Technology

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s health regulator has approved Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, paving the way for large-scale deliveries of the shot the government has put at the heart of its immunisation plans. The conditional approval by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) comes less than four months after it started a “rolling review” of the J&J vaccine, which …

Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine is around 91% effective at preventing the disease, they said on Thursday, citing updated trial data that included participants inoculated for up to six months. The shot was also 100% effective in preventing illness among trial participants in South Africa, where a new variant called B1351 is dominant, though the number of those participants was …

The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Thursday lifted the ban on popular video-sharing application TikTok and directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to take steps to ensure that “immoral content” is not uploaded to the platform. The court also directed PTA Director General Tariq Gandapur to submit a detailed report at the next hearing scheduled for May 25. Reacting to …

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has constituted an inter-ministerial committee to review the controversial social media rules. As per a directive issued by the Prime Minister Office on March 29, Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari will be chairperson of the committee comprising Parliamentary Secretary on Law and Justice Maleeka Ali Bukhari, Senator Syed Ali Zafar, Secretary of Information …

CAPE CANAVERAL: SpaceX chalked up another failed landing on Tuesday for its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship, as the prototype Mars rocket broke apart right before touchdown. A camera on the rocket froze not quite six minutes into the test flight, and dense fog in South Texas obscured views of the ruptured rocket. Other video showed debris raining down and explosions could …

BEIJING: ECARX, an auto tech startup backed by Geely’s chairman and Baidu, plans to supply products with 7 nanometer (nm) chip as early as next year through its joint venture with Arm China, its chief executive told Reuters. ECARX, which was founded by its CEO Shen Ziyu and Geely Chairman Li Shufu in 2016, is focusing on technologies used in …

LONDON: PayPal Holdings will announce later on Tuesday that it has started allowing U.S. consumers to use their cryptocurrency holdings to pay at millions of its online merchants globally, a move that could significantly boost use of digital assets in everyday commerce. Customers who hold bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin in PayPal digital wallets will now be able to …

WASHINGTON: Twitter said it permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account after the January 6 Capitol riot because there was a risk of further incitement of violence, following months of tweets disputing Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. False and misleading claims about American politics have since plummeted, a trend Twitter and Facebook — which also blocked Trump but may reverse course — …

While much of the country, particularly prime-time TV anchors and politicians, was hooked to the issue of the central bank’s independence and its possible impact, another major development took shape last Friday: the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) unveiled the Digital Bank Regulatory Framework draft. It lays out the regulations and procedures by which challenger banks will come into being …

Facebook said its services in Bangladesh were shut down on Saturday, as hundreds of protesters affiliated with religio-political parties marched across the country, angered by the police killing of their supporters who had protested against a visit by Indian premier Narendra Modi. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina did not comment if it had blocked Facebook and its messenger app, but …