A 10-year-old chess prodigy from north-west London has become the youngest person to earn the woman international master title.
Bodhana Sivanandan, from Harrow, also became the youngest female player to beat a chess grandmaster at the 2025 British Chess Championship earlier this month.
In 2024 Bodhana was thought to have become the youngest person ever to represent England internationally in any sport when she was selected for England Women’s Team at the Chess Olympiad in Hungary.
Her father Siva previously told the BBC he had no idea where his daughter got her talent from as neither he or his wife, both engineering graduates, are any good at chess.
The International Chess Federation said on its social media account on X that Bodhana “pulled off the win against 60-year-old Grandmaster Peter Wells in the last round of the 2025 British Chess Championships in Liverpool”.
The federation added: “Sivanandan’s victory at 10 years, five months and three days beats the 2019 record held by American Carissa Yip (10 years, 11 months and 20 days).”
Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain and the rank is held for life.
Bodhana’s new title – woman international master – is the second highest-ranking title given exclusively to women, second only to woman grandmaster.
Bodhana first took up chess during the Covid-19 pandemic.
She told the BBC last year: “When one of my dad’s friends was going back to India, he gave us a few bags [of possessions].
“There was a chess board, and I was interested in the pieces so I started playing.”
She says chess makes her feel “good” and helps her with “lots of other things like maths, how to calculate”.
A study published in Nature Biotechnology reveals a powerful new use for artificial intelligence: designing small, drug-like molecules that can stick to and break down harmful proteins in the body – even when scientists don’t know what those proteins look like. The breakthrough could lead to new treatments for diseases that have long resisted traditional drug development, including certain cancers, brain disorders, and viral infections.
The study was published on August 13, 2025 by a multi-institutional team of researchers from McMaster University, Duke University, and Cornell University. The AI tool, called PepMLM, is based on an algorithm originally built to understand human language and used in chatbots, but was trained to understand the “language” of proteins.
In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to researchers at Google DeepMind for developing AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts the 3D structure of proteins – a major advance in drug discovery. But many disease-related proteins, including those involved in cancer and neurodegeneration, don’t have stable structures. That’s where PepMLM takes a different approach – instead of relying on structure, the tool uses only the protein’s sequence to design peptide drugs. This makes it possible to target a much broader range of disease proteins, including those that were previously considered “undruggable.”
“Most drug design tools rely on knowing the 3D structure of a protein, but many of the most important disease targets don’t have stable structures,” said Pranam Chatterjee, senior author of the study who led the work at Duke and is now a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. “PepMLM changes the game by designing peptide binders using only the protein’s amino acid sequence,” said Chatterjee.
In lab tests, the team showed that PepMLM could design peptides – short chains of amino acids – that stick to disease-related proteins and, in some cases, help destroy them. These included proteins involved in cancer, reproductive disorders, Huntington’s disease, and even live viral infections.
This is one of the first tools that can design these kinds of molecules directly from the protein’s sequence. It opens the door to faster, more effective ways to develop new treatments.”
Pranam Chatterjee, senior author of the study
The study included major contributions from McMaster University, where Christina Peng, a PhD student in the Truant Lab, led the Huntington’s disease experiments.
“It’s exciting to see how these AI-designed peptides can actually work inside cells to break down toxic proteins,” said Peng. “This could be a powerful new approach for diseases like Huntington’s, where traditional drugs haven’t been effective.”
Other parts of the study were carried out at Cornell, where Matthew DeLisa and Hector Aguilar’s labs constructed and tested the peptides on viral proteins, and at Duke, where Chatterjee’s team developed the AI model and ran early validation experiments. The study also included contributions from Ray Truant at McMaster.
“This work shows we can now bind any protein to any other protein,” said Truant, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences. “We can degrade harmful proteins, stabilize beneficial ones, or control how proteins are modified – depending on the therapeutic goal.”
The team is already working on next-generation AI algorithms, like PepTune and MOG-DFM, to improve how these peptides behave in the body – making them more stable, more targeted, and easier to deliver.
“Our ultimate goal is a general-purpose, programmable peptide therapeutic platform – one that starts with a sequence and ends with a real-world drug,” said Chatterjee.
The research was supported by the CHDI Foundation, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, The Hartwell Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Krembil Foundation of Toronto, among others. Chatterjee and first author Tianlai Chen are co-inventors on U.S. patent applications related to PepMLM. Chatterjee and co-author DeLisa have financial interests in UbiquiTx, Inc., a biotech company developing programmable protein-based therapies.
Source:
Journal reference:
Chen, L.T., et al. (2025) Target sequence-conditioned design of peptide binders using masked language modeling. Nature Biotechnology. doi.org/10.1038/s41587-025-02761-2.
As far as television show relationships go, “Sex and the City” was the one I didn’t see coming.
It didn’t sweep me off my feet like the “Grey’s Anatomy” pilot did. It didn’t give me five years of bliss before slowly losing its spark like “Supernatural.” It was, in many ways, the friend I slowly fell for.
The show debuted in 1998, when I was too young to be watching it and my older sister was way too cool to care. I was a kid, so obviously didn’t see myself in any of the women at the time, but I appreciated being privy to the adult conversations. Did they all talk and think like this? Weird!
Growing up along the border in Texas, Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha were not women I knew in real life and not women I ever imagined myself being. But even as a preteen, I knew they were fabulous, funny and a good time. I didn’t need them to be more than that — until I did.
Back in 2023, I decided to take on my third rewatch of the original series ahead of the second season of spinoff series “And Just Like That,” which this week will air its finale and possibly mark the conclusion of the universe (but nothing ever really ends these days, does it?). I hadn’t seen the show from the beginning since my early 20s, when I was sexless in the city, having moved to New York with goals, ambitions and living up to the nickname bestowed upon me by my sisters after years of prudishness – Sister Mary Clarence.
This time, I was one month postpartum and having a hard time. Because the elusive perfect latch was not part of my motherhood story, I was exclusively pumping and needed to pump every 2-3 hours around the clock for a baby that needed to eat every 3-4 hours. Do the math. I was exhausted and very much in need of a laugh not caused by sleep-deprived mania.
So at night, I’d dull the sound of my whooshing breast pump with a blanket as I sat across from my sleeping son and pop my earbuds in to watch “the girls,” as they became known in my head. By the time I got to Season 4, I was crying with Miranda as she struggled to adapt to motherhood, understanding deeply when she confided in Carrie that her fear was losing the connections that she valued the most — those with her friends.
Two seasons later, when Charlotte had her miscarriage, I was thrown again. Just the year before, that sad lump on the couch had been me, and I did not recover in a day or with the help of an E! “True Hollywood Story” about Elizabeth Taylor. I cried for Charlotte because I knew her heartache, and I was grateful to know I got through it, with a whooshing breast pump to prove it.
Watching the show in my 20s had landed differently than my initial watch because by then, I knew what it meant to be lonely, to be broke because you love shoes, to feel broken, to be a good friend and be a bad one.
Watching the original show and spin-off in my 30s has been a mixed bag. I have more empathy for their younger selves, more judgement for the older ones who I feel should know better by now and endless amusement that I talk about fictional characters like they’re real people I’ve known for decades.
You may not have loved every minute of on-screen or off-screen drama in the “Sex and the City” universe, but — like real life, where the totality of our stories never hinge on one relationship, one breakup, one decision, one mistake, one triumph — a world rich enough to resonate across decades of your existence is something to be celebrated.
At its best, the show has been perspective wrapped in a Tiffany blue box, if you will. Because it has been the reminder that if you survive hard things — like blessings disguised as broken hearts or broken hearts disguised as the end of the world — long enough to have hindsight, that’s a gift that never goes out of style.
It’s time to admit that “Sex and the City” was never a fling. It was love.
Like the rest of the grid, Cian Shields has headed off on a much-needed summer break after a very busy opening 10 rounds of the 2025 season.
But before the AIX Racing driver jetted off on his holidays, we caught up with him and asked him some Would You Rather questions.
WOULD YOU RATHER BE A FAMOUS SINGER OR A FAMOUS ACTOR?
“A singer. I quite like the idea of going on a world tour, I think that would a quite cool and you don’t get to do that when you’re an actor.”
Life lessons and a nod to home: Joshua Duerksen on his helmet design
WIN YOUR HOME RACE ONCE OR MONACO GRAND PRIX THREE TIMES?
“I have a home race, so I suppose Monaco three times. But even if there was a race in Scotland, it would still be Monaco three times. “
WIN THE INDY 500 OR THE 24 HOURS OF LE MANS?
“Indy 500. I think I’d be more interested in that than sportscars, plus it’s a solo job, so maybe it’s a little bit more special.”
WIN FROM POLE OR WIN FROM LAST ON THE GRID?
“Last. Hundred percent. Makes it more fun.”
Shields would prefer to win from last than to win from pole
DRIVE IN A PERMANENT CIRCUIT OR A STREET TRACK?
“A permanent circuit. I really like Spa and Silverstone.”
KARAOKE OR DANCE OFF?
“Preferably none, but karaoke probably.”
WOULD YOU RATHER BE FRONT ROW AT FASHION WEEK OR AT THE OSCARS?
“Not really interested in either one of them but probably the Oscars. Not really sure why, but I will go with the Oscars.”
Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral and Thruxton: John Bennett’s Hometown Tour
WOULD YOU RATHER WIN THE TITLE WITH NO WINS OR WIN MANY RACES BUT NOT WIN THE TITLE?
“I’d say with the title without any wins. Race wins are special, but I don’t think anything would be as good as winning the title.”
TOO HOT OR TOO COLD?
“Too cold. It’s quite obvious why.”
BE AN ASTRONAUT OR A ROCKSTAR?
“A rockstar. I wouldn’t want to go to space.”
Shields is a big fan of both the Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps circuits
FLY TO SPACE AND DISCOVER A NEW PLANET, OR GO IN A SUBMARINE AND DISCOVER A NEW UNDERWATER KINGDOM?
“Go in the submarine. I’m not interested in space or the sea to be honest, but an underwater kingdom would be quite cool.”
EAT WITH A SPOON OR A FORK FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
“Spoon. You can eat anything with a spoon.”
COMMUNICATE TELEPATHICALLY OR KNOW EVERY SINGLE LANGUAGE ON THE PLANET?
“Speak every language in the world for sure. I only speak English, but I can order something to eat or ask for a table in most languages. That’s all I’ve had to do.”
READ MORE: Would You Rather with Dino Beganovic
DRIVE WITH WET TYRES IN THE DRY OR DRY TYRES IN THE WET?
By integrating a lightweight dilated contextual adapter (DCon-Adapter) and a weight decomposition matrix (WDM), the model learns efficiently from limited samples, achieving 93.53% accuracy in controlled tests and outperforming existing approaches in real-world settings.
Plant disease recognition technologies have advanced rapidly thanks to deep learning and large annotated datasets, but agricultural applications face unique hurdles. Data collection in the field is expensive and time-consuming, and some diseases are so rare that acquiring sufficient samples is nearly impossible. Few-shot learning offers a solution, enabling models to learn from just a few labeled examples per class. Yet, conventional methods often require pretraining on large, domain-specific datasets—a resource rarely available in agriculture. Foundation models, such as CLIP and DINO, have shown strong performance in zero- and few-shot learning, but their generalization to agricultural imagery is limited by domain differences and class imbalances.
A study (DOI: 10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100024) published in Plant Phenomics on 28 February 2025 by Ruifang Zhai ‘s team, Huazhong Agricultural University, improves plant disease recognition accuracy and generalization in data-limited scenarios, offering a practical solution for real-world agricultural diagnostics.
The researchers implemented PlantCaFo, a few-shot plant disease recognition model, by leveraging pretrained backbone networks from foundation models—CLIP (ResNet-50 image encoder and Transformer text encoder), DINO (ResNet-50), and DINO2 (distilled ViT-S/14). Training was conducted with varying sample sizes (1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 shots) using consistent random seeds. Only the cache model, dilated contextual adapter (DCon-Adapter), and weight decomposition matrix (WDM) were trainable, optimizing efficiency. PlantCaFo and its enhanced variant PlantCaFo* (with Mixup and CutMix augmentations) were trained for 40 epochs using AdamW, with evaluation on fixed-size test sets. Experiments on the PlantVillage dataset revealed that while Tip-Adapter-F performed well in ultra-low-shot settings (2–4 shots), PlantCaFo and PlantCaFo* surpassed it in higher-shot scenarios, outperforming CaFo-Base by up to 4.60% and achieving consistent gains on the more challenging Cassava dataset. Confusion matrices confirmed high classification accuracy and minimal misclassifications. Although runtime on PlantVillage doubled relative to CaFo-Base due to larger data handling, accuracy gains of up to 7.74% justified the trade-off. Generalization tests on an out-of-distribution dataset (PDL) showed strong performance on split1 (single-species diseases) but reduced accuracy on split2 (multi-species diseases with complex backgrounds), indicating domain shift challenges. Ablation studies demonstrated that the DCon-Adapter contributed more to performance than the WDM, with their combination yielding further gains, particularly when coupled with data augmentation. Prompt-based experiments confirmed PlantCaFo’s superior text–image understanding even with simple templates. Visualizations using Smooth Grad CAM++ revealed that, compared to CaFo-Base, PlantCaFo more effectively focused on disease-relevant regions while filtering irrelevant features, albeit with slightly less precise localization due to its broader generalization across species. These results highlight PlantCaFo’s capacity to balance accuracy, efficiency, and adaptability for diverse plant disease identification tasks under data-scarce conditions.
PlantCaFo’s ability to accurately recognize plant diseases from minimal data could transform agricultural diagnostics, particularly in resource-limited settings. Farmers, agronomists, and plant health agencies could rapidly deploy AI-based disease detection tools without the prohibitive costs of collecting large training datasets. This efficiency makes the technology suitable for mobile apps, drone-based monitoring systems, and early-warning platforms that help curb disease spread and reduce crop losses.
##
References
DOI
10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100024
Original Source URL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100024
Funding information
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFF1000100).
About Plant Phenomics
Science Partner Journal Plant Phenomics is an online-only Open Access journal published in affiliation with the State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics & Germplasm Enhancement, Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) and distributed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Like all partners participating in the Science Partner Journal program, Plant Phenomics is editorially independent from the Science family of journals. Editorial decisions and scientific activities pursued by the journal’s Editorial Board are made independently, based on scientific merit and adhering to the highest standards for accurate and ethical promotion of science. These decisions and activities are in no way influenced by the financial support of NAU, NAU administration, or any other institutions and sponsors. The Editorial Board is solely responsible for all content published in the journal. To learn more about the Science Partner Journal program, visit the SPJ program homepage.
/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here.
FILE-Reba McEntire performs during the Super Bowl LVIII Pregame at Allegiant Stadium on February 11, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Roc Nation)
Reba McEntire shared an emotional message on social media as she remembers her stepson, Brandon Blackstock, who died last week after battling melanoma.
McEntire posted a tribute for Blackstock on Instagram Tuesday with a caption and photos of herself with Blackstock.
RELATED: Who was Brandon Blackstock: A look back on the life of Kelly Clarkson’s ex-husband
People reported that the 70-year-old entertainer was married to Narvel Blackstock, Brandon’s father, from 1989 to 2015 and was identified as Brandon’s stepmother in his obituary.
Reba McEntire social media post about Blackstock
What they’re saying:
In an Instagram post from Reba McEntire’sofficial account, the country superstar wrote, “Last week, my stepson/oldest son Brandon Blackstock went home to be with God. His struggle is over and he is in eternal peace in God’s presence,” McEntire wrote. “There is no one else like him, and I’m thankful for the time we had together. His legacy and laughter will be carried on through his family. Rest in peace cowboy. Happy trails to you till we meet again.”
Brandon Blackstock obituary
The other side:
In Brandon Blackstock’s obituary, Brittney Marie Jones is identified as his “beautiful and loving partner in life and business.”
Blackstock’s obituary also states that he and Jones “started building a life, building companies, and working tirelessly to create Headwaters Livestock Auction and what will live on as his legacy, The Valley View Rodeo in Bozeman, Montana.”
RELATED: Kelly Clarkson’s ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock dies at 48
Jones worked as pop star Kelly Clarkson’s production assistant in Nashville from 2016 to 2018, People reported, citing Jones’ LinkedIn page. Blackstock was in a relationship with Jones when he died on Aug. 7.
Jones moved into an executive management assistant role for Blackstock in 2018, but still “assistant managed day to day artist schedule for Kelly Clarkson,” People reported, referencing her profile.
In June 2020, the same month Clarkson filed for divorce, Jones became an executive assistant for V Bar B Cattle Co., a Montana ranch owned by Blackstock.
Who was Brandon Blackstock?
The backstory:
Brandon Blackstock was a talent manager working for Starstruck Entertainment, the agency owned by his father Narvel Blackstock. The company also represents Blake Shelton, Carly Pearce, and Emily Ann Roberts.
Narvel Blackstock represented singer Kelly Clarkson beginning in 2007 until his son took over as Clarkson’s manager in 2017.
People reported that Blackstock had two children with Clarkson and two other children from a previous marriage. He also became a grandfather in 2022 when his oldest child, Savannah, had her first son.
The Source: Information for this story was provided by previous LIVENOW from FOX reporting, an Instagram post by Reba McEntire, and People. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.
Global rating agency Moody’s on Wednesday upgraded Pakistan’s credit rating by one notch to Caa1 from Caa2, citing Islamabad’s improving external position, and changed its outlook from positive to stable.
Moody’s Ratings is a credit rating system that evaluates the creditworthiness of borrowers, such as governments, corporations, or financial instruments. According to its website, the agency uses letter grades (Aaa, Aa, A, Baa, etc) to indicate the likelihood of timely repayment, with Aaa being the highest quality and C the lowest. These ratings help investors assess risk before lending or investing.
Within this scale, Caa1, Caa2, and Caa3 all fall into the “Caa” category, signalling very high credit risk and poor standing. Caa1 is the highest within this group (slightly less risky), Caa2 is one notch lower, and Caa3 is the last, meaning the greatest vulnerability to default among the three.
“Moody’s Ratings (Moody’s) has today upgraded the Government of Pakistan’s local and foreign currency issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings to Caa1 from Caa2,” the international rating agency — one of the top three global rating firms — said in its statement today.
It cited Islamabad’s improving external position and changed the outlook to Pakistan’s rating to “stable” from positive.
Moody’s rating outlooks fall into four categories: positive, negative, stable and developing. A stable outlook indicates a low likelihood of a rating change over the medium term, while the other three categories indicate a “higher likelihood” of a rating change.
“We have also upgraded the rating for the senior unsecured [medium-term note] programme to (P)Caa1 from (P)Caa2,” it said.
This table shows the rankings from highest to lowest of Moody’s long-term and short-term categories. — Moody’s
“The upgrade to Caa1 reflects Pakistan’s improving external position, supported by its progress in reform implementation under the [International Monetary Fund’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme,” Moody’s highlighted.
“The Caa1 rating also incorporates the country’s weak governance and high political uncertainty,” the agency noted.
“Foreign exchange reserves are likely to continue to improve, although Pakistan will remain dependent on timely financing from official partners,” it forecasted.
Moody’s went on to highlight that the “sovereign’s fiscal position is also strengthening from very weak levels, supported by an expanding tax base”. “Its debt affordability has improved, but remains one of the weakest among rated sovereigns,” it noted.
Expanding upon the “stable” outlook, the agency said it reflected “balanced risks to Pakistan’s credit profile”.
“On the upside, improvements in the debt service burden and external profile could be more rapid than we currently expect. On the downside, there remains risks of delays in reform implementation required to secure timely official financing, which would in turn weaken Pakistan’s external position again,” it noted.
“The upgrade to Caa1 from Caa2 rating also applies to the backed foreign currency senior unsecured ratings for the Pakistan Global Sukuk Programme Co Ltd,” Moody’s said, adding that it also changed the outlook for the Sukuk programme to stable from positive.
“We have also raised Pakistan’s local and foreign currency country ceilings to B2 and Caa1 from B3 and Caa2, respectively,” the agency added.
It noted that the two-notch gap between the local currency ceiling and sovereign rating was “driven by the government’s relatively large footprint in the economy, weak institutions, and high political and external vulnerability risk”.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed satisfaction over the rating upgrade and appreciated his economic team’s efforts, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
The premier also welcomed the Moody’s “upgraded rating about improvement in the economic outlook for Pakistan from positive to stable”, the report quoted a press release from the PM Office as saying.
PM Shehbaz reiterated that the government was committed to further improving the rating as it was reflective of the economic policies in the right direction.
Hailing the development, Adviser to Finance Minister Khurram Schehzad noted: “While challenges remain, this recognition reaffirms that Pakistan is on a clear path toward greater macroeconomic stability and resilience.
“With Moody’s upgrade, all the three top global rating agencies have now upgraded Pakistan’s ratings with stable outlook,” he pointed out, referring to Fitch and S&P Global Ratings.
External position continues to strengthen, although still fragile
“Pakistan’s external position has continued to strengthen over the past year,” Moody’s said, adding it expected further gradual improvements as progress in reform implementation under the IMF programme supports financing from bilateral and multilateral partners.
“In turn, this contributes to continued increases in the sovereign’s foreign exchange reserves, albeit from still fragile levels,” it noted.
“We expect Pakistan to fully meet its external debt obligations for the next few years, contingent on steady progress on reform implementation and timely completion of IMF reviews.”
“Nonetheless, Pakistan’s external position remains fragile,” Moody’s cautioned.
“Its foreign exchange reserves remain well below what is required to meet its external debt obligations, underscoring the importance of steady progress with the IMF programme to continually unlock financing,” it explained, estimating that Pakistan’s external financing needs were about $24-25bn in FY2026, and similar amounts again in FY2027.
Detailing its rationale for the rating upgrade, Moody’s noted that Pakistan fully met its external debt obligations and added to its foreign exchange reserves in FY2025.
“Reserves rose to $14.3 billion as of 25 July 2025, equivalent to about ten weeks of imports,” it said, comparing them to $9.4bn at the time of the last rating update in August 2024.
The agency also pointed out Pakistan’s successful completion of the IMF programme’s first review, unlocking a $1bn disbursement in May 2025, and a $1bn commercial loan in June 2025 by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Outlining its rationale for the stable outlook rank, Moody’s observed that it reflected “balanced risks to Pakistan’s credit profile”.
On the upside, it said, a building track record of reforms and revenue-raising measures could unlock more financing, which in turn would further boost foreign exchange reserves and the external position.
“On the downside, there remains risks of slippage in reform implementation or results, leading to delays in or withdrawing of financing support from official partners,” it warned, saying it could lead to renewed material deterioration in the sovereign’s external position.
“The current government formed after the February 2024 elections faces a significant challenge to continually implement revenue-raising measures without triggering social tensions,” the agency underscored.
Fiscal position improving, but debt affordability remains weak
Pakistan’s fiscal position has improved from very weak levels, reflecting progress in implementing revenue-raising measures, Moody’s observed.
Citing narrowing budget deficits and widening primary surpluses, the rating agency said the government debt affordability was “also improving, although it remains one of the weakest among our rated sovereigns”.
Noting strengthened revenue collection, it said: “We expect the government to continue enhancing revenue administration and compliance, alongside the introduction of new tax measures.”
Noting new taxes introduced on solar panels and e-commerce businesses in the recent budget, Moody’s estimated tax revenues to pick up by another 0.5 percentage points of GDP in FY2026. “However, a decline in SBP dividends will lead to an overall narrowing of government revenue to about 15-15.5 per cent of GDP,” it added.
“We expect government expenditure to remain contained, even as budgeted defence spending has increased,” the agency stated, noting reduced subsidies to the power sector and debt servicing costs.
“Overall, we expect the fiscal deficit to narrow further to 4.5-5pc of GDP in FY2026 (FY2025: 5.4pc),” the statement added.
Environmental, social and governance scores’ impact on rating
Moody’s also provided its assessment of Pakistan’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) credit impact scores (CISs), which communicate the impact of ESG considerations on the rating of an issuer or transaction.
Pakistan has a ‘CIS-5’ credit impact score, which means ESG considerations have a “pronounced impact on the current rating, which is lower than it would have been if ESG risks did not exist”.
Pakistan’s CIS-5 score “reflects its very high exposure to social and environmental risks, as well as its weak governance profile”, Moody’s statement said.
A clarification of what Moody’s ESG credit impact scores mean and what they do not. — ‘ESG Scores Explained’ presentation by Moody’s
It then stated the country’s issuer profile scores (IPS) for the ESG categories, which are expressed on a scale of 1-5 points.
“Pakistan’s E-5 issuer profile score for environmental risk reflects the country’s vulnerability to climate change and the limited supply of clean, fresh and safe water,” the agency pointed out.
“Pakistan has an S-5 issuer profile score for social risk. Very low incomes as well as limited access to quality healthcare, basic services, housing and education, especially in rural areas, together with safety concerns, are important social issues,” it added.
“Pakistan has a G-4 issuer profile score for governance risk. International surveys of various indicators of governance, while showing some early signs of improvement, continue to point to weak rule of law and control of corruption, as well as limited government effectiveness.”
How Moody’s ESG issuer profile scores contribute to the credit impact score. — ‘ESG Scores Explained’ presentation by Moody’s
Previous ratings
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb already urged Moody’s in July to improve Pakistan’s current Caa2 credit rating during a virtual engagement in July.
Speaking at an event in Islamabad earlier today, Aurangzeb pointed out that Fitch and S&P Global Ratings had already upgraded the country’s credit ratings this year and said he was hopeful of “the third agency” — an apparent reference to Moody’s — doing the same soon.
Pakistan has been postponing the launch of international bonds since July 2021 due to challenging macroeconomic conditions and resultant poor credit rating, and relying mostly on time deposits from friendly nations to meet external liabilities and stay afloat.
The agency had last upgraded Pakistan’s local and foreign currency issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings to Caa2 from Caa3 on Aug 28, 2024. It had also changed its outlook to positive from stable for improving macroeconomic conditions.
In late February 2024 — shortly after the general elections — Moody’s had retained Pakistan’s long-term credit rating at Caa3, noting that “political risks are high, following a highly controversial general election”.
