Technology

Petroleum Oil and Lubricant sales in the country surged by 39% on a month-on-month basis in May-2020 to 1.48 million tons mainly due to ease in lockdown with the resumption of intercity transport amidst the COVID-19 outbreak and a considerable decline in prices of retail fuels. Oil Companies Advisory Committee’s data showed that oil marketing companies witnessed a recovery in sales during May when compared to the preceding month. The rise in demand was mainly driven by a 46% month on month increase in Motor Spirit (MS) while High-Speed Diesel (HSD) demand rose by 25%. Sales of furnace oil were reported at 144,000 tons, while motor spirit volumes recorded a 46% surge to 636,000 tons during May compared with 435,000 tons in April. Similarly, high-speed diesel sales increased 26 percent to 687,000 tons in May over April. The economic stabilization measures during FY20 followed by the lockdowns have kept HSD sales depressed during the 11 months of FY20, down 14 percent on a year-on-yea..

Microsoft revamped its Edge browser for Windows 10 a few months ago into Edge Chromium, which is now based on the same engine as Google Chrome and is part of the Chromium Project by Google. Previously it was only available through manual downloads but it will now start rolling out through official Windows 10 updates. The original Microsoft Edge was based on EdgeHTML and Chakra JavaScript browser engine, but the revamped Edge Chromium runs on Blink and V8 engines just as Chrome, Opera, and several other browsers. Hence, the browser has similar performance to Chrome and most of its features, shortcuts and extensions work the same way as Chrome. This is paired with extensive UI changes too. Google Chrome’s extension website recognizes the new Edge as Chrome and lets you install all of its extensions just as they would on Chrome. Being a first-party browser, Edge Chromium features several efficiency and performance advantages on Windows 10 and combines them with the compatibility, featu..

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday announced that the clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the novel coronavirus will now resume. The UN health agency had paused these trials on May 25 following a study published in The Lancet medical journal suggesting that hydroxychloroquine could lead to higher death rates in Covid-19 patients. However, after studying the latest data, the executive group of the Solidarity Trial – an international clinical trial to help find an effective treatment for Covid-19 in partnership with hundreds of hospitals worldwide – found ‘no reasons to modify the trial protocol’. “Last week, the executive group of the Solidarity Trial decided to implement a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm of the trial, because of concerns raised about the safety of the drug,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference. “On the basis of the available mortality data, the members of the committee reco..

Video conferencing platform Zoom has been receiving massive backlash for vague misleading encryption claims for the past few months. To save its drowning reputation and beef up its privacy; Zoom hired a team of cryptographers and security engineers. The company ensured that it would provide real end-to-end encryption to its users, as previously advertised. However, the company has now announced that it will not enable end-to-end encryption for free calls. Only paying customers will receive this privilege (with exceptions for dissident groups or nonprofits that require the added security). According to Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan, they took this step so that they can give law enforcement agencies access to call logs if necessary. He said, We think this feature should be a part of our offering. Free users — for sure, we don’t want to give [them] that, because we also want to work together with the FBI, with local law enforcement, in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose. He is, of cou..

Pakistan State Oil (PSO) has got the government’s approval to import Euro-V standard fuel as the state-run oil company will commence partial imports this month from Kuwait Petroleum Corporation on a trial basis. As per the Petroleum Division, all petrol imports will have to be Euro-V compliant with effect from the third quarter of 2020 whereas the deadline for Euro-V diesel imports has been set to January 2021. The government-to-government contract for fuel import between the two state-run companies is in place for the past 40 years and Pakistan has been getting a 60-day interest-free credit facility since 2000. Since 2017, Pakistan has been importing Euro II high-speed diesel as the country meets 40% of its demand through imports; the remaining 60% is met through domestic refineries. ALSO READ OGRA Issues Notices to Shell, Attock Petroleum & Total PARCO PSO takes care of 22% of the country’s total high-speed diesel demand with a 55% share in total imports. On the other hand, the ..

The novel coronavirus is wreaking havoc around the world with more than half a million deaths in less than six months. While the developed countries are fully focused to defeat the virus, many developing countries including Pakistan are fighting a two-front war – against the virus and hunger. Though the federal government has been quite actively engaged, numbers show that it has not been fully successful to control the damage. ALSO READ PM Imran Khan Approves Protected Area Initiative As per a recent Gallup survey, seventeen million people are feared to lose jobs due to Covid-19 related restrictions. The economy is already squeezing, daily wagers are also out of work, but the disaster is far from over. The survey predicted that if the lockdown continues for another few weeks, a few million more people will be unemployed, taking the unemployment rate to 28 percent. Keeping the growing economic pressure in view, Prime Minister Imran Khan gradually eased the lockdown, which has prov..

The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet has set up a body headed by Special Assistant to Prime Minister for Petroleum Nadeem Babar to explore various options for hedging prices for the petroleum products imported by Pakistan. The ECC meeting chaired by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh also gave a go-ahead to a “full and final” human resource rationalization plan for Pakistan Steel Mills employees in accordance with the judgments and observations of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and other courts hearing the cases involving the PSM. ECC took up the proposal prepared by the Ministry of Energy in consultation with various international institutions and local partners for hedging prices for petroleum products being imported and decided to set up a committee headed by Special Assistant to Prime Minister for Petroleum Nadeem Babar and including representation from SBP, PSO, Finance Division, Petroleum Division, Law Division, and P..

Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Syed Amin Ul Haq chaired a meeting regarding IT Park Islamabad project. During the meeting, Federal Minister for IT was briefed about the detail engineering and ICT design of the IT Park to be built at Chak Shazad, Islamabad. The Federal Minister gave the direction that the work on the IT Park project must be completed in a transparent manner. He directed to install solar electric light poles in the parking area of the IT Park for the efficient utilization of energy. Solar panels can also be installed at the rooftop of the IT Park building to utilize renewable energy, he said. The Federal Minister gave the direction that the groundbreaking of the IT Park should be at the earliest and the work on it should be completed speedily. Earlier, the chair was apprised that the IT Park Islamabad will consist of twelve storeys (10 storeys above ground and 2 storeys underground) self-contained buildings and will act as a state-of-art facility and ..