The actor, who recently received widespread praise for her role as Beena, made the comments during an appearance on Gloss Etc by Maliha Rehman.

Hocane said a lot of reviewers, while meaning well, often use the adjective “Netflix-quality” to describe a good project.

“I find that so lame. We’re doing better than that. It’s just because there was a portal or an app that just came out and it worked for a couple of years,” she said, adding she doesn’t think Netflix knows “what they’re doing anymore”.

“The stories that we’re telling and the quality that we’re showing, we don’t need no Netflix and why are we comparing ourselves to that anyway?” Hocane continued.

The actor said the Pakistani drama industry doesn’t prioritise “glam” over the story, which, she believes, is “the soul” of a project.

“We’re really narrating stories and then we’re like let’s commercialise it. That’s a cherry on top,” she added.

Citing Aap Ki Izzat as an example, Hocane said Pakistani dramas attract audiences without any pomp.

Hocane’s comments are the latest addition to a discourse that has been simmering across the industry for a while, with celebrities such as Faysal Quraishi, Shamoon Abbasi, and Usama Khan — all offering a wide range of opinions.

In July, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal also announced that the government was “in talks with Netflix and other global streaming giants to adjust the regional framework”.

Cover: Muhammad Azeem Sani for Dawn

Thieves disguised as workmen sliced their way into the museum with industrial disc-cutters on October 19 last year before making off with eight irreplaceable items worth an estimated $100 million.

They include a brooch and crown from Napoleon III’s wife Eugenie. President Emmanuel Macron referred to the robbery as an attack on France’s history.

Experts from law enforcement and private art theft agencies believe the best chance of recovering the treasures is if the thieves acted alone and stashed their loot somewhere in the Paris region.

“There was a short period of time where they may have hidden them in a wall or buried them,” Christopher Marinello from Art Recovery International, a private agency, said.

All four men were arrested within 10 days of the heist.

Interrogation

The last known sighting of the glittering 19th-century gems was on CCTV footage recorded in an underground lock-up in the gritty Aubervilliers suburb of northern Paris, where all the suspects live.

Extensive searches directed by the 100-strong investigation team have been carried out at their homes and families’ homes, in cellars, garages and attics — all to no avail.

If the jewels have been hidden or handed to a ‘fence’ for safekeeping, there is still a chance that one of the suspects confesses in exchange for a more lenient sentence, said renowned Dutch private art detective Arthur Brand.

“The French police are very professional, they know how to interrogate, they know how to put pressure on [someone],” he said.

“You only need one to talk, and in many cases, one talks.”

Dismantling

The more worrying scenario is that the gang was acting on orders from a ringleader or middleman with links to organised crime — to whom they handed the jewels once they had finished their smash-and-grab.

“The power of organised crime is not only to bring the experience to commit a crime, but also to have people to take the objects and sell them,” said Corrado Catesi, head of the stolen art unit at international police body Interpol.

In custody, two of the suspects ha­­­­ve claimed a ringleader was part of their team, which is being treated with scepticism by investigators, a sou­­­rce close to the case said recently.

The worst-case scenario is that the jewels were transported either out of France or to a local contact in the und­­­e­­rground precious stones business.

“It’s mainly diamonds, so they have to dismantle them, recut them and sell them. If they would go to one place, it would be Antwerp,” said Brand, referring to the Belgian diamond hub.

Marinello lists Tel Aviv and India as other possible destinations.

Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, Europe’s largest online diamond jeweller, said that “once recut, re-entering the legitimate supply chain to be bought by wholesalers or retailers is fairly straightforward”.

“Unless a stone possessed ultra-distinctive internal inclusions, even top diamond laboratories like the GIA would struggle to flag a freshly polished diamond as stolen property,” he said.

‘Still a chance’

But if the jewels fell into the hands of an organised crime group, there appears to be still some grounds for hope.

Brand referred to several cases where stolen jewels were recovered, notably after a raid on the TEFAF art fair in the Netherlands in 2022 or the break-in at the Gruenes Gewoelbe museum in Dresden, Germany, in 2019.

“Although we all think that most of the gold, silver and diamonds that get stolen, we never see them back, in some cases, we do,” he explained.

“There is still a chance that we will see the Louvre jewels again and it might be that somebody talks before the court case.” The jewels remain listed as missing in Interpol’s database of stolen artworks.

Originally published in Dawn, October 20th, 2026

In a press release issued on Tuesday, organisers said they would be hosting 43 shows with over 50 established fashion labels participating alongside independent designers, contemporary and high-street labels, manufacturing and retail-ready brands and emerging talent.

The first show in the four-day series, LFW Presents: Starry Night, will bring together 21 designers, with each “presenting one look inspired by the night sky at its most alluring”.

Another show, presented in collaboration with the Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design, will bring 10 young designers onto the runway with capsule collections.

High street fashion labels will display their work as part of LFW Edit, with several marking their fashion week debut with Laam. Participating labels include: Almirah, Aramis Haijaan, Beygum Bano, Collected XX, Dhundli Zameen, Dreams of Arthur, Edenrobe Ceremonial, Hathghar, KIBO, Project 1959, Sadhbarg and U&I - Umer Imrana.

Some of the highlights of LFW this year will be individual showcases from some of Pakistan’s most prominent fashion designers. Participating designers include:

• Ali Xeeshan
• Deepak Perwani
• Duno by Hassan & Yahsir Waheed
• Emraan Rajput
• Erum Khan
• Fahad Hussayn
• HSY
• Jugnu Studios by Hussain Rehar
• MIHHA
• Mo by Mohsin Tawasuli
• Mohtaram
• Parishae Adnan
• Rici Melion
• Saira Rizwan
• Sania Maskatiya
• Souchaj by Mehak Junaid

Longtime fashion designer Nilofer Shahid will be the star of this edition’s LFW By Invite Only show, where her label Meeras will present the collection Tapestries in the Looms of Time. This follows Rizwan Beyg, who led the segment in the first edition.

LFW will also showcase participating retail-ready and manufacturing labels from the second run of its Ramp Readiness Programme. Twelve of these labels will display their wares in a special showcase, LFW Retail Runway.

The fashion week will take place in Lahore from October 23 to 26 and is directed by designer Hassan Sheheryar Yasin. Following its runway-to-e-tail model from last year, shows will be livestreamed on the Laam app, where patrons from around the world will be able to purchase the clothes on display. Shows will also be streamed on ARY Plus.

As per the press release issued on Tuesday, Laam’s CEO Arif Iqbal said, “Laam’s mission is to showcase the best of Pakistani fashion to the world. Our platform does that by letting people anywhere shop Pakistani fashion.”

His co-founder Amir Iqbal said the runway was just one part of the journey and the second, equally important part was “what happens after the show: how brands connect with customers, how collections translate into commercial opportunities and how designers gain access to wider markets”.

Dedicated to supporting the next generation of documentary storytellers in Pakistan, Patakha Pictures so far has supported 76 emerging filmmakers, whose work has collectively received more than 22 awards and screened at over 100 film festivals worldwide.

This year, eight women filmmakers from Punjab, Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan made four creative pairs, whose documentaries explore women breaking barriers in traditionally male spaces, climate change and child marriage, survival and artistic tradition in Cholistan and generations of women providing healthcare in one of Pakistan’s most remote valleys.

The five-month training and mentorship programme saw the fellows receiving production funding, weekly online mentorship, an intensive in-person edit week in Karachi along with specialised workshops spanning storytelling, camera techniques, editing and other practical aspects of documentary filmmaking.

Returning for the fifth time as an international mentor was acclaimed documentary filmmaker and Scottish Documentary Institute founder Noe Mendelle, joined by filmmaker and cinematographer Nadir Siddiqui, nonfiction and animation producer Huma Murad Shah, award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Maryam Ishani Thompson, Edit Mentor Husain Qaizar and sound engineer and producer Sameer Khan, bringing expertise across cinematography, documentary production and ethics, journalism and sound design.

While speaking on the occasion, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy said that five years of Patakha Pictures have reaffirmed a fundamental belief that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. “Together with the British Council Pakistan and the Scottish Documentary Institute, we have seen how access to funding, mentorship and creative freedom can transform the journeys of women filmmakers,” she said.

“Through successive cycles, Patakha Pictures fellows have received funding, international mentorship, practical filmmaking support and opportunities to develop stories rooted in their own communities,” she said.

“You are not the beneficiaries of this programme. You are for whom this programme exists. At the beginning of my career, there were many people who have held my hand to help me find my way. Now we are here to hold the hands of the next generation,” she smiled before calling to the stage to introduce this year’s filmmakers and their documentaries.

The first pair, Shagufta Rasool and Munira Shah, from Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, respectively, have made the documentary titled Koh-i-Firishtayesht, which traces the legacy of Lal Pari, a retired healthcare worker and midwife who spent decades reaching women across the remote Shimshal Valley.

The second pair, Kinza Waqar and Jazaba Raheel, from Bahawalpur and Lahore, respectively, have made the documentary D’aat, which follows the story of a camel barber, Bakht Ali, who makes beautiful designs with his scissors and razor on the camels’ coats in the Cholistan desert.

Next, there was a documentary Monsoon Brides, which tackles a very sensitive subject of the relationship between climate change, poverty and child marriage in rural Sindh by filmmakers and journalists Aleezeh Fatima and Aisha Manzoor of Karachi.

“It was an eye-opening and humbling experience to approach the story with sensitivity,” said Aleezeh about the film.

The fourth pair of Ishma Areeb and Javaria Waseem from Lahore have made the documentary titled The Horses Know Her Name, which explores the story of Anum Shakoor, a woman who found strength and healing through horses before entering the overwhelmingly male world of tent pegging.

Earlier, British Council Pakistan’s Arts Director, Laila Jamil, said that Sharmeen’s tenacity and vision bring the British Council and SOC Films to work together again and again across multiple art forms. “That’s how emerging filmmakers are supported, mentored and funded to ignite the firecracker that we know as Patakha Pictures,” she concluded.

Originally published in Dawn, October 20th, 2026

Some movies waste your time; others steal your soul, hold it for two hours, and hand it back slightly bruised. Produced by Hameem Productions, Mango Jutt does not tell a story. Instead, it dares you to look away.

An aam plot

Murad Jutt (played by Faysal Quraishi) is a police officer who has not taken a day off until he receives a call from his sister, Mariam (Ayesha Jahanzeb), in Lahore. She breaks the news of her husband’s passing and asks her brother to babysit her three children while she travels to Dubai for work in a few days.

While Murad is in Lahore, his boss (Aijaz Aslam) asks him to track down a major criminal with several cases against him. The catch is that Murad must go undercover. He becomes an aam aadmi (common man), or, as he puts it, an “aam Jutt”, hence the name of the movie, Mango Jutt.

The school is informed of Mariam’s trip, and the principal, Noor Jehan (Hareem Farooq), is asked to keep an eye on the children’s work and behaviour. Noor also happens to be Mariam’s friend. As Murad picks up and drops off the children at school, the two leads spark a typically Punjabi romance.

Meanwhile, Mariam’s late husband’s business partner is plotting to take over the entire business and planning to kidnap the children for ransom. With action, dance, drama and romance all lined up, the film checks the familiar boxes. The problem is that checking boxes does not automatically make a story work.

I went in with my friend with zero expectations. As we sat through the film, she whispered, “Wait for the Punjabi climax song.” Ten minutes later, we were watching Farooq and Quraishi dancing to ‘Ankhan Wich’. Then she whispered that the villain would enter. Of course, he came. Then she whispered that there would be a fight sequence. Of course, there was one.

What I mean to say is that it was a predictable film.

Songs, loose ends and unnecessary lectures

The movie is punctuated with music at random. For instance, ‘Ankhan Wich’ begins at a mela, which I could not figure out how or why had begun because there was no occasion for it. The film also carries side tales that did not need to be there. There is no clear beginning or end to how the kidnapper discovers that Murad is working undercover, leaving an important plot point hanging.

Then there are the randomly placed dialogues that do little to further the storyline. The unnecessarily preachy speech the eldest daughter delivers at the end, glorifying her mother and mamu, is one example. Another is the scene in which the film tries to prove its Punjabiat through a mother complaining that a child speaks Punjabi and sings in the same language at the elite school. It is unnecessary, adds nothing to the plot and feels particularly misplaced in a story that is already rather haphazard.

On the technical side, the dubbing could have been done better, too.

Shamoon Abbsi, Quraishi and Farooq are all fantastic actors and their mastery of their craft shines through individually. Quraishi and Farooq have the chemistry and screen presence to carry a film. Yet, even their stardom could not save Mango Jutt when the story itself had so little to offer.

Entertainment for the masses

Mango Jutt may be neither the best Punjabi film I have watched nor the funniest film of all time. What it is, however, is a film made for the entertainment of the masses.

Perhaps the film misses the need for single-screen cinemas, where a familiar plot, a few songs, some romance and a fight sequence can make for a good evening out. But there is a difference between making an accessible film and assuming that a predictable collection of scenes will be enough. The audience can see the villain coming, anticipate the fight and guess when the song will begin. What it cannot do is supply the story the film has failed to tell.

Mango Jutt has actors who can act, a romance that could have worked and all the ingredients of a crowd pleaser — it simply needed a tighter script to bring them together. Sometimes, even a passable movie needs to do more than show up with all the expected ingredients.

Final verdict: 3/10

The actor went through an emergency outfit crisis, which she described in colourful detail in an Instagram post on Sunday.

Farooq wrote about how she spent an entire week planning for the big day, including preparations for what she was supposed to wear — and that’s where things went wrong.

“A premiere to remember. A night of lessons, resilience & surrender,” she wrote.

“We’d spent a week planning every detail: clothes, jewellery, makeup, photography. Everything was ready for Thursday at 7pm… until 5pm, when an issue with my outfit meant I couldn’t wear it! Two hours to go. No backup. All hell broke loose,” the actor added.

It was in this moment of chaotic adrenaline that Farooq found a moment of clarity.

“When things aren’t going according to your plan, they’re going according to His,” she shared, noting that the sudden change in course was a reminder to surrender.

With the team scrambling, a quick decision had to be made.

“The chaos, the energy, everyone pulling together on hope… and somehow, it became one of my favourite looks, loved by so many of you too! We made it on time, in full desi glam,” she wrote.

Farooq then went on to thank her glam team for working tirelessly behind the scenes to make the cast look their best.

“Thank you for making Mango Jutt’s premiere so special with your love and warmth. Now playing in cinemas across Pakistan, take your loved ones, and keep the love coming!”

In the movie, Farooq shares the big screen opposite Faysal Quraishi. The cast also includes Shamoon Abbasi, Ayesha Jehanzeb and Qaiser Piya.

The Lawrence Bishnoi gang has reportedly claimed responsibility for firing at the actor’s car, according to The Statesman.

Anil Pandit, described as a notorious member of the gang, stated he carried out the attack along with an accomplice, Harman Sandhu.

Around five rounds were fired at Shroff’s BMW car. The incident occurred outside the Juhu home of filmmaker Rohit Shetty.

“A firing incident has been reported under Juhu police station. Actor Tiger Shroff is safe and has not sustained any gunshot injuries. Further investigation is underway,” a Mumbai police statement said, according to ANI.

The gang linked to the shooting has been tied to a series of high-profile incidents in India, most notably the 2022 killing of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala, the 2024 murder of politician Baba Siddique in Mumbai, and a firing incident outside Salman Khan’s Bandra residence in April the same year.

The same network has also been associated with attacks on figures perceived as close to Khan, including opening fire at a Delhi gym linked to singer Guru Randhawa in June. In 2025, the gang was linked to multiple firing incidents outside Indian comedian Kapil Sharma’s café in Canada.

American prosecutors have described Lawrence Bishnoi as a transnational organised crime syndicate using public claims of violence to intimidate targets and fuel extortion operations.

In a story posted to her Instagram account, Afgan said, “People like Abu Bakar and his mother do exist. When Jodi and I got married, I was as shocked as Zaryab.”

The actor said her husband and his family were still “the loveliest, most decent and kindest people in the world” and that she loves her mother-in-law “like my own mother”.

Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar) and his mother Khushbakht (Sania Saeed) are shown in Dar-e-Nijaat to be incredibly nice and patient — some have said too much so — with Zaryab (Durefishan Saleem), whose past continues to haunt her after even her marriage to Abu Bakar.

Afgan said early in her marriage, she had asked her husband, “Are you guys really this good? And why do you never fight amongst yourselves, are you aliens?” She said she could relate to Zaryab and that “good humans do exist”.

Earlier, the show’s writer, Umera Ahmed, had also asked why people in the audience had such a hard time believing people could be good to one another.

The writer said people had said her characters seemed “out of [this] world” and “AI-created”, implying that people like this don’t exist in the real world.

In her post, Ahmed asked why her followers felt “basic human traits like kindness, empathy, forgiveness [and] overlooking others’ flaws are [going] extinct from our society” and why, when they are portrayed in the media, people find them unreal.

Ahmed ended the post questioning if we were “deteriorating as a society on basic human morality and goodness”.

During the podcast, which touched on Rajab’s new film, his anger issues and fatherhood, among other topics, Ahmed also read out a list of names of public figures and asked his guest to name the first food item that came to mind for each. When he got to actor Durefishan Saleem, Rajab said “ras malai”, because she’s “gol matol” (plump, round). Yes, he fat shamed her.

But then, this is Rajab Butt, an internet personality whose conduct has drawn so much negative attention that the authorities have had to step in more than once.

You may be wondering what Ahmed was thinking, but then again, you don’t hand a microphone to someone with a proven record of offensive remarks and then act surprised when he offends. And you certainly don’t do it with someone like Rajab, who has made a whole career off profiting from outrage, not even sparing his own family from getting caught up in the negative attention.

The comment was repulsive, yes. But what was equally repulsive was the host’s reaction, which was to say there was no reaction at all. Ahmed let it pass without pushing back, as though body shaming were simply a normal part of the conversation. But Ahmed should know better as he has spoken about being on the receiving end of it in the entertainment industry.

Just last month, Rajab made headlines for an inappropriate ‘joke’ about child sexual abuse during a TikTok Live session with fellow creator Zaid Ali — a remark so far beyond the pale that it should have ended any possibility of having him as a guest on any respectable public platform again.

Yes, he apologised later, but only after the social media backlash grew intense enough that several celebrities, including Sehar Khan (of Aik Aur Pakeezah fame), called him out. Instead of doing any soul-searching, he responded to Sehar by arrogantly claiming that his vlogs pull higher viewership than her dramas. His deflection was a classic move in the arsenal of people looking to avoid accountability.

Rajab’s track record of controversies isn’t confined to the inappropriate words that come out of his mouth. He has faced several cases, including on charges of promoting online gambling applications, hurting religious sentiments and the unlawful custody of a lion cub. The first two cases are still ongoing, while he was sentenced to a year of community service in the lion cub case.

And yet, within weeks of his latest controversy, he was sitting in a podcast studio with a microphone in front of him and a well-known host lending him credibility. That is the problem here — not just what he does, but that people with platforms keep lending him theirs.

It makes sense to have him on if we take views into account. Rajab has one of the larger fan followings in Pakistan — well over nine million subscribers on YouTube and a further three million on Instagram — and that following is precisely what makes him bookable. But where should interviewers draw the line in the race for views?

Rajab is entitled to say what he likes on his own channels and his audience is entitled to judge him for it, but inviting someone with a documented history of offensive remarks onto a podcast isn’t an exercise in free speech; it’s a business move.

The host gains outrage-driven views. The guest gains legitimacy and, probably, a new audience. The target of the remark — in this case, Saleem— gains nothing but a fresh insult delivered in front of a larger audience.

This is what can make platforming worse than trolling itself. A notorious purveyor of the attention economy posting into the void reaches his (often) like-minded audience. The same person seated across from a recognised host reaches everyone the host reaches.

Every time a broadcaster or podcaster treats this behaviour as unremarkable, it normalises it. Listeners learn that a man can joke about child sexual abuse, rack up court cases, body shame women and face no meaningful consequences and actually be rewarded by sitting down for an interview where he isn’t even taken to task for his atrocious views.

That is the lesson being taught, whether the host intends it or not.

The fix is not complicated: hosts can not feature these people, producers can ask basic questions about a guest’s recent record and when a remark like “gol matol” is made about an actor on air, the host can say that it was unacceptable. At the very least.

Silence, in this context, can be considered endorsement.

Rajab will keep being Rajab; that much is predictable. What shouldn’t be normalised is the queue of people with platforms waiting to hand him yet another microphone.

The modified Tesla Roadster — and yes, it’s still called that even when airborne — has thrusters pushing out “ultra high-pressure air” to propel the vehicle into the air. During a demonstration, it was also seen doing a flip and landing after flying off a ramp.

It’s possible that Musk has finally found us a way to escape rush hour traffic on University Road — with advance apologies to all the motorcyclists and pedestrians who will get pelted with debris getting kicked up by the jets. Netizens were quick to find other ways the car could come in handy.

One user suggested one of the first cars should go to Indian director Rohit Shetty, to sustainably satisfy his desire to flip cars.

Another pointed out that Musk hadn’t done anything special and Bollywood had been launching cars off the ground for years.

There were some genuine concerns raised, like who would be crazy enough to insure a car for which the inventor said “success is not guaranteed” but that “it will probably work”.

Someone was concerned about what traffic might look like in the age of flying cars.

But in the face of all the naysayers, there were some who were just happy to see their favourite video game come to life.

To be honest, we’re not sold on the idea. Can you imagine a time when you don’t need to look both ways before crossing the road and instead need to look up too? If you’re looking for ways to get around — especially with skyrocketing fuel prices — go read our list of inexpensive commute options here.

The opening pages, narrated by the children, announce the terms of the book with chilling clarity: “We did not go to school because we already knew everything there was to know.” What they know is the work. They know the sounds and smells of it, “the false notes of pleasure,” and they know that the men who buy their mothers are, somewhere among them, their fathers, though “he never made himself known, never said, you are mine.”

This is the moral architecture of Uprising, and the source of its incantatory power. The chorus of daughters, girls who raise one another while their mothers sleep off the night, are at once unbearably frail and prematurely wise. Anam gives them small, piercing happinesses — lice coveted because delousing forces a mother to touch her child, rice passed hand to hand, 10 taka for sweets — surrounded by a horror the children narrate in the flat, rhythmic grammar of the inevitable.

Their chant of self-knowledge, “we were chorer-bacha… Soon to be our mothers,” lands like a sentence passed before a crime has been committed. Readers root for these girls because the novel refuses them innocence yet grants them perception; their seeing becomes the book’s engine of revolt.

Into this world arrives Kusum Khan, kidnapped and drugged in the aftermath of the protests that toppled Bangladesh’s dictator. She comes ashore screaming her own name like a cursed refrain, “Kusum Khan! Kusum Khan! I’ve been kidnapped!” and bites off a piece of a man’s penis in her first days.

Anam excavates her past in a chapter of unbearable economy: a fruit seller’s daughter with a voice “touched by God,” who loses her sister Pyara to a police bullet at a protest and is sold by her own parents to the man who promises her work abroad. Her telephone call home is the novel’s quietest devastation. Her mother asks the price of her freedom, repeats the figure, and hangs up with the words: “We told you to get married.”

That betrayal is the first lesson of the island, the children tell us: “No one was coming for them.” Kusum learns it and then refuses it. Her resistance begins with a green slate and two hours of school, teaching letters and sums to girls who have been told their lives are written on their foreheads. When a child asks why the river floods, Kusum answers with the novel’s quietest weaving of climate into fate: “The waters are rising everywhere… in all the countries and all the rivers and all the oceans.”

The drowning island and the used-up women are the same event at different scales: shrimp farms salting Farid’s fields, a cyclone shelter that turns the brothel’s children away, coal that heats the air that swells the river that eats the shore. Anam never lectures. Climate arrives as weather, as debt, as the slow violence that preys on those already marked for use.

Standing over everything is Amma, one of the great villains of recent fiction, rendered without caricature. She keeps her books, feeds the women pills to fatten and forget them, beats them and cradles their heads, and tells Kusum on arrival: “Everyone you know is dead… You are shit.” Yet Anam grants even Amma a biography of damage, and the novel’s most disturbing insight is that the women half-love her, the only mother who ever stayed.

When Lopa, born on the island and raised on Amma’s milk, finally confronts her, the question she asks undoes the whole economy of the place: “If I was your blood, is this the life you would give me?” Amma’s answer arrives later, from Kusum’s own mother, who sold her daughter for 30,000 taka to pay debts and bury Pyara.

The uprising builds with the patience of a tide. Kusum converts the women from selling their bodies to selling photographs of them, teaching camera angles and lighting while the children press their faces to the bamboo walls, scandalised. There is school now, and “Amar Sonar Bangla,” and sweet water from a new tube well driven deep enough that “even a cyclone could not uproot it”.

Anam understands that rebellion is made of such boring miracles: clean sheets, boiled water, afternoon naps, the key to the medicine cabinet withheld. “Potita noy, protirodh,” the women chant at the jetty. Protest, not prostitution. Then Amma returns with 30 men, and the novel detonates into its most brutal sequence, a night of sanctioned rape and burning huts that only a miraculous, furious rain arrests.

What follows is the novel’s boldest risk, and its triumph — rather than barricades, Kusum orders filth: no washing, matted hair, menstrual blood smeared on foreheads, a contagion of deliberate dirt so total that policemen fear to land. “What they hate is what they fear,” Kusum reasons, “and what they fear is that we are dirty.” The women stab a cloth man stuffed with their rapists’ names and discover the names were inside them all along: husbands, fathers, captors, sons. The scene risks absurdity and becomes liturgy instead, “We are the power!” shouted by women who were never once asked to say no.

Threaded through everything is Bon Bibi, the daughter of the forest raised by a doe after her mother abandons her, the guardian spirit of the Sundarbans whom the children invoke until myth and woman merge: Kusum, with her “hands soft, voice loud,” her skin “dusted with gold,” refusing at the end to go home with the mother who sold her. “Because of you,” she says, “I am these women.” The final storm, which swallows the island as the survivors escape on Mridul’s boat, is told twice: once as fact, once as legend in which Kusum sings the island under and “spread her wings and flew away”.

Anam earns this surrealism precisely because the realism around it is so exact; the myth is not an escape from the story but its destination, the shape a true story takes when carried by those it saved.

The author’s achievement is not simply that she gives exploited women a voice — it’s that she changes the scale at which their exploitation can be understood: from an isolated brothel to a system connecting patriarchy, family, state power, poverty and ecological destruction. Yet the novel’s movement from realism toward myth occasionally simplifies the very human complexity that makes its early sections so powerful.

Uprising is at its strongest when it refuses the consolations that usually accompany stories of extreme suffering. It does not rescue the women with sentiment, does not prettify their suffering, and does not let readers off with the easy villainy of one madam, though Amma is monstrous enough.

The family sold Kusum, “but it was also the whole world of men,” all of whom prefer a girl on an island to a girl causing trouble among them. That sentence indicts an order economic, climatic and patriarchal at once; the novel’s final gift is showing it crack, one island, one tube well, one alphabet at a time. That the crack is small and the sea still rising is what makes this book necessary rather than merely admirable. It ends as it began, with children who know everything, except now they know something else: that they were never the dirt, that the dirt was always the world, and that a girl with a voice can sink an island and still be singing.

A statement issued by her publicist repeated comments from earlier this week that Blair, who has ​multiple sclerosis, suffered a medical emergency on the flight from Los ​Angeles to New York. Blair did not try to open ⁠a door on the plane as some media outlets reported, the statement ​said.

“There was no attempt to open the door of the aircraft. Selma ​did not intend to harm anyone,” the statement said.

Blair pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of assaulting a police officer involved in her arrest at New York’s ​John F Kennedy Airport and a nurse at the hospital where she ​was taken afterwards.

Police met the plane when it landed after reports of a “physically abusive passenger” ⁠who was identified as Blair, according to a statement from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s police department. Two flight attendants reported injuries and one of them was taken to a hospital, police said.

Blair, ​54, is known ​for roles in Cruel ⁠Intentions and Hellboy. She has spoken publicly about being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018.

The statement by Blair’s representative ​said Blair has a neurological condition known as pseudobulbar ​affect, “which bears ⁠directly on how a medical episode presents to people who do not know her”.

“There is much more to this story than has been reported, and ⁠we ask ​to consider the entirety of the facts ​before rushing to judgment, whether in the courtroom or in the court of public opinion,” ​Blair’s representatives said.

Speaking to content creator Bilal Hassan — popularly known as Mystapaki — Khan said Zamil wasn’t just a person, he was a mindset, one which he had seen personally in men and boys he grew up with.

Quoting one of his earlier social media posts, the actor said he would often wonder how these young men, who had mothers and sisters at home, could allow themselves to objectify women the way they did. “I used to question how they allowed themselves… how their mindsets allowed them to speak this way about a woman.”

Hassan brought up how people who are part of these discussions, even if they don’t necessarily agree with what is being said, don’t call out their friends, which is also part of the problem. Both men agreed that many of these boys then tell tall tales to try and top each other in becoming “Zamil Pro Max”.

“What they don’t realise,” Khan said, “is that that in doing this, they are ruining the girl’s life”.

The content creator brought up Zamil’s crisis of faith, which sees him blame Zaryab for his own moral failings, to which Khan said you could pull out anything about his character on the show and it will be problematic.

Khan said his core issue was an identity crisis, which was the result of getting everything he wanted in life with relative ease. He said Zamil really started questioning himself when he failed to succeed as a student and that got worse when he crossed paths with Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar) — whom he saw as a rival.

Faith, said Hassan, was also a matter of competition for Zamil, something his guest completely agreed with.

“Zamil’s exploitation of Zaryab with regards to his faith… it’s an absurd thing, an absurd mindset and I have seen such people in life, Bilal. They exist and I feel sorry for them,” the actor said.

When asked whether there was a message in all of this and how we can stop producing more Zamils as a society, Khan said the development of such people and their mindsets began in their childhoods. He said a lot of the damage came from sitting with peers who objectified women and engaged in locker room talk, which boys engage in to “fit in”.

The actor said the way to fight that was through better parenting and trying to deter such behaviour in schools.

Hassan added to this, saying there was a need to raise boys who were “emotionally in touch” but also knew they could be “held accountable” for their actions. He said this also had to start at home, with boys being taken to task for misbehaving with girls and women in their households.

Khan said another important thing to instil in men and boys was empathy, which would allow them to put themselves in other people’s shoes. “If I have empathy and I am about to talk about a girl, I will think, ‘If this happened to my sister or my mother, how would I feel?’ So that’s the point where, whatever wrong course of action you were about to take, you stop.”

Both men agreed that society often told men who didn’t participate in its misogyny they were “boring”, but that it was “better to be boring and better to be alone than to become a Zamil-like character”.

Now that episodes 7 and 8 have aired on Wednesday and Thursday, the drama has everyone firmly in its thrall, with netizens unable to stop talking about it.

The performances — especially Wahaj Ali’s portrayal of Baala’s grief and Mahira Khan’s conflicted Bilqees Bano aka Billo — are being called career-defining, but there’s a lot more to the story than the actors. It’s the drama’s uncompromising look at casteism and honour that has sparked a deeper discussion online.

Baala’s wife, Zarina, played by Amar Khan has raked in overwhelming praise.

Some called her a “breakout star”.

While others empathised with her character on a deeper level.

The story has turned brutal in the last two episodes. Episode 7 ended with the railway crossing shootout, where Baala’s brother Aslam (Achi) is killed and Baala’s world falls apart. Episode 8 then shows his transformation into the hardened Baala Gujrati, a man shaped by loss and tied to the gangster Phajja, played masterfully by Sohail Ahmed.

Ali’s shift from raw grief — a brother unable to perform the last rites — to cold resolve has left viewers stunned.

This user said Baala’s character was written for Ali.

Mahira’s controversial Billo has viewers confused, as she has the ability to be both the victim and the oppressor.

What makes the show more than melodrama is how it handles caste. The divide between Shah (sovereign or master) and Miraasi (generational musicians) drives every betrayal. Billo’s in-laws use her past not for morality, but to protect their bloodline. Baala spends his whole life trying to escape the shackles of his lineage. Fans of the show can’t stop raving about these details.

Some compared the story to Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights, as it involves elements of class-based discrimination and unrequited love.

Viewers also pointed out how religious piety is used to humiliate rather than forgive — as seen when Billo, a faithful wife and obedient daughter-in-law, is kicked out of her own home by her father-in-law over a ‘mistake’ (falling for Baala) made when she was a teenager.

Some fans pointed out how revenge, blinded by hate, can turn fatal quickly and Mitti De Baway has depicted it well.

In the end, Mitti De Baway is more than just a revenge story — it holds up a mirror to society and asks hard questions about caste, honour and hypocrisy. With strong performances, directed by Syed Wajahat Hussain, and bold writing by Faiza Iftikhar, the drama has started a conversation that is clearly not dying down anytime soon.

The group’s fifth full-length album, Arirang, drove the achievement, generating 5 billion streams since its release in March, the most for an album dropped this year.

On the day the album rolled out, all 14 tracks, including the all-instrumental track, ‘No. 29,’ swept the top 14 spots on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs Global chart.

Meanwhile, the seven-piece act is in Santiago, Chile, for three shows through Saturday as part of its Arirang world tour.

BTS will wrap up the month with three shows each in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Sao Paolo, Brazil, before heading back to Asia.

The final shows in the two cities will be available for live viewings in cinemas worldwide, with the Buenos Aires show to air Oct 24 and the Sao Paolo show to air Oct 30.

This story was originally published on The Korea Herald, an ANN partner of Dawn

Cover photo: Reuters

Both of them have latterly turned to personal projects, working with their wives — film editor Tricia Cooke and actor Frances McDormand — on movies such as Honey Don’t and The Tragedy of Macbeth.

But they said they planned to reunite soon behind the camera, joking that it had to come soon because of their advancing ages.

“We’re getting old. It better be the near future,” Joel, 71, told AFP in a joint interview ahead of a prize ceremony in the French city of Lyon where they are being given the Lumiere lifetime achievement award.

“We have a number of different things in what we call the library, things that we’ve written before,” he added. “And then other things that we’ve thought about writing scripts about and never gotten around. So we don’t know yet.”

He denied reports that “there’s some kind of schism, that there’s some kind of break that happened. In fact, it’s not anything like that.”

Their last film together was 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an offbeat Oscar-nominated Western starring Tim Blake Nelson, which followed the 1950s Hollywood-set satirical comedy Hail, Caesar! in 2016.

Joel will release another solo project next year called Jack of Spades with Josh O’Connor, while Ethan has done a documentary about American pianist Jerry Lee Lewis as well as two other films with lesbian heroines.

Not fantasy

The brothers declined to give any details about what their next joint project would be, but it is unlikely to be fantasy-based.

“It’s definitely some weird cultural thing where mainstream movies are now mostly fantasy: fantasy, science fiction, horror, comic books, all different kinds of fantasy,” Ethan, 69, explained. “It’s a sad thing for us because we’ve never been drawn to those kinds of things.”

He also ruled out doing a TV series, despite serving as an executive producer on the long-running Fargo television adaptation.

“You have to sort of understand that structure in order to do it successfully. And it’s just not what we do. It’s not the way our brains think about stories,” Joel explained.

Cover photo: AFP

The stills, released as part of the magazine’s December 2026 issue, confirm that the finale jumps 17 years ahead of Part Two.

Of course, we see Zendaya’s Chani back in her stillsuit in the Arrakis desert, a return to the world she once called home.

We also see Timothée Chalamet, who plays Paul Atreides, and Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays his psychic sister Alia, together — with the latter wearing a full white head and body covering.

Netizens couldn’t help but notice that Taylor-Joy’s outfit bears a striking resemblance to traditional Muslim women’s garb. Meanwhile, Chalamet’s shaved head and clothes reminded people of how some Muslim men dress after returning from Hajj.

One user on X joked, “Me and my wife after iftar waiting for her to finish namaz so we can have chai.”

This netizen is getting Pakistani director vibes.

So is this one.

Another remarked it looked like a “standard jummah photo in a Pakistani household”.

One said, “Mashallah Anya sister,” because it really does look like a form of a hijab.

The latest reaction is not the first time Taylor-Joy’s Dune wardrobe has sparked jokes online. In February 2024, her outfit for the Dune: Part Two premiere in London — a flowing white gown that covered her from head to toe — drew a very different kind of reaction.

Many Muslim fans pointed out that while the actor was being praised by the mainstream media for her unique look, the very same modest styles worn by Muslim women — hijabs, niqabs and burqas — are often met with suspicion or worse.

Some critics even argued the moment was a textbook case of appropriation: white celebrities being celebrated for wearing what women of colour and religious minorities are penalised for.

Some also pointed out that Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel was heavily influenced by Islamic history and culture, yet the films have largely removed those influences, while only keeping the visuals.

So while netizens are currently poking fun at Alia’s all-white look, the bigger conversation about the movies’ departure from the source material is far from new.

The film will be screened in theatres in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington DC on October 28.

The Eyes of Ghana follows Ghanaian cinematographer Chris Hesse, who, as his eyesight declines, attempts to rescue more than 1,000 films capturing Africa’s fight for independence in the 1950s and 60s.

“It is a great honour to be part of The Eyes of Ghana and help bring this extraordinary piece of history to the big screen,” IShowSpeed said. He said he felt a great connection to Ghana after having visited the country this year on his Speed Does Africa tour.

Talking about Hesse’s work, the streamer said, “His camera captured the birth of African independence and his determination to preserve those images has ensured that future generations can witness it for themselves. I’m humbled by his legacy and proud to help bring his story to my community.”

IShowSpeed, whose real name is Darren Watkins Jr, was granted Ghanaian citizenship after his visit to the country brought positive attention. Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, announcing the decision to issue the streamer a passport, told him to “keep making our great nation Ghana, and our beloved African continent proud”.

He has a massive follower base of over 200 million across social media and is known for his high-energy content and livestreams. He was on TIME magazine’s inaugural TIME 100 Creators list last year.

Online creators have been making inroads into cinema, with YouTube star Markiplier directing, producing, starring in and distributing the horror film Iron Lung earlier this year. The film made $50m at the global box office, a massive amount compared to its $3m budget.

Also this year, YouTubers Kane Parsons and Curry Barker released their films The Backrooms and Obsession, both of which went on to become box office successes.

Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House, struck the deal in November 2024 with Alana Hadid, a philanthropist, activist, and sister of models Bella and Gigi Hadid, and Jenan Matari, an award-winning author. Displacement and the Palestinian American Story was set for a September release this year.

Matari shared the news on Instagram, saying that working with Penguin Random House — one of the world’s largest publishers — was the “ultimate dream”, but she wouldn’t pursue it if it meant betraying her own community.

“It is very simple to not sacrifice your morals for personal success. You simply choose who you want to be,” Matari wrote.

“Understanding an oppressed people’s legal right to resistance by any means necessary is central to decolonising one’s mind and understanding the chokehold that colonialism has on this world. And it is also our only shot at defeating it. We will never betray our own people for anyone’s comfort — and especially never for personal success,” she added.

Aimed at readers aged 10 to 13, Displacement and the Palestinian American Story traces Palestinian history, Israeli occupation, resistance and the diaspora, linked with the writers’ own family stories of being uprooted.

Alana and Matari, who handed The Guardian the draft and email extracts, said the standoff dragged on for months, based on wording about the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Their version contended that people living under “colonial domination” possess the “right to resist”, while Random House pushed them to accept that the attacks broke international law.

The British newspaper reported that an editor dropped in the sentence: “These actions were a violation of international law.” The writers then pulled the title in early September.

A Random House spokesperson told The Guardian the process “followed our standard bookmaking procedures” and that the publisher stood behind the writers’ choice, adding it stayed “committed to bringing the Palestinian perspective to young readers”.

This news comes a day after it was reported that bestselling Irish novelist Sally Rooney’s books will no longer be sold in Britain over her plans to use her royalties to support Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian group banned as a terrorist organisation, Rooney and her publisher said on Wednesday.

Rooney, known for novels including Normal People and Conversations with Friends, has been a vocal supporter of Palestine Action, even after the British government banned it as a terrorist group last year. In a witness statement to London’s High Court supporting a legal challenge to the ban, she said her plans could mean her books stop being sold in Britain.

Like the caricatures of men of power it depicts — primarily the corporate moguls, army men and politicians — the film is loud, strange, intemperate and perhaps far too pleased with its own madness. The madness and the satire, though, have a legitimate reason to co-exist.

Meet the embodiment of both: Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), an ageing oil magnate in cahoots with President Compson (John Goodman), who has been drilling deep into Alaska and Greenland despite methane warnings. As expected, a pocket explodes and an ice shelf the size of Maryland is towed away by ocean currents towards Norway.

With impact due in three days, Dr Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), the perpetually alarmed safety chief riddled with righteousness, screams about the loss of life the collision will bring. Digger and Compson cross their fingers in the hope that the ice melts in the Atlantic.

Alejandro Iñárritu’s Digger is loud, strange and gloriously unhinged — an eco-satire that digs beneath its own madness to confront the stories we tell ourselves when reality becomes too ugly to face

Disaster ensues and Europe floods. Digger faces the European Parliament, owns the catastrophe, argues that the world demanded his oil, and watches the chamber turn on itself. Compson — undergoing surgery for rectal cancer — floats the idea of nuking China as a distraction. His military chief Fitzgerald (Robert John Burke), however, thinks about nuking the ice, which Ganesh warns will only break it into pieces. Five years later, following a bigger disaster, Digger sits on an offshore platform, deserted by most of his men, bullying God for more food.

Yes, the film is as dark as it is comedic; in this case, one shouldn’t confuse fun with funny. The seriousness is ever-present, no matter the set-up.

Around the 30-minute mark, the film changes one’s perspective and the overblown theatricality suddenly makes sense. Although the full scope of this reveal hits you only in the last frames, the twist makes the drama more profound and palpable — perhaps more so than Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. The obvious comparison, though, is in spirit only.

By the end, Digger evolves from an eco-satire into a film about the stories we tell ourselves when reality becomes too ugly to face. I know this is a cop-out, but to understand what this writer means, one has to see the film.

There are, of course, good reasons to buy a ticket: Iñárritu — who, one needn’t be reminded, was the director of Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015) — his cinematographer on those films, Emmanuel Lubezki, the production design and Cruise and Ahmed.

Lubezki deliberately boxes the characters into a 5:4 squarish yet immersive VistaVision frame. Ahmed’s Ganesh is Digger’s foil — a man who can’t help sounding off his righteous concerns, despite shaking like a leaf. At one point, Goodman’s president even asks why Ganesh hasn’t been killed yet. Ahmed gets as much room as Cruise and, at times, owns the scenes. He will likely be a solid candidate in the Oscars race later this year.

Cruise — whom one forgets was nominated for Born on the Fourth of July, and was robbed for Jerry Maguire and Magnolia — is a shoo-in as well for the Oscars. Shifting tones with the subtlest of transitions, in his seclusion we see him as a fragile old man who loves his dying cat with the genuine worry of a parent. Barely a moment later, he turns into a corporate mogul who hates the idea of losing millions.

One realises early that Digger is not wrong about everything he says — and perhaps that’s why, despite his apparent evilness, he is not played like a villain. His self-conviction, written on to the page by Iñárritu and co-writers Alexander Dinelaris Jr, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, empowers Cruise to make him unforgivably loathsome, yet pitiful at the same time. Then there is the other side of Digger — the part kept spoiler-free here — that twists the narrative and helps Cruise augment a subtler divide in performance.

The balancing act is harder than it looks. Digger is interested in how we process catastrophe through performance, rhetoric and make-believe — how stories become easier to consume than facts, and how, in the process, we begin confusing narrative with truth. Because of the peculiarity of Iñárritu’s style, some will like it, while others will hate it with every fibre of their being.

Released by Warner Bros and HKC, Digger also stars Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons. The film is rated A for Adults. At times, it may prove too dense or radical even for the more mature among us

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, October 11th, 2026

The American actor, best known for playing Michael Corleone in The Godfather films is the 62nd recipient of the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award. The union will present the award to him in Los Angeles at the 33rd Actor Awards on February 28, next year, as part of a ceremony to be live-streamed on Netflix.

Pacino’s recognition follows a career spanning more than six decades across film, television and stage. He is known for numerous memorable characters, including real-life police officer Frank Serpico in 1973’s Serpico, Miami mobster Tony Montana in 1983’s Scarface and more recently Hollywood agent Marvin Schwarz in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.

The award is presented annually to an actor who embodies the “finest ideals of the acting profession”, according to the union.

“I wondered and wandered most of my life but have always felt at home with a script and my fellow actors,” Pacino said in a statement from the actors’ union.

“It’s the work and the actors along the way that have been among the greatest joys of my life. It’s an honour to be recognised by SAG-AFTRA in celebrating the journey,” he added.

Pacino won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in the 1992 film Scent of a Woman, and has also won multiple Emmy, Tony and Golden Globe awards.

“Like so many actors, I have spent my life in awe and appreciation of the force of nature that is Al Pacino. When you watch him perform, you are witnessing a student and a master,” SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin added in the statement.

Pacino also participated in the ‘America: A Tribute to Heroes’ telethon following the September 11 attacks in 2001, and in 2009 received the Arthritis Foundation’s Jane Wyman Humanitarian Award for his charitable work.

The 86-year-old actor was born Alfredo James Pacino in New York. He struggled throughout the 1960s to find steady work before his eventual film breakthrough in 1972’s The Godfather.

SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, programme hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists, influencers and other entertainment and media professionals.

But then someone says something which makes your dil ki tarkan faster and if you think we made a mistake there, let us present our lead offender of the evening: US-based comedian Hasan Minhaj.

In an interview last week, he said he likes to order daal with extra “dharka”.

Yeah, we were confused too, we thought we’d misheard the guy, but then he doubled down: “D-H-A-R-K-A, dharka, it’s the fried onions you put on the top,” he told Food & Wine magazine.

We actually don’t have words, so we’re just going to let the comments from under the post do the talking for us.

One user wondered what it must be like to be the waiter who had to decipher what Minhaj was talking about when he asked for dharka, especially with no context.

Another was nicer about the whole thing, saying it was sweet of the California-based comedian to try and connect with his culture like this. They explained that tadka was, in fact, tempering, not just fried onions.

Others said they wanted Minhaj’s confidence, even comparing him to someone — or something — else that kept making mistakes with huge amounts of unearned confidence.

One comedian from India even challenged Minhaj’s desi credentials saying he might as well be white if he’s having ‘dharka’ with his daal.

We don’t know about onions, but this person in the comments was right when they said something definitely got fried.

This other user was asking the right question: Do the aunties know yet?

Seeing how everyone thinks he needs to fix his ways, we hope Minhaj has learnt his lesson. If he has and he’s ever in Karachi, we’d love to take him out for some daal with extra tadka.

In an Instagram post on Thursday, Raheem announced he had submitted ‘Bewajah’ for consideration in the Best Music Video and Best Global Music Performance categories at the 2027 Grammys.

The track, sung in both Urdu and Shina, is a ballad of grief with a soul rooted in the mountains of the singer’s native Gilgit-Baltistan. It’s set to traditional percussion tunes as a pair of monologues between two lovers.

But the star of the song, as the categories it has been submitted to suggest, is the gorgeous music video shot in the shadow of the towering peaks of northern Pakistan.

Set largely in a polo match, with the singer bejewelled and dressed in white, contrasting sharply against the rest of the black-clad crowd, Raheem said the game was something everyone should see played once in their life.

In a post on Instagram at the time of the song’s release, the singer explained the game being played wasn’t the gentrified style of polo played internationally. This was freestyle polo, a variety played famously at the Shandur Polo Festival without rules and referees.

Raheem follows Meesha Shafi, who submitted her album Khilnay Ko and Arooj Aftab, who submitted her song ‘Raat Ki Rani’, for consideration last year.

While neither of them won, Aftab became the first Pakistani to ever win a Grammy in 2022 when her song ‘Mohabbat’ won her the Best Global Music Performance award.

Taurees Habib, sound engineer working on the soundtrack for Dune: Part Two, did end up winning a prize last year, making him Pakistan’s second-ever honouree.

The first round of voting for the Grammys, which determines the nominees for the awards, is open till October 22. Nominees will be announced on November 16.

The second round of voting, to determine the 2027 winners, will take place from December 10 to January 7. Winners will be announced at the 69th Grammy Awards on February 7.

The incident occurred at Al-Khair School in the city’s Afridi Abad neighbourhood.

Several Pakistani celebrities took to social media to express their grief and offer their condolences to the families of the victims.

Actor Dananeer Mobeen, who has roots both in Islamabad and Peshawar, shared the heartbreaking news on her Instagram story, saying, “Peshawar bleeds again.”

Actor Danish Taimoor offered his condolences to the families in a heartfelt note on Instagram.

“No words can describe the pain of losing innocent children in such a tragic incident. My heart goes out to all the families who have lost their loved ones. I can’t even imagine the pain and grief they must be going through,” he wrote.

Cricket star Shaheen Shah Afridi called the roof collapse “very tragic”. He also offered prayers for the deceased and condolences to the grieving families.

Actor Nadia Afgan called the incident “incredibly sad”.

What makes this accident even harder to bear is that it is not an isolated one. It comes barely a month after a similar tragedy occurred at a school in Karachi. In fact, these two structural collapses at educational institutions are just two of many that Pakistan has witnessed over the past year.

FRRO issues notice to Imran Khan

A police officer confirmed that the FRRO had issued a notice to the actor. “The FRRO has taken the action and a notice was served to the actor Imran Khan who is on an OCI card. The actor nephew of Bollywood star Amir Khan stays in Khar and was served the notice,” the officer said, according to ANI.

According to the information provided, action has been initiated against Khan under Sections 29 and 7 of the Immigration Act over allegations that he participated in the protest despite not being an Indian citizen.

Actor, family members detained during protest

Khan, his girlfriend Lekha Washington, his mother Nusrat and his niece Zayn (Marie) were among around 400 people detained by police during the protest at August Kranti Maidan.

The demonstrators were demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

After her detention, Zayn claimed in a video that police personnel had assaulted and manhandled her. She also showed bruises that she said she had sustained during the incident.

Kirit Somaiya seeks deportation, questions OCI status

Somaiya had approached Gamdevi police station with a complaint seeking action against Khan. The complaint was subsequently forwarded to the FRRO by the local police.

The BJP leader demanded Khan’s immediate arrest and deportation, alleging that the actor had violated OCI provisions and visa conditions by participating in what he described as an illegal political agitation.

Somaiya said he had submitted evidence to the police concerning Khan’s speeches at the protest and his earlier remarks. He also urged the Mumbai Police to verify the actor’s citizenship and questioned whether a foreign national holding an OCI card should participate in a political agitation.

Speaking to the media, Somaiya accused Khan of displaying what he described as “political extremism” and alleged that the actor had misused his OCI status.

“The citizens of India cannot tolerate the political extremism that Imran Khan has been displaying during his recent stay in the country. He is an American citizen holding an OCI card, yet he has attempted to misuse his status. Today, we submitted all proofs and evidence to the police regarding his conduct-specifically the speeches he delivered during the protest and his earlier comments,” Somaiya said.

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

Usama Toru’s debut solo exhibition Elsewhere at ZQ Gallery occupies this peculiar emotional space: one where people are physically present but seem to have already drifted somewhere else.

Born in Mardan and now based in Lahore, Toru is a graduate of the Pakhtunkhwa College of Art. His paintings move between everyday living rooms and imagined spaces, exploring what he describes as the tension between familiarity and strangeness, and between reality and memory. Yet, what makes Elsewhere compelling is not simply this premise but the visual unease through which it is constructed.

Green dominates the exhibition. It settles on to faces and bodies until skin no longer feels entirely human, giving otherwise ordinary encounters an almost dreamlike quality. In ‘Birthday Girl’, an apparently cheerful moment becomes oddly detached. The party hat, glasses and badge suggest celebration, but the stillness of the figure resists it. Similarly, the artwork ‘Goodfellas’ places us within a social interior, yet its figures seem emotionally separated, even while sharing the same room.

Through green-tinged interiors and isolated figures, Usama Toru’s artwork examines the loneliness that can exist in a crowd

This contradiction becomes one of the exhibition’s most interesting qualities. Toru paints crowds without necessarily painting togetherness. In ‘The Distance Between Us’ and particularly in the large ‘Elsewhere II’, bodies accumulate across the canvas but intimacy remains elusive. Some faces are blurred, others reduced to darkened eyes or barely resolved features. Figures further away become almost ghost-like, as though memory has already begun erasing them. Even surrounded by people, one can almost feel the silence.

The roughness of Toru’s brushwork strengthens this instability. Certain passages appear unfinished or abruptly interrupted, refusing the polish one might expect from scenes so recognisable. Rather than weakening the images, these unresolved marks often make them feel closer to recollection — we rarely remember an entire room with equal clarity.

A face remains vivid while someone standing behind it disappears; a colour survives while the details around it dissolve. In ‘Brief Encounter’, the sharply present central figure contrasts with those receding behind her, turning an ordinary scene into something closer to a half-remembered encounter.

At times, however, the repeated green treatment risks becoming too consistent a device. Because it appears across so many bodies and scenes, its initial strangeness can gradually become familiar. The works are strongest when colour operates alongside shifts in focus, scale, gesture and incompleteness rather than carrying the psychological unease on its own.

Perhaps this is also where the title Elsewhere begins to make sense. Toru’s figures are neither completely absent nor entirely present. They seem suspended between being inside a moment and remembering it from somewhere far away. There is loneliness here, but not necessarily the loneliness of being alone. It is the quieter kind that can exist between bodies occupying the same room, when physical closeness fails to close an invisible distance.

Toru does not explain where this elsewhere is and, perhaps, he does not need to. It may simply be that strange place the mind retreats to while the body remains behind.

‘Elsewhere’ was on display at ZQ Gallery in Lahore from August 22-September 2, 2026

Originally published in Dawn, EOS, October 11th, 2026

The bestselling author, known for novels including Normal People and Conversations with Friends, has been a vocal supporter of Palestine Action, including after it was proscribed by ​the British government under terrorism laws last year.

Rooney previously said in ​a witness statement submitted to London’s High Court, in support of ⁠a legal challenge over the ban on Palestine Action, that her plans ​could lead to her books being withdrawn from sale in Britain.

Her publisher Faber ​said on Wednesday that it had agreed with Rooney that “we can no longer supply her works in the UK in any format”, though it would sell her works elsewhere.

“Current ​legislation in the UK has led to circumstances where Faber cannot pass ​on UK earnings to Sally Rooney for her work,” Faber said in a statement.

“To sell a ⁠writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher.”

Rooney said in a statement: “I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions and I ​am wholly prepared to ​accept the ⁠consequences.”

Palestine Action, which had increasingly targeted Israel-linked defence companies, was banned shortly after a June 2025 break-in at the ​Royal Air Force’s Brize Norton base.

Last year, Palestine Action’s co-founder ​Huda Ammori ⁠challenged the ban and the High Court ruled in her favour in February, before the Court of Appeal overturned that decision in June. The Supreme Court is due ⁠to ​hear an appeal next month.

More than 3,000 people ​have since been arrested for holding signs in support of Palestine Action and its proscription has ​been criticised by civil liberties groups.

The one-time left-wing personality, who shot to fame as a television and radio presenter, faces seven sexual offence charges involving six women. He denies all the alleged offences.

Brand, 51, looked straight ahead as the charges against him were read to the jury.

Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones said the alleged offences took place between 1999 and 2009, a decade when Brand’s career was beginning to flourish.

Some of the women he targeted said no, others did not have the opportunity to react, she said, adding that Brand was “not deterred”.

His desire for sexual contact was “indiscriminate and voracious”, she said.

He used charm and comic talents when he wanted something but would then be “demanding and entitled … childlike in his expectation that his every desire should be met,” Karmy-Jones told the jury of eight men and four women.

“He was ruthless, calculated and manipulative, and the prosecution say — a sexual predator,” she added.

The identities of the women will not be revealed during the trial.

Brand, dressed in a dark suit, black and white striped shirt and long white tie, arrived for the start of the case at London’s Southwark Crown Court in a black Mercedes-Benz van accompanied by his wife Laura.

Karmy-Jones said acquaintances of Brand recalled him bragging that he wanted to “bed 5,000 women in his lifetime”, adding that “you have to tell them what they need to hear”.

This, the prosecutor said, was a clear indication of “how manipulative the defendant could be”.

Brand has in recent years reinvented himself as a conservative and faith-based guru for millions of social media followers.

He has pleaded not guilty to all seven of the charges — three counts of rape, three of sexual assault and one charge of indecent assault.

The trial at London’s Southwark Crown Court should last around six weeks but could stretch into December.

The trial is attracting intense media scrutiny, with numerous British outlets launching dedicated podcasts and US channels reporting from outside the court.

Born to working-class parents in Essex in eastern England, Brand launched a successful stand-up comedy career as a teenager.

He became a household name as a television presenter on MTV, Channel 4 and the BBC, also penning newspaper columns and two autobiographies.

He then made a foray into Hollywood, starring in several hit films, and was in a brief, but high-profile, marriage to US pop star Katy Perry.

Now remarried and living in Florida with his young family, he has gained a new following as an influencer, with six million subscribers on YouTube, 10.1 million on X and 4.9 million on Instagram.

The measure is the strongest reaction yet from Cornell’s leadership to a lawsuit filed by a former undergraduate, Jane Doe, alleging seven men sexually assaulted her during a party.

Over the last several weeks, the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York, and its president, Michael Kotlikoff, have come under heavy criticism from students, faculty and donors over its response to the allegations.

The suspension of parties and social events will apply to Interfraternity Council houses. The council website says Cornell currently has 34 fraternity houses.

“These measures will provide time for a thorough review of fraternity life at Cornell to determine whether and how it can safely continue,” Kotlikoff said in the statement.

The Cornell Interfraternity Council did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Prosecutors reopened the investigation into the alleged gang rape after the lawsuit was filed. New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as an independent special prosecutor in the case, citing the earlier failure to protect the alleged victim.

President Donald Trump repeated on Tuesday his call to take James, his longtime critic and an elected Democrat, off the case.

“The Governor should take James off this case, immediately,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Trump first questioned James’ appointment in early October, but his comments did not prompt any action by officials. The offices of Hochul and the attorney general did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Since the lawsuit against seven fraternity members, the university and others was filed in September, the Cornell administration has faced student protests, a pending no-confidence resolution from faculty, criticism by alumni and a public assembly where students blamed university officials for tolerating what they described as a culture of sexual violence.

None of the men named in the lawsuit have been criminally charged.

“I have spent the past weeks listening to students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and trustees, who have shared their feelings of deep connection and sympathy with Jane Doe, anger and frustration that this could happen at Cornell,” Kotlikoff said.

“Women on our campus continue to question whether they are safe,” he said, adding that additional staff would be hired to support survivors of sexual assault.

Cornell will also work with New York State Police to investigate incidents, he said, and accelerate previous recommendations put forward by a task force on sexual violence.

Thirty-five per cent of undergraduate women reported experiencing non-consensual sexual contact involving force or incapacitation since entering Cornell, according to a university survey conducted in 2025 and published on its website.

“We must meet this moment by acknowledging where we have fallen short and taking meaningful action,” Kotlikoff said.

The agreement to establish the institute’s first campus outside Karachi was signed by Syed Javed Iqbal, the chairman of Napa’s board of governors, and Balochistan Culture Secretary Hamidullah Nasir.

Also present at the signing were Napa board member and former senator Roshan Khursheed Bharucha and Dawood Tareen, the director of the culture department. They were joined by a number of artists, representatives of the media and members of civil society.

Speaking at the ceremony, Iqbal and Bharucha described the partnership as a significant step towards promoting art and culture in Balochistan.

Nasir and Tareen termed the MoU an important step to promote the province’s culture and heritage. They expressed hope that the initiative would help enhance the skills of local artists.