Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs / News (July 19, 2022) for CSS, PMS

Table of Contents

6. Three PHC additional judges take oath

• Three additional judges of Peshawar High Court took oath on July 18, 2022, taking the number of judges of the court to the sanctioned strength of 20.
• Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan administered oath to the new judges -Justice Fazal Subhan, Justice Shahid Khan and Justice Dr Khurshid Iqbal.
• Before their elevation, all the three were serving as district and sessions judges against different posts.
• The oath taking ceremony was attended by judges of the high court, representatives of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council, presidents and other cabinet members of Peshawar High Court Bar Association and Peshawar District Bar Association and judicial officers

7. Russian shelling kills six; Ukraine president sacks security chief

• Russian shelling of a town in eastern Ukraine on July 18, 2022 killed six people, Kyiv said, as EU ministers meeting in Brussels insisted that the pressure of Western sanctions on Moscow was working.
• Ukraine`s President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile appointed an acting security chief, having announced the suspension of senior law enforcement officials late on Sunday.
• Rescue workers in blue helmets were digging through debris and clearing rubble from a collapsed two-storey building in Toretsk in the industrial east that was struck by Russian artillery early on Monday. Emergency services said five people had been pulled dead from the rubble, while a sixth, seriously wounded, had died in hospital

8. Sri Lanka renews state of emergency ahead of key vote

• Sri Lanka`s acting president renewed the country`s state of emergency on July 18, 2022 ahead of a parliamentary vote to pick a new head of state a poll in which he is a leading candidate.
• Ranil Wickremesinghe automatically became acting president when Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned last week after fleeing to Singapore. A state of emergency allows troops to arrest and detain suspects, and the president to make regulations overriding existing laws to deal with any unrest.
• One was already in place but parliament had not met to ratify the declaration as required, and Wickremesinghe extended it from Monday `in the interests of public security`, he said. Police and the military, armed with emergency powers, stepped up security in the capital ahead of Wednesday`s election of a new president

9. Israeli army chief makes first visit to Morocco

• Israel`s army chief arrived in Morocco on July 18, 2022 for meetings with senior defence officials, military sources said, as cooperation between the countries expands following a normalisation of ties.
• Aviv Kohavi`s three-day trip is the first official visit of an Israeli army chief to the North African kingdom.
• Kohavi will meet Morocco`s minister delegate in charge of defence administration, Abdellatif Loudiyi, as well as the Inspector General of the Royal Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Belkhir El Farouk, and senior defence officials, an Israeli spokesman said

10. First `dormant` stellar-mass black hole discovered

• A team of astrophysicists known for debunking previous supposed black holes announced a discovery of their own on July 18, 2022 the first `dormant` stellar-mass black hole spotted orbiting a star in a nearby galaxy.
• While these black holes are thought to be common throughout the universe, they have proved difficult to find, and they have themselves rejected several possible candidates in recent years.
• Now the international team has found a `needle in a haystack`, said Tomer Shenar, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam and lead author of a new study in the Nature Astronomy journal