LIVE: SC to hear plea against tenure extension of ED director on Friday

Live news updates: The Supreme Court agreed to hear on Friday a plea challenging the amended law allowing extension of tenure of the director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) up to five years, and the Centre's decision to grant one year extension to Sanjay Kumar Mishra as head of the probe agency. A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana took note of the submission of senior lawyer Basava Prabhu Patil that the plea of Saket Gokhale, a leader of the All India Trinamool Congress, needed to be listed for an urgent hearing.

The National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune under ICMR has isolated monkeypox virus from the clinical specimen of a patient which can pave the way for development of diagnostic kits and vaccines against the disease, the apex health research body said on Wednesday. With India isolating the virus, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) also invited expression of interest (EoI), proposing to hand over the strain to interested Indian vaccine manufacturers, pharma companies and in-vitro diagnostic industry partners for development of indigenous vaccines against monkeypox and diagnostic kits for detection of the disease.

Expectedly, the US Federal Reserve jacked up its benchmark overnight interest rate by 75 basis points in an effort to tamp down the bristling inflation genie virtually bursting out of the bottle. The spike in inflation, highest since the 1980s, with "ongoing increases" in borrowing costs against a backdrop ahead of a decelerating economy. The Federal Reserve raised rates by 75 percentage point, same as that in June.