The Dispatch
보수 성향
정치
California Is Giving Election Deniers a Ready Excuse
The slow counting of the state’s votes could be expedited with some simple reforms.
"FORMS" · 총 652건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.3
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 83,319건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.2(균형)입니다. 긍정 4,196건(5.0%)·중립 77,061건(92.5%)·부정 2,062건(2.5%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 14.8(중도 균형)입니다.
The slow counting of the state’s votes could be expedited with some simple reforms.
Japan's government is making long-term plans for replacing up to a dozen nuclear reactors by 2050, to secure its electricity supply, with two to five of these to be rebuilt by the 2040s, the country's economy ministry said today. This is the latest step in a policy reversal for Tokyo, which, following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, closed all of its nuclear reactors and tried to switch to other forms of electricity generation. The Strait of Hormuz crisis, as well as LNG price volatility, has recently prompted a reconsideration of the nuclear-divorce…
A liberal lawmaker has drafted an anti-hate speech in online spaces law that would push operators of online platforms to remove posts containing derision or hate speech. The proposed legislation was prompted by public backlash over a series of perceived mockeries of citizens of the Jeolla provinces and the Korean democratic movement. Starbucks Korea came under fire for its "Tank Day" tumbler promotion on the anniversary of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising on May 18. In 1980, the military, under m
Chinese spies are posing as job recruiters to trick staff in western governments into disclosing sensitive information, the Five Eyes alliance of security agencies has warned. China’s military intelligence services advertise false jobs such as foreign policy or defence analysts on platforms including LinkedIn, the spy agencies of Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and […]
The party names an eight-member committee and a legal cell for Amaravati farmers, and a separate panel on alleged irregularities in the DSC-2025 teacher recruitment
Meta's top AI executive, Alexandr Wang, revealed the company's strategy to challenge rivals like OpenAI and Google by focusing on health-related AI capabilities. While acknowledging current models aren't top-tier, Wang highlighted Meta's commitment to advancing AI for health applications, aiming to integrate these features into popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Opaque algorithms, too little legal protection for minors, a lot of hate speech and disinformation: in Europe, US and Chinese social media platforms have long drawn criticism. Europe wants to go its own way — but how?
EVERY June, Pakistan’s budget season follows a familiar pattern: business groups repeat their proposals for relief, the government defends its targets, and taxpayers prepare for additional burdens. Yet a more fundamental question is rarely asked — what is the budget ultimately meant to achieve, and does it reflect a clear long-term national purpose? In principle, the budget is the state’s main instrument for promoting growth, improving public services, reducing poverty and raising living standards. In Pakistan, however, it has increasingly come to resemble an accounting exercise: mobilise sufficient revenue to finance a growing state and meet fiscal benchmarks agreed with the IMF. The result is a lopsided process that remains focused on extracting more from those already within the tax net, while paying insufficient attention to the quality of public spending, the need to broaden the base, or the incentives required for investment, employment and productivity. The Tax Policy Office was expected to introduce a longer-term perspective to this debate, but that wider vision is still not evident. The burden continues to fall, predictably, on the formal economy. Corporations, salaried employees, entrepreneurs, exporters, documented businesses and investors remain the most visible and therefore the most easily taxed. What receives much less scrutiny is whether public spending is yielding meaningful improvements in citizens’ lives, particularly in a country where a large share of the population remains below the poverty line. Pakistan has absorbed much of the fiscal cost of devolution without fully realising its potential efficiency gains. This distortion has become more pronounced since the 18th Constitutional Amendment altered Pakistan’s fiscal structure. Health, education, labour welfare and other social services were devolved to the provinces, which now receive a substantial share of national revenues through the National Finance Commission Award. The logic was straightforward: provinces, being closer to citizens, would deliver services more effectively, while the federal government would gradually withdraw from devolved functions and reduce its own size and cost. That second part of the arrangement, however, remains largely unfulfilled. More than a decade later, successive governments have shown limited willingness to undertake the constitutional, administrative and institutional reforms required to right-size the federation. Pakistan has, therefore, absorbed much of the fiscal cost of devolution without fully realising its potential efficiency gains. The results are plain: weak learning, poor healthcare access, child malnutrition, low productivity, millions of children out of school, under-equipped hospitals, inadequate skills training and persistently low female labour-force participation. Yet, even against this backdrop, the provinces are expected to post a combined budget surplus of roughly Rs1.6 trillion. This surplus forms part of the consolidated fiscal framework that enables Pakistan to meet primary surplus targets under the IMF programme. Fiscal discipline is necessary; Pakistan’s record on deficits and debt leaves little room for complacency. But every rupee retained as surplus is also a rupee not directed towards schools, hospitals, technical training and local services. The balance appears to have shifted too far towards meeting accounting targets and too little towards building human capital. The irony is that while existing taxpayers are repeatedly told there is little room for relief, substantial untapped capacity exists elsewhere. Agriculture contributes nearly a quarter of GDP but remains lightly taxed, while property taxation is among the weakest in the region. Large agricultural and urban wealth holdings generate limited recurring revenue because assessment remains weak, enforcement uneven and valuations often disconnected from market reality. Since provinces have constitutional authority over agricultural income and property taxes, meaningful reform in these areas could broaden the base, improve fairness and reduce the state’s dependence on taxing the same formal businesses and individuals year after year. It would also help strengthen the sense that the fiscal burden is being shared more equitably. The next budget should therefore reset fiscal priorities. Rather than treating compliant taxpayers as an inexhaustible source of revenue, policymakers should present a credible path towards relief for documented economic activity: lower excessive tax rates on salaried employees, entrepreneurs and businesses, phase out the Super Tax, remove distortionary levies, reduce cascading taxation and bring greater predictability to policy. Better incentives would support investment, exports, formalisation and job creation — the key objectives of fiscal policy. But relief must be matched by credible efforts to broaden the tax base, improve spending efficiency and mobilise provincial revenues from agriculture and property. Fiscal sustainability cannot rest indefinitely on squeezing a shrinking pool of compliant taxpayers. Provinces, meanwhile, should be judged less by the size of their surpluses than by measurable gains in education, healthcare, skills, productivity and poverty reduction. Pakistan’s fiscal debate remains confined to the narrow question of how to raise more revenue. The more important issue is how public finances can create opportunity, improve living standards and support durable growth. A budget should be more than a balancing exercise between revenue and expenditure; it should also reflect a willingness to reform the structure of the state itself. Unless Pakistan completes the unfinished agenda of devolution, broadens the tax base and channels provincial resources towards human development, it may strive to meet fiscal targets without delivering the broader prosperity its citizens are entitled to expect. The writer is a former CEO of Unilever Pakistan and of the Pakistan Business Council Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2026
• Field officers to lose powers to issue notices, conduct audits • Reforms aim to curb collusion, harassment • Phased rollout planned from October ISLAMABAD: The government has approved in principle a plan to introduce a centralised digital tax operating model, under which audits and assessments would be handled by “faceless” wings in Islamabad to reduce official discretion and direct contact between tax officials and taxpayers. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved Pakistan’s New Tax Operating Model on Thursday and commended the tax officials who developed the plan. The model is scheduled for a three-phase rollout beginning in October this year. The centralised and faceless tax model is similar to systems used in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Singapore and India. It is designed to eliminate physical contact between tax authorities and taxpayers to prevent corruption. The reforms have been driven by systemic leakages and widespread under-reporting detected by Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL). Officials said the reforms were not only about curbing collusion or corruption but also about improving weak enforcement. FBR data revealed a major discrepancy in tax compliance: 8,697 individuals holding a combined Rs750 billion in bank deposits officially reported zero income in their tax returns. The same pattern was found across the financial sector, where 98.9 per cent of high-deposit individuals were found to have materially under-reported their bank flows. The real estate sector also showed similar evasion patterns. Despite maintaining active filer status, 80pc of top property purchasers were found to have systematically under-declared their transaction values to avoid their actual fiscal obligations. At present, a single tax official within a Regional Tax Office, Large Taxpayers Office or Corporate Tax Office handles the entire tax cycle — from identification and notice issuance to assessment and recovery. Officials said this concentration of duties granted immense discretionary powers, creating opportunities for taxpayer harassment, under-assessment and compromised recoveries. To address this, the new model introduces separate audit and assessment wings, both operating virtually and facelessly from a centralised hub in Islamabad. Under the proposed plan, Inland Revenue operations will be restructured into three functionally separate wings, each operating with a defined mandate, distinct statutory powers and non-overlapping responsibilities. The new framework will apply uniformly across income tax, sales tax and federal excise duty. The National Faceless Audit Wing (NFAW) will be established in Islamabad and operate from an undisclosed location. This centralised, fully digital and anonymous wing will conduct risk-based audits and continuous monitoring of withholding and advance taxes through a Central Data Hub. Case allocation will be algorithmic, and the wing will have no powers to issue demands or execute recoveries. It will be able to handle any taxpayer across the country. Taxpayers will not be allowed to visit the NFAW or submit manual documents. The National Assessment Wing (NAW), also based in Islamabad, will handle quasi-judicial functions. The anonymous and digital NAW will process assessment orders, show-cause notices, zero-rating refund approvals and exemptions, but will have no mandate for audits or field enforcement. Hearings will be held online, while dedicated hearing rooms will be established at tax offices across the country. The third wing, the Field Operation Wing, will serve as the enforcement arm of the system. It will be responsible for revenue recovery, prosecution, taxpayer registration, field verification and expansion of the tax base, but will have no authority to assess, adjudicate or modify tax demands. Field officers will now focus on data verification, assigned information, taxpayer facilitation and registration. For the first two wings, the government will post around 200 officers strictly on merit, with market-based salaries and enhanced surveillance to ensure credibility, transparency and accountability. The proposed reform is expected to tighten the net around tax evaders while reducing the compliance burden on honest taxpayers. This will be achieved mainly by eliminating officer-dependent compliance, as all interactions will be digitally logged through an online portal, ending direct contact with tax officials. To simplify filing, taxpayers will receive pre-populated returns powered by the Central Data Hub, which will automatically pull salary, banking, property and vehicle data to reduce filing time from hours to minutes. A single integrated taxpayer account will consolidate all income tax, sales tax and federal excise duty obligations, credits and refunds into a unified IRIS view. The updated system will also introduce predictable, time-bound processing with auto-escalation features to give taxpayers certainty on contingent liabilities. The FBR will also retain the authority to independently transition tax appeals into a faceless, phased format. Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2026
By Progress Godfrey ABUJA – The Federal Government has presented the Africa Quality Mark (AQM) certification to 131 companies for 220 made-in-Nigeria products, reiterating its commitment to supporting industrial expansion and export growth. This forms part of efforts to strengthen the competitiveness of Nigerian goods in regional and continental markets under the African Continental Free […] The post 131 Nigerian companies earn Africa Quality Mark in major trade boost appeared first on Vanguard News.
Indera Mahkota MP says the initiative involves efforts to rebuild the country's political culture based on principled struggle, integrity, and nation-building,
The icon debuted Confessions II track "Love Sensation," straddled a speaker box, and air-guitared during a historic Pride Month performance
On a recent stormy Sunday, domestic helpers on their weekly day off were seen hastily erecting tents and laying out plastic sheets under footbridges and inside transport hubs in Hong Kong’s Tsuen Wan district as they sought refuge from the downpour. Dozens of tents were pitched around the pillars of the footbridges, while other groups crowded onto narrow concrete platforms inside a bus terminus. Many leaned against metal railings or sat on the ground, laying down blankets and carving out spaces...
House of Commons committee uncovers a 'disturbing picture' of never-ending crisis, and blasts the Government for 'shocking' oversights.
South America has raised its oil exports more than the U.S. has done so far this year as key producers in the region boosted production and shipments to a world scrambling for crude that’s not dependent on the Strait of Hormuz. Over the past five years, South America’s biggest producer and exporter, Brazil, has started production at several new offshore platforms in the Santos pre-salt fields. Guyana has continuously increased overseas shipments as the Exxon-led consortium starts up developments at fields in the offshore Stabroek block,…
National investment fund UzNIF enjoys 32% price bounce since groundbreaking IPO.
Suvendu Adhikari said Bengal was keen to strengthen maritime infrastructure and inland water transport and was examining structural reforms to boost the sector.
Fresh off a major festival win and new international distribution deals, Taichi Kimura reflects on the deeply personal project that honors his mother's perseverance.
Follow today’s news live Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast A Labor MP has declared victory in the debate over the government’s tax reforms, engaging in a bit of meta-commentary at the end of parliament’s sitting fortnight. Julian Hill made the comments on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing on Thursday. I believe the government’s won the debate on negative gearing. I believe we’ve won the debate on capital gains tax on property. And we’re winning the debate, we got a way to go, on removing the distortion that would otherwise be there. … I think we’re winning the debate … Start ups and so on, we are still engaging on. Continue reading...
Advance ticket rush for ‘The Odyssey’ sparks chaos as demand surges across AMC Advance ticket sales for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film The Odyssey have triggered a surge in demand across AMC Theatres, IMAX, Fandango and major booking platforms. Fans are reporting long...