Amazon | Pakistan

Tech giants Google and Amazon agreed to use a secret code to evade legal obligations in countries around the world to serve Israeli interests, a report by The Guardian has revealed. The joint investigation, conducted with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, highlights how a $1.2 billion cloud-computing deal in 2021 (known as Project Nimbus) between Israeli government and the tech firms had an “unusual demand”, i.e., agree to use a secret code as part of an arrangement that would become known as the “winking mechanism”. Project Nimbus was a joint contract that aimed to provide cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology services to the Israeli government and its military, which has faced condemnation for its war on Gaza, described by United Nations experts and several countries as a genocide. Google employees based in the United States also staged protests last year at the tech giant’s offices in New York City, California an...

Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS was struggling to recover on Monday from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world’s most popular apps — Snapchat and Reddit — and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year’s CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world’s interconnected technologies. After more than nine hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 1pm ET (10pm PKT). But AWS acknowledged that elevated errors were still affecting several AWS services and that it was working on recovering connectivity. AWS was down for more than 9,300 users as of 1pm ET, according to outage tracking website Downdetector. That figure is higher than the earlier peak of about 5,800 reports at 3:48am ET (12:48pm PKT). Lambda, one of AWS’s computing services, was experiencing errors due to issues with an internal s...

Amazon cloud glitch causes global disruption

ISLAMABAD: After Starlink, a European giant and a Chinese company, Amazon’s satellite broadband initiative — Project Kuiper — has expressed interest in rolling out its services in Pakistan. In a meeting with Minister for IT and Telecom Shaza Fatima Khawaja, a delegation from Amazon outlined plans to launch Project Kuiper in Pakistan by the end of 2026. The delegation, led by Mostafa Mousa — Project Kuiper’s lead for Licensing and Regulatory Affairs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa — also included Jeff Kietzemen and Hisham Alshaer. The IT minister welcomed the delegation, stressing that this development signals growing confidence among global tech giants in Pakistan’s expanding digital economy. She noted that the entry of Project Kuiper would create new opportunities for affordable, high-speed internet, particularly in remote and underserved communities where traditional connectivity options remain limited. Project Kuiper is Amazon’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network, which plans to deploy 3,236 sat...

Amazon will invest more than $233 million in India in 2025 to expand and update its operations infrastructure, develop new technology for its fulfilment network and improve delivery safety, it said on Thursday. The investment builds on top of Amazon’s prior investments for the creation of an operations network to deliver to all serviceable PIN-codes in the country, it added. In June 2023, the e-commerce major — which competes with Walmart’s Flipkart and billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail in India — had said it will take its investments in the country to $26 billion by 2030, without providing a breakdown. The new investment will be used to launch new sites and upgrade existing facilities across its fulfilment and delivery network, improving speed and processing capacity, it said. Additionally, Amazon plans to use technology to alert delivery associates about unsafe speeds and ensure equitable distribution of delivery routes. Some of the funds will also be used to expand initiatives to improve the heal...