Category: Articles

Pakistan’s Kashmir diplomacy | CSS Essay Material

Post author By Guest Author
Post date July 28, 2020
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By: Khurram Minhas

On August 5, 2019, the Modi-led BJP government wiped out the special status of Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IoJ&K). During this year, Pakistan’s diplomatic manoeuvring was effective, calculated and rational, which has been widely acknowledged by the international diplomatic community. Islamabad suspended its diplomatic and trade relationship with India. The Kashmir dispute was, after a long time, discussed at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) after almost five decades due to Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts and with Chinese assistance. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech at the UN General Assembly session has been categorised as one of the most persuasive speeches where he declared himself as the ambassador of Kashmir.

Tags CSS Current Affairs, CSS Essay Material, Pakistan’s Kashmir diplomacy

General

Punjab Govt allowed PPSC to conduct interviews of candidates

Post author By CSS Times
Post date July 6, 2020
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The Punjab government has allowed the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) to conduct interviews of candidates.

Secretary Primary & Secondary Healthcare Department M Usman has issued a notification after the approval of the Punjab Cabinet Committee on Saturday.

Now, the PPSC can conduct interviews of the candidates in phases after implementing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) devised by the Punjab Health Department, however procedure of written examination would remain suspended.

Tags PPSC Info, PPSC Interview, PPSC Jobs

Articles Current Affairs Pakistani Newspapers

Key dates in India-China border tensions

Post author By Guest Author
Post date June 17, 2020
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Key dates in India-China border tensions

Asian regional superpowers India and China share a long history of mistrust and conflict along their lengthy border, and tensions flared up this week in a deadly clash between troops.

The world’s two most populous nations and nuclear-armed neighbours have never even agreed on the length of their “Line of Actual Control” frontier, which straddles the strategically important Himalayan region.

Recent decades have seen numerous skirmishes along the border, including a brief but bloody war in 1962.

Tags CSS Current Affairs

Articles Foreign Articles General

Locusts Pose a Bigger Economic Threat to Pakistan Than the Virus

Post author By Guest Author
Post date June 10, 2020
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By Ismail Dilawar and Faseeh Mangi

Agriculture sector accounts for 20% of Pakistan’s economy
Some provinces diverting resources from virus to fight locusts

Swarms of locusts spreading across Pakistan are emerging as a bigger threat to the economy than the coronavirus pandemic, with the pests threatening farm output, livelihoods and food security.

The locust-invasion now covers an area of 57 million hectares in a country with a total crop area of 23 million hectares, said Falak Naz, director general of crop protection at the Ministry of Food Security and Research. While not all the areas infested now are crop lands, the insects are moving fast, he said.

Agriculture is the second-biggest sector in the economy — contributing about 20% to gross domestic product — and provides a livelihood to half of the nation’s workforce. Faced with devastating losses, authorities are now being forced to divert money set aside to fight the coronavirus to help combat the locust scourge instead.

Tags CSS Current Affairs, Economic Threat to Pakistan, Locusts in Pakistan, Locusts threat

Articles Pakistani Newspapers

Problems with CSS seats (By: Mohsin Saleem Ullah)

Post author By CSS Times
Post date June 1, 2020
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For many fresh graduates from local and international universities, joining civil services is a dream job, which has one of the toughest selection processes in place for filtering out the sharpest minds. And later pre-training them in the country’s oldest yet premier training institution called Civil Services Academy. Though it remains unclear whether their aim to join this prestigious service is to serve the public or for the sake of seeking recognition in the society and craving for the authority is what they want, as per my understanding from the recent mindset recruited across the country.

Tags CSS Quota, CSS Sindh SEats, Mohsin Saleem Ullah, Problems with CSS Seats

Current Affairs Foreign Articles

UK among the worst countries for children’s rights — report | CSS Current Affairs

Post author By CSS Times
Post date May 30, 2020
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This reading is best for CSS Current Affairs / CSS International Relations / International Organizations

Based on UN data, an annual study has measured how children’s rights are respected in 182 countries.

The UK is one of the worst countries in the world for respecting children’s rights, an international report has found.

Published this week, The KidsRights Index 2020 ranked the UK 169th out of 182 nations, behind Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iraq.

Ranked at the top were Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, and Germany.

Tags CSS Current Affairs, CSS International Relations, The pandemic’s impact, UK lags behind

Articles Foreign Articles

The Latest Turkish Defence Breakthroughs You Need to Know About

Post author By Guest Author
Post date May 19, 2020
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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signs a drone at a military airbase in Batman, Turkey, Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018. The Turkish military says two of its soldiers have been killed in Syria and a third was killed on the Turkish side of the border in an attack by Syrian Kurdish militiamen, saying Saturday's deaths were related to Turkey's operation against the Syrian Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin. (Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Pool Photo via AP)

Following Turkey’s recent test-firing of the native HGK-84 precision guidance kit, we take you through the top Turkish defence industry achievements in recent years.

Native HGK-84 precision guidance kit

On Monday, Turkey’s National Defence Ministry stated that Turkey successfully test-fired a locally-produced precision guidance kit known as the HGK-84.

“The test-firing of our HGK-84 LAB (Precision Guidance Kit-84 Laser Seeker Head) produced by domestic and national facilities were successfully carried out,” announced the national defence ministry.

It is a GPS/INS guidance kit that transforms existing 2,000-pound MK-84 general purpose and penetrator bombs into air-to-ground smart bombs enabling precision-strike capabilities in all-weather conditions.

Articles Foreign Articles

Coronavirus: Why do well-informed people subscribe to conspiracy theories?

Post author By CSS Times
Post date May 18, 2020
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We speak to an expert on conspiracy theories who tells us why people hold onto unfounded beliefs even when presented with the facts.

From the moment Coronavirus swept across the world, killing thousands of people each day and paralysing life for weeks, another kind of outbreak began to emerge: conspiracy theories. They are proving just as contagious as the virus itself.

Many fantastic and unproven claims have been made about COVID-19, such as the virus being produced as a biological weapon in a lab in China, that it is spread by 5G wireless technology, and even that billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates created the disease himself. Some of these conspiracies have had real-life consequences. Dozens of radio towers, assumed to be carrying 5G technology, have been attacked and damaged in Britain and the Netherlands.

Tags coronavirus, Coronavirus in Pakistan, Symptoms of Coronavirus

Articles Current Affairs Foreign Articles

How India and Israel Use the Pandemic to Expand Settler-Colonial Projects

Post author By CSS Times
Post date May 17, 2020
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The international community’s focus on battling Covid-19 provides the perfect cover for criminal political adventurism.

When France was distracted with a national election and a range of unresolved domestic issues in 1936, Nazi Germany seized it as an opportunity to violate the Treaty of Versailles by remilitarising the Rhineland. This buffer zone had been established in the aftermath of World War I to prevent it from threatening its western neighbours.

History is replete with examples of expansionist states using distraction and diversion as a weapon or element of surprise – as illustrated by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 when the world’s attention was fixated on the Beijing Olympic Games.

It’s no secret that world leaders often use foreign policy as a means to divert attention from political problems at home, as illustrated by the United States’ assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which was likely carried out to distract from President Donald Trump’s impeachment hearing.

Tags Hindu settler-colonial project in Kashmir, independent Kashmiri state, TRT World

Articles History articles

Ibn al Jazzar identified contagious diseases 1,000 years ago

Post author By CSS Times
Post date May 17, 2020
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How the 10th-century Muslim polymath gave physicians a new perspective when it came to examining infectious diseases.

Ibn al Jazzar, a 10th-century Muslim polymath, was the first to diagnose leprosy, explaining the disease in scientific terms and measures to contain it.