Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs / News (February 22, 2022) for CSS, PMS

Table of Contents

6. Tehran sees `significant progress` in nuclear talks

• Talks in Vienna on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers have made `significant progress`, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on February 21, 2022.
• Separately, Iran`s top security official Ali Shamkhani said talks with European negotiators were ongoing and would continue while negotiations with the United States were not on the agenda because they would not be the source of `any breakthroughs`.
• Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington have been held in Vienna since April amid fears about Tehran`s nuclear advances, seen by Western powers as irreversible unless agreement is struck soon

7. EU parliament`s biggest bloc wants Switzerland `blacklisted`

• The main political grouping in the European Parliament called on February 21, 2022 for a review of Switzerland`s banking practices and for the country`s possible inclusion in the EU`s dirty money blacklist after leaks of Credit Suisse documents.
• Media outlets published the results of investigations into a leak of data on thousands of accounts held at the bank in past decades and said they appeared to show clients included human rights abusers and businessmen under sanctions.
• Credit Suisse said it strongly rejected any allegations of wrongdoing and that the media reports were based on `partial, inaccurate or selective information taken out of context`

8. Unicef to pay Afghan teachers for two months

• As the country descends into economic crisis due to looming sanctions on the Taliban regime, the United Nation`s children`s agency has announced it will pay a monthly stipend to Afghanistan`s teachers, who have remained unpaid as most schools across the country remained closed since August last year.
• The payments, of roughly $100 per month, would be paid in local currency to around 194,000 primary and secondary schoolteachers for January and February, and would be funded by the European Union, Unicef announced.
• `Following months of uncertainty and hardship for many teachers, we are pleased to extend emergency support to public school teachers in Afghanistan who have spared no effort to keep children learning,` said Mohamed Ayoya, the representative for Unicef Afghanistan

9. Putin recognises Ukraine`s rebel regions, infuriates West

• Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 21, 2022 recognised two Moscow-backed rebel regions of Ukraine as independent, in a move that could set off a potentially catastrophic war with Kyiv`s Western-backed government.
• In an often angry 65-minute televised national address, Putin railed against Russia`s ex-Soviet neighbour Ukraine as a failed state and `puppet` of the West, repeatedly suggesting that it is essentially part of Russia.
• He accused authorities in Kyiv of persecuting Russian speakers and of preparing a `blitzkrieg` against the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in Ukraine`s east.

10. Pakistan hockey great Abdul Waheed Khan is no more

• Eminent Olympian Abdul Waheed Khan, one of the two survivors of 1960 Rome Olympics gold medal-winning Pakistan hockey team, died peacefully at his home in Karachi early February 21, 2022.
• He was 87.
• Waheed is survived by a widow, two daughters and a son.
• He will be laid to rest at Sakhi Hasan graveyard after Zuhr prayers on Tuesday.Born in Raipur village of Bhopal district in India on Nov 13, 1934, Waheed migrated to Pakistan with his parents in 1949 and settled in PIB Colony in the metropolis