Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs/News (Aug 11 2023) for CSS

Table of Contents

Pakistan continues to face five major and persistent economic challenges, resulting in rising poverty and social vulnerabilities, said the Ministry of Finance a day after the national assembly and the federal cabinet were dissolved.
In its first quarterly performance report to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on $1.5bn Building Resilience with Active Country-cyclical Expenditures(BRACE)released on Thursday, the Ministry of Finance said the financial progress remained satisfactory on Countrycyclical Development Expenditure Programme (CDEP) in the quarter ending Dec 31, 2022 as 41.5pc of the budget for the fiscal, under social proteetion, was utilise d.It said the current expenditures increased by 30pc to Rs6.061 trillion in JulyDecember FY23 against Rs4.676tr in the comparable period of the last year. The bulk of this rise stemmed from a sharp rise in mark-up payments which grew by 77pc driven by higher servicing on domestic and foreign debt due to a higher level of interest rates. Public Sector Development Programme (federal and provincial) grew by just 4.5pc during the first half of the current fiscal year

The West African bloc ECOWAS on Thursday ordered the activation of a standby force for possible use against the junta that took power in Niger in July, saying it wanted a peaceful restoration of democracy but all options including force were on the table.
After a summit of its heads of state in the Nigerian capital Abuja, the bloc pledged to enforce sanctions, travel bans and asset freezes on those preventing the return to power of democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum.
`No option is taken off the table, including the use of force as a last resort,` said Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, the ECOWAS chair

Iran agreed to release four American-Iranian dual nationals from Tehran`s Evin prison under a prisoner exchange deal between Tehran and Washington, its mission to the United Nations said on Thursday.
`Under the deal mediated by a third country, five Iranians jailed in the United States will be released and Iran`s frozen funds in South Korea will be unblocked and transferred to Qatar,` it said, according to state news agency IRNA

Ecuador was under a state of emergency on Thursday after the assassination of a popular presidential candidate just days before an election dominated by concerns over the once-peaceful country`s descent into brutal violence linked to drug trafficking.
Fernando Villavicencio, a 59-year-old journalist and anti-corruption crusader, was killed in a hail of machine gun fire as he left a campaign rally in the capital Quito

The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi defeated a no-confidence motion in parliament on Thursday after a fiery speech by the premier at the climax of a three-day debate.
Opposition lawmakers who had brought the motion over months of ethnic violence in Manipur state walked out of the chamber, prompting a furious rebuke from the premier, with the government then winning the vote.