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May 19, 2023: National Current Affairs MCQs
1. Shehbaz, Raisi electrify ties with power, trade plans
• Top leaders of Pakistan and Iran inaugurated the first border market and an electricity transmission line on May 18, 2023 as relations warm between the two countries.
• Located in the remote village of Balochistan`s Mand town, the marketplace is the first of six to be constructed along the Pakistan-Iran border under a 2012 agreement signed by the two sides.
• Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also inaugurated the Gabd-Polan power transmission line, under which Iran will supply 100 megawatts of electricity daily to Gwadar
2. Sepoy martyred in Bajaur gunfight
• Five suspected militants were killed and a soldier was martyred in clashes in North Waziristan and Bajaur on May 18, 2023. In Peshawar, one person died when a bomb went off in the city`s Pishtakhara area.
• The first clash between security forces and the militants took place in the Eidak area of North Waziristan when three accused were being shifted from Miramshah to Bannu, according to official sources.
• The convoy of security forces, including the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of police, was attacked by militants with heavy weapons
3. Pakistan rejects US report on religious freedom
• The Foreign Office on May 18, 2023 rejected as baseless assertions made about Pakistan in the International Religious Freedom Report released by the US Department of State.
• `Such ill-informed reporting exercises about internal affairs of sovereign states are pointless, irresponsible and counter productive,` Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told a press briefing.
• She said Pakistan is proud of its religious diversity and pluralistic social fabric. She pointed out that the country`s Constitution has set a robust framework for wide-ranging legal policy and affirmative measures to safeguard and advance the rights and freedoms of all Pakistanis irrespective of their faith
4. PM confidant made finance secretary
• In a reshuffle in top bureaucracy, Finance Secretary Hamid Yaqoob Sheikh has been removed and the post was assigned to Imdad Ullah Bosal, a confidant of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
• Mr Bosal was working as special secretary of the finance division.
• Amir Ali Ahmed, a PAS officer of BS-21, who was working as Chief Commissioner of Islamabad in the PTI government and was removed earlier last year, was appointed as secretary of Benazir Income Support Programme.
• Mohammad Aamer Jan, a PAS officer of BS-20, was made executive director of the National Vocational and Technical Training Commission
5. Govt gets a paltry $8.1bn in financing
• Without the IMF umbrella, Pakistan`s external financing pipeline appeared drying up as it received 38 per cent lower inflows only $8.1 billion in the first 10 months (July-April) of the current fiscal year against over $13bn in the same period last year.
• The pace of dwindling inflows could also be seen from the fact that $8.1bn receipts in 10 months of this fiscal year stood at just 35.5pc of the $22.8bn full year budget target implying a constant precarious position of the foreign exchange reserves despite tight import curbs.
• The foreign assistance so far suggests the annual target would be missed by a wide gap. In April alone, Pakistan received only $359m, down 57pc when compared to $842m in November 2022
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