Marriyum dismisses govt's upcoming relief package, says biggest relief will be PM's resignation

PML-N Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb on Wednesday branded an expected relief package by the government an "eyewash", adding that the "biggest relief package" for the country will be Prime Minister Imran Khan's resignation.

Her statement came in the wake of the government's announcement that a "big package" is to be unveiled today in order to to deal with rising inflation and provide relief to 10 million people directly.

The government has been facing severe criticism from the opposition after the premier approved a Rs10 increase in the price of petroleum products last month. Major opposition parties, including the PML-N and the PPP, have held country-wide rallies and protests over what they termed "unprecedented inflation in the country".

In her presser today, Aurangzeb said that the prime minister's resignation was the only solution to rid the country of menaces, including inflation, unemployment and poverty.

She accused the premier of lacking the required competence to run the country. "You have no ability to decide the fate of 220 million Pakistanis. You are here to facilitate the mafia that has good terms with you," she alleged.

The PML-N leader insisted that the package Imran Khan was is to announce today would be a "cosmetic" one. She said if the prime minister actually intended to provide relief to the masses "then he should revert wheat price to Rs35 per kg and power tariff to Rs11 per unit".

She said that PM Imran had promised to eliminate corruption within the first 90 days of his government "but it proved to be an eyewash".

Aurangzeb said the prime minister had also promised to convert the PM House into a university — another promised she said "has not materialised".

"You should not add to your sins by fooling nation through addresses," she lamented.

The PML-N leader also demanded that the government make public the details of its agreement signed with the TLP.

"I condemn the loss of lives of policemen in the incident and how government representatives gave conflicting statements on the matter."

She said the government "duped" people by not announcing details of the agreement and made off with a terse statement that details would be unveiled at an "appropriate time".

The government presser should have disclosed in detail the conditions in the accord, because the country remained locked down for four days and people have the right to know about it, she added.

She added that details of the agreement should also be laid down before the parliament for discussion.

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23 die as coach plunges into ravine in Azad Kashmir

At least 23 people were killed and over nine injured when a passenger bus plunged into a ravine in Azad Jammu Kashmir’s Pallandri area, police said Wednesday.

More than 30 passengers were on board the ill-fated bus, which was on its way to Rawalpindi.

Earlier, the police had shared that only seven passengers died, but increased the death toll after a while.

The bodies and injured have been shifted to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Baloch.

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ICC Rankings: Pakistani skipper babar azam reclaim top slot in T 20,s

Pakistan skipper Babar Azam on Wednesday reclaimed the top slot in ICC's T20I Batting Ranking after a superb performance during the Pakistan vs Namibia match in the T20 World Cup.

Azam’s two successive half-centuries in the ongoing ICC tournament (and three in four matches) have helped him overtake England’s Dawid Malan and grab the No. 1 position for batters.

Babar, who recently scored 51 against Afghanistan and 70 against Namibia to lead the 2009 champions into the semifinals, is at the top of the ranking for the sixth time in his career.

The 27-year-old had first attained the top position on January 28, 2018. He is presently also ranked No. 1 in ODIs.

Babar’s tally of 834 rating points puts him 36 points ahead of Dawid Malan, but his career best remains 896 rating points — achieved after scoring 65 against England at Cardiff on May 5, 2019.

Malan has been at the top of the ICC ranking since November 29 last year.

England’s brilliant performances in the tournament too reflect in the rankings, with openers Jos Buttler and Jason Roy moving up in the latest weekly update.

Buttler has gained eight slots to reach a career-best ninth position after smashing a maiden T20I hundred against Sri Lanka, while Roy is up five places to 14th place.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan leg-spinner Wanindu Hasaranga has topped the bowling charts for the first time in his career after two successive three-wicket hauls against South Africa and England. He replaces South Africa’s Tabraiz Shamsi, who was at the top since 10 April this year.

The top four bowlers in the rankings are all wrist spinners, with England’s Adil Rashid overtaking Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan to take third place with a career-best 730 rating points. A fast bowler who has made rapid gains is South Africa’s Anrich Nortje, who has gained 18 slots to reach seventh position.

At the top of the all-rounders’ table, Mohammad Nabi has caught up with Shakib Al Hasan with 271 rating points. Hasaranga is fourth on this list.

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We welcome TLP into national mainstream, said Ali Muhammad Khan

Terming the current deal between the proscribed Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and the government a “temporary solution”, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan said that the proscribed organization will accept Parliament’s decision on the issue of the French ambassador's expulsion from the country.

Ali Muhammad Khan said that both sides have decided to keep the agreement secret for some time due to certain reasons.

Details of the agreement will come to light within seven to 10 days, he said, hinting at the release of TLP chief Saad Hussain Rizvi in a few days. The minister said that the government’s negotiation team struck a deal with the proscribed outfit after receiving a nod from Prime Minister Imran Khan.

“The state struck a deal with its people to restore peace in the country,” he added.

"Did those people, who were opposing the deal, want to see another incident of Lal Masjid in the country?” he asked.

He said that the agreement was not a victory or defeat of any individual, but a victory of Pakistan. The minister said that anti-Pakistan elements did not want peace in the country. He said that they wanted bloodshed and another incident of “Lal Masjid” in the country.

Prime Minister Imran Khan is expected to take the nation into confidence today (Wednesday) on the secretive deal that the government had struck with the proscribed TLP, sources had told۔

The prime minister is expected to speak to the nation about the current economic, security, and political situation in the country, sources had said.

A day earlier, addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry had said the premier would also take the nation into confidence about the government's economic policies in his address on Wednesday.

The information minister had said the premier would announce a package for the masses in the address.

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WHO urges for development of vaccine against bacterial infection responsible for infant deaths

The World Health Organization on Wednesday called for the urgent development of a vaccine against a bacterial infection responsible for nearly 150,000 stillbirths and infant deaths each year.

A fresh report by the UN health agency and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that the impact of Group B Streptococcus infection (GBS), which is estimated to live harmlessly in the intestinal tracts of up to a third of all adults, is a far bigger cause of preterm births and disability than previously thought.

The report confirmed a previous devastating finding from 2017 that the bacterium causes almost 100,000 newborn deaths and close to 50,000 stillbirths each year, although it pointed to significant data gaps suggesting the true figures could be higher.

And for the first time it quantified the impact on preterm births, finding that GBS is behind more than half a million early deliveries each year, leading to significant long-term disability.

In light of such staggering numbers, the report authors lamented that more progress had not been made towards developing a vaccine.

"This new research shows that Group B strep is a major and underappreciated threat to newborn survival and wellbeing, bringing devastating impacts for so many families globally," Phillipp Lambach of WHO's immunisation department said in a statement.

"WHO joins partners in calling for urgent development of a maternal GBS vaccine, which would have profound benefits in countries worldwide."

Professor Joy Lawn, who heads LSHTM's maternal adolescent, reproductive and child health centre, agreed.

"Maternal vaccination could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of babies in the years to come," she said, decrying the lack of progress since the idea of developing a jab against GBS was first raised three decades ago.

On average, 15 percent of pregnant women worldwide, or nearly 20 million annually, carry the GBS bacterium in their vagina.

But even though most of these cases show no symptoms, an infected pregnant woman can pass GBS to her foetus via the amniotic fluid, or during birth as the infant passes through the vaginal canal.

Babies and foetuses are particularly vulnerable because their immune systems are not strong enough to fight the multiplying bacteria.

If untreated, GBS can lead to meningitis and septicaemia, which can be deadly. Babies that survive may develop cerebral palsy, or permanent sight and hearing problems.

Wednesday's report showed that the bacterium leaves some 40,000 infants each year with neurological impairments.

Currently, women with GBS are given antibiotics during labour to reduce the chance of it passing to their baby.

But this approach poses problems in places where screening and antibiotic administration during labour are less accessible.

Tellingly, the highest rates of maternal GBS are found in sub-Saharan Africa -- which alone accounts for around half of the global burden -- and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, the study showed.

It suggested that a GBS vaccine that could be administered to pregnant women during routine pregnancy checkups and that reached over 70 percent of pregnant women could avert 50,000 infant and foetus deaths each year.

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Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition system

Social media giant, Facebook, announced that it is shutting down its facial recognition system which automatically identifies users in photos and videos, citing growing societal concerns about the use of such technology.

"Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use," said Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, in a blog post. "Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate."

The company, which last week renamed itself Meta Platforms Inc, said more than one-third of Facebook's daily active users have opted into the face recognition setting on the social media site, and the change will now delete the "facial recognition templates" of more than 1 billion people.

The removal will roll out globally and is expected to be complete by December, a Facebook spokesperson said.

Facebook added that its automatic alt text tool, which creates image descriptions for visually impaired people, will no longer include the names of people recognized in photos after the removal of face recognition, but will otherwise function normally.

The removal of face recognition by the world's largest social media platform comes as the tech industry has faced a reckoning over the past few years amid criticism that the technology could falsely identify people as part of crimes, or favor white faces over people of color.

Facebook has also been under intense scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers over user safety and a wide range of abuses on its platforms.

 

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Pakistan paid $100 million penalty to Asian Development Bank

Pakistan has paid a whooping $100 million (approximately) penalty to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for its failure to execute various donor-funded projects within the stipulated time-frame during the last 15 years.

The publication shared a couple of examples of bad governance in implementing the donor-funded projects in the country for which the hard-earned precious foreign exchange reserves of approximately $100 million were paid by different governments coming into power since 2006.

“The ADB imposed 0.15% amount as commitment charges on signed projects if the executing agencies failed to deliver on implementation of projects within the stipulated time-frame and signed loan amount was not disbursed,” top official sources confirmed.

Another top official said that there was a need to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate commitment charges. If the implementation of the project got delayed, then the executing agencies could be held responsible for paying the heavy amount in the shape of commitment charges.

Jamshoro Power project

The official sources cited some examples of bad governance, stating that the ADB had approved around $900 million for the Jamshoro Power project to generate 660MW of electricity through supercritical coal fire technology in 2014. It was expected that the project would be completed in five years by 2019. Through the savings, the project cost was reduced from $900 million to around $660 million. However, this ADB-funded project could not be accomplished till right when the year 2021 is nearing end. So far, the ADB has disbursed less than 50% amount ranging around $313 million, so Islamabad is forced to pay the penalty as commitment charges.

Smart meter project

Another classic example is the smart metering project funded by the ADB as Manila-based lender approved this project in 2015-16 but it could not be started till recently.

According to official working related to payment of commitment charges paid out to the ADB, Pakistan paid $8.5 million in the year 2006 on account of sovereign and non-sovereign loans penalty, $8.4 million in 2007, $8 million in 2008, $9.4 million in 2009, $9 million in 2010, $7.6 million in 2011, $6.3 million in 2012, $4.2 million in 2013, $3.4 million in 2014, $5 million in 2015, $4.4 million in 2016, $5.3 million in 2017, $5.5 million in 2018, $5.8 million in 2019, $5 million in 2020 and $2.3 million till June 2021.

It is expected that the total amount till right now in November 2021 might have touched to the tune of $100 million in the last 15-year period.

However, the ADB, in its own assessment on last Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) from 2015-2019, had stated that the ADB’s loan portfolio continued to face significant design and implementation challenges and it was unable to insulate itself from the context of Pakistan’s volatile political economy.

The current IMF-led financial rescue of Pakistan government is occurring against a backdrop of increased concern in the public discourse about external debt levels and governance issues and more recently the start of a global recession and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this context, the ADB needs to place particular attention on external debt sustainability and quality of its lending in terms of design and integrity of its projects and programs.

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