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

Table of Contents

6. Germany to go into recession next year

• Germany will sink into recession next year and inflation will soar, the government forecast on October 12, 2022, as Europe`s top economy battles skyrocketing energy prices following Russia`s gas shutdown.
• The official predictions were the latest warning that Germany`s economy, which was just getting back on its feet after the pandemic, is set to shrink in 2023 due to the fallout of Moscow`s invasion of Ukraine.
• Unveiling the government`s latest forecasts of 0.4pc economic contraction and 7pc inflation for 2023, Economy Minister Robert Habeck painted a dark picture of a `serious energy crisis`

7. US slaps visa curbs on Taliban for `repressing women`

• The United States has imposed visa restrictions against Taliban officials and other individuals `responsible for repressing Afghan women and girls`, hoping to persuade the regime to reconsider its repressive policies.
• `Today I am announcing a visa restriction policy … to restrict the issuance of visas for current or former Taliban members, members of non-state security groups, and other individuals believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, repressing women and girls in Afghanistan through restrictive policies and violence,` said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement issued on Tuesday evening.
• In Kabul, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said the new US visa rules could have a `negative` impact on ties with Afghanistan`s government, which held talks with Washington this week

8. Nato assures Ukraine of bolstering its air defence amid Russian strikes

• Ukraine`s allies announced delivery of new air defences and recommitted to providing it robust, enduring military assistance at a meeting at NATO headquarters on October 12, 2022, saying Russian missile strikes two days ago only further united them.
• US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, sitting next to his Ukrainian counterpart, opened the gathering of more than 50 countries by condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin`s deadly missile attacks against `targets with no military purpose` across Ukraine.
• `The whole world has just seen yet again the malice and cruelty of Putin`s war of choice, rooted in aggression and waged with deep contempt for the rules of war,` Austin told the gathering, sitting next to Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov

9. Blow for Japanese space agency as rocket launch fails

• The launch of a Japanese rocket taking satellites into orbit to demonstrate new technologies failed after blast-off on October 12, 2022 because of a positioning problem, the country`s space agency said.
• It was Japan`s first failed launch in nearly two decades, and the only one for an Epsilon rocket, a solid-fuel model that has flown five successful missions since its 2013 debut.
• The unmanned craft took off from Uchinoura Space Centre in the southern Kagoshima region, with its lift-off livestreamed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

10. Vote rule change in India-held Kashmir angers parties

• A new law that allows new residents of India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir to register as voters has angered political parties, which see it as an attempt by India to change the demography of the Muslim-majority region.
• India stripped the status of the occupied state in 2019. The new rule, introduced by electoral authorities in one of India-occupied Kashmir`s 20 districts on Tuesday, allows those who have been living there for a year or more to register as voters, in contrast with the earlier rule which enfranchised only people who resided in the region in 1947, or their descendants.
• Political parties opposed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s Bharatiya Janata Party fear that the new rule will be replicated in other districts and say this is an attempt to change demography in favour of Hindus