THE national sport continues to suffer. Years of mismanagement have plunged Pakistan hockey into a state of disrepair that has seen not only players go unpaid but the national team unable to fund its participation in international tournaments. Those tournaments do not surpass the FIH Pro League — the competition where the game’s elite feature, a place where Pakistan have long aspired to be. Once the undisputed kings of world hockey, they are now unable to dine with the world’s best. Sporting reasons aside, they do not have the finances to do that. And while the cash-strapped Pakistan Hockey Federation is asking for funding to the tune of Rs350m, the government seems to have lost faith in it. The lack of trust has not come overnight. The Pakistan Sports Board, the national regulatory body for sports, has repeatedly asked the PHF to submit statements of all its bank accounts and to show where previous grants from the PSB were spent. It is a condition for the disbursement of further funding, which the PHF should meet.
Pakistan did not qualify for the Pro League on the field. Instead, they were only extended the invitation by international hockey’s governing body after New Zealand, which won the second-tier FIH Nations Cup after beating Pakistan in the final, withdrew due to the high cost of participation. The PSB and the government are now mulling over the PHF’s demand to ensure Pakistan’s presence at the Pro League. It is a double-edged sword: on one end is the PHF’s chequered history, on the other a chance for the team to play consistently against top-ranked sides. From a purely sporting perspective, the government should support the team — the move could potentially revive Pakistan hockey — but it should make it binding on the PHF to improve its governance and show financial accountability. It should also ensure that the PHF immediately clears the dues of the players who participated in the Nations Cup.
AFTER days of negotiations, UN-brokered efforts for agreement on a new plastics treaty collapsed on Friday. The failure of what was meant to be the most important environmental treaty since the Paris Agreement is sad and terrifying, adversely affecting all people and our planet. At the very least, this dismal outcome should spark fresh conversations about plastic production and pollution, including in Pakistan.
The world is now producing 460 million tons of plastic each year (of which only nine per cent is recycled), and the OECD predicts that plastic use will triple by 2060. Calls to cap plastic production were rejected by oil-producing countries that hope to feed the global hunger for plastics (99pc of which are derived from fossil fuels) and reap profits in a world otherwise turning towards renewables and EVs. Other controversial topics included implementation finance for developing countries and more restrictions on the use of chemicals in plastic production.
Pakistan’s climate minister reportedly called for developed economies to stop treating countries like Pakistan as “junkyards” for plastic waste, demanding more green financing for emerging economies and proposing plastic credits.
Pakistan must remain a strong voice at international fora focused on environmental issues and climate change. On the same day the plastics treaty hit an impasse, more than 220 people were killed in flash flooding in KP and Gilgit-Baltistan, the latest climate change-related tragedy in our extremely climate-vulnerable country. Lest the link between a flash flood and the collapse of the plastics treaty remain unclear: fossil fuel consumption in the production of plastics exacerbates global climate change, and the resulting frequency and intensity of climate-related natural disasters.
Pakistan is among the 10 largest producers of plastic waste.
But the climate minister’s indignation masked the reality of the plastic skeletons in the national closet. Pakistan is among the 10 largest producers of plastic waste, generating 2.6m tons of plastic waste each year. As of 2020, we were using 55 billion single-use plastic bags each year. Pakistan also imports up to 80,000 tons of hazardous waste annually.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Pakistan), 86pc of our plastic waste is mismanaged (think landfill leaching toxins into groundwater, burning plastic sullying urban air, beaches littered with plastic bottles, the Indus rushing macro-plastics into the Arabian Sea). Less than 10pc is recycled.
There is also a social cost. Almost half of the waste dumped in the country’s landfills is meant to be sorted by informal waste pickers, who are poorly compensated, exposed to hazardous materials and who often include women and children. Their plight sits alongside the broader societal challenges linked to widespread plastic pollution, including severe health implications (disrupted hormonal and reproductive systems, lung disease, cancer, etc) and disruptions to food systems.
Despite all this and our robust participation in the talks, Pakistan is unlikely to give up plastics any time soon, especially considering the economics. In 2020, there were more than 11,000 plastic processing and manufacturing companies in the country, contributing 15pc to GDP as well as 15pc of national tax revenues that year. More than 500,000 workers are directly employed in the plastics manufacturing sector. And with national plastic demand growing by 15pc each year, one can assume these numbers are increasing.
Rather than posture in the hope of attracting green finance, Pakistan needs to seriously rethink its relationship with plastic. On paper, we are headed in the right direction — we joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership in 2022 and launched a National Action Roadmap to Reduce Plastic Pollution this year, which commits to reducing mismanaged waste by over 75pc by 2040.
But in the case of plastic pollution, intentions must be judged by actions. For example, repeated efforts to ban single-use plastic bags have faltered due to weak enforce-
ment, a lack of public awareness on the harms of plastic pollution, the fragmentation of plastic policies and legal frameworks at federal and provincial levels, and the paucity of affordable, practical alternatives (admittedly, more recent bans, such as the one in Islamabad, have met with greater success).
Pakistan should go back to basics, ready for a sustainable approach to plastics. To start, we need an approach to waste collection that is consistently applied across the country, including an expansion of collection services and facilities for sorting and treating waste. Then come plans for recycling, disposal, upcycling, zero waste. Our road to less plastic pollution is long, and sadly strewn with PET packaging, plastic bags and bottles.
The writer is a political and integrity risk analyst.
AS Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza intensifies, targeting and assassinating journalists is part of its genocidal campaign. Last week, four Al Jazeera journalists were killed in cold blood, among them Anas al-Sharif, the most prominent face on the global television network who had courageously been reporting on the catastrophic war and famine conditions in Gaza. The journalists were killed in a drone attack on a makeshift media tent outside Al-Shifa hospital. Targeting journalists is a war crime but Israel has acted with impunity and has long shown contempt for international humanitarian law or norms.
The Israeli military has been carrying out deliberate assaults on journalists since its war on Gaza began nearly two years ago. According to the UN, 242 journalists have been killed in that period, which is described as the highest number in any conflict. Israel’s military claimed responsibility for the murder of Anas al-Sharif saying he was a “Hamas terrorist” — a patently false allegation that Al Jazeera vehemently denied. Labelling journalists as militants is a disingenuous tactic Israel has always used. According to the Israeli-Palestinian news outlet ‘+972 magazine’ Israel’s military has a special unit charged with identifying journalists to ‘smear’ as Hamas members and target them.
The killings of journalists sparked global outrage. UN Secretary General António Guterres denounced it and the UN’s Human Rights Office called it a grave breach of international law. Journalists’ bodies and human rights organisations, including Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists all issued strong condemnations of these extrajudicial murders and called for accountability and international action to stop Israel. There have been worldwide protests over the killings.
Clearly, Israel’s intent is to silence voices and prevent media coverage of the atrocities and war crimes it is committing in Gaza as well as the mass starvation it has subjected Palestinians to. Suppressing the truth is a time-old practice of occupying forces, but it is always in vain. Despite Israel’s ban on the international media from reporting from Gaza, the world knows exactly what’s happening there, thanks to brave local journalists who have risked their lives to report the atrocities. Pictures of starving children have been on television screens across the world and video footage of Israeli soldiers firing on desperate aid-seekers have gone viral on social media. This, in fact, is the most documented genocide in history.
Even though Israel faces global isolation, US backing enables it to continue its genocidal war.
Israel has stepped up both its military offensive and its war on truth ahead of its planned takeover of Gaza City leading to the full occupation of Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan for the military capture of Gaza City earlier this month with Israel’s military given the go-ahead to launch an offensive to achieve this objective. This prompted worldwide condemnation with UN officials warning it would lead to “unimaginable suffering” and “another calamity”, which would reverberate across the region. Arab states, Pakistan, the EU and many Western countries denounced the impending move. In an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Aug 10, China, the UK, France, Russia and other members voiced opposition to the plan and called on Israel to reverse its decision. The only exception was the US, which backed Israel.
The shift in global especially Western opinion against Israel is palpable. It is being driven by the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and Israel’s use of starvation as weapon of war. As a BBC correspondent put it, “Starvation appears to be an inflection point for European countries — a moral impetus to drive their divergent diplomacy.” Last week, the foreign ministers of 27 countries, including over 20 European nations, issued a joint statement demanding that Israel allow unhindered aid into Gaza.
More Western nations are moving towards recognition of a Palestinian state. Australia has followed France, Canada and the UK, who announced plans to recognise Palestinian statehood, even though the UK has qualified that by saying it will refrain from doing so if Israel moves towards ending the war. France’s decision is particularly significant as it is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. These announcements are aimed at raising diplomatic pressure on Israel but haven’t been enough to stop it from continuing the war. As of now, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states recognise the state of Palestine.
The US, of course, remains opposed to recognition, saying that would reward Hamas. This echoes Tel Aviv’s stance. The US position on a two-state solution, which it long supported but is now ambivalent on, isolates it from the rest of the international community and bucks the global consensus reflected in several Security Council resolutions. Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador in Israel said in June — and wasn’t contradicted by the administration — that he did not think a sovereign Palestinian state is still a goal of US foreign policy. If this is the case, then it marks a significant shift in American policy under President Donald Trump. Again, it would be in line with Israel’s complete rejection of a Palestinian state and imply backing Netanyahu’s vision of a ‘Greater Israel’, a notion that has recently been condemned by the OIC.
Despite Israel’s growing global isolation, Netanyahu can ignore that as well as violate international law and continue its ethnic cleansing policy because he can count on unwavering US support. Trump’s oft-repeated desire for a Gaza ceasefire rings hollow as he has done nothing to pressure Israel in this direction. Throughout the war, Washington has extended military, diplomatic and financial support to Israel. It has also backed the militarised aid-distribution system Israel set up, which has been rejected by the UN and is widely seen as ‘death traps’; over 1,400 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food at these sites.
All this with no real effort to restrain Netanyahu, has given Israel a licence to do whatever it wants in Gaza. The US has also not dissuaded Tel Aviv from its disastrous plan to take over Gaza City and eventually reoccupy the entire Strip. Washington and the self-proclaimed ‘man of peace’ are fully complicit in the catastrophic situation in Gaza. And the world, for all its condemnations and moral outrage, has been unable to mount real pressure on the US to change course.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.
Allen & Gledhill advised Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (“OCBC”), acting through its Sydney Branch, on the issue of A$1 billion floating rate green notes due 2028 (“Notes”) under its US$30 billion global medium term note programme.
The net proceeds of the Notes will be allocated towards the financing or refinancing of new or existing qualifying assets which meet the eligibility criteria for green bonds under OCBC’s sustainability bond framework.
Advising OCBC was Allen & Gledhill Partner Glenn David Foo.
BEIJING, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) — The central parity rate of the Chinese currency renminbi, or the yuan, strengthened 49 pips to 7.1322 against the U.S. dollar Monday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System.
In China’s spot foreign exchange market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by 2 percent from the central parity rate each trading day.
The central parity rate of the yuan against the U.S. dollar is based on a weighted average of prices offered by market makers before the opening of the interbank market each business day. ■
Madelyn Cline is putting out a word of wisdom as she navigates the dating world.
The actress, 27, was at the Charleston premiere of her new romance film The Map That Leads To You on August 10 when the press asked her for the “best love advice” she’s ever received.
“Best love advice. I dunno. Fall in love, don’t be afraid of it,” said Cline, who’s had several high-profile romances, including with Pete Davidson from September 2023 to 2024.
“Look, historically, I haven’t been, like, the most successful [at love], so don’t take advice from me until I figure it out.”
The Outer Banks star, whose most recent known relationship was with the 31-year-old comedian, kept their relationship private for the most part, except until recently.
“The jokes, they write themselves. And I said it before, and I’ll say it again, that is my only comment,” Cline told Allure for their July cover story. “He has a really cute dog and some really great girlfriends now,” Cline added.
Cline also previously dated her Outer Banks costar Chase Stoke, whom she met in 2019 shortly before filming for the series began. The pair went public with their relationship in 2020 before splitting after less than two years in 2021.
The Map That Leads to You premieres on Prime Video on August 20.
Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Prince and Princess of Wales, are set to relocate with their family to 300-year-old Forest Lodge, a historic and elegant eight-bedroom residence in Windsor Great Park, reported the Daily Mail.
The move, anticipated before the end of 2025, is part of their long-term plan for a “fresh start” after a challenging period that included personal health issues and significant family transitions.
The move has drawn public attention due to its impact on two non-royal families living in nearby cottages. These cottages, previously converted from stables and managed by the Crown Estate, were rented out to private tenants for several years. In the summer of 2025, both families were informed that they would need to relocate. While no formal eviction notices were issued, the surprised tenants were relocated to similar or better accommodations within the estate’s 4,800-acre grounds. According to a source familiar with the situation, the proximity of these cottages to the mansion meant the royals preferred not to have unrelated tenants living so close once they moved in, the report stated.
This measure was primarily taken for reasons of privacy and security, with royal sources indicating that the presence of non-family tenants so close to the new home required careful management.
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Since 2022, the couple has resided at the Adelaide Cottage home, drawn by its family-friendly atmosphere and close proximity to their children’s school. Foresrt Lodge, their new property, only four miles away from their current home, is valued at approximately $21 million and will offer them more space, privacy, and comfort as their “forever home.” The house itself boasts luxurious amenities including a tennis court, wine cellar, pond, and extensive gardens, along with a significant privacy upgrade through new landscaping features.Financially, the Prince and Princess will pay moving rent for Forestt Lodge, with ongoing costs covered privately, reflecting their effort to minimize public expenditure associated with their living arrangements. The move also includes significant renovations and modern updates to the property, although their ethos of a “normal” family life continues—with no live-in staff planned for the residence. Official confirmation of the relocation has come from both Kensington Palace and the Crown Estate.
An Australian court has fined airline giant Qantas A$90m (£43m; $59m) for illegally sacking some 1,700 ground workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Australia’s Transport Workers’ Union said it welcomed the ruling, which it said marked the largest employer penalty in the country’s history.
Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said in the judgement that he wanted the fine to act as a “real deterrence” to other employers.
The BBC has contacted Qantas for comment.
Australia’s biggest airline has faced a years-long legal battle over its decision in 2020 to outsource its ground operations staff, which it said was a necessary financial measure as the aviation industry came to a standstill during the pandemic.
Qantas was ordered by the court to pay A$50m of the penalty directly to the transport workers’ union, which had sued the airline over the layoffs.
The decision marked the “end of a David and Goliath five-year battle” and is a “moment of justice for loyal workers who’d loved their jobs at the airline,” said the transport union in a statement.
The penalty is on top of A$120m of compensation that Qantas had agreed to pay to laid off workers in 2024, after losing multiple appeals in court.
One of the hallmarks of the legal profession is that it has historically been very labour-intensive, with a great deal of time spent on manual tasks like document review, legal research and drafting.
Legal professionals must conduct comprehensive research when building their case.
Sifting through vast volumes of data and documents to find a single relevant clause or case can be an incredibly slow and tedious process.
We a looking at how we can build similar AI tools for other sectors, says IMDA’s Janet Chiew.
The process requires them to spend countless hours reading through lengthy judgments, each containing tens of thousands of words. And there are no shortcuts.
Fortunately, technology can help.
Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), can be used to automate many of the repetitive text-heavy tasks that have traditionally consumed time in the legal profession.
It is with this premise that the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) partnered with the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) to create GPT-Legal, an LLM which makes legal research quicker and more efficient.
The LLM for the legal fraternity debuted at TechLaw.Fest 2024.
IMDA’s Deputy Director (Incubation), Janet Chiew, notes that around two out of every three judgments in Singapore are not summarised, and some of these judgments can span up to 100 pages.
The team behind GPT-Legal trained the model to provide legal summaries that use official legal terminology and follow the standard format in use by the Singapore legal fraternity, which consists of catchwords, facts, and holdings.
IMDA looks to tap the potential of generative AI (GenAI) to benefit Singapore’s text-heavy legal profession.
Speaking to GovInsider, Chiew says that the main objective is to make the legal sector “more efficient”.
Distinct blend of influences
She notes that Singapore’s legal system stands out for its distinctive blend of influences from multiple jurisdictions.
While it is fundamentally rooted in English common law, Singapore’s legal system incorporates elements from other jurisdictions, including the US and India.
“This unique legal landscape presents both opportunities and challenges for legal practitioners and technology developers. For AI models like GPT Legal to be effective, they must be intimately familiar with the specific terminologies, legal principles, and formatting conventions that arise from this complex mix of legal sources,” she adds.
To date, GPT-Legal has been used to generate summaries of over 15,000 court judgments, condensing 8,000-word judgments into concise 800-word summaries.
“These summaries follow the format and structure of ‘headnotes’, which are the official summaries of select judgments authored by Justices’ Law Clerks. The summaries can be found on SAL LawNet,” Chiew adds.
Overcoming hurdles
Chiew notes that a core part of GPT Legal’s vision is to foster trust and confidence among its users.
Talking about the hurdles the team overcame, she notes that data quality and model accuracy go hand-in-hand.
“If the system is trained but uses poor-quality data, users would get poor responses from the system. Gen AI systems are prone to hallucinations, so it is paramount that we figure out ways to mitigate this and assist users in detecting these as well,” she notes.
The challenge of GenAI hallucination was particularly critical in the legal domain, where accuracy is paramount. And the users in SAL need to identify hallucinations before the summaries are rolled out, Chiew adds.
One of the challenges centres around finding high-quality legal data due to the rarity of vetted, comprehensive legal documents.
The model also needs to contend with the risk of “catastrophic forgetting” during fine-tuning, where specialised training might cause the AI to lose previously learned knowledge.
Chiew says the team developed a comprehensive suite of safety features that work with the users.
“Our system shows users exactly where each summary paragraph originates through similarity highlighting. It also flags weakly substantiated paragraphs and potentially hallucinated entities,” she adds.
Most importantly, every summary must achieve a 90 per cent score when “we conduct automated and randomised fact-checking” before being presented to users.
To achieve this level of accuracy, the team invested heavily in Direct Preference Optimisation (DPO) – a technique to align AI with the legal professionals’ needs, Chiew shares.
“Legal professionals helped to ‘mark’ our system responses, and these markings are then used to align the model. This iterative process is crucial for aligning our AI with legal terminology and Singapore’s unique legal context. The support from SAL and the legal community has been amazing,” she adds.
Positive feedback
Chiew notes that there has been good feedback on the usefulness of the model. “We are glad that the summarisation model has managed to improve the productivity for this process,” she adds.
She notes that the team is working to expand the capabilities to include features that would be useful for the legal fraternity, and “they will be publicly shared when ready”.
During an earlier presentation on GPT-Legal at GovInsider’s Festival of Innovation 2025, Chiew mentioned that the focus would be on collaborating with industry partners, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and legal tech firms to develop transformative tools that can uplift job scopes and roles across different legal practice areas.
This includes potential applications in front-office technology, back-end services, and comprehensive support for lawyers in various legal domains.
The development roadmap prioritises continuous improvement of the model’s accuracy, context understanding, and safeguards, says Chiew.
IMDA plans to refine the model’s ability to handle large, complex legal documents while maintaining high standards of semantic accuracy and reducing hallucinations.
Summing up, Chiew says: “Now that we have gained experience creating AI solutions for the legal sector, we are excited to see how we can work with other sectors to build similar specialised AI tools to unlock greater possibilities.”
Adelaide star Izak Rankine is under AFL investigation for allegedly using a homophobic slur during the game against Collingwood on Saturday night.
The AFL confirmed on Monday that its integrity unit is looking into the alleged on-field incident.
“The AFL is aware of an alleged matter with the Integrity Unit making enquiries,” a league spokesperson said.
Adelaide have confirmed that one of their players is under investigation.
“We are aware of an alleged matter involving one of our players in Saturday night’s game and we are in discussions with the AFL,” a club spokesperson said on Monday.
The Crows defeated the Magpies to lock in a first finals campaign since 2017 and tighten their grip on top spot with one round remaining in the home and away season.
Rankine has been critical to the Crows’ rise into premiership contention after the club finished 15th last year.
The 25-year-old has averaged 20.5 disposals and booted 31 goals this season as his creative spark is a key to the Crows’ success.
Rankine is yet to play in a finals series after spending four seasons with Gold Coast before joining a rebuilding Adelaide at the end of 2022.
But the resurgent Crows’ premiership hopes could face a huge blow as the AFL integrity unit looks into the alleged incident.
The AFL has handed out suspensions ranging from three to five matches in the past two seasons to players found guilty of conduct unbecoming.
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West Coast’s Jack Graham was last month suspended for four matches for directing a “highly offensive” homophobic slur toward a GWS Giants opponent, after the Eagles player self-reported the incident.
Sydney player Riak Andrew was suspended for five matches this season for a homophobic slur used in a VFL match against North Melbourne.
Three AFL players were suspended for using homophobic slurs last year.
Gold Coast defender Wil Powell (five matches) and Port Adelaide forward Jeremy Finlayson (three) were banned over incidents during AFL matches.
St Kilda’s Lance Collard was handed a six-match penalty for “unprompted and highly offensive” slurs directed towards two Williamstown players in a VFL game.
