Author: i2wtc
A still from Disney and Pixar’s animated film “Elio.”DisneyDisney’s Pixar animation studio had its worst opening ever over the weekend — and its problems aren’t unique.”Elio,” the story of a young boy who is mistakenly identified as Earth’s ambassador to the universe, tallied just $21 million in ticket sales during its first three days in theaters, a record low for the studio.The underwhelming performance fits a recent pattern among Pixar’s releases. While franchise films have lured in moviegoers, the studio’s original fare has had far less success in recent years.Just look at 2023’s “Elemental,” which brought in the previous lowest-opening…
ISLAMABAD: The defence ministers of Pakistan and India may meet for the first time since last month’s four-day military conflict, as both Khawaja Asif and his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh are attending a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in China. The two-day SCO defence ministers’ summit has begun in Qingdao City, located in China’s eastern Shandong Province. The meeting is being hosted by Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun. Both Singh and Asif are present for the event. It is the first time since Marka-e-Haq that the high-ranking officials from both the countries will be present at the same event. On…
Nikos Pekiaridis | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesRobert F. Kennedy Jr.’s revamped government panel of outside vaccine advisors on Thursday recommended the use of Merck’s shot to protect infants from respiratory syncytial virus, a temporary reprieve for public health officials and companies concerned about the Health and Human Services secretary’s immunization policy.The group, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, also voted unanimously to include Merck’s shot in the government’s list of recommended childhood immunizations that receive wide insurance coverage.The votes in favor of the injectable antibody, Enflonsia, are a sigh of relief for drugmakers and the medical community…
ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs Muhammad Junaid Anwar Chaudhry has announced the approval of Rs12 billion for transforming the Gadani Ship-Breaking Yard into a model green facility, aligning the maritime sector with international climate and environmental standards. According to an official statement released on Wednesday, while chairing a high-level meeting on the Gadani redevelopment, Chaudhry underscored the ship-breaking industry’s contribution to the economy and its potential role in the country’s climate resilience strategy. “Ship recycling must evolve to meet global sustainability standards. This transformation is essential to reduce pollution, manage hazardous waste responsibly, and contribute to a greener maritime…
Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of Salesforce, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 22nd, 2025. Gerry Miller | CNBCSalesforce is accelerating its use of artificial intelligence in automating workloads, according to CEO Marc Benioff.”All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher value work,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, noting that the technology currently accounts for about 30% to 50% of the company’s work.Technology companies are hunting for…
ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court Justice Mansoor Ali Shah on Wednesday turned away Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, who sought the court’s intervention for a meeting with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan in Adiala Jail, telling him that he was knocking at the “wrong door”. Gandapur appeared in the court of Justice Shah along with senior PTI leader Advocate Latif Khosa and the K-P advocate general. Khosa requested the court to immediately hear the request for a meeting with the founder PTI because of the ongoing budget session of the provincial assembly. Gandapur said that the budget approval process…
Head coach Dusty May and players of the Michigan Wolverines celebrate after defeating the Wisconsin Badgers in the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament championship game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on March 16, 2025 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Aaron J. Thornton | Getty ImagesGlobal payment company PayPal announced on Thursday that it has inked a deal with the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences to allow student-athletes to receive compensation through the fintech company’s platform.The announcement comes just weeks after a court settlement in the House v. NCAA case, which dramatically shifts the college sports landscape by allowing schools to compensate student-athletes for…
An aerial drone photo taken on April 29, 2024 shows a drone dropping a takeout at Anshang grassland in Hefei, east China’s Anhui Province.Once an obsolete airport, Luogang Park at the center of Hefei city now serves as the urban air transportation hub and a “super experimental field” for low-altitude economy, where services such as sightseeing by “air taxi” and drone takeout delivery are readily available at the visitors’ fingertips.In recent years, Hefei has been vigorously developing low-altitude economy and continuously enrich related consumption scenarios. It has launched over 100 low-altitude service routes including sightseeing, medical supplies delivery, takeout delivery,…
ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Wednesday completed the approval process for demands for grants pertaining to ministries, divisions and various federal departments. In total, the lower house of parliament, which met under the chairmanship of Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, approved 136 demands for grants amounting to Rs9,951.22 billion for 33 federal ministries and divisions. Meanwhile, over 750 cut motions moved by the opposition were rejected by majority vote. Finance Minister Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb, while winding up the debate, said that independent data validated by global rating agencies and reputable surveys shows a significant rise in consumer confidence, reaching its highest…
AI reasoning models were supposed to be the industry’s next leap, promising smarter systems able to tackle more complex problems and a path to superintelligence.The latest releases from the major players in artificial intelligence, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet and DeepSeek, have been models with reasoning capabilities. Those reasoning models can execute on tougher tasks by “thinking,” or breaking problems into logical steps and showing their work. Now, a string of recent research is calling that into question.In June, a team of Apple researchers released a white paper titled “The Illusion of Thinking,” which found that “state-of-the-art [large reasoning models] still fail…