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January 06, 2020: National / International Current Affairs
1. Pakistan rules out use of its soil in ME conflict
• Pakistan on January 5, 2020 reaffirmed its resolve not to become a part of any conflict in the region and renewed its offer for mediating in the Middle East crisis.
• The offer was formally conveyed by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi during a telephonic conversation with his counterparts from Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
• This was the first contact of Foreign Minister Qureshi with the Iranian leadership after the assassination of Iran`s Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.
• Mr Qureshi made the telephone calls to Iran`s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, UA E Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on the day anti-US protest demonstrations were held in many Pakistani cities, including Karachi and Islamabad
2. Ex-minister, MQM leader Safwanullah passes away
• Syed Safwanullah, a former federal minister, leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and intellectual, passed away here on January 5, 2020.
• He breathed his last at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, where he was admitted four days ago.
3. Iraqi MPs call for foreign troops` withdrawal
• Iraq`s parliament called on January 5, 2020 for US and other foreign troops to leave amid a growing backlash against the US killing of a top Iranian military commander that has heightened fears of a wider Middle East conflict.
• Qassem Soleimani was killed on January 3, 2020 in a US drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport, an attack that carried US-Iranian hostilities into uncharted waters and stoked concern about a major conflagration.
• In a war of words between Iran and the United States, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday Washington would target any Iranian decision-makers it chose if there were further attacks on US interests by Iranian forces ortheir proxies.
4. Al Shabaab attacks base used by US forces in Kenya
• Jihadists from Somalia`s Al Shabaab group on January 5, 2020 stormed a military base used by US forces in Kenya`s coastal Lamu region, destroying several aircraft and military vehicles, according to Kenyan police and army officials.
• Attackers breached heavy security at Camp Simba at dawn but were repelled and four jihadists were killed, said army spokesman Colonel Paul Njuguna.
• Al Shabaab has launched regular cross-border raids since Kenya sent troops into Somalia in 2011 as part of an African Union force protecting the internationally backed government which the jihadists have been trying to overthrow for more than a decade
5. Bush, Obama rejected option to kill Soleimani: NYT
• Former US presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were also offered the option to assassinate Iranian Gen Qassim Soleimani but they `rejected killing him as too provocative,` The New York Times reported on January 5, 2020.
• The report did not specify when and why the two former presidents were offered this option, but it did say that Washington has long believed Gen Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops in Iraq.
• The last time the United States killed a major military leader in a foreign country was during World War II, when the American military shot down the plane carrying the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
6. US has 52 Iranian targets in sight: Trump
• President Donald Trump has warned the US is “targeting” 52 Iranian sites and will strike “very fast and very hard” if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets.
• The president’s remarks followed the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in a drone strike. Soleimani’s killing was a major escalation between the two nations, and Iran vowed to take “severe revenge”.
• Writing on Twitter, Trump accused Iran of “talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets”. He said the US had identified 52 Iranian sites, some “at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture”, and warned they would be “HIT VERY FAST AND HARD” if Tehran struck at the US.
• The president said the targets represented 52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran for more than a year from late 1979 after they were taken from the US embassy in Tehran
7. Tehran forsakes limits on enrichment
• Iran announced on January 5, 2020 it would abandon limitations on enriching uranium, taking a further step back from commitments to a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers, but it would continue to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog.
• Iran had been expected to announce its latest stance on the deal this weekend.
• But its announcement coincided with a major escalation of hostilities with Washington following the US killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani
8. Bangladesh court orders arrest of former chief justice
• A Bangladesh court ordered the arrest on January 5, 2020 of former chief justice Surendra Kumar Sinha and 10 others on charges they embezzled nearly half a million dollars.
• `All of them are fugitives from justice,` prosecutor Khurshid Alam Khan said, adding Sinha was accused of embezzling money and laundering it from one bank account to another.
• After accepting the charges, Judge K.M. Emrul Kayesh of the Senior Special Judges`Court of Dhaka issued arrest warrants against all the accused as they have been named as fugitives in the charge sheet.
• The court directed police to submit by Jan 22 reports on execution of the arrest warrants.
9. Nobel Prize-winning scientist retracts paper
• American scientist Frances Arnold, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, has retracted her latest paper.
• Ms Arnold shared the prestigious award in 2018 with George P Smith and Gregory Winter for their research on enzymes. A subsequent paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams was published in the journal Science in May 2019. It has been retracted because the results were not reproducible, and the authors found data missing from a lab notebook.
• Reproduction is an essential part of validating scientific experiments. If an experiment is a success, one would expect to get the same results every time it was conducted
10. Japanese woman turns 117, extends record as world`s oldest person
• Kane Tanaka has extended her record as the world`s oldest person by celebrating her 117th birthday at a nursing home in Fukuoka in southern Japan.
• Tanaka marked her birthday with a party on January 5, 2019 along with staff and friends at the nursing home, television footage from local broadcaster TVQ Kyushu Broadcasting Co showed.
• Tanaka, whose birthday was on Jan 2, took a bite from a slice of her big birthday cake.
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