Author: i2wtc

PUBLISHED June 22, 2025 KARACHI: Not long ago, I stumbled upon an old clip of George W Bush hosting Vladimir Putin at his Texas ranch. Bush, in his usual casual swagger, spoke in awkward metaphors, grinned too often, and seemed unable to put together a sentence without either fumbling or reaching for something vaguely Texan. “I looked into his soul,” he said of Putin, almost as if he were describing a horse instead of the president of a former Cold War rival. The moment felt surreal, borderline comical. But it triggered a question I haven’t been able to shake since.…

Maxar Technologies, a U.S. defense contractor, released satellite imagery on Sunday showing activity at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility prior to U.S. air strikes.The images of the secretive plant, which were collected on Thursday and Friday, depict truck and vehicle activity near to the entrance of the underground military complex.Located 300 feet under a mountain and reinforced by layers of concrete, Iran’s fortress-like Fordo facility is situated to the south of Iran’s capital of Tehran. It is the country’s most hardened and advanced nuclear site.Alongside nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan, Fordo was the target of U.S. air strikes on Saturday.…

PUBLISHED June 22, 2025 KARACHI: It begins in the dead of night – ICE agents raiding factories, restaurants and farms, while families sleep unaware as the state flexes its full disciplinary muscle, reviving the ghosts of America’s exclusionary past with a vengeance that is unmistakably contemporary. What Donald Trump hails as “the largest deportation operation in American history” is unfolding as a dark and sweeping expansion of state machinery – an iron-fisted blend of ICE raids, sprawling detention centres and legal shortcuts dug up from the dustiest corners of America’s statute books to shore up both physical and social borders.…

Listen to article ISLAMABAD: As the local currency comes under renewed stress, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Saturday proposed linking tax benefits with a minimum one-year retention period for foreign investments in government debt and equity markets to bring predictability in outflows. Dr Mohammad Ali Malik, an SBP executive, suggested the 10% reduced income tax rate should be tied to at least one-year retention of investment made through the Special Convertible Rupee Account (SCRA). He made the proposal during a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance, chaired by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s Syed Naveed Qamar. Federal Board…

GALLE: Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews gestures as he is carried around the field by team-mates at the end of the first Test against Bangladesh at the Galle International Cricket Stadium on Saturday. Mathews, who made his debut in 2009 on the famous pitch perched beneath the fortress in Galle in 2009, will hang up his boots with over 8,000 runs, after playing his 119th and final Test, behind only Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene in Sri Lanka’s all-time charts.—AFP GALLE: Bangladesh skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto blasted twin centuries to help his side draw the first Test against Sri Lanka in…

Listen to article ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Saturday it would recommend US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, an accolade that he has said he craves, for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between Pakistan and India. Some analysts in Pakistan said the move might persuade Trump to think again about potentially joining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Pakistan has condemned Israel’s action as a violation of international law and a threat to regional stability. Pakistan agrees that US diplomatic intervention ended the fighting, but India says it was a bilateral agreement between the two militaries.…

KARACHI: Pakistan are likely to get a rare opportunity to play opposition outside Asia in next year’s FIFA World Series with team’s possible participation coming under discussion when FIFA chief Gianni Infantino met recently-elected Pakistan Football Federation President Mohsen Gilani at the FIFA Executive Football Summit. The summit, held on the sidelines of the ongoing FIFA Club World Cup in the United States, was the first event attended by Mohsen since he won the long-awaited elections of the PFF last month and football development plans for the country were also discussed during his meeting with Infantino in Miami, according to…

As the usage of artificial intelligence — benign and adversarial — increases at breakneck speed, more cases of potentially harmful responses are being uncovered.Pixdeluxe | E+ | Getty ImagesAs the usage of artificial intelligence — benign and adversarial — increases at breakneck speed, more cases of potentially harmful responses are being uncovered. These include hate speech, copyright infringements or sexual content.The emergence of these undesirable behaviors is compounded by a lack of regulations and insufficient testing of AI models, researchers told CNBC.Getting machine learning models to behave the way it was intended to do so is also a tall order,…

Listen to article LAHORE: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), once a fierce critic of the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for claiming to be “on the same page” with the establishment, now finds itself in a rather awkward silence after its key ally in the ruling alliance not only admitted to the existence of a hybrid model but appeared to wear the newfound power-sharing arrangement with the military as a badge of honour. The recent confession by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif – about what has long been an open secret – has laid bare an uncomfortable truth: the PML-N-led government is now…

Listen to article ISLAMABAD: A National Assembly panel on Saturday approved special powers for tax authorities to arrest individuals involved in tax fraud, while it deferred the approval of another fiscal law that would have suddenly deprived government entities of their cash surpluses. Meanwhile, teachers and researchers will now be subject to full income tax, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did not agree to the government’s proposal to extend the 25% income tax rebate for another fiscal year. Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Rashid Langrial informed the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance that the IMF had refused to extend…