The Trump administration pulled out of two international agreements after Iran and the Palestinians complained to the International Court of Justice about U.S. policies, the latest withdrawal by Washington from multilateral accords.
U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that the U.S. will withdraw from the Vienna protocol and the 1955 "Treaty of Amity" with Iran.
Saudi Arabia to Invest in Gwadar
As per reports, Saudi Arabia will invest in a new oil refinery in Pakistan's growing deep-sea port of Gwadar.
Gwadar is part of Pakistan's mineral rich southwestern Balochistan province.
ICICI Bank Ltd chief Chanda Kochhar has resigned after seeking an early retirement and will be replaced by Sandeep Bakhshi.
Kochhar is the third high-profile woman banker in India to step down in recent months, following Arundhati Bhattacharya who retired from the State Bank of India a year ago and Shikha Sharma who is set to exit after almost ten years atop Axis Bank in December.
VAT Rates Reduced by States
So far, 12 States have joined the Centre in cutting their tax rates on petrol and diesel by Rs. 2.5 per litre. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Assam, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chhattisgarh were the States to match the Centre's rate cut.
Rules Eased for Oil PSUs
The RBI allowed forex borrowings for working capital by oil marketing companies, the largest consumers of foreign currency, under the automatic route with immediate effect.
Under the liberalised norms individual state-run refiners are allowed to borrow up to $750 million or equivalent, while for the system, it is capped at $10 billion.
Astronomers have announced the possible discovery of the first known moon outside our solar system.
This "exomoon" is not like any in our cosmic neighbourhood: it's the size of Neptune and orbits a planet the size of Jupiter - but with 10 times the mass.
The object was spotted in data from Nasa's Kepler spacecraft, and later observed using the Hubble telescope.
To date, astronomers have discovered more than 3,500 exoplanets - worlds orbiting stars other than the Sun.
Prithvi Shaw became the youngest Indian cricketer to score a century on debut as he slammed a 99-ball ton against West Indies.
He is also the second youngest Indian overall after Sachin Tendulkar to have scored a Test century.
Shaw became the second-youngest Indian test cricketer after Vijay Mehra, and he was the 13th youngest Indian cricketer overall to play a Test match.
JRD Tata Memorial Award
Hamirpur has won the JRD Tata Memorial Award for the best implementation of government programmes in the sectors of health, hygiene, population control and improvement in child sex ratio.
Travellers will soon be able to enter airports in the country with facial recognition biometric under the government's Digi Yatra initiative.
The facial recognition biometric feature would be optional for air passengers. Digi Yatra initiative seeks to promote paperless and hassle-free air travel.
The Digi Yatra central platform would be operational by end of February 2019.
R. N. Ravi Becomes Deputy National Security Advisor
The government redesignated R. N. Ravi as deputy national security advisor (internal affairs) from his earlier assignment as the chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
But he will continue to be the centre's interlocutor for Nagaland.
Ravi will be third deputy to NSA Ajit Doval after former Research and Analysis Wing chief Rajinder Khanna and serving diplomat Pankaj Saran.
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