WASHINGTON, Mar 1 (AFP): FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday his agency believes the COVID-19 pandemic was “most likely” caused by an incident in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray said in an interview with Fox …
Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation clocked in at 31.5% on a year-on-year basis in February 2023 compared to an increase of 27.6% in the previous month and 12.2% in February 2022. On a month-on-month basis, it increased to 4.3%, showed data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Wednesday. As per PBS data, the food group, which …
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief and former premier Imran Khan announced his party was suspending its ‘jail bharo‘ movement as he welcomed the Supreme Court’s (SC) ruling in a suo motu notice over delay in the announcement of elections in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P). Arrests were offered by several PTI leaders and workers since February 22, as part of the party’s ‘Jail Bharo‘ …
GREECE, Mar 1 (Reuters) : A passenger train and a cargo train collided head-on in Greece on Tuesday night, killing at least 36 people and injuring 85 as the country’s deadliest rail crash in decades threw entire carriages off the tracks. Sixty-six of those injured were hospitalised, six of whom are in intensive care, a fire official said. The …
ISLAMABAD, Mar 1 (EW): Several incidents of leopards being hit by motorcyclists are rampantly increasing in Pakistan’s northern areas, particularly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), which is known for its rich tourism. The increasing number of leopards-vehicle collisions, in which the wild cats are either killed or critically injured, along the highways in KP’s different districts indicated a thriving population of …
KARACHI, Mar 1 (EW): The central bank would likely confirm market expectations and raise its benchmark policy rate by 2 percentage points in an off-cycle meeting this week to fulfil the International Monetary Fund (IMF) requirements for a $6.5 billion bailout. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the SBP was previously slated to meet on March 16. The central …
ISLAMABAD, Mar 1 (EW): Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has welcomed the Supreme Court verdict in which it has directed to hold elections within 90 days asking the president to consult with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and fix a date for elections in Punjab. The five-member bench of the apex court, in a split verdict, also ordered the governor …
ISLAMABAD, March 1 (EW): The Supreme Court ordered on Wednesday that elections in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) should be held in the next 90 days with the chief justice saying that ‘democracy cannot exist without assemblies’. The court has also ruled that President Arif Alvi’s orders will be binding on Punjab but not K-P. “If the governor dissolved the …
ISLAMABAD, Feb 28 (EW): The next general elections would be held in constituencies based on the new digital census, which would begin across the country on Wednesday (tomorrow), the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) spokesperson said on Monday. Addressing a news conference, Sarwar Gondal said that a digital portal was launched on Feb 20, where the people could submit …
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday “preponed” its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on March 2 — which was initially scheduled to meet for March 16 — in another attempt to increase the pace of efforts to secure the much-awaited International Monetary Fund (IMF) tranche. The SBP announced on its official Twitter handle that “the forthcoming meeting of the …
