The exchange, founded in China, said the first phase of withdrawals would start between 0600 and 0900 GMT and cover 15 crypto assets including bitcoin, ether, XRP, dogecoin and others.

Binance said on Sunday it had covered $6bn of stolen cryptocurrencies by using company money to buy replacement tokens. The remaining 5pc of stolen tokens consist of assets that are less liquid and may take longer to source in the required amounts, according to the exchange.

FBI ties attack to North Korea unit

The incident adds to a string of crypto thefts.

Last year, attackers stole $2.9bn worth of cryptocurrency across nearly 150 attacks, according to researchers at TRM Labs.

The FBI said on Saturday the North Korean state-sponsored unit known as TraderTraitor was responsible for the attack.

Pyongyang has for years denied using state-linked cyber units for espionage, financial theft and revenue. Its mission in Geneva and embassy in China did not respond to requests for comment.

Law enforcement observed members of the unit converting stolen assets into the cryptocurrency ether, the FBI said in a statement, adding that it expected “further laundering” of the assets through the use of related technology.

Analysts had blamed North Korea and said the Binance theft could be the largest financial heist of all time.

The bulk of the theft unfolded in around 20 minutes beginning late on Thursday and bore similarities to previous large attacks blamed on North Korea, according to US blockchain analysis firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis.

US President Donald Trump, however, said on Saturday that the US was still not certain if North Korea was involved.

“We don’t know if it’s North Korea but if it is, we’ll talk to North Korea about it,” Trump told reporters on Saturday in comments posted by a White House handle on X.

Binance vows to bear financial costs

Binance has been working with industry partners to freeze some of the affected assets, with about $3bn located as of Friday, it said.

The exchange has repeatedly said it would bear the financial impact of the funds stolen in the hack. It has set aside around $6.34bn of company funds internally to cover the losses.

The money spent buying replacement tokens came from Binance’s $1bn Secure Asset Fund for Users( Safu), a bitcoin reserve it holds to protect customers in the event of security breaches, as well as some of its Futures Insurance Fund and its corporate treasury, it said on X.

Co-CEO Yi He said on Saturday that 50pc of its Safu funds would be used, while the company committed to replenishing the fund to about $1 bn.

Richard Teng, the other co-CEO, has said that the breach was a “complex attack” involving a compromised laptop and malicious software designed to delete evidence of its activity, making it harder to trace and investigate.

Crypto prices fell on Friday, while Binance sought to reassure customers that their funds were safe after the hack.

Binance, which allows users to buy, sell and trade digital assets, has 335 million registered users globally and had about $162.8 billion in assets under custody as of its 2025 annual report.

Coinbase said it made adjustments to its systems that store cryptocurrency keys offline “solely out of an abundance of caution”, while Kraken said it was monitoring industry incidents for lessons it could apply to its defences.

But the industry will need to move urgently, analysts and industry executives said, as United States President Donald Trump’s regulators promote deeper integration of digital assets into the financial system, raising the stakes for an industry with a history of big hacks.

“For crypto to reach its full potential, the security situation must be addressed immediately,” said Chris Perkins, Franklin Templeton’s head of crypto.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, halted withdrawals after Thursday’s attack, which analysts blamed on North Korea and said it would use company funds to cover the losses.

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on X that the complex attack may have begun with a compromised software engineer’s laptop, giving hackers access to systems used to process withdrawals. The company later found additional breaches, while software designed to erase traces of the attack hampered the investigation.

Rival crypto exchanges moved quickly on Friday to shore up their own systems and to reassure customers that their tokens were safe. Full-time teams at Kraken look for potential vulnerabilities every day, a Kraken spokesperson said.

Still, even as the industry reeled from the biggest cryptocurrency heist of all time, executives expressed confidence that Binance had sufficient resources to cover the losses and that the hack would not have broader financial repercussions.

Bitcoin fell more than 4 per cent on Thursday while ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, fell more than 5pc, although both tokens recovered some of that ground on Friday.

“Our expectation is the industry writ large will actually not suffer material losses, even though Binance is obviously going to have to deal with the exploit directly,” said Josh Riezman, chief legal and strategy officer at crypto firm GSR.

The bulk of the heist unfolded in around 20 minutes late on Thursday and bore similarities to previous attacks blamed on North Korea, according to US blockchain analysis firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis.

North Korea routinely denies involvement in cryptocurrency thefts, and its mission in Geneva did not respond to requests for comment.

Hack involves social engineering, money laundering

While much remains unclear, social engineering, a common tactic in which hackers trick victims into revealing sensitive information or granting access to systems, may have been involved in compromising the laptop, security experts said.

Harry Donnelly, CEO of Circuit, a crypto risk infrastructure company, said companies are planning more employee training to guard against social engineering attacks.

In such attacks, hackers race to launder the funds before the exchange detects the breach and token issuers freeze assets.

Stablecoin issuer Tether said it had frozen nearly $1.57bn linked to Binance, while Circle said it froze $800 million. Bitcoin and ether cannot be frozen because no single entity controls the coins.

Chainalysis said the hackers appeared to be using sophisticated laundering patterns it had not seen before.

On Friday, some crypto exchange executives called for the industry to develop a coordinated hack detection system.

“We need a real-time alert system that allows participants to share information immediately when a hack occurs, coordinate a rapid response, and temporarily freeze suspected stolen funds,” said Star Xu, CEO of crypto exchange OKX, in a post on X.

GSR’s Riezman added that the Binance hack could spur the industry to act: “As we’re at this kind of confluence moment for traditional finance and digital assets, I think it’s obviously important that we continue to improve, and I think this, if anything, will be a catalyst for that.”

The game is a story-based walking simulator that has the player assume the role of Riaz, a member of the Air Quality Task Force in the quarantined city. As Riaz, you explore different pockets of the city, decontaminating zones and placing monitors to keep things running as best as possible. The fog, meanwhile, turns people into ‘sayahs’ — literally shadows of their former selves — and as Lahore is fully locked down, trying to get you and your partner Amara out is a bureaucratic nightmare of its own.

Despite being only 18 years old, this is not the first game Hisham has published. In fact, the developer has been creating games since before he hit double digits, including arcade shooter Pointblank on Steam and several game jam creations available on Itch.io. While all of them are entirely different in style, concept and genre, this one is described as “mostly interactive fiction”, akin to a walking simulator — there will be “light combat” and puzzle elements, but the main focus is on telling a story through dialogue, exploration and a linear narrative of about one and a half to two hours.

Hisham told Dawn that the toxic fog is heavily based on his experience growing up in Lahore, where he has watched the air quality decline year after year.

“I think grade 4 or 5 was the first time I remember it was something we talked about in our morning assemblies,” he recalled. “After that it just got worse … We had to start wearing masks around that season.”

In 2024, his school shut down for about two weeks due to hazardous air quality, which was where the seed was planted for the game.

“I think that also gave me a bunch of free time to think about the situation a little more,” he added jokingly. “And so, just sort of extrapolating that into … a horror idea for an imagined future where it just goes completely crazy.”

Although the game is not quite rooted in realism, it promises splashes of reality in the themes it explores. For example, the central tension of the story revolves around Amara, Riaz’s partner whom he brought to Lahore before the quarantine, and the resulting conflict between the two as he tries to get her back out.

The specificity of the developer’s experience with Lahore’s worsening smog is why the game is firmly rooted in the city itself, instead of just inspired by it. That said, it isn’t intended to be a game exclusively ‘for Pakistanis’, and the appeal of the premise extends beyond just finding new local talent.

“I would say it’s more of a storyline that transcends,” he said. “It’s grounded in that culture and that setting, but the story itself revolves around a bunch of themes like dissociation, guilt — something that would be applicable to a wider audience.

“I don’t think I could imagine this story that I’ve thought out happening outside of Pakistan, because the entire smog conflict is something that I wanted it to be rooted in,” he added.

“My idea with this in terms of appeal is that I want Pakistanis to feel represented, but I don’t want the story to just remain confined to something that only a Pakistani were to enjoy.”

Still, the game’s Pakistani roots and setting will be felt by players in another way: while the upcoming release of Fogbound will be in English, Hisham is planning to roll out a roman Urdu translation later so that it can reach the wider subcontinent. (Right-to-left or RTL text, for languages such as Urdu and Arabic, is a notoriously difficult facet of game localisation, so an Urdu-script translation remains off the table for now.)

Fogbound is created by a team of three. The art — featuring low-poly models deliberately designed to evoke old PlayStation games and a 3D-modelled city of Lahore — is all handled by one artist, while the music consists of 20-30 “dark ambient” tracks composed by a musician in Russia who was recruited to the project through Discord. The rest of it is entirely spearheaded and executed by Hisham.

The visual inspiration for the game comes from a ‘PSX-style’ aesthetic, which features low-poly graphics and models to evoke the feeling of playing on older PlayStation models. According to the creator, this is popular among indie developers as an accessible way to bring ideas to life, while also leaving “more to the imagination”.

A trailer is expected to drop for the game in November, while the game itself is planned to release on Steam at the end of December. Hisham noted that success for him looks less like revenue and more like having an influence.

When asked, he said that players who are interested in narrative-driven indie titles and interactive worlds to explore are his target audience. Those who exclusively lean towards action-packed AAA titles will likely not get the fix they’re looking for — but those interested in a short, interactive and introspective story will want to keep an eye out for this at year end.

“Personally, for me, it doing well is just people talking about it … it having some sort of impact in the Pakistani indie game scene, because it’s pretty fragmented right now,” he told Dawn. “So people can be like, ‘Oh, this is something you can maybe do,’ and so there’s more people being really crazy about their art and just wanting to make something really good.”

He added, “I consider this a success if I finish this game exactly how I wanted to finish it, and if people care about it enough to talk about it and it leaves some sort of mark in the Pakistani indie scene. Even if not in a global way — as long as it has some sort of impact there, I’m happy.”

“We remain committed to improving safety for kids on social media apps and holding tech companies accountable, and we are pleased to have brought this matter to a just resolution on behalf of our client,” Emily Jeffcott, a lawyer representing one of the young women suing both companies, said in a statement.

Jury selection began on Wednesday, and opening statements are scheduled for Nov 4.

The terms of the agreement are confidential, but sources close to Meta said the company decided to settle for business reasons.

“Trials, dismissals and settlements are all common in the bellwether process, and this litigation is no exception,” a Meta spokesperson said, referring to the series of test cases against the company being tried in Los Angeles.

If Snap does not settle, the trial will go ahead next week.

TikTok and YouTube were also named as defendants in the case, but both had already reached settlements with the plaintiffs, known by their initials SJ and KDB, their lawyers said. Meta had also previously settled with SJ.

A California state judge consolidated the two cases into a single trial.

Snap, which makes Snapchat, will defend itself against the claims of both SJ and KDB.

Lawyers for SJ and KDB will argue that their clients were exposed to “addictive and problematic” social media apps when they started using them at ages 13 and 15, respectively, according to court documents.

“We believe the evidence will support that we have put our community first, and that these allegations fundamentally misrepresent the plaintiffs’ experiences on Snapchat and how our platform was designed,” a Snap spokesperson said in a statement earlier this week.

Avoiding trial

Thousands of lawsuits have been filed in recent years in local, state and federal courtrooms across the cou­­ntry with various claims about alle­­ged harms to children and teenagers caused by social media companies.

The cases, the first of which went to trial earlier this year in Los Angeles, have taken twists and turns.

Meta and YouTube lost the first so-called bellwether case earlier this year, when a jury found them collectively liable for harming a young user known by the initials KGM, and ordered the tech companies to pay a combined $6 million penalty.

Snap and TikTok settled with KGM ahead of that trial.

Months later, Snap, TikTok and YouTube settled another case that was set to go to trial in August; that plaintiff, known as RKC, then withdrew their remaining claims against Meta, allowing the Instagram and Facebook maker to avoid trial without a settlement.

By settling before a trial kicks off, the social media companies contain costs from lawyer fees and potential penalties; another benefit is that it shields their executives from testifying in court.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri were expected to be called as key witnesses in the upcoming Los Angeles trial.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is expected to testify if the trial proceeds without another settlement.

In August, Meta agreed to pay more than $18 billion in penalties, in addition to making changes to Instagram and Facebook for teens, when it settled with 52 attorneys general several days into a trial held in California.

That settlement came just a day after Mosseri testified, and before Zuckerberg had been called to the stand.

Meta has faced other trials, though.

Earlier this month, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in a case where the company was found liable for deceiving users in the state about how their data was used in a case related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

A New Mexico jury also found the social media giant liable for harms to children, leading to a combined penalty of $942 million earlier this year.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2026

The company — the world’s largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes — said investigations had “uncovered additional points of breach”, contrary to initial findings that suggested the hack involved a single compromised laptop.

“This was a complex attack, and we are doing all we can in coordination with law enforcement to resolve it,” Binance wrote on X.

The firm earlier posted a series of sometimes contradictory messages, insisting that “user funds are completely safe” but also saying it would “cover all losses.”

The company confirmed on its X account for Latin America that “the total estimated impact is around $6.3 billion.”

That is four times the amount impacted in the biggest-ever cyberattack of its kind to date: $1.5 billion taken in February last year from the Bybit platform.

Binance warned the figure “may continue to increase as our teams work closely with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets.”

It said around $3 billion in affected assets had been frozen.

The 2023 Bybit heist was attributed at the time to a group of hackers affiliated with North Korea called TraderTraitor.

Blockchain investigation firm TRM Labs said Thursday it had “high confidence” that the Binance hack was also orchestrated by TraderTraitor, citing “robust on and off-chain intelligence.”

“Several features of this attack match earlier North Korea-linked heists,” TRM said.

TraderTraitor is believed to be part of Lazarus Group – which gained notoriety in 2014 when it was accused of hacking into Sony Pictures as revenge for “The Interview,” a film that mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Fund freeze

At about 0900 GMT Friday, Binance said it was on track to resume withdrawals in 45 hours, after announcing earlier that all deposits and withdrawals had been “temporarily suspended”.

“Deposits remain unaffected,” it said.

The company had said on X that initial investigation suggested the hack involved a compromised laptop belonging to a “DevOps engineer,” allowing the unauthorised party to access a “service container” and execute unauthorised withdrawal transactions.

“We have found no evidence of any private key leaks from wallets,” it said, promising to share a detailed technical analysis once investigations were complete.

But it said later that “subsequent investigation has uncovered additional points of breach.”

Paolo Ardoino, the boss of Tether — a company that issues a cryptocurrency known as USDT — said his firm froze about $1.6 billion “related to a potential Binance exchange hack.”

Jeremy Allaire, who runs cryptocurrency platform Circle, said his company had frozen more than $800 million in USDC.

USDT and USDC are both “stablecoins” or digital currencies whose value is linked to a traditional currency, the US dollar.

The US Department of Justice and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Crypto prices tumble

For several hours before Binance confirmed the attack, industry observers said hackers had managed to reach the platform.

The prices of most major cryptocurrencies fell on news of the cyberattack, except for the stablecoins, which by definition can only fluctuate within tight margins.

Bitcoin and Ethereum plunged nearly 5 per cent and nearly 6pc respectively on the news. BNB, native to Binance, tumbled nearly 10pc.

The attack on Binance comes as many observers express worries that the ever-expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) models could compromise cryptography and IT security protocols.

Binance has secure asset fund

Binance runs a secure asset fund for users, which is a reserve held entirely in bitcoin that is intended to protect user assets in cases of security breaches, according to its website.

“It’s becoming very hard to counter hacks as AI can find vulnerabilities faster than you can fix them,” said Bernardo Brites, CEO of Trace Finance, a payments and stablecoin infrastructure company.

“My view is that users will move away from smaller and medium-sized exchanges, (it is) becoming too risky to park your money somewhere that couldn’t cover a hack of meaningful size.”

World Liberty Financial, a crypto company linked to US President Donald Trump and his family, said on Thursday it had worked with cryptocurrency custodian BitGo to freeze funds stolen in what it described as a Binance hack.

Binance’s Yi said $27 million in stablecoins and about $2 million worth of World Liberty tokens had been frozen.

Crypto firm Ripple also froze roughly $200 million in funds, Yi said. Jack McDonald, senior vice president of stablecoins at Ripple, said the company was closely monitoring reports of a potential exploit involving Binance and was freezing affected funds and coordinating with relevant parties.

Incident adds to string of crypto thefts

The incident adds to a string of crypto thefts. Last year, attackers stole $2.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency across nearly 150 attacks, according to researchers at TRM Labs.

In September, cryptocurrency exchange Bitget said roughly $350 million in crypto had been stolen from its platform, underscoring the industry’s vulnerability to hackers.

Authorities have warned that organised crime groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies to move funds across borders outside the traditional financial system.

Binance.US, a separate cryptocurrency exchange, said it was not affected by the security incident.

Coinbase said it was unaffected and was monitoring the situation.

In an unrelated incident earlier on Thursday, prediction market operator Polymarket temporarily halted trading after a security incident involving a third-party provider. It later resumed trading and said it would fully reimburse affected traders.

But insurance protection is far from uniform. Coverage depends on how assets are stored, how hackers gain access and the specific terms of the policy.

Limited regulation and volatile crypto prices have long made insurers wary of the sector, despite growing demand for protection against digital asset theft and claims against company executives.

While both crime and demand for protection have tracked cryptocurrencies’ meteoric rise, underwriting such risks remains a niche business offered largely by specialist insurers in the Lloyd’s market and in Bermuda.

What is digital asset insurance?

Digital asset insurance is a range of policies designed to protect cryptocurrency exchanges, custodians and other companies operating in the sector against financial losses arising from the theft of digital assets, cyberattacks, technology failures and other business risks.

Unlike traditional insurance, these policies are tailored to risks associated with blockchain technology, including the theft or loss of private keys, wallet security breaches, smart contract vulnerabilities and failures in digital asset custody.

The global crypto insurance market was valued at $9.37bn in 2025 and is projected to reach $184.98 billion by 2033, according to Data Bridge Market Research.

The research firm cited growing institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies and rising incidents of cyberattacks and digital asset theft among the factors driving demand.

Coverage can include several types of policies: crime insurance for theft, social engineering and scams; cyber liability for breaches, hacks and regulatory response; errors and omissions insurance for software bugs; smart contract failures; directors and officers insurance for lawsuits targeting executives; and technology liability for infrastructure providers.

How are losses covered?

When a crypto exchange suffers a hack, losses can be covered through a combination of insurance payouts, the company’s own capital and emergency funds set aside to compensate customers.

The extent of insurance coverage depends on the policies held by the exchange, including their limits, deductibles and exclusions. Where losses exceed the insured amount, the company must rely on its own financial resources or other recovery arrangements to meet its obligations.

Some exchanges also maintain reserve funds to reimburse customers following security breaches. Binance established the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) in July 2018 as an emergency reserve to protect users in extreme cases, such as security breaches or platform-level incidents.

As of 2026, the SAFU fund holds crypto assets worth roughly $1bn, entirely in bitcoin, according to Binance’s website. The company did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on its insurance coverage.

What can prevent an insurance payout?

Exclusions that let insurers deny certain claims are common in policies covering digital assets and the personal liabilities of directors and officers at cryptocurrency companies. These can limit the scope of protection available to companies and make it harder for them to secure coverage.

Common exclusions in these policies include value fluctuations, fraudulent acts by the policyholder and unsecured or negligent key management.

Do traditional crime and cyber insurance policies cover crypto?

Most standard crime insurance policies do not cover cryptocurrency losses, as they were originally designed to protect physical property such as cash, securities and precious metals.

Traditional cyber liability policies also do not always cover the value of digital assets stolen in a hack. While cyber policies can cover both first-party losses and third-party liabilities, including forensic investigations, customer notifications and legal expenses, they generally exclude the loss or transfer of funds.

As a result, standalone cyber policies typically do not cover the full value of stolen cryptocurrency unless specific digital asset coverage has been added.

How do insurers assess crypto theft claims?

Insurers examine how a breach occurred, which systems were compromised and whether the resulting loss falls within the policy’s coverage.

They may also assess whether the exchange followed required security procedures, including controls over private keys, wallet access and transaction approvals.

The distinction between an external hacker stealing credentials and an employee deliberately transferring assets can determine whether a crime or cyber insurance policy covers the loss.

Advancing in rank from 99th place in 2025, Pakistan also reclaimed its “overperformer” status for the fourth time, a status given to economies identified as performing above expectations for their level of economic development. It also held the status in 2022 and 2024.

The global index report showed that Pakistan performed better in innovation outputs than innovation inputs in 2026. This year, Pakistan ranked 121st in innovation inputs and 72nd in innovation outputs — both higher than last year.

“Innovation overperformance shows that innovation does not follow a straight line from income to results,” the report said.

“The 2026 overperformers show that economies can generate more innovation than expected for their level of development when they build on focused strengths.”

WIPO highlighted that Pakistan’s strengths were concentrated in the digital economy, particularly mobile app creation, ICT services exports, high-tech imports, and software spending. It added that the country’s “relatively strong” scientific production and university quality supported a developing digital economy.

In the 2026 index, Pakistan ranked 15th among the 36 lower middle-income group economies and eighth among the 11 economies in central and southern Asia. It did not rank among the top innovation clusters in any specific innovation pillar of the index (including ‘human capital and research’, ‘infrastructure’, etc).

Pakistan’s GII ranking (2020-2026) showed a rise over the past seven years, ranking 107th in 2020; 99th in 2021; 87th in 2022; 88th in 2023; 91st in 2024; and 99th in 2025.

Meanwhile, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States remained the world’s top three innovation economies, with Switzerland ranking first for a 16th consecutive year. The organisation noted, “In a period of major geopolitical and economic turbulence, the most striking feature about the top of the ranking is its stability.”

According to the report, the leading economies broadly remain the same as in 2025, with no new economy in the top 15 since last year, and Europe once more accounting for the largest share of the group with 14 economies out of 25 innovation leaders. Additionally, the Netherlands moved up to seventh place and Austria to 18th.

“The main signal at the innovation frontier this year is continuity, rather than the emergence of any single new entrant,” the report said.

Five Asian economies were also among the top 25: South Korea and Singapore in fourth and fifth place respectively; China remaining 10th — as the only middle-income economy among the innovation leaders — Japan at 12th and Hong Kong, China in 14th place.

The report highlighted that the presence of Asian economies was now an “established feature of the top ranks, rather than a development unique to this year”.

According to the report, the GII 2026 Innovation Tracker pointed to “continued but slower progress across the innovation cycle”. Most indicators advanced, with notable gains in scientific output, corporate research and development (R&D), battery costs and technology adoption; however, about three-quarters remained below the decade average.

Research effort nonetheless remained at a historic high, it pointed out, with global R&D intensity close to two per cent of GDP.

The WIPO report identified that the near-term environment was more demanding than the previous year: “Global growth of about 3.4pc in 2025 is expected to ease to around 3pc in 2026, held back by higher energy prices and elevated uncertainty, before recovering modestly in 2027.”

It highlighted that AI-related investment remained “the main engine on the upside”, with the largest hyper-scalers set to spend over $1 trillion on AI infrastructure across 2025 and 2026.

“This will be increasingly financed through debt and private credit, meaning a downward revision of expected AI returns could tighten financing conditions well beyond the sector,” it added.

The report noted that emerging economies, including Pakistan, could build on their standout strengths to improve their overall innovation performance.

All three major US stock indexes were in negative territory, with the Nasdaq dragged sharply lower by tech and tech-related megacaps in the wake of Alphabet’s disappointing quarterly results released late Wednesday.

In contrast, the smallcap Russell 2000 advanced 0.8 per cent.

Semiconductor stocks were poised to snap their four-day winning streak, dropping 2.0pc as investors sought to distinguish between companies that can fund their lofty AI ambitions from those that burn through cash and borrow funds to realise their ambitions.

Alphabet was in the latter camp following its quarterly report released late on Wednesday. The Google parent’s revenue miss was compounded by its accelerated AI-related cash burn. Its shares slid 13.2pc.

“A risk-off day like this, with small caps outperforming, is a good sign that thus far the market’s interpretation of cracks in the AI story doesn’t mean cracks in every corner of the market,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird in Louisville, Kentucky.

“There’s plenty of other places to go with your money outside of the AI trade that have pretty decent prospects.”

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve policymakers chose to hold US rates steady, acknowledging that while price pressures remain “elevated”, the central bank will decide on its next move as it “accumulates more information”.

A raft of economic data released on Thursday answered that call, with a first take on third-quarter GDP that showed the US economy grew at a faster-than-expected pace in the third quarter, while price growth continued to gain heat with a war-related oil supply crunch feeding into broader, systemic inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 315.36 points, or 0.59pc, to 52,163.07, the S&P 500 lost 48.73 points, or 0.63pc, to 7,695.25 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 441.15 points, or 1.66pc, to 26,108.35.

Among the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, communication services and tech were down the most, while healthcare led the gainers.

Third-quarter earnings season has crossed the halfway point, with 253 of the companies in the S&P 500 having reported. Of those, 81pc have beaten analyst expectations, according to the most recent LSEG data.

Analysts now expect aggregate third-quarter S&P 500 earnings growth of 31.0pc, year-on-year, per LSEG.

Caterpillar topped quarterly profit estimates but left its growth targets unchanged. The heavy equipment maker’s shares tumbled 9.5pc.

Eli Lilly jumped 6.3pc after the drugmaker lifted its revenue outlook on the strength of weight-loss drug sales.

Ford gained 2.9pc following the automaker’s third-quarter revenue beat.

Merck beat earnings expectations on the strength of its cancer drug Keytruda and its HPV vaccine Gardasil. The drugmaker’s shares advanced 4.4pc.

Software stocks were broadly weak. Fortinet and ServiceNow dropped more than 20pc each after their quarterly results.

Marvell Technology slumped 12.8pc after media reports said the company was in advanced talks to buy data-centre optics maker Lumentum Holdings. Lumentum shares rose 2.0pc.

Amazon’s shares were off 3.9pc ahead of its earnings report, expected after the closing bell.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.59-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 113 new highs and 155 new lows on the NYSE.

On the Nasdaq, 2,416 stocks rose and 2,221 fell as advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.09-to-1 ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 19 new 52-week highs and six new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 81 new highs and 131 new lows.

Under EU law, member states must notify the European Commission to ensure their bills do not break the bloc’s rules. Austria wanted to ban children under 14 from social media, but the EU said no.

“The commission has decided to postpone for 12 months any draft national laws overlapping with the future harmonised rules,” EU spokesman Thomas Regnier said.

The European Commission last month proposed to ban children under 13 from social media, and permit only limited, supervised access until the age of 15.

The EU believes allowing countries to move ahead with national laws would divide the bloc, creating varying age-limits among member states.

Brussels also fears EU countries will not rush to pass the bloc-wide law if they have their own country-level rules in place.

“We need to now focus on the negotiations of the EU Kids Act and to ensure an effective enforcement of our rules,” Regnier said. The commission hopes EU countries and the European Parliament will reach a deal on the new rules in the next few months.

There will, however, be exceptions to the EU’s decision.

Although the commission demanded France’s proposed law be reworked, it is not expected to be blocked because Paris notified Brussels of the law before bloc-wide legislation was put forward.

And Greece has been able to pass its own rules, drafted long before September. Regnier would not be drawn on whether France would be prevented from enacting its national legislation.

The EU has yet to deliver verdicts on bans by other EU states, including Italy and Slovakia.

The law requires chatbot operators, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to verify the ages of users and restrict the use of certain traits by the artificial intelligence interface if the user is under 18.

If used by a minor, chatbots would not be able to produce any content that could leave its user to believe it “is human, alive, or experiences human emotions,” the law states.

It also cannot generate outputs that makes the user think it “has a personal relationship, professional relationship, or an authority figure role,” nor can it frame the content it produces as being a “personal opinion”.

“No longer will minors have access to chatbots that pretend to be their friends, boyfriends and girlfriends,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a signing ceremony on Wednesday.

“No longer will chatbots be able to keep sensitive information about a minor’s emotional and physical health,” Hochul added.

Other US states including California have also passed laws restricting chatbots, but the law signed by Hochul imposes some of the broadest language in regulating the tech, prompting backlash from AI companies.

Tech:NYC, a tech industry advocacy group for the sector in New York, criticised the “vague language” of the law.

“Keeping kids safe online should not mean cutting them off from tools that help them learn and prepare for careers,” the group said in a statement.

AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to an AFP request for comment on the law.

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group that provides guidelines for parents about media suitability for children, celebrated the bill’s passage, calling it “the strongest kids’ AI safety bill in the country.”

“AI companies offer chatbots with features that are dangerous, and even deadly, for kids and teens… Now, those harmful features will be outlawed in New York,” Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer said in a statement.

The premier was chairing a meeting in Islamabad reviewing progress on the use of AI and digitalisation in the economy and governance, as well as cooperation with Alibaba in these areas, according to a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

“The secret to Pakistan’s development lies in artificial intelligence and digitalisation,” the PMO quoted him as saying.

During the meeting, he said the effective use of digitalisation, AI and modern technology could play a “vital role in improving trade, exports, agricultural productivity, ease of doing business and the quality of public services in Pakistan”, PMO said.

PM Shehbaz welcomed Alibaba’s cooperation in facilitating Pakistani agricultural exports to Chinese markets, highlighting that modernising the agricultural sector was essential for national development. He also welcomed cooperation with Alibaba on automation in agriculture.

The prime minister directed that an AI-assisted cancer early-detection system be implemented at the earliest in collaboration with Alibaba. He also directed that a 15-day AI training programme for IT graduates be launched soon under the IT ministry’s Ignite programme, in collaboration with Alibaba.

The prime minister recalled that a memorandum of understanding had been signed with Alibaba at the company’s headquarters in Hangzhou during his visit to China in May.

He said the government’s top priorities included making full use of its strategic partnership with the global company to improve small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) access to global markets and create new opportunities for technology-driven development in the country.

The prime minister directed all relevant authorities to ensure that cooperation with Alibaba was translated into tangible results through clearly defined targets, timelines and effective monitoring of all projects. He instructed the relevant ministries to complete all necessary measures by November and submit a progress report.

The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) was directed to introduce an analytics system for monitoring the petroleum products supply chain in collaboration with Alibaba, the PMO statement said, adding that Ogra was being provided with AI tools for it.

The Export Promotion Board was also instructed to work with Alibaba to help increase Pakistan’s exports.

During the briefing on progress in strategic cooperation between Alibaba and the Pakistani government, the meeting was informed that work was under way on AI-based models for agriculture, track-and-trace technology for tobacco, and digital platforms to facilitate the export of citrus fruits and olives.

A dedicated Pakistan pavilion has also been established on Alibaba’s platform to promote Pakistani products in international markets, PMO added. A system for the digital verification of trade documents through Pakistan Single Window has been made operational as well.

Meanwhile, a two-year programme is being launched through collaboration between the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) and Alibaba to provide SMEs with access to international markets, training and e-commerce opportunities.

The meeting also reviewed progress on developing an advanced data platform and a central data hub for the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL), as well as a proposed pilot project for AI-assisted cancer diagnosis.

Initiatives involving the use of digital technology and AI in higher education, railways, postal services and urban administration are also “in the final stages of completion”, the statement added.

Federal ministers Ahsan Iqbal, Rana Tanveer Hussain, Jam Kamal Khan, Dr Musadik Malik, Ahad Khan Cheema, Muhammad Aurangzeb, Attaullah Tarar, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, Syed Mustafa Kamal and Abdul Aleem Khan attended the meeting, along with Minister of State Bilal Azhar Kayani and relevant senior officials.

During the premier’s four-day visit to China in May this year, Pakistan expressed its support for “China’s initiative of establishing the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO), believing that this represents a concrete step toward promoting the development of artificial intelligence for good and for all”.

In July, Pakistan became a founding member of WAICO after Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar signed the agreement establishing the forum in Shanghai, China.

Earlier this year, PM Shehbaz announced the government’s plan to invest $1 billion in AI by 2030.

The corridor was launched at a ceremony in Islamabad, which was televised on Tuesday. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning and Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong attended the launch.

In his televised remarks, Tarar expressed his “long-standing“ desire to collaborate with China in the fields of media, information sharing and digital platforms.

Hailing Pakistan and China’s bilateral relations, Tarar recalled the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), noting that it had “turned decades of goodwill into steel, concrete and current”.

“It lit homes, laid motorways across our provinces and gave Pakistan at Gwadar a gateway to the world.”

Tarar said that while the first phase of CPEC connected lands, the next phase will “connect our minds and this information corridor will act as a bridge for connecting the minds of the people of the two countries”.

The information minister said the collaboration under the newly launched corridor will stand on four pillars — media, business and enterprises, think tanks, and culture/tourism.

“First, media. A news exchange working group of 18 Pakistani and Chinese media organisations. From our state broadcasters and private channels to Xinhua, CMG, and People’s Daily now share verified news on our cooperation.”

He added that it will also include a dedicated fact-check mechanism to track misleading narratives and counter them with “concrete facts”.

The second pillar, which includes businesses and enterprise, Tarar said, will draw on leading Pakistani and Chinese commercial groups.

“This pillar has opened its first regional office in Karachi,” Tarar said, adding that under the initiative, a trade portal to track trade, investment, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was being built, along with a podcast series about the stories of Chinese entrepreneurs in Pakistan and vice versa.

He said the third pillar will involve collaboration between think tanks from the two countries.

“Led by the Pakistan-China Institute and joined by our foremost research institutions, this pillar will bring evidence and depth to the bilateral conversation through joint dialogue, research, and publications with Chinese counterparts,” Tarar said.

The fourth pillar, which Tarar described as the “heart of the corridor”, will focus on tourism, with work already underway on the Xinjiang-Gilgit-Baltistan tourism corridor, “extending the journeys of Chinese travellers into the valleys of our north”.

Tarar also shared that the first cohort of CPEC Youth Ambassadors had been nominated from 13 universities across Pakistan.

“Before a community of shared future can be built in steel and stone, it must find its place in the minds of the people,” Tarar said, stressing that the principle was at the core of CPIC.

“If CPEC is its body and the shared future, CPIC will be its voice. If CPEC connects our economies, CPIC will connect our understanding. Through it, a student in Lahore will know the China of today, and not the caricatures of yesterday. A family in Chengdu will see Pakistan as it truly is: warm, resilient, and full of potential.”

He added that the corridor will counter “falsehoods with fact, isolation with exchange, and suspicion with trust,” lauding Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vision.

“President Xi gave us the vision of a shared future, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has given Pakistan the means to reach it,” Tarar said.

For PM Shehbaz, Tarar said the digital revolution was about people and “above all Pakistan’s young people”.

“More than 68 per cent of our nation is under 30 in their hands. A laptop is a passport and a smartphone is a marketplace. Through their talent, Pakistan is taking its place in the global digital economy.”

Tarar further stated that CPIC was at its core a “digital corridor”.

“Its news exchanges, fact-check mechanisms, trade portals, podcasts, social media channels, and youth ambassadors are tools of a digital age put to work for an old and trusted friendship. And here too, Pakistan walks with China,” Tarar said.

The information minister, in his address, also invited Chinese media houses, think tanks, universities, enterprises, and youth ambassadors to join each pillar of CPIC.

Concluding his address, Tarar said that while the Karakoram Highway was carved through the mountains, today Pakistan and China were building a “different highway [..] it is not made of rocks, but it is made of truth, and it will be carried not on trucks, but on voices.

Meanwhile, China’s Ning also addressed the ceremony, noting that China and Pakistan continue to face misinformation and fake news, according to state broadcaster Pakistan TV.

Ning stressed the need for the CPIC, saying that its four pillars can play a key role in highlighting bilateral cooperation.

Pakistan and China share a longstanding strategic partnership rooted in mutual trust, economic cooperation and regional connectivity. Over the decades, ties have expanded across different sectors — including trade, energy, defence and infrastructure — with the CPEC symbolising a shared vision for development.

A day earlier, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met Ambassador Zaidong to review progress on CPEC.

During the meeting in Islamabad, Dar praised the ongoing expansion of the “all-weather strategic cooperative partnership” between the two nations. Discussions focused on advancing trade, investment, regional connectivity, agricultural modernisation and people-to-people exchanges.

Staff on select teams in the United States, Canada, India and Britain at vice president level and below will be eligible, a Microsoft spokesperson said, while some groups of employees, including some working on data centres, sales and marketing, are excluded.

“The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we’re evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter,” Amy Coleman, an executive vice president and chief people officer, told employees in a memo.

It’s the second voluntary buyout offer that Microsoft has offered employees this year.

In April, the company reportedly offered around seven per cent of its US workforce the option to retire early.

Around 30pc of those eligible took the voluntary retirement plan, according to CNBC.

Microsoft had 223,000 employees globally at the end of June, down from 228,000 at the end of 2025, according to regulatory filings.

Around 27pc of Microsoft’s workforce is eligible for the new buyout offer.

The company is expected to report quarterly earnings later this week.

Tech layoffs

As major tech giants continue to spend heavily on AI-related investments, concerns persist about the impact of the technology on jobs.

Even industry insiders, such as Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei, have warned of mass job losses.

Netflix will reportedly cut around 6pc of its workforce, or 1,000 jobs, US media reported last week.

Auction site eBay laid off 1,000 employees earlier this month, adding to a previous round earlier this year which impacted 800 jobs.

In May, Meta laid off around 10pc of its global workforce, impacting around 8,000 employees.

In April, Meta also said it would cancel plans to hire an additional 6,000 people and also shift 7,000 other employees into AI workflow-related roles.

Ride-hailing giant Uber said in September that it would lay off around 10pc of its staff, impacting an estimated 3,000 or more employees.

And e-commerce giant Amazon announced 16,000 global job cuts in January.

Microsoft previously cut nearly 5,000 jobs in July that heavily targeted its Xbox gaming division.

Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are collectively on track to pour roughly $700 billion into AI data centres, chips and computing infrastructure this year alone.

In July, Microsoft said it spent $41bn overall between April and June and expected to increase its spending to $50bn between July and September.

However, the company also adjusted its forecast for total spending in the 2026 calendar year to $175bn, down from $190bn previously.

Around two-thirds of its spending goes towards “short-lived assets,” specifically chips, due to customer demand for “both AI and non-AI infrastructure”, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said during a call with analysts.

Facebook’s parent company also announced plans to launch an additional stock offering of up to $60bn, at a date yet to be determined.

The fundraising comes days after Meta created a new class of non-voting shares that it said would give it greater flexibility to raise capital as it competes in AI.

Chipmakers Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom, all major suppliers to the AI data centre boom, have indicated interest in buying up to $5bn of the common stock offered, Meta said, though those indications are not binding.

The company has been spending aggressively to build out its AI capabilities, and investors are looking for signs that the investments are paying off.

Because the new shares carry no voting rights, Meta can issue them without diluting the voting control held by founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Google’s parent, Alphabet, recently raised $85bn through equity offerings to fund its own AI data centre expansion.

He addressed the launch ceremony in Islamabad of the Prime Minister’s Youth Chromebook Scheme, a nationwide initiative to distribute 500,000 Chromebooks equipped with MiFi internet connectivity to deserving students and high achievers.

Banners visible at the ceremony read “500,000 refurbished Chromebooks” were to be handed out.

Expressing confidence in the initiative’s broad impact, the prime minister noted that the scheme’s internet connectivity features will extend benefits to family members, ultimately reaching an estimated 2.5 million people.

He highlighted that the facility was available to students of religious seminaries, noting that previous laptop schemes had also successfully reached prominent religious seminaries.

The prime minister stressed that the 500,000 Chromebooks will be distributed on the basis of the youth’s “ability and ability alone”.

“These Chromebooks will help you gain further education, and in the future, these devices will help you secure employment,” the premier said.

PM Shehbaz recalled that the previous PML-N governments distributed 600,000 laptops within a decade; however, he vowed that the government now aimed to distribute 500,000 Chromebooks in the next two years.

“These wonderful instruments will be in your hands so that you are not lagging in intelligence and skills,” he said, stressing that intelligence and hard work should not be limited by poverty.

The prime minister stressed that empowering the nation’s youth with modern tools was vital to helping them compete globally, while expressing gratitude to Tokyo Technology Care Foundation (TTCF) for partnering in the Chromebook initiative.

At the outset of his address, the premier stressed that it was his duty and the state’s “collective responsibility” to provide the youth with modern technology, so they could become “the great builders of Pakistan”.

“Our boys and girls [..] are the true assets of Pakistan,” the prime minister remarked. He added that the Chromebooks were being distributed based on the youth’s hard work and ability.

He hoped students would be able to “attend school remotely [..] and find themselves amongst the most educated people” with the help of the device.

Recalling the recent inauguration of a Daanish School in Islamabad, PM Shehbaz stressed that education “should be the priority of any government”.

“For the development of the nation’s children, all the resources should be provided,” he said.

“Education is a jewel; regardless of where you are from, it will always make you distinguished in society,” he remarked.

The event was attended by ministers, parliamentarians, the Punjab Assembly speaker, educationists, vice chancellors, ambassadors and foreign guests.

Ministers hail inclusion of seminary students

Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar and Defence Minister Khawaja Asif particularly highlighted the inclusion of seminary students in the scheme.

In a post on X, Dar said, “Including madrasa students marks a historic national consensus that every child deserves the tools of the modern world.”

Asif said that “madressah students were kept away from the mainstream for years”. He stated that one out of every five Chromebooks will be given to a student of a registered seminary under the new scheme.

Addressing the Chromebook distribution ceremony, Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui emphasised that the government was striving to elevate Pakistan’s global standing by adapting to evolving educational trends.

He noted that transforming the country’s 150 million youth into a productive national asset was crucial to ensuring the youth demographic drives progress rather than becoming a challenge.

TTCF Chairman Rashid Minhas also spoke about the partnership, noting that the memorandum signed with the government aims to empower students to become creators in the digital world and spur a national digital revolution.

Meanwhile, PM’s Youth Programme Chairman Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan praised the prime minister’s vision for recognising young talent with the support of the overseas diaspora.

In August, PM Shehbaz, speaking on the occasion of International Youth Day, said that 250,000 high-achieving students would be awarded Chromebook laptops this year.

Last year, Pakistan launched its first Google Chromebook assembly line and hailed it as a “historic milestone” that would make digital tools more accessible.

At the time, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar had said the assembly line’s establishment held great economic significance as it laid the “foundation for jobs, supply chain, development and future tech exports”.

KARACHI: A sharp rise in mobile phone prices in the city has made new smartphones almost unaffordable for a large number of consumers as all major mobile phone brands have increased prices by Rs15,000 to Rs30,000 per handset.

The increase has hit particularly hard those who could previously afford “budget smartphones”.

The budget smartphone can be described as a device with bare minimum features needed to function reliably for daily essentials, such as 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. While it used to cost around Rs20,000 until last year, it is now priced above Rs30,000, and, therefore, has gone out of reach for many.

Consumers wonder why the prices have gone up so much. Some think it is because of the taxes imposed by the government while others say it is so because of the US-Iran war that has affected international trade and, with that, export of mobile phone components.

For a vast majority, education, work, online transport services, banking, government services and communication with family members are linked to smartphones and, therefore, having a reliable phone is essential.

Due to a steep hike in prices, a large number of buyers have no option but to buy used phones available on the market or kit phones, which are refurbished sets imported in bulk without retail packaging to avoid heavy customs duties.

However, many believe that used or kit phones do not offer the same reliability which a new smartphone does.

Shopkeepers said the unprecedented increase in mobile phone prices had not only made life more difficult for consumers, but had also severely affected their businesses.

One shopkeeper said: “When a phone costing Rs20,000 rises to Rs30,000 or Rs35,000, many consumers can no longer afford it. Our sales have fallen drastically following the increase in prices.”

Another shopkeeper said the market was currently facing uncertainty because of continued price fluctuations and a shortage of supply.

The ‘reason’ behind price hike

The Karachi Electronics Dealers Association president, Muhammad Rizwan Irfan, said that there had been no significant increase in taxes to affect the price so much.

He said mobile phone prices had increased mainly due to the rising cost of chips.

Similarly, Mian Abdul Rehman of the Pakistan Mobile Phone Manufacturers Association told Dawn that mobile phones were becoming increasingly expensive mainly because of the rising cost of RAM (random access memory) and ROM (read-only memory).

He said demand for memory components had increased significantly with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, including its use in AI systems and robotics and data centres. However, their production had not increased at the same pace as consumption.

“AI companies are buying RAM and ROM at very high prices, which is driving up their cost,” he said.

Mr Rehman said memory device prices had remained relatively stable before the rapid expansion of AI, but the situation had changed with the growing demand from AI-related industries.

He said mobile phone manufacturers were finding it increasingly difficult to absorb the higher cost of memory components. “That’s why there has been such a significant increase in mobile phone prices,” he added.

Consumers seek govt intervention

Perturbed by the jacked-up prices, consumers Dawn spoke to are calling on the government to take measures to keep smartphones with basic specifications within the reach of ordinary citizens, arguing that access to digital services should not become limited to those who can afford increasingly expensive handsets.

They said mobile phones are an essential part of everyday life rather than merely a means of communication or entertainment.

A customer at Sareena Mobile Market in Buffer Zone said phones are a basic necessity in everyday life.

“On the one hand, the government talks about a ‘Digital Pakistan’, but on the other, the price of the very device through which ordinary citizens access essential government and other digital services continues to rise,” he said, adding: “The government should take measures to keep the prices of basic smartphones affordable, so that people can access essential government apps and other digital services.”

Another customer suggested that the government enter into an agreement with a mobile phone manufacturer to make basic smartphones available to consumers at affordable prices.

A man, who had come to Saddar Mobile Market to buy a new phone for his daughter, who just started college, told Dawn that he realised after visiting the market that buying a new smartphone was out of his budget.

“When I came to buy the phone in August, I found that the price of the model I wanted had risen from Rs22,000-Rs23,000 to around Rs30,000. When I asked the shopkeeper about the increase, he told me that there might be problems with imports, which had pushed up the mobile phone prices.

“With my salary and the current inflation, I could not afford an additional Rs7,000 to Rs8,000 all at once, so I decided to wait until the following month and save some more money. But the price has increased further this month. Now I have only two options: either buy a used smartphone or a keypad mobile phone, because a new smartphone is now beyond my means,” he said.

A woman at the same market said rising phone prices had forced her to spend money from her savings to buy a new smartphone. “It is my compulsion to purchase a mobile phone at an inflated price as I am a working woman and need a phone in good condition,” she said.

Speaking to Dawn at North Karachi’s Abdullah Mobile Market near UP Mor, a young man said: “My mobile phone was snatched last night near KDA Chowrangi. I have come to the market to buy a phone, but even for Rs25,000-Rs30,000, I cannot find a decent handset on which essential everyday apps can run properly.”

He said: “Previously, a reasonably good phone with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage could be bought for Rs20,000-Rs22,000, but shopkeepers are now quoting Rs35,000-Rs40,000 for phones with similar specifications. Under these circumstances, I may now have to settle for a lower-quality handset, start using a keypad phone that can only make calls and send SMS messages, or buy a used phone.”

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2026

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced plans for the ban in April, taking to TikTok — one of the most popular social networks with young people in Greece — to explain the “difficult but necessary” measure.

After a heated debate in a parliamentary session that started on Thursday and stretched into Friday, Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy party used its majority to pass the bill, which no other parties backed, the Ana news agency reported.

The opposition socialist Pasok party abstained after seeking an alternative bill that would have banned social media for under-13s and parental controls for 13- and 14-year-olds. Other left-wing and nationalist parties voted against.

The bill, set to take effect on January 1, will require age verification on social networks and impose harsh penalties if companies fail to comply.

Australia last year became the first country to introduce such a social media ban for kids, barring under-16s.

More than 20 countries have passed similar laws, according to an AFP tally.

Critics say social networks use addictive algorithms to keep kids glued to their screens, and warn excessive scrolling can damage their mental health.

Bans have faced pushback from free-speech advocates, and sceptics question how well they will work.

The Duo’s reception could prove an early test for new CEO John Ternus, the former hardware chief who unveiled the phone barely a week after taking charge in September.

It could also have large implications for a niche category in which ⁠rivals such as Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies have sold premium ​offerings for several years.

Within minutes of pre-orders opening last Friday, Apple’s estimated delivery dates for the Duo had slipped to late January as demand outpaced supply.

The US company called the response from customers “nothing short of extraordinary.”

With the massive demand, Apple capped pre-orders at two handsets per customer and limited sales significantly for walk-in shoppers, resulting in muted crowds unlike the hype that typically accompanied new iPhone releases.

In China, France, Hong Kong, India and Japan, units would be available only for customers who had ordered online

In Sydney, the first Apple store to sell the phones on Friday, a queue of customers formed outside before opening at 8am local time (2100 GMT or 2am PKT).

Simon Krishnan, a 48-year-old engineer, paid A$3,899 ($2,734) for a Duo with 512GB memory.

“This is a bit of a luxury item for me, because it’s so expensive, but I just think, you know what? Life’s too short,” he said.

In China, a soft consumer market combined with memory costs pushing prices higher has led to six straight quarters of declines in smartphone shipments.

Apple’s market share, however, has rebounded as some phone buyers trade up to premium devices while others seek value at the lower end of the market, putting pressure on mid-range brands.

Liu Wei, a 26-year-old healthcare professional, already has a foldable phone from Xiaomi, but still queued outside a central Shanghai Apple store from 6am to get his hands on Apple’s first foldable.

“I’ve used Apple products for many years and I have more trust (in the brand), so I bought one on launch day to try it out,” he said.

In Hong Kong, May, 38, who declined to give his full name for privacy reasons, secured a 256GB iPhone Duo, which retails for HK$17,499 ($2,231.73), during an online pre‑sale and aimed to resell the handset for a profit of around HK$4,000: “A few meals’ worth of money,” he joked.

Mixed reviews

Early reviews have praised the Duo’s design as well as its sturdy and barely visible hinge, a major feat for phones whose prominent creased screen has long been a drawback and potential deterrent for buyers.

But reviewers have said camera compromises including the absence of a telephoto lens and third-party apps that still need to be reworked for the new display size could disappoint some buyers.

They have also said the Duo in its smaller, folded state is less handy for the litany of quick tasks that most users carry out each day on standard iPhones, with several prominent reviewers recommending against the Duo for many Apple customers.

“It’s been a lot of fun trying the Duo out for a week, but it feels like I’ve gotten to use an extraordinarily polished prototype — not a finished product that I’d want to buy and carry,” longtime Apple commentator John Gruber, author of the blog Daring Fireball, wrote in a review.

Tech commentator Marques Brownlee, popularly known as MKBHD, said in a YouTube review that “if you’re just a regular person who doesn’t do much more than texting, social media and browsing here and there, then it is probably a no. But if the $2,000 doesn’t mean much to you, and you like the idea, after the learning curve and getting used to not having facial identification, it is a really fun phone.”

Tough to find

The limited supplies could disappoint Apple fans lining up in front of stores to buy the Duo. Apple told Reuters that walk-in availability would vary by country, with limited stocks in the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico and much of Britain and Europe.

“Foldables have been an established category for years, but adoption has remained relatively limited compared with conventional smartphones. Apple’s entry could bring the format to a much broader audience,” said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at market researcher IDC.

IDC expects Apple will take 44 per cent of the foldable value in 2026 on 31pc of foldable units.

By 2027, it will become the market leader in the category both in value and units shipped, IDC forecast.

“Apple has made a convincing case for this form factor,” Jeronimo said after spending a week with the passport-shaped Duo.

“Now comes the next test: turning excitement into availability, adoption and a lasting new chapter for the smartphone market,” Jeronimo said.

Pros:

• Wolverine is a comic-accurate short king

• Highly detailed facial capture and character models

• Visceral, stylish and satisfying combat … at first

• Voice acting is decent, even if the material isn’t

• Stunning set-pieces

Cons:

• Why is there a blue line permanently guiding me through a level with only one path?

• Combat can feel barebones and repetitive at times

• “Hidden” collectables are exposed by very invasive visual cues

• Stealth and boss fights are awful

Score: 4/7 — Not worth buying at full price. Play it when it eventually lands on PlayStation Plus.

Reviewed on PlayStation 5; available on PlayStation 5

Price: Rs18,000 (physical copy), $69.99 (PlayStation Store)

All screenshots and GIFs captured by author.

If you’ve read my reviews, you’ll likely know I’m a big DC and Marvel fan, and games like Batman Arkham and the Spider-Man series hold a special place in my heart. I wrote a two-parter on Lego Batman for heaven’s sake.

So when Insomniac, the minds behind PlayStation’s Spider-Man series, announced that they were developing a Wolverine game, I was genuinely hyped. Spider-Man gave us engaging combat, vibrant worlds to explore and, especially in the case of the first title, amazing stories to tell. It was a first-party Sony exclusive. What could go wrong?

As it so happens, quite a fair bit.

Marvel’s Wolverine has a decent foundation, but there’s barely any meat on the adamantium skeleton. A solid, but shallow, combat system gets repetitive, and the game is extremely linear, but for some reason, it doesn’t believe you can proceed through missions without a blue line festooned upon the screen guiding you.

While that description may sound harsh, let’s be clear: Wolverine isn’t a bad game; there’s far worse stuff out there that you and I have played. But this is absolutely not worth the full price of admission.

Let’s jump in and see why, motorbike and all.

Skin deep?

Off the bat, I want to talk about what the game gets right before diving into what brings it down, starting with the presentation.

The game looks genuinely impressive, with Tokyo, the Canadian wilderness and Madripoor’s Lowtown neighbourhood truly standing out with unique aesthetics and a high level of environmental detail.

The same goes for (some) of the character models, with incredible facial capture which depicts microexpressions and the likenesses of the actors perfectly; at times, the characters are genuinely lifelike.

They’re also voiced well; Liam McIntyre does an especially good job as the eponymous hero and capturing his anger, and whenever he roars, I definitely hear Logan, aka Wolverine.

He also stands out in particular due to his appearance after being injured.

When taking damage, his skin will be removed, exposing the adamantium skeleton underneath, much like the Uncaged Edition of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine but with higher visual fidelity. Wounds also heal in real-time, not only looking cool but also showcasing the iconic mutant’s powers.

Scripted sequences in the story are bombastic and, as the game goes on, massive in scale. Sequences with a plane over Tokyo and a casino stood out to me in particular.

So it looks superb, as one would expect from a full-price AAA blockbuster, but that only goes skin deep. Once you dig through the first layer, it becomes clear that the presentation is as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle.

The sprawling Canadian wilderness is limited to only two or three very linear paths. Invisible walls prevent you from exploring Tokyo’s Shinjuku area. Locations like labs look absolutely soulless compared to the others. The first mission sees you claw your way through one, and I did not like the aesthetic, or lack thereof.

Granted, this was never meant to be an open-world game, but a bit more freedom to explore wouldn’t have hurt, and no-go areas could have been blocked off with objects rather than an invisible barrier. The strongest points of the level design are when you can explore and find hidden collectables, or items like documents and voice recordings to flesh out the game’s lore.

Rip and tear, until it is done

The game’s combat system is something that initially had me excited, and indeed, it’s a solid system with a strong foundation. But upon getting the claws out, one thing becomes very clear: the combat system is a restricted version of Spider-Man’s.

You just spam the square button to hit enemies, circle to dodge and L1 to parry attacks, just like Spider-Man. Obviously, it’s far more brutal due to the game’s darker tone, but provides an incredible spectacle, especially against the backdrop of some of the game’s environments.

This is aided by destructible props that will completely fall to pieces once Logan goes to town. Wooden boards, street carts and other objects will completely splinter apart. Everything put together is absolutely glorious.

It is genuinely fun at times to engage groups of enemies in this game, building up the rage meter and using special moves, with Logan’s roar and the clash of steel filling your ears. It’s in these moments where the game is at its strongest.

However, the combat quickly gets repetitive due to Wolverine’s limited moveset. Spider-Man had the benefit of variety, through launching enemies into the air and fighting them, or using a wide arsenal of gadgets. This variation is largely absent in Wolverine, where you rely on two move combinations and six special abilities.

Pressing the exact same button combination ad nauseam made combat a monotonous slog, especially in the late-game, when enemies soaked up a lot more damage.

There are only six special moves — you can equip four at a time — and they take a lot of time to recharge between uses, meaning you’ll press ‘square, square, square, triangle’ (that’s the main combo) and hope that enemies don’t interrupt the animation for the final hit.

This could have been fixed in several different ways, I reckon: more button combinations for variation, a faster recharge time for special moves, Wolverine moving on all fours like in Deadpool and Wolverine, or even using a different control scheme.

I recently finished The Blood of Dawnwalker (let us know if you want a review) and found that game’s directional parry and strike system a lot of fun to engage with. Maybe something like that would fit here?

The stealth isn’t much fun either; it feels tacked on like an afterthought rather than a key mechanic in the game. Enemies spot you very quickly, and takedown animations are so long that you end up getting spotted anyway. When presented with stealth encounters, I’d opt for open combat because it was less awful.

This is emblematic of why Wolverine is a disappointment: there’s a very solid foundation, but Insomniac, playing it safe, have elected against building anything unique or crazy on top of it. Even the boss fights are extremely basic and predictable, designed for the lowest common denominator.

I’m with stupid

By far, the biggest complaint I have is with the game’s excessive handholding and use of invasive visual cues to guide the player through levels.

Sometimes, Logan has to track a character by their scent, which is where this issue is at its most prevalent. As a visual demonstration of his enhanced senses, this is fine. But as I said earlier, these levels are very linear in design, with only one or two paths to go down. I don’t need a permanent blue or red line showing me where to go when there’s only one path.

I have to assume the game was designed with the most casual of casual gamers in mind, but even those players would be able to navigate the levels without the scent trail. Thankfully, these can be turned off, but that only came in with a post-launch patch.

It gets worse. There are hidden crates with materials to craft suits in most levels, which you need to find using an audio cue that gets louder when looking in the crate’s direction. Now this is fine, but a giant blue marker reveals the box’s position before the audio cues even kick in, rendering the entire system redundant. Why would I listen for the cue when it’ll be flashed on my screen anyway?

At best, this is counter-productive, and at worst, it insults the player’s intelligence. Overall, it’s very frustrating. I hope this sort of thing does not become a pattern in future titles.

What a nightmare

In terms of side content, Marvel’s Wolverine features Nightmare Doors “hidden” in each of the game’s levels. I use “hidden” in quotes because they’re about as hidden as a billboard on the nearest chaurangi. Giant purple roots sprout out of the ground — accompanied by audio-visual cues and controller vibrations — pointing you to a door that appears out of thin air.

Behind these doors lie challenges for the player to complete, which will unlock parts of Wolverine’s memory, and these take the form of combat challenges, traversal time trials and gauntlets.

Gauntlets are one of the highlights of the game. These are challenges with up to 25 waves of various enemies that you need to survive. I loved these because, unlike the restrictive story mode, they allow you to get creative with the game’s combat system.

The campaign didn’t offer enough scenarios to use Wolverine’s abilities against large groups of enemies, but here, there are no restrictions. You face plenty of foes of varying difficulty, allowing you to be more tactical rather than just spamming the square button. The presence of three or four heavy enemies may prompt you to focus on the 15 other smaller ones, for example.

Despite my complaints with the combat, I genuinely enjoyed these and looked forward to playing them. They also fit the character perfectly.

Just a bit dull, really

To sum up, Wolverine is a game that’s been largely declawed. What frustrates me most is that there is a structure for a good game here somewhere; but Insomniac played it safe and buried it under layers of handholding that leave it boring.

There are good moments in the story and the gauntlet challenges rule, but they aren’t enough to justify spending Rs18,000, especially not with other games out now that are (or might be) better.

It isn’t even that single-player linear action games have a place in the market — look at 007: First Light — the issue lies in the core of the game’s design: it’s restrictive, doesn’t want to grant player agency and relies on references, flashy visuals and the studio’s prior laurels to keep itself afloat.

Given how expensive games are getting, and considering what we’re due to get during the rest of this holiday season, I can’t recommend buying this at full price. If you’re really desperate, get it on sale, or wait for it to come onto the PlayStation Plus Game Catalogue within a year or so.

As I said, this is not a bad game. It’s just a very disappointing one.

“When you say that it will be the end of the human civilisation, first of all, it’s not true,” he told a conference organised by his company in Berlin.

While such statements generate “headlines”, they were “made up” and “cheap”, added Huang, whose visit to Berlin is the final stop of a European tour.

After incidents of the technology getting around controls during tests, there has been a heated debate about whether AI presents an existential risk to humanity.

In September, a researcher resigned from Anthropic with a stark warning that leading AI labs were “gambling with our lives”, and the bosses of Anthropic and fellow industry giant OpenAI have called for a slowdown.

Huang, however, is firmly in the opposing camp, and has advocated for development of the technology to move full steam ahead. Speaking in Berlin, he urged the world to approach AI with “responsible optimism”.

“If you care about the future, past our own lives, if we care about the future of sustainability, this is the perfect time — build AI,” he said. “Don’t try to stifle AI.”

US regulators are seen as unlikely to intervene when it comes to AI development.

President Donald Trump opposes strict regulation and said in September that the US government would rename the technology “super intelligence” in official communications.

During Huang’s European tour, Nvidia pledged nearly $10 billion in investments in the continent’s tech sector and urged Europe, which is lagging behind in the AI race, to move faster.

As AI’s fast-advancing capabilities fuel concern over the increased risk of cyberattacks, here are some questions and answers about the situation: What is PHP and how widely used is it? Created in the early 1990s, PHP is a computer programming language that helps run an estimated 70 per cent of the world’s websites.

It is “a backbone of the web”, according to security firm Wiz Research, which says it used AI to find vulnerabilities hidden in PHP for more than a decade.

PHP — a name that originally stood for Personal Home Page — underpins popular web design platforms, meaning the flaws could allow hackers to break into various sites, from online stores to government services.

A fix was released Wednesday, with the PHP Foundation telling the tech departments of companies and organisations around the world: “If you run PHP, it is imperative that you update now.”

That has resulted in a slew of apps and websites — from the Paris police website to a Pokemon sleep tracker — going dark as developers work to protect their underlying code from hacks.

How did AI find the flaws? Cutting-edge AI models, such as those from US giants OpenAI and Google, were used by Wiz and other groups to uncover PHP’s weak spots in August.

This was kept under wraps while a fix was developed.

OpenAI called the flaws “one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent memory”, adding that it “marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet-scale impact”.

Separately to Wiz, security firm Calif found the flaws as part of an OpenAI-funded audit of PHP’s code.

“The trouble with tools like AI is that the moment all the information’s out there, people can weaponise it very, very quickly,”

Steve Kerrison, senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the Singapore campus of James Cook University, told AFP.

“That’s why everybody’s acting with such urgency to respond to this issue.”

Have sites already been hacked? “Taking websites offline does not necessarily mean they have been hacked.”

“It can be a responsible measure to protect systems while security updates are applied,” said Dimitrios Salampasis from Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology.

So far “the evidence that security researchers are seeing is that nobody was actively performing attacks using the techniques available”, Kerrison said.

Larger institutions, from government agencies to news outlets, should be able to fix their websites relatively quickly — but others may be left vulnerable.

“There are sites, systems and people out there who will have no idea about this and still won’t for days, weeks and months,” Kerrison warned.

That may include user-run blogs that could be used to spread computer viruses, spam people or distribute malicious content.

Could there be other consequences? A data breach could affect customers in the future if their personal information is used in so-called “phishing” attacks, where someone is tricked into revealing their password to an online service.

The complex and interlinked nature of online systems, which often use third-party interfaces, means some vulnerabilities could remain even after the problem is fixed.

If the third parties use PHP, “then even though you patched yourself… you’re still unsecure”, said Rahat Masood, senior lecturer in cyber security at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

PHP isn’t everything, however — strong cybersecurity measures should include several layers of defences, Kerrison said.

Header image: Unplugged LAN network cables at a computer server, as cyber agencies warn that websites may be taken offline while PHP prepares a critical fix, in Berlin, Germany, on October 21, 2026. —Reuters

Developers of the PHP programming language on Wednesday released urgent new fixes to vulnerabilities that had quietly been lurking in their software for years until they were uncovered using AI, saying that all users were “encouraged to update immediately.”

With tech firms warning that some hackers were already exploiting the flaws, government agencies across Europe were among those that took sites offline as a precaution.

Because a fix is now public and artificial intelligence tools are able to reverse engineer the bug with little effort, experts said they were bracing for a wave of intrusions as hackers jumped to get ahead of fixes.

AI was powering a “race to exploit,” said Costin Raiu, co-founder of cybersecurity research and incident response firm TLP: Black. He said the next step was the “mass compromise of every vulnerable web server on the internet”.

PHP, a language that dates back to the early 1990s and initially stood for “Personal Home Page”, underpins huge parts of the public-facing web and is baked into WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento sites, meaning that any critical vulnerability potentially has enormous knock-on consequences.

“All servers using any version of PHP released in the last 20 years will be vulnerable,” said Tiffany Farriss, the interim chief executive of the Drupal Association. “This issue impacts the majority of the Internet.”

Cybersecurity agencies in Europe, Australia, Japan and Britain have urged PHP users to update immediately or take websites offline until patches can be applied.

The Dutch cybersecurity agency itself went offline, saying it had done so as a precaution because of the vulnerabilities. The operator of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia also said it had taken down an unspecified number of systems until they could be safely patched.

Even some world leaders, who don’t typically get involved with software updates, weighed in. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in a post on X, said website owners should “check whether your live site uses PHP and prepare to apply the new fix.”

Bug found with AI

The flaw in PHP was discovered using artificial intelligence, Alphabet-owned cybersecurity company Wiz said in a blog post.

The vulnerabilities remained hidden in the PHP codebase for more than a decade and would have been extraordinarily complicated for a human hacker to have taken advantage of, the post said.

“Pre-AI, this manual work would be difficult to implement and even harder to scale,” it said. “With AI, this is no longer a barrier.”

Wiz said its research relied on Wiz Atlas, its autonomous AI vulnerability research tool, as well as Google’s Gemini 4 Argon and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol. Wiz said it coordinated with the PHP team, OpenAI, and the cybersecurity company Calif on the discovery of the vulnerability and patch verification.

The company said it also partnered with Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft, WordPress.com operator Automattic, and other companies such as Fastly, Akamai, Imperva, and Vercel to protect customers and prepare mitigations.

In a statement, the White House said it was made aware of the flaw on Friday.

“This discovery demonstrates exactly why American leadership in SI is so critical,” the White House said, referring to President Donald Trump’s preferred term for artificial intelligence. “This is American innovation strengthening our national security.

Critical software

When a visitor loads a page, a server running PHP assembles the content and sends it to the browser. It is free, open-source software maintained by volunteers.

Because of its ubiquity, PHP runs roughly 75 per cent of websites whose programming language can be identified, according to web technology tracker W3Techs, and because the vulnerabilities are considered so dangerous, experts are anxious about a potentially vast pool of sitting ducks.

AI-assisted hacking campaigns, which have proliferated in recent weeks, would only make things worse, said Lukasz Olejnik, a visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London.

“The scale is huge, and with AI, exploitation may happen instantly, on a large scale,” Olejnik said.

The risk is particularly acute for small websites run by individuals or organisations with limited technical resources, often on shared hosting services where customers do not directly manage the underlying servers. Security experts said such sites could take longer to patch and remain exposed well after fixes become available.

Mass outages

In the Netherlands, several organisations followed the example of the National Cyber Security Centre and took public-facing websites offline, including the Port of Rotterdam, government portal Overheid.nl, the national football association KNVB, the websites for the country’s five largest political parties and several hospital websites.

Danish municipal IT company Kombit said it had shut down several services, including the national school communication platform.

Disruption was even more widespread in Finland, where state IT services provider Valtori said government public network services had been taken offline “as a precautionary measure”.

France’s Interior Ministry said it had placed all of its websites into preventive maintenance. Japanese cloud service provider Sakura Internet said on Wednesday it had suspended a database appliance function.

EA said it would cancel an early-stage Mass Effect project and close BioWare’s studio in Edmonton, Canada, marking the end of the developer known for role-playing game franchises and titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

In a statement on X, BioWare wrote, “After more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing, and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending.

“There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games, and supporting one another through this transition,” the studio added. “These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with the characters, and made these worlds your own.”

EA is planning to cut around 400 jobs, about three per cent of its total staff, including roughly 50 at BioWare, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the company’s plans.

The video game publisher said it would concentrate on fewer large-scale action-adventure games, while continuing development of Marvel’s Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game.

EA also said it was restructuring the team behind skateboarding simulation skate into a smaller, more focused studio.

The company said it would help affected employees explore other opportunities within the publisher.

EA was taken private in a $55 billion deal led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, which closed in August.

Apple announced its first folding phone in September, with analysts expecting it to quickly come to dominate a niche segment where rivals such as Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies have sold premium offerings for years.

But the iPhone Duo is also a more complex product than standard candy-bar iPhones, with a tight-fitting hinge that analysts believe may take time for Apple to learn to manufacture in high volumes.

“On Friday morning, our teams look forward to welcoming customers at Apple Stores to experience iPhone Duo and the incredible iPhone line-up for themselves,” Apple said in a statement.

“Apple Stores will have limited iPhone Duo available for walk-in customers, and we’re working hard to get this revolutionary new product into customers’ hands as quickly as possible,” it said.

The availability of walk-in units will vary by country, Apple said.

Online order pickup and limited walk-in purchases will be available in the United States, Australia, Canada, Mexico and much of the UK and Europe.

Other regions will only have iPhone Duo units available for customers who already bought them online, including mainland China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the UAE, Apple said.

On the China-governed island of Macau, the iPhone Duo will be available for walk-in customers only, with limited inventory, Apple said.

The company said in August its ads ​business had reached an annualised revenue run ⁠rate of $1 billion.

OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT ​in the US earlier this year, and ​more than 100,000 advertisers have since run campaigns on the platform, the company said.

The expansion adds 14 more ​Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia ​and Peru, following launches in Mexico and Brazil.

Ads are also launching in markets across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, including Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Advertisers can access ​ChatGPT ads ​in the ⁠new markets through technology partners, or get self-service access via Ads Manager ​on the company’s platform.

Ads will appear ​only ⁠on ChatGPT’s Free and Go plans, while Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free.

In ⁠September, ​OpenAI introduced AI-powered tools for ​advertisers and began testing business-sponsored agents with select US advertisers.

The identified failures were often cases of “over-enforcement that suppresses political speech, and under-enforcement that undermines electoral integrity,” said the board, which independently checks moderation on Meta’s Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook platforms.

Social media is a go-to source of electoral information for many voters, raising fears in several countries that it could swing results in favour of certain interests.

Meta’s oversight board, in a statement, noted “the removal of political activist accounts during protests in the US ahead of the midterm elections” and “technical restrictions that hit the accounts of a presidential candidate in Brazil leading to allegations of electoral interference”.

Global affairs officer Joel Kaplan to leave company after 15 years

It added: “It’s clear that Meta must do more to ensure that its enforcement practices during elections are transparent and consistent, and that political speech is protected rather than stifled.”

Brazil election controversy

Brazil’s top electoral court on Monday gave Meta 24 hours to prove it is treating President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his right-wing opponent Flavio Bolsonaro equally.

The order came after Lula’s campaign alleged that Meta was suppressing his online content on Instagram and WhatsApp to boost Bolsonaro ahead of a runoff election round on Sunday.

Meta has denied taking any actions to favour one side in Brazil’s election, but previously said that some of Lula’s campaign ads had been mistakenly deactivated due to technical errors not isolated to Brazil.

On Monday, the group run by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg apologised on X over another controversy in the United States.

An Instagram account called “No Kings” — after citizen groups protesting what they saw as unconstitutional power grabs by President Donald Trump — was temporarily deactivated on Saturday.

“We sincerely apologise,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said on X, blaming “automated systems” for taking down accounts that had “very high frequencies” of posts, shares or comments.

Meta’s oversight board reiterated a call for the company to fulfil its promises to make fewer moderation mistakes around elections and political debate.

Joel Kaplan to leave company

Meta Platforms’ chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan will leave the company next year after 15 years there, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.

President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick will add external affairs to her portfolio, the spokesperson said.

The move comes ahead of the Nov 3 midterm elections. McCormick was part of the Donald Trump administration during his first stint as US president. Kaplan was elevated to Meta’s top policy role in January last year, as the social media giant rolled back US fact-checking, ended diversity initiatives and sought closer ties with Trump. A longtime Republican strategist, Kaplan served as deputy chief of staff for policy in the administration of George W. Bush. Meta is among the tech companies facing questions over AI’s impacts, as concerns mount over safety and the industry’s growing footprint among local communities. Trump recently said tech executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, had agreed to establish voluntary AI standards.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2026

The restriction was notified in an order by the Punjab Home Department secretary in exercise of powers conferred under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898.

“No person shall wear or operate ‘camera-enabled smart glasses with hidden recording ability’ or ‘miniature cameras with recording ability disguised as everyday objects such as pen, keychain, etc.’,” the order said, adding that the restriction excluded laptops, handheld tablets, mobile phones and terminal equipment approved by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

In addition, the government restricted retailers, wholesale dealers, traders and distributors from “selling or offering these devices for sale, online or off the shelf”.

The order said that it had been reported that the unrestricted use of these glasses and disguised cameras — capable of “capturing, processing and transmitting data in the form of speech, images, videos and sound” — in Punjab could pose a “serious risk” to public order, individual privacy, particularly the integrity and dignity of women and children; security of sensitive data and installations; and institutional integrity.

It named airports, examination centres, secure government establishments, healthcare facilities, shopping malls, court premises and public places as particular areas of risk.

The order also noted that the use of such devices were deemed to “create an imminent apprehension of secret recording, breach of privacy and security, or unauthorised transmission of protected information”.

“Immediate preventive action is necessary to ensure public safety, integrity and dignity of persons particularly women and children, and the maintenance of order within the province,” it stated.

The order said the ban was being enforced with immediate effect and would remain in force for a period of 30 days unless withdrawn earlier. It was also specified that “authorised law enforcement personnel” would be exempt from the restriction.

The ban comes a day after the Punjab government announced its plan to impose the restriction.

Amid concerns about the misuse of such devices, the Lahore High Court (LHC) has also been seized with a public interest petition that challenges the unregulated import and sale of camera and mic-equipped smart glasses, citing threats to people’s privacy, dignity and national security.

Meta in particular has faced pushback for its AI-powered smart glasses, with critics dubbing the eyewear as “pervert glasses”. And while it has not officially listed Pakistan as a market, the petitioner’s counsel in the case before the LHC has contended that its glasses are openly sold online and in shops in Lahore.

Taking up the plea on Thursday, the LHC directed the federal government to forward a summary to the federal cabinet regarding the unregulated import and sale of smart glasses.