Author: i2wtc

A travelers check flight information at LAX as the shutdown passes the one-month mark, leaving essential workers unpaid in Los Angeles, California, on November 5, 2025. Grace Hie Yoon | Anadolu | Getty ImagesU.S. airlines are predicting another record Thanksgiving holiday travel period and are upbeat now that the travel-snarling government shutdown has ended.Airlines will carry more than 31 million people between Friday, Nov. 21, and Monday, Dec. 1, Airlines for America, a lobbying group representing the largest U.S. carriers, predicted Thursday. The busiest days are expected to be the Sunday after Thanksgiving, with about 3.4 million people flying, followed…

PUBLISHED November 23, 2025 The recent suicide attack in Islamabad—the first of its kind in over a decade—has once again thrust Pakistan’s capital into the spotlight of global security concerns. With a bomber detonating near the District Judicial Complex, killing at least a dozen and injuring dozens more, many analysts have rushed to interpret this as a “return” of suicide terrorism to Pakistan’s urban centres. Yet history and context urge caution before drawing such conclusions. Suicide terrorism, as a strategic operational choice, thrives not as a single dramatic act but as a sustained campaign—an environment that Pakistan’s current security architecture,…

Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan President Donald Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a “wish list” of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible…

PUBLISHED November 23, 2025 From the moment Sanae Takaichi stood in parliament and declared that a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan could be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, the tectonic plates of East Asian security shifted. Her words this November did more than stir a diplomatic tempest: they signalled a decisive step away from Japan’s longstanding post-war pacifism and into a far more volatile era of militarised logic. The phrase “survival-threatening situation” refers to the controversial 2015 security legislation under Shinzo Abe that permitted the Japan Self‑Defense Forces (JSDF) to act when Japan’s survival was directly endangered—even if Japan itself…

PUBLISHED November 23, 2025 For poets and listeners, the voice is not just sound; it marks the shift from silence to meaning. Writing can preserve words, but the voice brings them alive in the moment. When poetry moves from the page into the air, it turns into something more than language—it becomes performance, resonance, and revelation. The real force of poetry lies right at this crossing of sound and sense. The Indo-Muslim tradition recognised this duality. Urdu, Persian, and Arabic poetry were first recited, then written. In Sufi gatherings, majalis, markets, and courts, poetry was shared orally. The mushāʿira—Urdu’s poetic…

PUBLISHED November 23, 2025 For decades, winter in Pakistan has been marked by the glitter of weddings in grand banquet halls, outdoor marquees, and a blur of mehndis and baraats filling chilly December evenings. But the traditional “shaadi season,” once synonymous with the cold weather at year end, is changing fast. Event planners, designers, and venue owners across major cities say Pakistan’s wedding calendar is shifting earlier, with October and November now rivalling December and January as peak months. What began as an occasional adjustment has become a widespread trend, reshaping one of the country’s most cherished cultural rhythms. Families…

China State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi speaks during the United Nations Security Council meeting at the United Nations Headquarters to discuss the conflict in Ukraine on September 22, 2022 in New York City.Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesChina’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was “shocking” for Japan’s leader to openly send a wrong signal concerning Taiwan, according to an official statement on Sunday, the latest remarks in a row that has shaken relations for more than two weeks.Wang, the most senior Chinese official to have commented publicly on the issue, said…

PUBLISHED November 23, 2025 KARACHI: Pakistan enters each new economic year with the same uneasy mix of hope and exhaustion. Inflation continues to unsettle households, foreign reserves rise and fall without warning, and policymakers describe recovery in terms that feel more like survival than growth. In offices across Karachi and Lahore, young engineers look for jobs that are not always there, while factories in Faisalabad run below capacity. The country is still trying to find its footing after years of volatility, yet trying just as hard not to fall behind in a world moving at a faster digital pace. On…

PUBLISHED November 23, 2025 KARACHI: Triple the climate finance for developing countries by 2035 — that is the marquee promise that took shape at COP30 in Belém, the gateway to the Amazon. The pledge might sound like progress, even as it lands in a world exhausted by promises and desperate for enforceable cuts to emissions. But the reality is that, this year, even a show of global unity seemed like a distant dream. The United States, once central to climate negotiations, stayed away. With Donald Trump back in the White House, the summit’s headline finance plan risks becoming less a…

ISLAMABAD: Despite facing mounting pressure from within their own institution, a group of Islamabad High Court (IHC) judges continues to adopt an assertive and uncompromising strategy in their struggle for judicial independence. With the passage of the 27th Constitutional Amendment, the threat of their transfer to other high courts looms large. Yet four IHC judges — Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Justice Ejaz Ishaq Khan, Justice Saman Rafat Imtiaz, and Justice Babar Sattar — remain undeterred. In September, the five IHC judges themselves came the Supreme Court to challenge several administrative orders of CJ Dogar. They also came in courtroom to…