orders, there are reports of The dog culling in the city with guns and poison as of last month.