ISLAMABAD — The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced the launch of Pakistan’s indigenously developed 285kg PakTES-1A observatory satellite in July.

Fitted with sensors and cameras, PakTES-1A will remain stationary 610km in space and its position relative to the sun will not change.

Known as the Remote Sensing Satellite (RSS) it can be used to study various features of Earth, determine mineral deposits, and depending on the kinds of sensors and gadgets fitted, the RSS technology can also help study impacts of climate change such as recession of melting glaciers, green house gasses, detect forest fires and even solve problems related to agriculture as well as forestry, besides a whole range of passive and active tasks.

The navigation technology for the satellite was acquired from China back in 2012.

• Saurabh Chaudhary today set a new Junior World record scoring a total of 243.7 in the 10M Air Pistol event

• Saurabh who earned the eighth Gold medal for India today, ended the eight-man final with a score of 243.7 after 24 shots

• Another Indian shooter Anmol finished fourth with a total score of 199.6.

Everyone was waiting for Germany to score another late Fifa World Cup-saving goal. It never came.

Instead, the Germans have become the fourth defending champions in the last five tournaments to be eliminated in the group stage following a 2-0 loss to South Korea on Wednesday (Thursday NZ Time).

The four-time champions allowed a pair of injury-time goals while knowing a 1-0 victory would have been enough to advance because of the result in the other group match.

METRO MAN’ E Sreedharan will head a newly constituted high-level committee to lay down indigenous technical standards for all metro rail systems across the country. Prime Minister Narendra  Modi cleared Sreedharan’s appointment on Sunday.

The multi-disciplinary committee will set indigenous technical standards for entire ecosystem of metro functioning in India, including rolling stock, signalling, track and the like. Sreedharan, founder of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, where he was MD until 2012, belonged to Indian Railway civil engineering service and was Railway Board member (engineering).

Seoul: North Korea is carrying out rapid improvements to its nuclear research facility, a monitor said on Wednesday, despite declaring a commitment to denuclearisation of the peninsula at the Singapore summit.

The nuclear-armed North's leader Kim Jong-un promised to "work toward" the goal at a landmark summit in the city-state earlier in June with US president Donald Trump.

But the Singapore meeting failed to clearly define denuclearisation or produce a specific timeline towards dismantling the North's atomic weapons arsenal.

Trump claimed the process would start quickly, saying last week that "It will be a total denuclearisation, which is already taking place." But recent satellite imagery showed that not only were operations continuing at present at the North's main Yongbyon nuclear site, it was also carrying out infrastructure works, said the respected 38 North website.

The British government’s so-called Brexit legislation that would allow the country to leave European Union became law Tuesday after Queen Elizabeth II gave her approval.

House Commons Speaker John Bercow announced that the European Union Withdrawal Bill received royal assent and passed into law. The announcement was cheered by pro-Brexit officials.

“I have to notify the House in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967 that her Majesty has signified her royal assent to the following acts ... European Union Withdrawal Act 2018,” Bercow said.

New Delhi: Senior bureaucrat S Ramesh has been appointed as chairman of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), the apex policy-making body for indirect taxes, according to an official order.

He will succeed Vanaja N Sarna, who superannuates on June 30.

Ramesh, a 1981 batch officer of the Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Central Excise), is at present the member in the board, mandated with the responsibility of implementing the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Indian Naval Ship Sahyadri has reached the Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, to participate in the 26th edition of Exercise RIM of PACific (RIMPAC), the Navy said today.

INS Sahyadri, commanded by Captain Shantanu Jha, is a state-of-the-art indigenously built guided missile stealth frigate which is a part of the Eastern Fleet under the Eastern Naval Command.

It reached Pearl Harbour of the USA on Monday.  

Prior to RIMPAC 18, the ship also participated in the 22nd edition of MALABAR 18 exercise in the south-western Pacific region between June 7 and 16.

The RIMPAC is the largest multilateral naval exercise in the world and is held biennially in the Western Pacific Ocean.

India is the world's most dangerous country for women due to the high risk of sexual violence and being forced into slave labour, according to a poll of global experts released on Tuesday.

War-torn Afghanistan and Syria ranked second and third in the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of about 550 experts on women's issues, followed by Somalia and Saudi Arabia.

The only western nation in the top 10 was the United States, which ranked joint third when respondents were asked where women were most at risk of sexual violence, harassment and being coerced into sex

The poll was a repeat of a survey in 2011 that found experts saw Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia as the most dangerous countries for women.

Experts said India moving to the top of poll showed not enough was being done to tackle the danger women faced, more than five years after the rape and murder of a student on a bus in Delhi made violence against women a national priority.