Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs / News (July 13, 2022) for CSS, PMS

Table of Contents

6. One Rajapaksa flees after brother prevented from leaving

• Sri Lanka`s embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa flew out of the country in the wee hours of Wednesday morning in a military plane heading to the neighbouring Maldives, local officials said, following widespread protests against him.
• The 73-year-old leader, his wife and a bodyguard were among four passengers on board an Antonov-32 aircraft which took off from the main international airport, immigration officials said.
• Earlier, he had headed to a naval base on Tuesday with a view to fleeing his island by ship following a humiliating standoff at the airport, official sources said

7. Iran to supply Russia with UAVs for use in Ukraine: US

• Iran is planning to supply hundreds of drones with combat weapon capabilities to Russia for use in Ukraine, a top US official said on Monday.
• Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said the information received by the United States supported views that the Russian military is facing challenges sustaining its weaponry after significant losses in Ukraine.
• `The Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), including weapons-capable UAVs, on an expedited timeline,` Sullivan told reporters

8. Ukraine claims destroying Russian arms depot in Moscow-controlled region

• Kyiv said on Tuesday it had launched artillery barrages that a destroyed a Russian arms depot and carried out a `special operation` to free military captives in the Moscow controlled Kherson region.
• The bombardments in the south came as Washington and the EU announced nearly $3 billion combined for Ukraine and Turkey said delegations from Moscow and Kyiv would meet in Istanbul Wednesday to discuss restarting stalled grain deliveries across the Black Sea.
• Ukrainian military officials said the strikes had destroyed artillery, armoured vehicles `and a warehouse with ammunition` in the town of Nova Kakhovka

9. BBC report reveals UK commandos killed 54 unarmed Afghans

• Commandos in Britain`s elite Special Air Service (SAS) corps killed at least 54 Afghans in suspicious circumstances but the military chain of command concealed concerns, a BBC investigation said on Tuesday.
• Unarmed Afghan men were routinely shot dead `in cold blood` by SAS troops during night-time raids during the long war, and weapons were planted on them to justify the crimes, the four-year probe found.
• Senior officers, including General Mark Carleton-Smith who headed UK Special Forces at the time, were aware of concerns within the SAS about the operations but f ailed to report them to military police, it said

10. Stardust and `time travel`: revolutionary images from James Webb show universe in new light

• The cosmic cliffs of a stellar nursery, a quintet of galaxies bound in a celestial dance: the James Webb Space Telescope released its next wave of images on Tuesday, heralding a new era of astronomy.
• `Every image is a new discovery,` said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. `Each will give humanity a view of the universe that we`ve never seen before.
• Released one by one, the new images demonstrated the full power of the $10 billion observatory, which uses infrared cameras to gaze into the distant universe in unprecedented clarity.
• On Monday, Webb revealed the clearest image to date of the early universe, going back 13 billion years