Day by Day Current Affairs (August 19, 2018) | MCQs for CSS, PMS, NTS

 

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 August 19, 20181

1. Imran Khan takes oath as 22^nd Prime Minister of Pakistan

• An upbeat Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan on August 18, 2018 formally assumed the office of the country`s chief executive following an impressive oath-taking ceremony at President House.
• Clad in a traditional black sherwani, a visibly blushing Imran Khan later reviewed the guard of honour accorded to him at the Prime Minister`s House.
• Stars of the ceremony in which President Mamnoon Hussain administered the oath to Mr Khan were Indian cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu and the first lady Bushra Bibi.
• Mr Khan faced some difficulty in reading out his oath because of some difficult Urdu words and at one stage smilingly said `sorry` when he uttered the word Qayadat (leadership) instead of Qayamat (the day of judgement). And before start of the oath, Mr Khan made everyone curious as well as amused when he began to look for his spectacles in a pocket of the shirt that he was wearing under his sherwani.

2. PM Office announced 21 members’ Cabinet

• PM Office announced the names of 21 cabinet members including many old faces. A number of them had either served in the cabinet during the military rule of Gen Pervez Musharraf or had had association with him in the past.
• Of the 16 ministers, seven belong to the coalition parties whose support Mr Khan had secured to win the prime minister`s election with 176 votes. The new cabinet members 16 federal ministers and five advisers are expected to take the oath at President House on August 20, 2018.
• Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi has been nominated as the country`s new foreign minister, Asad Umar has been made minister for finance and revenue, the portfolio of the information and broadcasting has been allocated to Fawad Chaudhry, Ghulam Sarwar Khan (petroleum ministry), Dr Shireen Mazari (human rights), Pervez Khattak (defence minister) Shafqat Mehmood (federal education and professional training and national history and literary heritage) Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiyar (minister for water resources), Aamir Mehmood Kiyani (national health services, regulations and coordination),
• Among those who have been given representation in the cabinet for being leaders of the PTIs allies are Senator Farogh Naseem (law and justice); Chaudhry Tariq Bashir Cheema (states and frontier regions); Zubaida Jalal (defence production); Sheikh Rashid Ahmed (railways); Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui (information technology and telecommunication); Dr Fehmida Mirza (inter-provincial coordination) and an independent MNA from Fata Noorul Haq Qadri (religious affairs and interfaith harmony).
• Those who have been appointed as advisers to the prime minister are former law minister in the PPP government Babar Awan (parliamentary affairs); former KP chief secre-tary Shehzad Arbab (establishment division); former minister during the Gen Musharraf regime Abdul Razzak Dawood (commerce, textile, industry & production and investment); Dr Ishrat Husain (institutional reforms and austerity), who had served as State Bank governor during the military rule of Gen Musharraf, and another former minister of state during the Gen Musharraf regime Amin Aslam (climate change).

3. Jam Kamal elected 16th CM of Balochistan

• Jam Mir Kamal Khan Alyani, the joint candidate of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP)-led six party alliance, was elected leader of the house with majority votes in the Balochistan Assembly on August 18, 2018.
• He will take the oath as the 16th chief minister of Balochistan at a ceremony in Governor House.
• Jam Kamal, president of BAP, the majority party in the provincial party, was the joint candidate of the sixparty alliance comprising his party, the Awami National Party, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), Hazara Democratic Party, Balochistan National PartyAwami and Jamhoori Watan Party.
• The opposition`s two part yalliance-Balochistan National Party-Mengal and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal had fielded Mir Younis Aziz Zehri as its candidate for the office of chief minister.
• Speaker Mir Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo conducted the election for leader of the house through division of the house. Jam Kamal got 39 votes in the house of 65 members, while Younis Zehri received 20 votes.

4. Murad Ali Shah takes oath as Sindh CM for second term

• Pakistan People’s Party’s Syed Murad Ali Shah on August 18, 2018 took oath as Sindh chief minister, retaining the post which he was given in 2016.
• Acting Governor of Sindh Agha Siraj Durrani administered the oath to Murad in Urdu language at a ceremony at Governor’s House. After Shah’s oath, tenure of the caretaker government led by Sindh Chief Minister Fazalur Rehman came to an end.
• Shah became an MPA for fourth time on July 25 after winning the general elections from PS-80, his native Sehwan district. He defeated Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah of the Sindh United Party quite comfortably. During vote count for chief minister’s office at Sindh Assembly, Murad bagged 97 votes, defeating Shahryar Mahar, joint candidate of three major opposition parties — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Grand Democratic Alliance. He managed to get 61 votes. This is PPP’s third consecutive tenure in the province and Murad was sworn in as chief minister of Sindh for the second time in a row.
• He was elected leader of the house in July 2016 when the party leadership had decided to replace party stalwart Syed Qaim Ali Shah. Murad became an MPA for the first time in 2002 when he was elected from PS-77. He remained part of Qaim Ali Shah’s cabinet from 2008 to 2013 and held portfolios of irrigation and finance

5. Azam Khan appointed secretary to PM

• The federal government has appointed a grade-21 officer Mohammad Azam as Secretary to PM. Muhammad Azam Khan had served as Chief Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the first tenure of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led government in the province.
• The Establishment Division issued the orders of transfer of Secretary to PM Sohail Amir just after his meeting with newly-elected Prime Minister Imran Khan who visited his office after oath-taking ceremony.
• The federal government posted Azam as Secretary to PM with the consent of Imran Khan and the Establishment Davison issued a notification in this regard.
• According to the notification, “Mohammad Azam, a BS-21 officer of the Pakistan Administrative Service, presently posted as Additional Secretary (In-charge), States and Frontier Regions Division, is transferred and posted as Secretary to Prime Minister, PM’s office with immediate effect and till further order.” The outgoing secretary to PM Sohail has been directed to report to the Establishment Division.
• Azam Khan had also served as Acting Chief Secretary KP twice, additional chief secretary Fata, secretary sports, tourism and youth affairs, secretary home and tribal affairs and as commissioner Peshawar in the past.

6. Ex-UN chief and Nobel laureate Annan passes away

• Former UN chief and Nobel peace laureate Kofi Annan died on August 18, 2018 at the age of 80, triggering a flood of tributes from around the world for the `diplomatic rock star`.
• The Ghanaian national was a career diplomat who projected quiet charisma and was widely credited for raising the world body`s profile in global politics during his two terms as head of the UN from 1997 to 2006.
• The first secretary general from subSaharan Africa, Annan led the United Nations through the divisive years of the Iraq war and was later accused of corruption in the oil-for-food scandal, one of the most trying times of his tenure.
• Ghana`s President Nana AkufoAddo announced a week of mourning for `one of our greatest compatriots`.
• In 2001, as the world was reeling from the September 11 attacks in the United States, Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the world body `for their work for a better organised and more peaceful world`.
• Another Nobel laureate, retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu described Annan as `an outstanding human being who represented our continent and the world with enormous gra-ciousness, integrity and distinction`.
• `Diplomatic rock star` Born in Kumasi, the capital city of Ghana`s Ashantiregion,Annan devoted four decades of his working life to the UN and was the first chief to rise from within the organisation`s ranks.
• In1993, he took over as peacekeeping chief a position he held through two of the UN`s darkest chapters: the Rwandan genocide and the Bosnian war.
• His tenure as UN chief was tarnished by a 2005 investigation of Annan and his son over the oil-for-food scandal, seen by some as payback for his comments that the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq was `illegal`.

7. US supplied bomb that killed Yemeni children: CNN

• The bomb that killed 40 children and 11 others in a Saudi-led coalition air strike on a bus in rebel-held northern Yemen was sold by the United States under a State Department deal with Riyadh, CNN has reported.
• The numbers on shrapnel, of which images were taken shortly after the attack this month, indicate that it was a laser-guided Mk 82 bomb manufactured by defence contractor Lockheed Martin.
• Former president Barack Obama banned the sale of precision-guided weaponry to Saudi Arabia after it used a similar bomb in an October 2016 attack that killed 140 people at a funeral in the rebel-held capital Sanaa.
• But President Donald Trump overturned that ban after taking office in 2017.
• Fifty-six children were also among the 79 people wounded in the August 9 strike on Saada province, a rebel stronghold that borders Saudi Arabia, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

8. UN chief proposes options to protect Palestinians

• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has presented four options aimed at boosting the protection of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories, from sending UN rights monitors and unarmed observers to deploying a military or police force under UN mandate.
• The proposals were contained in a report requested by the General Assembly in response to a surge of violence in Gaza, where 171 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since late March.
• The UN chief stressed that for each of the options, cooperation by Israel and the Palestinians would be necessary. It remained unlikely however that Israel would agree to the proposals.

9. KSA tests Japan-inspired ‘nap pods’ for Haj

• Mansour al-Amer swipes a card to reveal a narrow sleep pod, reminiscent of Japan’s famed capsule hotels. But this pod is in Saudi Arabia, where the Muslim hajj pilgrimage begins.
• The kingdom has plans to introduce capsule rooms in the western city of Mina in the coming days, as an estimated two million Muslim faithful gather for the six-day Haj, one of the five pillars of Islam.
• The free nap pods are part of new measures Saudi Arabia is rolling out this year in a bid to modernise the centuries-old practice of Haj. The government has also introduced apps for on-the-spot translation and emergency medical care.
• Amer is the head of a Saudi charity, the Haji and Mutamer Gift Charitable Association, which is offering between 18 and 24 capsule for pilgrims to nap in for free in the coming days.
• Each fibreglass pod – less than three metres long and just over one metre high – features a mattress, clean sheets, air conditioning and a large, well-lit mirror. The pods can be lined up horizontally or stacked vertically to save on space.

10. Asian Games burst into life

• North and South Korea marched together in a stirring display of unity as the Asian Games, one of the world’s biggest sports events, opened in a blaze of colour in Jakarta on August 19, 2018.
• South Korean women’s basketball player Lim Yung-hui and North Korean footballer Ju Kyong-chol jointly held the Korean Unification flag aloft as they led the athletes out to an ovation from the packed crowd. It is the second such symbolic gesture this year by the two Koreas, who also walked together at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony — an event that heralded an unprecedented warming of ties.
• The North and South, still technically at war, are joining forces in women’s basketball, canoeing and rowing during the 40-sport, two-week regional Olympics in the Indonesian capital and Palembang, a port city on Sumatra island.