It has been a good couple of years for domestic mobile manufacturing. Based on import figures, the size of the pie is around $2.5-2.7 billion. Stakeholders agree that good sound policies have been introduced to encourage domestic production while introducing tariffs that make imports non-viable. But, there is always a ‘but’. “There are rumours that a new GST on mobile phones …

The prices of sugar have been making rolling records over the last three years. In a highly toxic political economy, the entire supply chain thus remained under debate and perpetual scrutiny without any productive outcome. Even after a series of inquiries, investigations, committees and commissions to reform the sugar sector, the government has not been able to introduce systematic changes …

TAFTAN: The Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul (ITI) freight train left Taftan for Iran on Sunday. It had arrived at the border town the previous day. According to Pakistan Railways, eight carriages of the train were loaded with pink salt. Representatives of the Iranian government, Pakistan’s consulate in Zahedan and Pakistan Railways saw off the train when it left for the Iranian city. The …

The information technology industry is facing a Covid-like situation in its security realm due to Log4j vulnerability. Fear is that international hackers are already active in exploiting the breach in security. The US Department of Homeland Security is raising a severe alarm, urging federal agencies to swiftly erase the issue since it’s so easy to be exploited — and telling …

Robotic vacuum cleaners wouldn’t start. Doorbell cameras stopped watching for package thieves, though some of those deliveries were canceled anyway. Netflix and Disney movies got interrupted and The Associated Press had trouble publishing the news. A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network on Dec 7 severely disrupted services at a wide range of US companies for hours, raising questions about the …

BANGKOK: The international aid group Save the Children said two of its staffers were missing in a massacre in eastern Myanmar that left more than 30 people, including women and children, dead and burned in their vehicles after they were reportedly shot by government troops as they were fleeing combat. Photos of the aftermath of the Christmas Eve killings in Mo …

WASHINGTON: The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major impact on population growth as well, as the US population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of this nation. Statistics released by the US Census Bureau showed that in 2021 the US population grew only 0.1 percent and this is the first time …

JERUSALEM: A bird flu outbreak has killed more than 2,000 wild cranes on a reserve in northern Israel, an unusually high toll for the seasonal flu, the parks authority said on Sunday. In addition to the 2,000 dead, another 10,000 are believed to be infected, Ohad Hatsofe, a specialist at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, said. The virus affects …

ZURICH: People in Switzerland will be able to legally change gender by a visit to the civil registry office from Jan 1, putting the country at the forefront of Europe’s gender self-identification movement. Switzerland joins Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Norway as one of the few countries on the continent that allow a person to legally change gender without hormone therapy, …

RIYADH: The Saudi-led coalition on Sunday accused Iran and Hezbollah of helping Yemen’s Houthi rebels to launch missiles and drones at the kingdom, where two people were killed. Since the coalition intervened almost seven years ago to support Yemen’s government, Saudi Arabia has regularly accused Iran of supplying the Houthis with sophisticated weapons and Hezbollah of training the insurgents. Tehran …