Author: admin@primenews

Pakistan’s parliament has been formally dissolved, but polls meant to be held within 90 days will likely be delayed. The electoral commission says electoral boundaries must be redrawn to reflect fresh census data, a months-long process. Last week, former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested and jailed, and then barred from politics for five years. He had openly challenged the powerful military establishment and claimed it was “petrified” of elections. With President Arif Alvi’s order on Wednesday to dissolve the National Assembly, a caretaker government will take charge. Outgoing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his government have been given three days to name…

Gig workers in India are celebrating a small but significant victory in their ongoing fight for labour rights and better working conditions. The work is gruelling, hours are long, the pay is meagre and there’s no job security or access to basic rights like paid leave, insurance or pension. But on 24 July, the western state of Rajasthan passed a landmark law that aims to provide platform-based gig workers social security benefits – a right they have been demanding for a long time – among other provisions. The Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act 2023 proposes to…

The US plans to require American companies to disclose investments they make in China in high-tech sectors such as artificial intelligence, and to prohibit certain investments outright. The much anticipated move gives the government new power to screen foreign dealings by private companies. The US said the measure would be narrowly targeted, but it is poised to further chill economic relations between the two superpowers. China said it was “very disappointed”. The US “has continuously escalated suppression and restrictions on China,” said Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington. He added that White House claims that the…

Yang Huiyan, the chair of real-estate giant Country Garden and one of China’s richest women, has lost more wealth than any billionaire in the world in the past two years, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, as her building conglomerate sits on the edge of default. Her net worth has plunged 84% since June 2021, or $28.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. Yang’s current net worth is $5.5 billion, the biggest dollar decline for the world’s richest people over that period, placing her at #475 on the Bloomberg ranking. She lost $490 million on Tuesday alone, according to the index. Country Garden, once China’s…

Robbie Robertson, guitarist and songwriter for Canadian-American group The Band, has died aged 80. A statement from his manager said he died on Wednesday surrounded by his family after a long illness. The Band were an influential act in the late 1960s and also the subjects of The Last Waltz, a 1978 Martin Scorsese film about their farewell concert. Robertson wrote some of their best-known songs, including The Weight and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Born Jaime Royal Robertson in Toronto in 1943, he left home to pursue a career in music aged 16. As well as their…

A man who posted violent threats against President Joe Biden and other officials online was shot dead during an FBI raid on Wednesday. Agents were attempting to serve an arrest warrant on Craig Robertson at his home in Utah, just hours ahead of a planned visit to the state by Mr Biden. A criminal complaint said Robertson posted threats on Facebook against Mr Biden and a prosecutor pursuing criminal charges against Donald Trump. The FBI declined to give more details. The raid happened at about 06:15 local time in Provo, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Salt Lake City.…

A candidate in Ecuador’s forthcoming presidential election has been shot dead at a campaign rally. Fernando Villavicencio, a member of the country’s national assembly, was attacked as he left the event in the northern city of Quito on Wednesday. A member of his campaign team told local media Mr Villavicencio was getting into a car when a man stepped forward and shot him in the head. Current president Guillermo Lasso vowed the “crime will not go unpunished”. Witnesses said Mr Villavicencio, 59, was shot three times. The suspect was also shot in an exchange of bullets with security and later…

A prisoner believed to have been released early to fight with Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine has been accused of committing a double murder in Russia after returning home from the war. Demyan Kevorkyan, who was given an 18-year prison sentence in 2016, has been arrested for killing a young man and woman on their way home from work. He denies the accusation. The BBC has learned he is not the only convict freed early to fight, pardoned and then accused of reoffending. He was one of 150 prisoners recruited by Wagner on 31 August 2022 when the head of the…

Raging wildfires fanned by hurricane winds have devastated the historic town of Lahaina on Hawaii’s island of Maui. Brian Schatz, a US senator from the state, said on social media that Lahaina is “almost totally burnt to the ground”. At least six people were killed in Maui County, officials said on Wednesday. Maui’s hospital system has been overwhelmed with burn patients and people suffering from smoke inhalation. “Firefighters are still trying to get the fires under control, and our first responders are in search and rescue mode,” Mr Schatz said. There were reports early on Wednesday that some people jumped…

There’s a new coronavirus variant topping the leaderboard in the United States: EG.5. Nationally, EG.5 is causing about 17% of new Covid-19 cases in the country, compared with 16% for the next most common lineage, XBB.1.16, according to the latest estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. EG may sound like a whole new flavor of the virus, but it’s not; it’s a spinoff of the XBB recombinant strain of the Omicron family. And it represents another incremental tweak to the virus rather than a major evolutionary leap like the original Omicron strain. Compared with its parent XBB.1.9.2, it has…