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October 16, 2022: National / International Current Affairs
1. `Cohesive` reply greets Biden`s N-arsenal doubts
• In a stern response, Pakistan has categorically rejected US President Joe Biden`s remarks about the country`s nuclear weapons as `factually incorrect and misleading`, while the American ambassador in Islamabad was summoned to issue an official demarche.
• President Biden brought up Pakistan out of the blue at a fundraising event in California on Thursday, while discussing various global threats to US interests.
• He said he has spent more time with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping than `any person in any head of state in America,` he said.
• `This is a guy who understands what he wants but has an enormous, enormous array of problems. How do we handle that?` he asked.
• `How do we handle that relative to what`s going on in Russia?` And then, totally out of context, he moved on to Pakistan. `What I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan.` And then he explained why he thought Pakistan was dangerous: `Nuclear weapons without any cohesion
2. Reconstruction after floods to begin on 24th
• Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will formally announce government measures for the reconstruction and rehabilitation phase for the post flood recovery of affected districts on Oct 24, the Planning Commission said on October 15, 2022.
• The announcement came after the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment of the damages and losses in the wake of catastrophic floods that hit Pakistan in August has been completed by the planning and development division in collaboration with the World Bank, ADB, EU and UN.
• Addressing a roundtable on the sidelines of the World Bank-IMF annual meetings on Friday, Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal shared some of the report`s key findings
3. Pakistan suffered climate-induced losses worth $29bn: World Bank
• Weather and climate-related disasters have affected over 75 million Pakistanis in the past three decades, with estimated economic losses of over $29 billion, or roughly $1billion a year, latest World Bank report estimated.
• The projected temperature extremes will progressively amplify the negative impacts on human health, livelihoods, and ecosystems that Pakistan is already experiencing, said the report titled `From Swimming in Sand to High and Sustainable Growth: A Roadmap to Reduce Distortions in the Allocation of Resources and Talent in the Pakistani Economy`.
• The report explained Pakistan`s climate has been changing in recent decades and the country faced rates of warming that are considerably above the global average
4. Punjab gets four more districts
• The Board of Revenue has notified four new districts Wazirabad, Murree, Kot Addu and Talagang out of five approved by Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi, as the fifth Taunsa Sharif is likely to be notified next week soon after the realignment of Fort Munro tehsil that touches D.G. Khan district.
• Some politicians had approached the provincial government demanding that Fort Munro tehsil should be attached to Dera Ghazi Khan district, which is just 30km away, while the same tehsil is more than 100km from Taunsa Sharif, sources say.
• It would be relatively unfeasible for a large population to look towards Taunsa Sharif for the resolution of their issues, they had complained
5. Floods spike Pakistan poverty rate: WB
• The World Bank says the national poverty rate in Pakistan could increase by 2.5 to 4.0 percentage points as a direct consequence of the floods, with adverse human development effects in disaster-affected areas.
• The size and duration of shocks will vary across locations and households, depending on the intensity of the flooding as well as the quality of relief and reconstruction efforts, the World Bank says in its latest `Macro Poverty Outlook for Pakistan` released during the course of ongoing IMF World Bank annual meetings.
• According to the outlook made available on Saturday, the high inflation and devastating floods will have an adverse impact on poverty. While rising prices reduced the real purchasing power of all households, the floods primarily affected rural areas in Sindh and Balochistan where poverty rates are already high
