Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs/News (jan 09 2023) for CSS

Table of Contents

6. Sweden can`t meet some of Turkiye demands for Nato bid, says PM

• Turkiye, which has for months blocked Nato membership bids by Sweden and Finland, has made some demands that Sweden cannot accept, Sweden`s prime minister said on January 8, 2023.
• `Turkiye has confirmed that we have done what we said we would do, but it also says that it wants things that we can`t, that we don`t want to, give it,` Ulf Kristersson said during a security conference also attended by Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg. `We are convinced that Turkiye will make a decision, we just don`t know when,` he said, adding that it will depend on internal politics inside Turkiye as well as `Sweden`s capacity to show its seriousness.` Sweden and Finland broke with decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the US-led defence alliance in response to Russia`s February invasion of Ukraine.
• But Turkiye has refused to approve their bid until the two countries take steps, including joining Turkiye`s fight against banned Kurdish militants. Most of Turkiye`s demands have involved Sweden because of its more robust ties with the Kurdish diaspora. Finland`s foreign minister said that the country would join Nato at the same time as its neighbour

7. Israel takes away VIP pass over Palestinian world court move

• Israel suspended on January 8, 2023 a pass that eased the Palestinian foreign minister`s travel in and around the occupied West Bank, as part of its response to Palestinian efforts to involve the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the conflict.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu`s right-wing security cabinet on Friday announced a series of steps, which also included using Palestinian money to compensate victims of Palestinian militant attacks and imposing a moratorium on Palestinian construction in some areas of the Israeli occupied West Bank. Israel collects tax money on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
• Israeli border staff confiscated Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki`s `VIP` travel card as he crossed from Jordan into the occupied West Bank, his office said

8. Russia, Ukraine swap captured soldiers

• Russia and Ukraine swapped 50 captured soldiers each on January 8, 2023 in a deal that both sides welcomed even as they fought one another in eastern Ukraine.
• Russia`s defence ministry said the 50 returned Russian soldiers would be flown to Moscow for medical and psychological rehabilitation.
• `On January 8, as a result of negotiations, 50 Russian servicemen, who were in mortal danger while in captivity, were returned from the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime,` it said in a statement

9. China reopens borders after three years of quarantine

• China lifted quarantine requirements for inbound travellers on January 8, 2023, ending almost three years of self-imposed isolation even as the country battles a surge in Covid cases.
• The first people to arrive expressed relief at not having to undergo the gruelling quarantines that were a fixture of life in zero-Covid China. And in Hong Kong, where the border with mainland China was re-opened after years of closure, more than 400,000 people were set to travel north in the coming eight weeks.
• Beijing last month began a dramatic dismantling of a hardline zero-Covid strategy that had enforced mandatory quarantines and punishing lockdowns

10. `Once in a century flood cuts off communities in Australia

• Military helicopters airlifted hundreds of people from communities cut off by `once in a century` floods in Australia`s northwest, an official leading relief efforts said on January 8, 2023, noting water covered some places `as far as the eye could see`.
• The crisis in the Kimberley an sparsely populated area in Western Australia state about the size of California was sparked last week by severe weather system Ellie, a former tropical cyclone that brought heavy rain.
• `The water is everywhere,` Western Australia Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson told reporters in Perth.
• `People in the Kimberley are experiencing a one-in-100-year flood event, the worst flooding Western Australia has had in its history