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April 23, 2021: National / International Current Affairs
1. India posts global record of 315,000 Covid cases in a day
• India posted a global record of almost 315,000 new Covid infections on April 22, 2021 as hospitals in New Delhi sent out desperate warnings that patients could die without fresh oxygen supplies.
• The country`s long-underfunded healthcare system is being stretched to the limit by a devastating second wave of the pandemic blamed on a `double mutant` variant and `super spreader` mass gatherings.
• Health ministry data on April 22, 2021 showed 314,835 new infections in the past 24 hours, the most of any country since the pandemic began, taking total cases to 15.9 million, the world`s second highest
2. Murree rest houses given to tourism department
• The Forest Department has handed over its three rest houses in Murree to the Tourism Department under an agreement for promoting tourism while generating revenue through the existing government infrastructure.
• A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between the two departments here on Thursday. Forest Minister Sibtain Khan, Tourism Adviser Asif Mahmood, Tourism Secretary Ehsan Bhutta, Forest Secretary Javed Iqbal Bukhari, and others attended the ceremony.
3. Three-way Afghan peace talks in Istanbul today
• The foreign ministers of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey will hold talks in Istanbul on April 22, 2021, Turkey said, after a wider Afghan peace conference was postponed because the Taliban announced they would not participate.
• The planned peace talks in Turkey were scheduled for April 24 to fast-track an agreement between the Taliban and Afghan government in light of the announcement by the United States that foreign troops would leave Afghanistan by Sept 11.
• No new date has been set for those talks
4. China warns of `serious harm` as Australia scraps BRI deal
• China on April 22, 2021 said Australia`s sudden scrapping of a Belt and Road Initiative deal risked `serious harm` to relations and warned of retaliatory actions, but Canberra insisted it would not be bullied.
• The federal government pulled the deal with Victoria state late on Wednesday in a move justified by the defence minister as necessary to prevent Australia hosting a giant infrastructure scheme `used for propaganda`
5. House passes bill to make Washington 51st state
• The US House of Representatives on April 22, 2021 narrowly voted, for the second time in less than a year, to make the District of Columbia the 51st state, sending it to the Senate where it faces stiff Republican opposition.
• By a vote of 216-208, the Democratic-controlled House approved the initiative with no Republican support.
• The population of Washington, DC, is heavily Democratic. As a state, it likely would elect two Democratic senators, potentially altering the balance of power in the Senate, which now has 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans
6. Britain apologises for racism in memorials to WWI dead
• British authorities apologised on April 22, 2021 after an investigation found that at least 161,000 mostly African and Indian military service personnel who died during World War I weren`t properly honored due to pervasive racism. It said that number could possibly range up to 350,000.
• The investigation found that those service members were either not commemorated by name or weren`t commemorated at all, according to a report commissioned by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Between 45,000 and 54,000 other casualties were commemorated unequally
7. Russia orders end to huge military drills near Ukraine
• Russia`s defence minister on Friday ordered an end to military drills near Ukraine involving tens of thousands of troops and dozens of warships that had exacerbated tensions with the West.
• The announcement came as President Vladimir Putin invited Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for talks in Moscow following weeks of renewed fighting in the east of Ukraine between government troops and pro-Moscow separatists
8. Israel strikes at Syria after attack near secretive nuclear site
• A Syrian officer was killed and three soldiers wounded on April 22, 2021 in strikes launched by Israel after a missile was fired towards a secretive nuclear site in the Jewish state, a monitor said.
• Since the outbreak of Syria`s civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out aerial raids on the country, mostly targeting Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces as well as government troops. Its latest salvo was launched in the early hours of Thursday after a missile was fired from Syria towards southern Israel, where the Dimona nuclear reactor is located. Sirens sounded in Abu Qrenat, a Bedouin village not far from the nuclear site, the Israeli military said, before it responded by striking multiple defence batteries across the border
9. NASA extracts breathable oxygen from thin Mars air
• NASA has logged another extraterrestrial first on its latest mission to Mars: converting carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the US space agency said on Wednesday.
• The unprecedented extraction of oxygen, literally out of thin air on Mars, was achieved on Tuesday by an experimental device aboard Perseverance, a six wheeled science rover that landed on the Red Planet on Feb 18 after a seven-month journey from Earth
10. Turkish crypto founder vanishes with $2bn
• Turkish prosecutors on April 22, 2021 launched an investigation after the Istanbul based founder of a cryptocurrency exchange froze trading and left the country holding a reported $2 billion in investors` assets.
• The Thodex exchange suspended trading after posting a mysterious message on Wednesday saying it needed five days to deal with an unspecified outside investment.
• Turkish security officials then released a photo of Thodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer going through passport control at Istanbul airport on his way to an undisclosed location
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