Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs / News (February 11, 2021) for CSS, PMS

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February 11, 2021: National / International Current Affairs

1. No death penalty for inmates with mental ailment: SC

• In a verdict hailed by rights organisations, the Supreme Court has ruled that a condemned prisoner if found, due to mental illness, unable to comprehend the reasons behind his/her punishment qualifies for an exemption from the execution of death sentence.
• `We hold that if a condemned prisoner, due to mental illness, is found to be unable to comprehend the rationale and reason behind his/her punishment, then carrying out the death sentence will not meet the ends of justice,` said a 51-page judgement announced by a five-judge SC bench at the Lahore registry on February 10, 2021

2. Five new educational boards established for seminaries

• The government on February 10, 2021 finally succeeded in breaking the monopoly of five already existing religious boards by creating new ones. It will also assist in the registration process for religious seminaries that had been stalled in the past after existing boards boycotted it.
• Education Minister Shafqat Mehmood and Minister for Religious Affairs Pir Noorul Haq Qadri, during a ceremony awarded registration certificates to representatives of the new boards

3. ADB issues Inaugural Education Bond

• The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has priced its first education bond to finance a pool of projects related to the sector, including technical and vocational training, in Asia and the Pacific.
• According to an ADB press statement received here, priced on February 2, the A$75 million (about $57 million) 10-year bond was purchased entirely by Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited of Japan and arranged by Credit Agricole CIB.

4. Punjab establishes education villages for special children

• The Punjab government is in the process of setting up education villages for the special children on the land retrieved from the illegal occupants.
• In this connection, Punjab Minister for Special Education Chaudhry Muhammad Akhlaq laid the foundation stone of the four walls of Special Children’s Village Sharqpur Sharif on February 10, 2021.
• The Punjab Special Education Department, in collaboration with the local administration and police, has retrieved 104 kanals and 8 marlas of land worth Rs10 crores from illegal occupation

5. Supreme Court converts death sentence of mentally-ill prisoners into life term

• The Supreme Court of Pakistan on February 10, 2021 converted the death sentence of two mentally-ill prisoners into life imprisonment.
• The court converted the death sentence of Imdad Ali and Kaneezan Bibi into life imprisonment and ordered the Punjab government to shift them to Punjab Institute of Medical Health for treatment and rehabilitation as per prison rules in view of their mental health condition.
• The court further directed that a medical board should afresh examine them on completion of their imprisonment and they should be discharged from hospital if the medical board declares them fit.

6. Saudi women`s rights activist walks free after three years

• Saudi authorities on February 10, 2021 released prominent women`s rights activist Loujain al Hathloul, her siblings said, after nearly three years in detention.
• Loujain was `at home after 1001 days in prison,` she added along with a picture of the freed activist.
• Hathloul, 31, was arrested in May 2018 with about a dozen other women activists just weeks before the historic lifting of a decades-long Saudi ban on female drivers, a reform they had long campaigned for, sparking a torrent of international criticism.

7. Row escalates between Twitter and India over blocking accounts

• Twitter said on February 10, 2021 it had blocked some accounts in India over comments on mass farmer s` protests in New Delhi, but the social media giant refused to shut down others despite the threat of criminal action by the government.
• Indian officials last week demanded that Twitter block hundreds of users that have tweeted on demonstrations against proposed new agriculture laws, saying they were a` grave threat to public order`.

8. China`s Tianwen-1 probe enters Mars orbit

• China`s Tianwen-1 probe entered the orbit of the planet Mars on February 10, 2021, state media said, after it launched from southern China last July.
• It is the latest step in Beijing`s ambitious space programme, which aims to establish a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually put a man on the moon, and has opened up a new, extraterrestrial arena for US-China competition.
• Tianwen-1 launched around the same time as a rival US mission, and is expected to touch down on the Red Planet in May

9. New research highlights risk of COVID mutations

• SARS-CoV-2 mutations similar to those in the B1.1.7 UK variant could arise in cases of chronic infection, where treatment over an extended period can provide the virus multiple opportunities to evolve, say scientists.
• Writing in Nature, a team led by Cambridge researchers report how they were able to observe SARS-CoV-2 mutating in the case of an immunocompromised patient treated with convalescent plasma. In particular, they saw the emergence of a key mutation also seen in the new variant that led to the UK being forced once again into strict lockdown, though there is no suggestion that the variant originated from this patient.

10. Tsegay smashes 1,500m indoor world record

• Ethiopia`s Gudaf Tsegay smashed the world indoor 1,500m record by over two seconds at a meet in northern France on Tuesday, beating Laura Muir, who became the first British woman to break the four-minute barrier when finishing second.
• A world bronze medallist, Tsegay blew the rest of the field away at the Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais with a blisteringtime of 3:53.09, taking more than two seconds off the world indoor record set by compatriot Genzebe Dibaba in Karlsruhe in 2014.

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