ISLAMABAD – The federal government on Saturday announced a reduction in profit rates for various National Savings schemes, as per a notification issued by the Ministry of Finance.
The revised profit rates will come into effect from July 28, 2025.
According to the official notification, profit rates on Special Savings Certificates, Regular Income Certificates, Defence Savings Certificates, Behbood Savings Certificates, Pensioners’ Benefit Accounts, and Shuhada Family Welfare Accounts have all been revised downward.
The profit rate on Special Savings Certificates has been reduced from 10.6 percent to 10.4 percent annually. Similarly, the rate for Behbood, Pensioners’ Benefit, and Shuhada Family Welfare Accounts has been brought down from 13.20 percent to 12.96 percent.
The cumulative profit on Defence Savings Certificates has also been adjusted.
For the 9-year term, the rate has been reduced from 162 percent to 161 percent while for the 10-year term, it has been revised from 204 percent to 200 percent.
Additionally, profit rates on Short-Term Savings Certificates and Regular Income Certificates have also been decreased, although exact figures were not disclosed.
However, the profit rate on Savings Accounts will remain unchanged at 9.50 percent.
In contrast to the overall downward revision, the federal government increased profit rates for Islamic savings products.
Both the Sarwa Islamic Term Account and the Islamic Savings Account will now offer higher returns, in line with market trends and the growing demand for Shariah-compliant investment options.
The Ministry of Finance stated that the changes reflected the current economic indicators and market conditions, aiming to strike a balance between investor returns and fiscal sustainability.
Data from Swiss health foundation Radix leaked on the dark web
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Two decades since first bear sighting in Switzerland
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Cyberattacks on Swiss companies increase by 9%
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Swiss households faced 21 minutes of power outages in 2024
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Swiss citizens will be voting on restricting wind farm expansion
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On Wednesday, the 30 millionth bird sighting was recorded on the Swiss birdwatching platform ornitho.ch.
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The matcha craze has taken the world by storm. Whether as latte, ice cream or chocolate, the Japanese green tea has been experiencing a boom for years, leading to surging demands among the people of every age.
The global matcha mania is being driven by social media, with several influencers sharing brewing and preparation tips and recipes.
The “Matcha Tok” hashtag has amassed tens of millions of views. Moreover, Andie Ella, who has more than 600,000 subscribers on YouTube, drew attention by starting her own brand of matcha products.
Genesis of matcha popularity
Matcha’s growing popularity is associated with Japan’s post-pandemic boom in the tourism industry. The country’s weak currency has made it not only an attractive destination but also boosted demands for Japanese goods, especially green tea.
Soaring demand outpaces global reserves
The latest casualty of social media hype is the matcha global supply chains. As the demand for the green powder has surged, the farmers in Japan are facing difficulties to keep up with the unprecedented demand of matcha. Consequently, the price of “green gold” has increased threefold.
In the Kyoto region, the hub of about a quarter of Japan’s tencha, poor climate conditions including heatwaves have led to the poor harvests. Moreover, the labour crisis driven by the aging population has also exacerbated the woes of the industry.
Shops and cafes in Uji, Kyoto, often see their shelves emptied by tourists. Resultantly, the retailers have set limits on the purchase of matcha.
Kyoto-based Camellia Tea Ceremony allows customers to purchase only one tin of matcha each as visitor numbers doubled over the last year, according to the director Atsuko Mori.
Thousands of kilometres away in Sayama, the northwest of Tokyo, Masahiro Okutami who runs his family’s tea company, has slashed the matcha orders on the website due to shortages.
Like Japan, the supply constraints have made headway into the western countries. The US-based tea importer Lauren Purvis told BBC about the dried up reserves of matcha.
“Some cafes are even asking for a kilo a day. They are desperate to keep up,” says Purvis.
The impact of tariffs
Another factor that would also spike the prices of matcha is the looming threat of tariffs on Japan. On July 22, the US administration and Japan announced a trade deal that will mean a 15 percent import tax on Japanese products going to the US.
The Oregon-based entrepreneur says orders skyrocketed by more than 70 percent in early July ahead of the trade agreement between two countries.
The rising industry in Japan
The rising demand of matcha also acts as a gateway for more people to know about Japanese culture.
According to Japan’s agricultural ministry, matcha production nearly tripled between 2010 and 2023, with green tea exports rising by 25 percent in 2024 to 36.4 billion yen.
Mindful consumption of matcha
The matcha boom has sparked the advocacy for the mindful consumption of green tea. The Global Japanese Tea Association is encouraging people to use lower-grade matcha from later harvests, which is better suited for cooking as high-grade matcha loses its flavour when it is used in the variety of drinks.
The association added: “Promoting awareness of these distinctions helps ensure the Japanese team is enjoyed with respect, while supporting the craft and tradition behind it.”
Lauren Jones* was on her way home from a gig when she realised something was wrong. After having no reception all day, her mobile started pinging with message after message containing verifications for her LinkedIn, Vinted and Facebook accounts. Someone was trying to get in and change the contact details.
At home she realised the hackers were also trying to take over her Instagram account. She tried to sort it out but it was late, she had work the next day and, she says: “I thought: ‘What damage could they do?’”
Within 24 hours she knew the answer: using her account, the hackers advertised tickets to Oasis’s Wembley Stadium gig on Saturday 26 July and stole £1,400 from her unsuspecting friends. They then sent a text demanding $100 (£75) to return the Instagram account. All day she was fielding messages from contacts. “I had about 20 different people text, saying they were about to send over the money and can I hold the tickets for them,” she says. “The hackers had impersonated me so well that my friends and family genuinely thought they were speaking to me.”
Three weeks later, she is still locked out of her account, and Instagram has refused to recognise it as being fraudulent. It has ignored her requests for help. It did not respond to Guardian Money’s requests for comment.
The scammers’ post offered four tickets for the Oasis show at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 26 July. Photograph: Supplied
Jones is a music fan and so the Instagram story offering four tickets to a concert did not seem out of place to her 600 followers – even her sister believed she had tickets to sell. “I’ve just returned from Glastonbury and I was away for Bruce Springsteen,” she says. “It’s not as if they’d taken it over and started advertising bitcoin.”
The people who responded via Instagram were taken in by the scammers’ replies – one friend told her he thought they had been having a good catchup. It was only those who moved the conversation to WhatsApp or texts who found out pretty swiftly that the tickets did not exist. “They’re really impersonating me and it’s so invasive,” she says. “It’s distressing not knowing what is being said in my name.”
A former colleague shared the post after a request from the scammers. Photograph: Supplied
The fraudsters did not just leave the post for Jones’s followers to see – they messaged one of her former colleagues and asked them if they would share the posts. They agreed and inadvertently spread the scam more widely.
The tickets were realistically priced and the post had good spelling and grammar. Victims were asked to pay into an account held with the online bank Revolut, with the fraudsters explaining that it was in the name of the friend who had originally bought the tickets.
Official data shows £1.6m was lost to fraud involving gig tickets last year – more than double the previous year’s figure – and Oasis’s high-profile reunion tour has been widely used to lure victims. Earlier this year, Lloyds Banking Group (which includes Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland) said more than 1,000 customers had fallen for scams linked to the Manchester band’s eagerly anticipated UK concerts.
Lloyds said its data suggested that UK Oasis fans had lost more than £2m to fraudsters by March this year – the total is likely to have risen since. It found that fans lost an average of £436 each – about £200 more than the average amount stolen in a concert ticket scam – and said some had handed over more than £1,700.
Chris Ainsley, the head of fraud risk management at the bank Santander, recently saw a Facebook account used for the scam – the post advertised four tickets, again for the 26 July concert, and included details of seat numbers and a WhatsApp number to contact. The scammers used the highlight tool to put it in front of the real account holder’s followers – this, Ainsley says, is a way to make a fraud “grow very quickly”.
His team searched Facebook and found multiple other accounts had posted the same message, suggesting the same people had hacked them all.
Messages from the scammers. Photograph: Supplied
Jake Moore, a cybersecurity expert at ESET, says that by using Instagram and Facebook accounts linked to individuals, scammers give victims a false sense of security. “It’s not an Oasis Facebook group which is completely random – buying tickets there would be a complete gamble. Instead, they’re buying from people they know, or friends of friends – they’re verified. It’s doing exactly what we tell people to do,” he says.
“The scammers can check the messages before and see how you sign off – if it’s a kiss or emoji maybe – and replicate that.” Moore says criminals who may be worried about their spelling or grammar giving them away can use AI to craft their messages. “Even if you take an extra minute to reply, the other person is not going to notice – you can even tell it to sign off each one with a smiley face, for instance.”
You might think the criminals would carefully select accounts that give them the best chance of finding victims – Jones’s would have appealed because she loves live music – but the experts say that the fraud is not that sophisticated.
Ainsley says the account he originally saw compromised had not been used since 2011, so anyone doing some due diligence might have taken that as a red flag. Moore says it is simply a numbers game, with criminals breaking into as many accounts as they can.
Jones is not sure how the hackers got into her account but suspects she may have fallen victim to a phishing attack or used an insecure public wifi network.
Moore says that often accounts are compromised because people use the same password in more than one place. Criminals will try the details across a range of sites – a practice known as “credentials stuffing”.
In-app attacks are another way for fraudsters to get the details they need, Ainsley says. “Sometimes you will get a message that makes it look like you have been kicked off Facebook – it will ask for your details to log you back in,” he says.
The best way to protect your account is to use the social media website’s two-factor authentication or two-step verification settings. “That extra layer will push the criminals to the next account – you are not the lowest hanging fruit,” Moore says.
KARACHI – United Bank Limited (UBL) has unveiled a latest auto financing offer, allowing customers to own their dream Suzuki Cultus with convenient monthly installment plans.
The offer includes three popular variants of Suzuki Cultus: VXR, VXL, and AGS, all with flexible payment terms and a fixed markup rate of 14.50 percent.
UBL aims to make car ownership more accessible through quick processing, minimal documentation, and financing tenures ranging from 1 to 5 years. Customers can also benefit from a residual value option of up to 50 percent.
Suzuki Culuts Latest Prices
The price of Suzuki Cults VXR stands at Rs4,089,490 while the VXL variant is available for Rs4,359,160 and AGS variant for Rs4,591,460 as of July 2025.
Fixed Rate Installments with 14.5%
Under the fixed rate installment plan for Suzuki Cultus VXR, the buyer will deposit Rs1.22 million in wake of down payment with monthly installment standing at Rs67,353.
Similarly, the down payment for Suzuki Cultus VXL will be Rs1.394 million and monthly installment will be Rs69,743.
The down payment stands at Rs1.607 million for Suzuki Cultus AGS while the per month installment will be Rs70,219.
Residual Value Installments
Alternatively, customers can opt for the residual value installment plan, which reduces monthly payments by allowing a balloon payment at the end of the term:
The down payment will be same as for fixed rate installment plan for the Suzuki Cultus variants. However, following will be the monthly installments”
Suzuki Cultus VXR: Rs50,972/month
Suzuki Cultus VXL: Rs52,780/month
Suzuki Cultus AGS: Rs53,141/month
This option is ideal for those looking for lower monthly financial commitments while retaining ownership flexibility at the end of the term.
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Additional information
Benefits:
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Attractive remuneration (fixed, variable and profit-sharing)
Opportunities for rapid, tailor-made professional development
The meal voucher card
Efficient and competitive health and provident insurance cover
In addition to these, we offer other benefits
Want to find out more? Apply and ask our recruiters !
Company description
The right career for all!
Created in 2006, leboncoin.fr is an exchange platform that simplifies access to consumption, favors local relations and makes digital a tool at the service of all. leboncoin is positioned as a digital, economic, societal, innovative player, always with the same objective: to facilitate all day-to-day exchanges for all of our users. We give a second life to thousands of goods. Behind this apparent simplicity, there is a fast-growing company with 1,400 employees, where it is good to work, a company that cultivates a responsible and collective HR approach. We are also the 1st site for sales between individuals in France and the 5th most consulted site in France.
Adevinta is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status.
If you feel like you don’t meet all of the requirements for this role but are interested, please consider applying anyway. Research suggests that women and individuals from underrepresented groups may self-select out of opportunities if they don’t meet 100% of the job requirements. We strongly encourage people from historically excluded groups to apply and look forward to speaking with you.
A U.S. dollar bill. Photo by Unsplash/alexandratimis
The U.S. dollar rose slightly against the Vietnamese dong on the black market Saturday morning.
Unofficial exchange points sold the greenback 0.04% higher at VND26,460.
Vietcombank kept its rate unchanged at VND26,320.
The State Bank of Vietnam’s reference rate was stable at VND25,164.
Globally the U.S. dollar advanced on Friday, bolstered by solid economic data that suggested the Federal Reserve could take its time in resuming interest rate cuts, while tariff negotiations showed more clarity that eased some uncertainty in the market, Reuters reported.
“The dollar regained some ground the past two days, after being on the defensive earlier in the week … supported mostly by an encouraging set of U.S. economic data that argues for continued patience at the Fed,” said Elias Haddad, senior markets strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in London.
The greenback was set for its biggest weekly drop in a month, ahead of more tariff dialogue and central bank meetings next week, while sterling dipped after softer-than-expected British retail sales data.
Falls against the euro and yen leave the dollar index, which measures the dollar against six other currencies, at 97.45, on track for a drop of 0.8% this week, its weakest performance in a month, though it bounced back 0.2% to 97.663 on Friday.
Chinese premier Li Qiang has proposed establishing an organisation to foster global cooperation on artificial intelligence, calling on countries to coordinate on the development and security of the fast-evolving technology, days after the US unveiled plans to deregulate the industry.
Speaking at the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, Li called AI a new engine for growth, adding that governance is fragmented and emphasising the need for more coordination between countries to form a globally recognised framework for AI.
Li warned Saturday that artificial intelligence development must be weighed against the security risks, saying global consensus was urgently needed.
His remarks came just days after US president Donald Trump unveiled an aggressive low-regulation strategy aimed at cementing US dominance in the fast-moving field. One executive order targeted what the White House described as “woke” artificial intelligence models.
Opening the World AI Conference, Li emphasised the need for governance and open-source development.
“The risks and challenges brought by artificial intelligence have drawn widespread attention … How to find a balance between development and security urgently requires further consensus from the entire society,” the premier said.
Li said China would “actively promote” the development of open-source AI, adding Beijing was willing to share advances with other countries, particularly developing ones in the global south.
The three-day event brings together industry leaders and policymakers at a time of escalating technological competition between China and the United States – the world’s two largest economies – with AI emerging as a key battleground.
Washington has imposed export restrictions on advanced technology to China, including the most high-end AI chips made by companies such as Nvidia and chipmaking equipment, citing concerns that the technology could enhance China’s military capabilities.
Li did not name the United States in his speech, but he warned that AI could become an “exclusive game” for a few countries and companies, and said challenges included an insufficient supply of AI chips and restrictions on talent exchange.
At a time when AI is being integrated across virtually all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions, from the spread of misinformation to its impact on employment, or the potential loss of technological control.
Earlier this week, news companies were warned of a “devastating impact” on online audiences as search results are replaced by AI summaries, after a new study claimed it caused up to 80% fewer clickthroughs.
The World AI Conference is an annual government-sponsored event in Shanghai that typically attracts major industry players, government officials, researchers and investors.
Saturday’s speakers included Anne Bouverot, the French president’s special envoy for AI, computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as “the godfather of AI“, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has in past years regularly appeared at the opening ceremony both in-person and via video, did not speak this year.
The exhibition features predominantly Chinese companies, including tech companies Huawei and Alibaba and startups such as humanoid robot maker Unitree. Western participants include Tesla, Alphabet and Amazon.
LAHORE – The buying rate of Canadian dollar recorded no change against Pakistani rupee in open market where it stood at Rs208.5 on Saturday.
The selling rate of the Canadian Dollar stood at Rs213.5 reflecting its dominance over the local currency.
The local currency rates reflect ongoing trend in the forex market influenced by regional demand, remittance inflows, and overall economic sentiments.
How much is $1000 CAD in PKR?
As of July 26, they buying rate of the Canadian dollar stands at Rs208.5. It means an individual can convert $1000 CAD for Rs208,500 in open market.
Remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis play a crucial role in supporting the national economy. They provide a stable source of income for millions of families, helping them meet basic needs such as food, healthcare, and education.
Pakistan recorded workers’ remittances inflow of $3.4 billion in June 2025.
According to the data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday, workers’ remittances increased by 7.9 per cent on a year-on-year basis.
During fiscal year 2024-25, workers’ remittances rose by 26.6 per cent to $8.3 billion as compared with $30.3 billion in 2023-24.
Remittances during June 2025 were mainly sourced from Saudi Arabia ($823.2 million), United Arab Emirates ($717.2 million), United Kingdom ($537.6 million) and United States of America ($281.2 million).
Pakistani Rupee (PKR)
The Pakistani Rupee is the official currency of Pakistan and is issued by the State Bank of Pakistan. It is used for all financial transactions within the country and reflects the nation’s economic conditions. The rupee’s value is influenced by trade, inflation, remittances, and foreign exchange reserves. Its performance affects the cost of imports, fuel, and everyday commodities. Economic and political stability also play key roles in its strength.
Canadian Dollar (CAD)
The Canadian Dollar is the national currency of Canada and is managed by the Bank of Canada. Known for its stability, it is widely traded in global markets and often considered a “commodity currency” due to Canada’s resource-based economy. The value of the Canadian Dollar is influenced by global oil prices, interest rates, and economic performance. It is used for all domestic transactions and is trusted internationally for trade, investment, and reserve holdings.
