Pak govt made enormous sacrifices for counter terrorism: China

China today said global community should shed bias and take an "objective" look at Pakistan's efforts on counter terrorism, days after it backed out from supporting its all weather ally at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting which placed Islamabad on terrorist financing watch list.
The 37-nation FATF at its plenary meeting in Paris last week placed Pakistan on a watch list of the countries where terrorist outfits are still allowed to raise funds.
Though Pakistan has not been named, it has to submit the action plan to implement UN Security Council resolutions on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism by April, failing which it would figure in the list.
"Pakistan government and people have made enormous sacrifices for counter terrorism," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a media briefing here today.
China which earlier opposed the move along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey later backed out after Riyadh under pressure from the US withdrew its opposition in view of the rule that at least support of three members was required to stall the resolution against Pakistan.

400 mysterious ancient stone structures discovered in Saudi Arabian desert

Scientists have discovered about 400 previously undocumented stone structures known as 'Gates' in Saudi Arabia with the help of Google Earth imagery.

While Saudi Arabia is largely thought of as barren mountains and desert, it was also home to an immense number of archaeological sites that were yet to be identified, recorded and mapped, said David Kennedy, researcher at University of Western Australia.

"You can not see them in any intelligible way at the ground level but once you get up a few hundred feet, or with a satellite even higher, they stand out beautifully," Kennedy said.

The structures look like flat field gates from top in the images obtained from Google Earth.

"I refer to them as Gates because when you view them from above they look like a simple field gate lying flat, two upright posts on the sides, connected by one or more long bars," he said.

They do not look like structures where people would have lived nor do they look like animal traps or for disposing of dead bodies. It is a mystery as to what their purpose would have been, researchers said.
READ MORE