Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs / News (July 30, 2022) for CSS, PMS

Table of Contents

6. PM appoints new HEC chairman

• Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on July 29, 2022 appointed Dr Mukhtar Ahmed as the Higher Education Commission (HEC) chairman.
• Dr Ahmed, a renowned educationist, had earlier held the post from 2014 to 2018.
• According to a notification issued by Secretary to Prime Minister Dr Syed Tauqir Shah, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has appointed Dr Mukhtar Ahmed as the HEC chairman.
• He was appointed out of a panel of three shortlisted candidates.
• The notification said the terms and conditions of the appointment shall be settled separately.

7. World Bank refuses new funding for bankrupt Sri Lanka

• The World Bank on Friday said it would not offer new funding to Sri Lanka unless the bankrupt island nation carried out `deep structural reforms` to stabilise its crashing economy.
• Sri Lanka has suffered an unprecedented downturn with its 22 million people enduring months of food and fuel shortages, rolling blackouts and rampant inflation.
• The South Asian nation defaulted on its $51-billion foreign debt in April and huge protests earlier this month forced then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign

8. Macron counts on MBS to `ease` Ukraine war effects

• French leader Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman agreed to work `to ease the effects` of the Ukraine war, Macron`s office said July 29, 2022, after talks in Paris that marked the full diplomatic rehabilitation of the Saudi leader.
• Like US President Joe Biden who visited Riyadh earlier this month, Macron had been keen to secure extra oil production from the de facto Saudi leader who was a pariah in the West until recently.
• A French statement made no reference to any agreement during a dinner on Thursday night, but said the two men had agreed to `intensify their cooperation to ease the effects (of the war) in Europe, the Middle East and the world`

9. Eurozone economy resilient amid inflation

• Europe`s economy is proving surprisingly resilient against soaring energy and food prices, data showed on July 29, 2022, as tourism boosted France and Spain but export powerhouse Germany stalled, keeping recession fears alive.
• The EU agency Eurostat said gross domestic product in the 19-country eurozone grew by 0.7pc in the second quarter, far stronger than expected by analysts. The EU as whole grew by 0.6pc.
• The war in Ukraine has seen the price of natural gas and grocery items skyrocket, and Eurostat`s data also showed that inflation in the single-currency area hit yet another new record of 8.9pc in July

10. Gluttonous cosmic `black widow` is heaviest-known neutron star

• Astronomers have observed the most massive known example of an object called a neutron star, one classified as a `black widow` that got particularly hefty by gobbling up most of the mass of a stellar companion trapped in an unhappy cosmic marriage.
• The researchers said the neutron star, wildly spinning at 707 times per second, has a mass about 2.35 times greater than that of our sun, putting it perhaps at the maximum possible for such objects before they would collapse to form a black hole.
• A neutron star is the compact collapsed core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova at the end of its life cycle. The one described by the researchers is a highly magnetized type of neutron star called a pulsar that unleashes beams of electromagnetic radiation from its poles. As it spins, these beams appear from the perspective of an observer on Earth to pulse akin to a lighthouse`s rotating light