Indian tennis champion Sania Mirza says she and cricketer Shoaib Malik have been divorced “for a few months now”, a day after he announced his marriage to actor Sana Javed on Instagram.

Mirza and Malik were married in April 2010 with wedding ceremonies held in both Pakistan and India. The couple welcomed their first child in 2018.

“Sania has always kept her personal life away from the public eye. However, today the need has arisen for her to share that Shoaib and she have been divorced for a few months now. She wishes Shoaib well for his new journey ahead!” read a statement posted by Mirza’s father Imran.

“At this sensitive period of her life, we would also like to request all fans and well-wishers to refrain from indulging in any speculation and to respect her need for privacy.”

Before this, Mirza never addressed rumours of her divorce. She did, however, post several cryptic messages on Instagram about marriage. She and Malik were both spotted at their son Izhaan’s fifth birthday party in Dubai a few months earlier.

Malik and the Aye Musht-E-Khaak actor announced their marriage on Instagram Saturday morning, to the shock of social media. Javed was previously married to singer Umair Jaswal. Neither party had, at the time of the announcement, publicly confirmed their respective divorces.

Famous Pakistani actor Sana Javed — who is making headlines after her unforeseen marriage with star cricketer Shoaib Malik — made her acting depute in 2012 with a drama named Shehr-e-Zaat.

Later on, she appeared in several plays and won hearts and fame due to her powerful acting and attractive personality.

Sana received recognition after playing a leading role in the blockbuster drama Khaani in 2017. The serial produced under the banner of 7th Sky Entertainment, and spearheaded by Abdullah Kadwani and Asad Qureshi aired on Geo TV. In the serial, she performed a leading role against Feroze Khan.

She received recognition after portraying the titular role in the romantic drama Khaani. She was among the Lux Style Awards 2019 nominees for the Best TV Actress category.

After marrying Shoaib, Sana changed her name in the bio on her Instagram account. It now reads “Sana Shoaib Malik”. 

According to media reports, the actor was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on 25 March 1993. Her zodiac sign is Aries. She went to a top-notch school in Karachi for her primary education, before completing her graduation from the University of Karachi.

In an interview with a daily newspaper, the incredible actor was of the view that she was a “very sensitive person” in real life and always supportive towards her loved ones.

“My family is my weakness and strength, and I love them to bits.”

The actor added that she is extremely passionate about her work and this industry has made me very strong.

“I love shopping," she said on a lighter note.

In October 2020, Sana tied the knot with Sammi Meri Waar singer Umair Jaswal in an intimate ceremony. The couple surprised their fans after they shared pictures from their wedding nuptials.

On their Nikkah, Jaswal wore an off-white shalwar kameez while Sana made a stunning bride in a peach ensemble. However, their marriage could not last long.  

In a surprising turn of events, Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik announced his marriage to actor Sana Javed amid rumours of his separation from Indian tennis player Sania Mirza.

The duo shared two pictures of them decked up in wedding clothes on Instagram, leaving netizens shocked at the revelation. Additionally, Javed swiftly changed her name on Instagram to Sana Shoaib Malik.

Malik and Mirza, the Indian tennis player, were married in April 2010 with wedding ceremonies were held in both Pakistan and India. The couple welcomed their first child in 2018.

Before Mirza, Malik was married to Ayesha Siddiqui. The two divorced in 2010 after eight years of marriage.

Javed, best known for her role in Ruswai, married singer Umair Jaswal in 2020.

Neither party publicly confirmed their separation from their former spouses.

Pakistani celebrity couple Urwa Hocane and Farhan Saeed on Friday welcomed their first born, a baby girl who they named Jahan Aara Saeed.

Urwa, who is a renowned drama and film actor, took to Instagram to announce the little one's birth.

Leading the post with a Quranic verse from Surah Rehman about the blessings of Allah, the star revealed that the "joy, blessing and the most precious gift" of her life has arrived.

She told her fans that the family will call the baby by her shortname "Aara".

"You are the queen of our hearts forever! Thankyou Aara for bringing us unimaginable happiness and gratitude! With your birth it’s a re-birth of us as well, we hope to learn from you and become better and better parents to you everyday."

She also prayed for the baby's success and well being.

The Instagram post included two pictures, one with the new parents holding Aara's little hand and the other with a collage of Urwa and Farhan holding the baby in their arms.

However, they kept the baby's face hidden.

The same was posted from the Sajni singer's official account on Instagram.

The pair announced the pregnancy last year in October.

The celebrities tied the knot in 2016 right after the success of their drama serial Udaari.

In 2020, the couple faced rumours of a rocky marriage, leaving their dedicated fanbase deeply concerned. However, with the support of their families, Urwa and Farhan navigated those rough waters and emerged stronger, rekindling the love that has made them a beloved power couple in Pakistan's entertainment world.

Amidst all the rumors and speculations, Urwa and Farhan chose Eid-ul-Fitr as the perfect occasion to put to rest any doubts about their relationship status. The couple shared heartwarming Eid pictures on their respective Instagram accounts, radiating joy and togetherness.

South African international lawyers frequently appeared before the International Court of Justice in the 1960s. At the time, they were tasked with justifying their apartheid in Namibia. And they did. They argued that apartheid was good for everyone, that it prevented racial conflict and ‘decline’, that different people were at different stages of their development and so required different laws.

Their memorial to the court reads today like a banned subreddit containing “extensive references to the phenotypical characteristics of different tribes, the precise colour of their skin and the shape of women’s breasts” to justify what they called their policy of ‘separate development’.

How amazing that some decades later, black South African lawyers are arguing before the same court that a country that collaborated with their racist government should be held responsible for a genocide.

The applicant is South Africa
While some argue that it is a matter of shame that no Arab or Muslim state lodged the case, leaving the task to South Africa, I maintain that it is exactly this — that a non-Arab, non-Muslim nation and one which has overcome settler colonialism has brought this case — is what makes it so compelling.

Israel was a military ally of South Africa’s apartheid regime under some of the worst years of white rule. It even offered to sell nuclear weapons to the apartheid regime.

Once South Africa became democratic, its new government, the African National Congress and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation were so close their ties were referred to as fraternal. Yasser Arafat was one of the first leaders Mandela met after being released from prison in 1990 and he was one of the first foreign leaders to speak at South Africa’s newly democratic parliament.

The head of South Africa’s legal team, John Dugard, was UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine in the 2000s and notably said: “I’m a South African who lived through apartheid and I have no hesitation in saying that Israel’s crimes are infinitely worse than those committed by the apartheid regime of South Africa.”

There could be no better applicant for these proceedings than this former apartheid and colonised state and one against whom Israeli accusations of libel and anti-Semitism are less likely to stick.

The allegations are genocide
South Africa has alleged that Israel has committed a genocide against the Palestinian people. While most people understand genocide to mean mass killings of civilians, for international lawyers, it is a term of art.

Genocide requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, and religious group. It is possibly the most difficult international crime to prove because it requires the ‘special intent’ to destroy the group. Mass extermination without that special intent is a crime against humanity but it is not genocide. The term genocide was coined after the Second World War by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who wanted a category of crimes to denote the Holocaust where Jews were killed with the specific intent to annihilate them as a group.

There is no numbers requirement for a crime of genocide — either in victims or perpetrators. A lone individual, acting by himself, having killed only one person could have committed genocide, so long as it was done with that special intent. The killing of six million Jews in the Holocaust was as much a genocide as was the killing of 8,000 military-aged Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica.

While genocide is known as the ‘crime of crimes’, I do not believe it is. There are no hierarchies of crimes under international law. A genocide can be as bad as a crime against humanity or a war crime. To argue that genocide is the worst crime would mean that the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities in the killing fields of Cambodia against their own ethnic group — a ‘mere’ crime against humanity — were not as bad as the forcible transfer of Aboriginal children in Australia into white families in an attempt to ‘breed out the black’ — a genocide. While suffering can be categorised, it cannot be ranked.

The reason genocide is being argued before the court is largely jurisdictional. While Israel has ratified the Genocide Convention of 1948, there exists no such treaty that gives the ICJ jurisdiction over crimes against humanity or war crimes. So if it is not genocide, but a crime against humanity or war crimes, the ICJ has no place to act. At this stage, it’s either genocide or bust.

So is it genocide?
Over the two days of hearings, South Africa has alleged that Israel has committed genocide by killing Palestinians, subjecting them to serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. It argues that this has been done by the “sustained bombardment, forced evacuation without adequate shelter in which they continue to be attacked, killed and harmed”, and by “failing to provide or ensure essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian people, which has pushed them to the brink of famine”.

South Africa further argues that Israel has done all of this with genocidal intent. It has produced pages upon pages of evidence of this intent with statements from Israel’s president, prime minister, minister of defence, officials of the Israel Defence Forces, and other government officials.

Israel has meanwhile countered that it is not genocide, that the statements were taken out of context and are about Hamas and not the Palestinian people, and that Israel has done everything it can to spare civilian life and mitigate casualties, something it would not do if it had genocidal intent. “Not every conflict is genocidal” its lead counsel told the Court, arguing as well that Israel has a right to self-defence and that its means and methods of warfare comply with the laws of war.

A lot of people have been asking me what I made of the arguments. South Africa’s advocacy was definitely better, both in style and substance. Israel largely wasted time by expressing its same rhetoric about Hamas (even going so far as to claim that South Africa enjoys close ties with Hamas and could itself be genocidal).

But the ICJ is less like an American or British courtroom where advocacy matters; it places far more emphasis on truth-seeking. When the US didn’t appear before the court in its case against Nicaragua, the ICJ addressed all the arguments that it felt the US might have made to do justice to the case. Here, South Africa has a difficult hill to climb — that of proving Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza with intent.

The request is for an injunction
But South Africa doesn’t have to prove genocide yet. For now, they have asked for an injunction given the risk of irreparable harm and urgency to Palestinians if the court doesn’t act now. South Africa has asked that Israel be ordered to stop military operations, do everything it can to prevent a genocide and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The court issues injunctions only when it is satisfied that the case would be ‘plausible’, in that it might be found that there could be a genocide when the merits are decided.

Given the huge amount of evidence brought to the ICJ by South Africa and its previous precedent, it is unlikely, I think, that the court will decide that there is not at least a plausible risk of genocide and harm to Palestinians. It would be tricky though for it to order that Israel stop its military operations given what that means for Israel’s right to self-defence. I’m expecting the court to sidestep that issue and leave it for the merits but to give a protective order nonetheless.

The ruling may not be enforced
Even if that ruling comes, Israel will probably ignore it. Under Article 94 of the UN Charter, the Security Council can issue a resolution directing a state to comply with the ICJ’s order, but the US will likely veto this. Even still, the ICJ’s ruling would give moral and legal weight and influence state’s actions, in imposing sanctions or boycotting Israel, for failing to comply.

South Africa is the best example of this. When the ICJ ruled that South Africa’s occupation of Namibia was illegal, it served to help end that occupation. Despite the US under Reagan and the UK under Thatcher using their veto to stop sanctions against South Africa at the time, it took decades, but eventually, the apartheid regime was toppled and the occupation ended.

The responsibility is legal and moral
South Africa emphasised to the court that it filed the application to comply with its own legal obligation to prevent a genocide as well as a moral one.

In stark contrast, Germany has announced it will intervene in favour of Israel before the ICJ. Its arms sales have surged to Israel since October 7, while the Israeli army bombs homes, refugee camps, schools and hospitals.

In the words of Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra, “the German authorities risk failing in their responsibility to the rest of the world: never again to become complicit in murderous ethnonationalism”. This is a responsibility South Africa is upholding.

Iqra Kanwal, the elder sister from the popular YouTube channel Sistrology, recently got married to Areeb Pervaiz in a wedding that everyone on social media loved. They had different events, and their families and friends joined them in their happiness.

After their celebrations, Iqra and Areeb went on a special trip to Phuket, Thailand, for their honeymoon. They’ve been sharing pictures on social media, showing their fans the fun times they’re having. Whether they’re discovering the colorful local culture or enjoying the beautiful views of Phuket, the newlyweds look happy in every photo they post.

As Iqra and Areeb walk on the sandy beaches and check out the cool things on the island, it looks like they’re enjoying their honeymoon. They’re wearing comfy and cool clothes, taking pictures that show how happy they are, and you can feel their joy even through the screen. People who like them have been sending lots of happy messages and good wishes.

Phuket, a beautiful place, is where Iqra and Areeb started their married life. They both look really happy in the pictures, laughing and smiling a lot. It shows how much they love each other. Their honeymoon is not just fun for them, but also for all the people who follow them online.