KARACHI: We are not Sri Lanka neither we are close to it, in fact, the six per cent GDP growth for the last two years is amazing shocks for the entire world, Acting Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Dr Murtaza Syed said in a podcast on Thursday. “There is no doubt that the economy is facing challenges and the …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s merchandise trade deficit widened by an alarming 57.85 per cent year-on-year to an all-time high at $43.33 billion during the first 11 months of 2021-22 through May on the back of higher-than-expected imports, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics data showed on Thursday. The 11-month deficit has already crossed the full year’s highest trade deficit of $37bn in 2018 when …

SRINAGAR: An unidentified attacker shot dead a bank manager in Indian-occupied Kashmir on Thursday, the seventh in a spate of targeted killings in the occupied territory. The attacker shot Vijay Kumar, a Hindu who had moved from the western Indian state of Rajasthan a week ago, in his office with a pistol in the Kulgam area, a police officer said. …

RAMALLAH: Israeli troops shot dead a teen in the West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, the fourth Palestinian killed in the occupied territory in two days. The ministry identified the slain Palestinian as 17-year-old Odeh Odeh, who was hit in the chest by what it said was an Israeli bullet near the village of Al-Madiya, west of …

ISLAMABAD: A new World Bank report says 733 million people globally have no access to electricity, while 2.4 billion people are still using fuels detrimental to their health and the environment. At the current rate of progress, 670m people will remain without electricity by 2030 — 10 million more than projected last year, according to the ‘Energy Progress Report’, which …

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has said at a UN non-proliferation debate this week that states have a ‘legitimate right’ to avail dual-use technologies and materials, while keeping non-state actors away from those. India, however, used the open consultations of the UN Security Council on non-proliferation to insist that “new and emerging technologies” increase the risk of non-access actors getting their hands …

PESHAWAR: The outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) formally announced an “indefinite ceasefire” with the government late on Thursday night, following two days of intense talks with a grand tribal jirga in Kabul. A statement issued by the TTP spokesman, Muham­mad Khurasani, said that substantive progress had been made in talks with the grand jirga of “Pashtun nation, particularly tribal elders and …

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif returned to the cou­n­try on Thursday after completing a three-day official visit to Turkey. Turkish Minister of Trade Mehmet Mus saw off the prime minister and his delegation at Esenboga Airport. The prime minister termed the visit successful. He had met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign and trade ministers, besides addressing the business …

WASHINGTON: A White House report on Thursday warned that inter-state water disputes in South Asia were increasing, and while the Indo-Pak Indus Waters Treaty “has withstood six decades and four Indo-Pakistan wars”, it is now “facing pressure due to regional population growth and disagreement over hydropower use”. These observations were noted in the first US Action Plan on Global Water …

Turkey has told the United Nations that, at the behest of its president, it wishes from now on to be called “Turkiye” in all languages, the UN announced on Thursday. “The change is immediate,” Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief’s spokesperson, told AFP by email. He noted that Ankara’s official letter requesting the change had been received at the UN’s New York headquarters …