The Women’s World Cup will take place in South America for the first time after Brazil was chosen to host the 2027 edition at a FIFA congress Friday marked by debate about the onslaught in Gaza. After the success of Australia and New Zealand in 2023, which earned a record $570 million in commercial revenue, FIFA chose to continue its push to expand women’s football to new continents. Delegates meeting in Bangkok voted by 119 votes to 78 to send the 10th Women’s World Cup to the land of samba football, which beat a joint bid from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
The social network formerly known as Twitter has fully migrated over to X.com, owner Elon Musk said on Friday. The billionaire head of Tesla, SpaceX and other companies bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and announced the rebrand to X last July. Although the logo and branding were changed to “X”, the domain name remained Twitter.com until Friday. “All core systems are now on X.com,” Musk wrote on X, posting an image of a logo of a white X on a blue circle. Queries to Twitter.com redirected users to X.com on Friday morning, though the original domain name still appeared on some browsers.…
French police on Friday shot and killed an armed man who was allegedly trying to set fire to a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen. “National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X. Police responded at 6:45am local time to reports of a “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said. A source close to the case told AFP that the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”. “It is not…
ISLAMABAD: A day after senators Faisal Vawada and Talal Chaudhry questioned judges about their allegations of interference by intelligence agencies in judicial matters, leaders of MQM-P and Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party (IPP) also jumped on the bandwagon on Thursday, reminding the judiciary of its own shortcomings. In separate press conferences at the National Press Club, MQM-P’s Syed Mustafa Kamal and IPP’s Awn Chaudhry called for establishing ethical standards for the judges as well. Mr Kamal, the MQM-P deputy convener, said the most serious issue in the country was limited access to justice for ordinary citizens. “Justice is not delivered by the system. It can…
ISLAMABAD: A third-party validation report about the Federal Sehat Sahulat Programme (SSP) commonly known as Health Card has showed that though it is a cashless programme, 33pc of the patients paid from their pockets. This indicated the need for more effective enforcement of the programme policies to ensure that all services are fully covered under the benefit package. Although there were a few cases, complaints concerning cash demands in the empanelled health facilities needed to be urgently investigated. While majority of respondents had knowledge about the diseases and services covered in the benefit package, a significant population – 38.7pc -…
ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) disposed of a petition filed by Naanbais Association after the issue related to the prices of Roti and Naan was settled amicably. The IHC released the order on the petition that had challenged the prices of Roti and Naan at Rs16 and Rs20, respectively. The association through their counsel Barrister Umar Ijaz Gillani had also sought release of Tandoor owners arrested for selling Roti and Naan at higher rates. Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri had earlier directed the association and the deputy commissioner Islamabad to resolve the issue amicably. Advocate General Islamabad Ayyaz Shaukat informed…
BEIJING: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Thursday the government under its economic reforms agenda offers attractive incentives for investment and asked the Chinese entrepreneurs to take advantage of the friendly policies and set up labour intensive industry in Pakistan. “The labour cost is very competitive and much less as compared to the current labour cost in China. Agriculture, textile, mining and information technology are the prime areas where there is a great scope to do business in Pakistan,” he said while speaking at the Pakistan-China Business Roundtable Conference organised by the Pakistan Embassy in Beijing.…
LAHORE: Being a businessman, I will invest my money where I like, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on Thursday. “My wife has a property in London. She had a property in Dubai in 2017 which she sold in 2023. I was not a public office-holder 10 years ago,” he said. “Tax has been paid on these properties,” he said, clarifying his position with regard to Dubai Leaks in which an astounding volume of leaked property data that includes over 23,000 properties, has been listed as belonging to Pakistani nationals up to the spring of 2022. According to the data gathered by the Organised Crime…
ISLAMABAD: Severe heatwaves will sweep most parts of the country over the next 10 days, the Meteorological Department warned on Thursday, forecasting dust storms, thunderstorms, and heavy rains in the country’s northern areas. The presence of high pressure in the upper atmosphere will result in heatwave conditions in most parts of the country, especially Punjab and Sindh from May 21 and a severe heatwave from May 23 to 27, the advisory warned. Daytime temperatures are “likely to remain 4 to 6 degrees centigrade above normal” in Sindh and Punjab from May 21 to 23 and six to 8°C from May…
ISLAMABAD: The government is mulling a move to introduce a carbon tax on petroleum and similar products, amid a push for an integrated general sales tax (GST) from the International Monetary Fund to achieve the true spirit and benefits of the value-added tax (VAT) for documentation and digitisation. Sources told Dawn that carbon tax was one of the measures being deliberated that could also help garner international financial support for newer aid instruments, including green and e-bonds and cheaper loans and grants from multilateral institutions. The future development programme is already being aligned with climate public investment management benchmarks, the sources added.…
