• In a blow to Pakistan, the Financial Action Task Force has placed it on the 'grey list' for failing to curb anti-terror financing despite Islamabad submitting a 26-point action plan and launching a concerted diplomatic effort to avert the decision, officials said on Thursday.
  The decision was taken late on Wednesday night at the global financial watchdog Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) planery session in Paris where finance minister Shamshad Akhtar represented Pakistan, according to official sources.

  The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

  The announcement comes a day after Pakistan submitted a comprehensive 26-point action plan to the FATF to choke the funding of militants groups, including Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led JuD and its affiliates, to avoid being blacklisted by it.

  The placement on the 'grey list' could hurt Pakistan's economy as well as its international standing.

Today is noted applied statistician and scientist Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis' 125th anniversary and in honor of this occasion Google has dedicated its today's doodle by Nishant Choksi to him.

He was born on 29 June 1893 in West Bengal and graduated from King's College, Cambridge.

Mr Mahalanobis is known for his pioneering work in statistics and is most often remembered by the "Mahalanobis distance", a way of measurement used in population studies and was one of the members of the first Planning Commission of India. He was also awarded one of the highest civilian awards, the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India. 

India's second five year plan (1956-1961) which laid heavy emphasis on the development of the public sector and rapid industrialization also followed the Mr Mahalanobis model which emphasizes the importance of building a strong domestic consumption goods sector, which was crucial to the nascent Indian economy and had a lasting impact on the nation's development.

Apple and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on 27 June settled a seven-year patent dispute over Apple’s allegations that Samsung violated its patents by “slavishly” copying the design of the iPhone.

Terms of the settlement, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, were not available.

In May, a US jury awarded Apple $539 million, after Samsung had previously paid Apple $399 million to compensate for patent infringement. Samsung would need to make an additional payment to Apple of nearly $140 million if the verdict was upheld.

How much, if anything, Samsung must now pay Apple under the 27 June settlement could not immediately be learned.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the terms of the settlement but said Apple “cares deeply about design” and that “this case has always been about more than money.” A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment.

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.