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Not targeting India: US says its H-1B visa laws are being applied globally
Not targeting India: US says its H-1B visa laws are being applied globally
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50.3
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최근 7일 기준 87,728건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.2(균형)입니다. 긍정 4,370건(5.0%)·중립 81,209건(92.6%)·부정 2,149건(2.4%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 14.7(중도 균형)입니다.
Not targeting India: US says its H-1B visa laws are being applied globally
Special restrictive procedures and measures will be applied to Russian citizens who seek to visit Ukraine after the end of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
This year, Sweden's National Day is also the day when tough new citizenship rules come into effect, even on applicants who applied years ago under different rules. The Local asked our readers how they're feeling about the day.
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If your application for Swedish citizenship is at risk of getting rejected because it will be judged on the new rules which didn't exist when you applied, can you get a refund on the 1500 kronor application fee?
The 56-year-old told Extra that the teenagers, whose father is singer Marc Anthony, applied to multiple universities Jennifer Lopez may be a global superstar, but like any other mother, she is immensely proud of her children's achievement. The Maid in Manhattan actress revealed that...
SEREMBAN, June 5 — The Dewan Keadilan dan Undang Negeri Sembilan (DKU) has applied for an interlocutory injunction...
The sentence marked the first case in Japan in which the law has been applied to the possession of AI-generated sexual deepfakes.
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The Huntsville, Alabama-based space and defense manufacturer priced 32.5 million shares at $20 each, within its marketed range
The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits at the end of May jumped to a four-month high, but not because businesses are laying off more workers. The timing of the Memorial Day holiday was a major factor.
Allegations made in Melbourne magistrates court on Thursday as Zeinab Ahmad, 31, applied for bail, a month after she was charged with slavery offences Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast A woman accused of marrying Islamic State fighters allegedly lived with a teenage slave who was repeatedly assaulted and raped by the woman’s father. The allegations were detailed in Melbourne magistrates court on Thursday as Zeinab Ahmad, 31, applied for bail, a month after she was charged with slavery offences. Continue reading...
NC AI, the artificial intelligence subsidiary of gaming giant NCSoft, said Thursday it has won a project from Hanwha Ocean to develop AI-powered autonomous welding technology for shipbuilding sites. The project involves a vision-based welding model and a collaborative robot system designed to identify welding targets and carry out work with minimal human intervention. NC AI said the technology will be applied to Hanwha Ocean’s commercial and special-purpose vessel production sites, where welding
THEY all look the same and for good reason. Every budget over the past 10 years (and more) is pretty much the same with minor differences usually in the gimmickry being advanced in the name of a ‘revenue plan’. And it will be no different this time round when the budget for FY27 is announced. There is a simple reason for this. A little more than a decade and a half ago Pakistan finally abandoned its last attempt to try and get serious tax reform through. Since then, successive governments have been rolling out various gimmicks, from amnesty schemes to ‘point of sale machines’ to do something that cannot be done with gimmicks. They are trying to document the growing services sector of the economy with these gimmicks, which is like trying to measure the ocean with a teacup. Consider a little perspective first. Since the 1980s, the single fastest-growing sector of the economy has been services. It was slightly less than half of Pakistan’s GDP back in those days. Today, it is touching 60 per cent while the shares of industry and agriculture have shrunk. But today, services contributes less than 40pc of total revenues while the share of manufacturing can be as high as 55pc. This is an important crux of the problem. The fastest-growing sector in Pakistan’s economy has made a diminutive contribution to its revenue effort. And there are a number of reasons why. First, successive governments have failed to undertake the kind of tax reforms necessary to keep abreast of the changes sweeping the economy where the services sector is a motor force for growth. For now, the bulk of the revenues contributed by this sector comes from banking and telecom — the low-hanging fruit. Quite possibly, this is the one budget of the past decade or more which will be defined almost entirely by its revenue effort. Documenting the transactions taking place in this sector is the first step to reaching them. And for decades there was one big idea on how to do that. It was called ‘value-added tax’, or VAT, and countries around the world implemented it with varying measures of success to help document their economies during periods of change, and help distribute the burden of the tax effort more widely. In some shape or form, the VAT was always on the agenda as a crucial structural reform measure of every IMF programme that Pakistan signed between 1988 and 2008, and there were many. The tax itself was passed into law in 1992, updated in 1996, but never really applied in value-added mode across the board. In 2008, it was supposed to be updated and modernised but the government of the time failed to ensure passage of the legislation so spectacularly that the IMF simply dropped it from all future reform agendas. Since then, it has been abandoned. In abandoning it, however, a new question arose. If you are not going to use the VAT to document your economy, how exactly are you going to do it? The question was an important one because Pakistan’s economy was growing in directions that its tax machinery struggled to capture. And successive governments gave their own answers to this question. This was the decade of gimmicks. We had amnesty schemes, proliferating withholding taxes, new taxes on banking transactions of non-filers, attempts to document the economy by triangulating multiple databases, reliance on data from point of sale machines and even one brief and doomed attempt to manually document the retail sector by serving tens of thousands of notices to them. Of course, all of these failed because, as already stated, they amounted to attempts to measure the amount of water in the ocean using a teacup. Pakistan’s tax-to-GDP ratio stagnated in the single digits and intensified political struggles around the shrinking resource envelope of the state. We saw more gimmicks on the revenue side, like deemed incomes. We saw a ‘hard state’ approach to withdraw all exemptions or rebates offered to schoolteachers and university professors. They leaned harder on fuel taxes than any government in any period in the past. And they printed more money than any other government in any comparable decade in the past. All to help make ends meet at the centre. Taken together, all these gimmicks made for an unseemly display of desperation. The growing resort to gimmickry was the state thrashing around within the shrinking confines of its resource envelope when it could not generate resources in quantities sufficient to keep pace with its expenditure growth. And they squeezed out a decade for themselves like this. This was the overriding context within which all budgets in these years were made. And now the context is wrapping itself around them like the cloak of Nessus that once worn began to tighten around the wearer until its grip became inescapable and fatal. This is what sets the stage for the forthcoming budget. Watch what rabbit they’ll pull out of their hat this time round to call a ‘revenue plan’ for the next fiscal year. They have to give relief to salaried people, and industry is near breaking point. They can’t lean more heavily on fuel or electricity taxes or deem more taxes into being out of foreign assets of the rich. Keep an eye on the revenue plan they announce as well as the target for incremental revenues they have to pursue. They are chasing incremental revenues of up to 0.6pc of GDP, half of which will come from the federal government through slashing exemptions and their FBR transformation plan, including production monitoring and audits. This was their Achilles heel this year. Now their constraints are tighter still for next year, and options even more limited. Quite possibly, this is the one budget of the past decade or more which will be defined almost entirely by its revenue effort. If there is no attempt to break out of the constraints, then we’ll know we are all headed for the embrace of Nessus. The writer is a business and economy journalist. khurram.husain@gmail.com X: @khurramhusain Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2026
The FIFA Men’s World Cup starts next week—and some players still don’t know whether they’ll be able to travel to their matches. On Wednesday, Switzerland’s main goalscorer, Breel Embolo, applied for a visa at the US embassy in the country’s capital after US officials blocked him from boarding a flight with his teammates to their […]
ISLAMABAD: The state-owned Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) on Wednesday said it made a significant oil and gas discovery from its exploratory well Bobi Deep-1, located in Sindh’s Sanghar district. The company is the country’s largest oil and gas producer and, in April this year, began commercial production from Pakistan’s largest-ever oil and gas discovery from a single well. In a statement issued today, OGDCL said the well successfully tested the Massive Sand interval of the Lower Goru Formation and produced 2,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) and 1.1 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd) through a cased-hole Drill Stem Test (DST), confirming the hydrocarbon potential of the reservoir. A Drill Stem Test (DST) is a temporary well-completion procedure used in oil and gas exploration to assess the pressure, permeability and production potential of a geological formation. It helps determine whether a well has encountered a commercially viable reservoir without the need for costly permanent casing. “The achievement marks a major milestone for OGDCL as the first hydrocarbon discovery from the Massive Sand play within the Bobi and Dhamraki Mining Lease,” the company stated. “Beyond the discovery itself, the success has opened a new exploration window in the area, de-risking similar prospects in the surrounding region and creating opportunities for future reserve additions and resource growth,” said the oil company. The discovery is particularly significant because the project had previously encountered complex subsurface challenges that led to the suspension of drilling operations. “Rather than abandoning the prospect, OGDCL relied on indigenous expertise and adopted an innovative approach to address the issue,” it said. A multidisciplinary team of geoscientists and engineers collaborated with the Centre for Pure and Applied Geology at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, to investigate the formation through advanced geophysical surveys, subsurface studies and field evaluations. The joint effort led to the development of a comprehensive geological and geophysical model, enabling OGDC to de-risk the prospect and resume operations. Multiple engineering safeguards, specialised civil works and extensive technical evaluations were carried out before the drilling rig was redeployed and the target depth successfully reached. “The exploratory well Bobi Deep-1 success story stands as a testament to indigenous innovation, technical excellence and industry-academia collaboration. It demonstrates how local expertise can successfully resolve complex operational challenges and unlock new hydrocarbon resources for the country,” the company said. “The discovery is expected to contribute towards enhancing Pakistan’s indigenous oil and gas production, strengthening national energy security, reducing reliance on imported energy and augmenting the hydrocarbon reserves base of the country,” it concluded. Last April, OGDCL announced the successful revival of oil and gas production from Chak#2-2 well, a joint venture in the Sinjhoro Block in Sanghar. The Sinjhoro Block comprises OGDCL as the operator with a 62.5 per cent working interest, alongside Government Holdings (Pvt) Ltd (GHPL) with 22.5pc, and Orient Petroleum Inc. (OPI) holding a 15pc share.
The bus lurched to a halt on the long, dry highway that takes you from Gwadar to Turbat. A clutch of men jumped out and sprinted towards the makeshift bathroom by the road. Some of them scattered into the bushes. Back in the bus, anchored to their seats, women stared out of the windows stiffly. They must have done the math before boarding: drink enough water to bear the heat, but not so much that you need to empty your bladder. Gwadar to Turbat is a short two hours. But it is eight long ones if you are heading to Karachi. A washroom on the Makran Coastal Highway between Turbat and Gwadar Balochistan’s new and smooth highways are praised as corridors of connectivity and trade and promise progress for a place that has long been politically and geographically distant from the rest of Pakistan. Motorway 8 goes from Ratodero to Gwadar, the N-10 runs along the Makran coast, the N-25 RCD Highway connects Quetta to Karachi and the N-40 that meanders towards the Iran border from Quetta to Taftan. But the praise for this network does not make up for the lack of safe and accessible public bathrooms for hundreds of kilometers. Where you do find one, it is rudimentary at best, a hole in the ground, a door that won’t close or lock and almost never any running water. To make matters worse, the women’s toilets are usually located in male-dominated spaces, such as roadside motels, dhabas, and bus stops. In Surab, washrooms are attached to the mosques and are strictly off limits for women. This neglect is now being challenged in court by Kulsoom Baloch, Fauzia Shaheen and Dr Quratulain Bakhtiari. They filed a complaint in the Balochistan High Court, arguing that the highways are deliberately designed to prioritise the cold mechanics of commerce at the expense of human safety, accessibility and equity. They said that the long stretch between Mastung and Kalat is the worst affected. There isn’t a single restroom for women when you travel from Quetta to Makran through Kalat and Mastung. The Karachi to Quetta-Chaman N-25 Highway is being widened into a double carriageway but toilets for women are missing from the plan. The government has to provide sanitation which is a constitutional right as Article 9 guarantees the right to life and dignity, 14 protects the dignity of the people and privacy at home, and 15 ensures the right to movement. “Men are socially free,” says Kulsoom. “They can go anywhere for nature’s call. Women are restricted socially and culturally, and their biological needs are different.” Unusable washrooms in Ormara and Gwadar Fatima, 46, describes one of her experiences. She was travelling from Turbat to Karachi for eye surgery with her husband and daughter. The bus had been on the road for a couple of hours until it stopped near a roadside hotel in Ormara. Ormara, located in Gwadar along the Makran Coastal Highway, is often the first and only major stop for buses travelling from Turbat and Gwadar to Karachi. During this journey, the first stop is usually this deserted hotel in Ormara, where bus drivers and conductors often receive free meals in exchange for bringing passengers. There were four bathrooms, supposedly for men and women both, and all of them were broken, dirty, and without door locks. She entered the dingy bathroom but her eyes kept darting towards the ajar door. Her daughter came to the rescue. “She held the door while I was inside … we had no other choice,” she says. “There’s a lingering fear that men nearby can see you. It feels humiliating.” At Gwadar’s Zero Point, which is about 90km from Hub town, there are two bathrooms, but both are unusable. “When the vehicle stops for security checks,” says Kulsoom, “women looking to use a bathroom are told to, ‘go as far as you can’.” The story is the same from Yousuf Goth Terminal in Karachi, used by passengers from Balochistan daily, to Khuzdar’s Chamrock Hotel and Restaurant (another bus stop). Dozens of women line up inside warehouses, waiting their turn to use the few available toilets. Women who regularly need to travel fall sick with urinary tract infections, diarrhoea and dehydration. Urologists warn that holding urine for hours on end causes bladder infections and serious kidney problems. In many parts blanket bans on night-time public transport are imposed when there is a threat of violence. Protests, road blockades, security checks and insurgent raids often leave women stranded for hours, if not days. A student, Saadia, was stuck on the M-8 Motorway for two days last year. “We did not have proper food, water or basic facilities. At one point, we walked several kilometres to a nearby bazaar just to use a bathroom,” she says. The only washroom at the Talaar Checkpost with proper signage and running water Saif owns a hotel on the Makran Coastal Highway at Ormara. He handles 15 to 20 buses daily with each bus carrying roughly 400 passengers. This means up to 800 travellers use his 19 bathrooms every single day. “Business is very weak these days, and on top of that, there is a major water issue,” he says. A broken sewerage system and chronic power failures cripple his efforts to maintain hygiene. He tried introducing a Rs10 upkeep fee to pay a dedicated cleaner but most passengers cannot afford to pay even this amount. He appealed to the transport companies to subsidise the maintenance cost as their passengers benefit from the stopovers without contributing towards sanitation. “The buses only stop for meals and then leave. We have spoken to bus operators time and again but they don’t cooperate,“ he says. It would cost around Rs300,000 to Rs400,000 to build good quality bathrooms. The local authorities hardly help small business owners like Saif who they fine instead of assisting with infrastructure grants or water tankers. “The Assistant Commissioner came once and fined me without any prior warning,” says Saif. He ordered him to build a chabutra (a raised platform) in the bathrooms but didn’t offer any financial support. The Balochistan Development Statistics report of 2018-2019 says the province has 42,911 kilometres of roads, with national and provincial highways connecting districts and towns. International highway design guidelines say that key rest areas should be constructed every 80km to 100km, with smaller stop points at every 50km. Washrooms along the route from Quetta to Makran If such designs were applied, the 653km Makran Coastal Highway for instance, would need at least seven rest stops. The 892km M-8 would need eight and the 487km N-85 Surab-Panjgur-Hoshab highway would need five. To pull this off, safe gender-segregated resting areas should be built in towns along these routes such as Awaran, Turbat, Gwadar, Chaghi, Pasni, and Ormara. In more isolated stretches, eco-friendly and water-efficient technologies could be viable alternatives to provide these spaces lighting, clear signage and proper maintenance systems. And infrastructure is only as good as the insight behind it. If women are not included in the designing, the facilities will fall short of their needs. As Kulsoom Baloch says, “True development begins with the basics. In Balochistan, it is always the opposite. Roads are constructed first, celebrated as progress.” No one even thinks of toilets.
A one-and-a-half-month-old baby boy, who does not possess a birth certificate and was reportedly delivered via homebirth, has been temporarily moved to a sheltering facility following a court order. The Social Welfare Department on Wednesday said the baby is under professional care, adding that it has applied for a child protection order from the court following the arrest of a couple said to be his parents. Police, meanwhile said they have obtained the DNA sample of the boy, as well as samples from the couple, for verification. Officers said the test results are not out yet. The couple was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of child neglect after failing to provide proof that they had taken the infant for medical checks. They previously refused DNA testing to prove their relationship with the baby and failed to register a birth within 42 days set out in the law. Following the couple’s arrest, the baby underwent checks at the hospital and medical workers found no apparent injuries on him. Senior social work officer Stephanie Lee said the department will submit a report to the court to decide the next steps after meeting with the couple. “We will collect the information and then make the assessment and then also involve all other concerned parties. The time [taken for the report submission] will be subject to the progress of this assessment or the information gathered,” she said. When asked if the department will hand the baby back to the couple if it is found they are his biological parents, she stressed that the department will prioritise the baby's well-being. She added that if the couple is proven unfit to care for the child, the department may seek a guardianship order. The couple said they have another child that was placed in foster care in Sweden a number of years ago. The Immigration Department said it has reached out to the Swedish authorities to seek more information, including her identity there and foster care arrangements. The department added that it will take follow-up actions based on their response. Edited by Aaron Tam