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

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July 19, 2018

 1.  Pakistan backs UN response to India on Kashmir report

• The Foreign Office on July 18, 2018 expressed disappointment over rejection by India of the United Nations reopen on gross human rights violations in India-held Kashmir and said it welcomed visit of the Commission of Inquiry to the disputed region.
• Foreign Office responded to the Indian stance as the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) stood by its report on Kashmir.
• The rights body on July 18, 2018 dismissed `numerous misrepresentations` by Indian authorities and the media of its first-ever human rights repon on the issue. The report was developed through remote monitoring after India and Pakistan failed to grant the UN body unconditional access to the region, adds Amin Ahmed from Islamabad.

2.  ECP takes digital measures to assist voters

• WITH less than a week to Pakistan`s internet-driven polls, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has taken various tech-savvy measures to guide voters on the polling process.
• Among other steps, the ECP has updated its short message service, putting an end to the ambiguity surrounding the path to polling stations. Voters will be able to acquire the exact address to their polling station by sending their computerised national identity card (CNIC) number to 8300. Although the messaging service has been active for some time, it only provided constituency details earlier. The ECP, however, is in the process of updating its database and the service will be fully functional in a day.
• Another effort to digitise the electoral processis that the National Database and Regulatory Authority (Nadra) will activate the Result Transmission System (RTS) an Android application which enables election officers to send the results to the ECP in real time.
• Nadra teams will go to the offices of Returning Officers to activate the RTS software, and according to the ECP, the RTS software will be installed in the smartphones of all Presiding Officers (PO) who will be able to transmit Form 45 (containing tabulated results of the polling station) via their phone to the ECP on election day. For POs without smartphones, the RTS software will be involved in smartphones of any of their election staff.
• The app also automatically uses GPS to record the result`s location and the time of the upload. The system will be used to announce constituency results as they are collated.

3.  Asia Khattak appointed CM’s adviser

• The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa interim chief minister has appointed Asia Khattak as the adviser on social welfare, women empowerment, education for special persons and arts and culture.
• The KP administration department had issued a notification to this effect on July 12.
• The chief minister made the appointment in the exercise of powers conferred on him by section 3(3) of the KP Advisers and Special Assistants to Chief Minister (appointment) Act, 1989

4. EU imposes record $5bn fine on Google

• The EU antitrust regulators hit Google with a record fine of 4.34 billion euros ($5bn) on July 18, 2018 for using its Android mobile operating system to squeeze out rivals.
• The US technology company said it would appeal the decision.
• The penalty is nearly double the previous record of 2.4bn euros which the US company was ordered to pay last year over its online shopping search service.
• It represents just over two weeks of revenue for Google parent Alphabet Inc and would scarcely dent its cash reserves of $102.9bn. But it could add to a brewing trade war between Brussels and Washington.
• Google`s parent company Alphabet said in a regulatory filing it would accrue the fine in the second quarter of 2018.

5. After two-year purge, Turkey to end state of emergency

• Turkey’s state of emergency which was imposed after the failed 2016 coup is to end July 18, 2018 but the opposition fears it will be replaced by even more repressive legislative measures.
• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared the state of emergency on July 20, 2016, five days after warplanes bombed Ankara and bloody clashes broke out in Istanbul in a doomed putsch bid that claimed 249 lives.
• The measure, which normally lasts three months but was extended seven times, has seen the detention of some 80,000 people and about double that number sacked from jobs in public institutions. The biggest purge of Turkey’s modern history has targeted not just alleged supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based preacher blamed for the coup, but also Kurdish activists and leftists. The former leaders of the opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) – Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas – are still languishing in jail following their arrest in November 2016 on charges of links to Kurdish militants.

6. Iran builds new centrifuge rotor factory

• IRAN has built a factory that can produce rotors for up to 60 centrifuges a day, the head of its atomic agency said on Wednesday, upping the stakesin a confrontation with Washington over the Islamic Republic`s nuclear work.
• The announcement came a month after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he had ordered agencies to prepare to increase uranium enrichment capacity if a nuclear deal with world powers falls apart after Washington`s withdrawal from the pact.
• Under the terms of the 2015 agreement, which was also signed by Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The other signatories have been scrambling to save the accord, arguing it offers the best way to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb. Iran has said it will wait to see what the other powers can do, but has signalled it is ready to get its enrichment activities back on track. It has regularly said its nuclear work is just for electricity generation and other peaceful projects.
• The factory would have the capacity to build rotors for up to 60 IR-6 centrifuges per day, he added.-Reuters

7. Massive diamond cache detected beneath Earth’s surface

• There’s a load of bling buried in the Earth.
• More than a quadrillion tons of diamonds to be exact — or one thousand times more than one trillion — US researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported this week.
• But don’t expect a diamond rush. These naturally occurring precious minerals are located far deeper than any drilling expedition has ever reached, about 145 to 240 kilometres below the surface of our planet.
• Using seismic technology to analyse how sound waves pass through the Earth, scientists detected the treasure trove in rocks called cratonic roots, which are shaped like inverted mountains that stretch through the Earth’s crust and into the mantle.
• These are “the oldest and most immovable sections of rock that lie beneath the centre of most continental tectonic plates.

8. Pakistan crush Zimbabwe, win series

• Seamer Faheem Ashraf grabbed his maiden five-for in Oneday Internationals as Pakistan continued their domination of Zimbabwe by inflicting a nine-wick et drubbing upon their hapless hosts on July 18, 2018 to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series.
• Faheem Ashraf claimed 5-22 and left-arm fast bowler Junaid Khan returned to the one-day side with 2-7 as Zimbabwe were shot out for 67 in 25.1 overs at the Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo.
• Captain Hamilton Masakadza won his third successive toss, but Zimbabwe`s batsmen continued to struggle against Pakistan seamers.
• Opener Fakhar Zaman, dropped on two at first slip, made an unbeaten 43 off 24 balls and took Pakistan to 69-1 in just 9.5 overs.

9. Asian Games torch goes on month-long relay through Indonesia

• The Asian Games torch is headed out on an 18,000-kilometer journey around Indonesia after ceremonies at an ancient temple where its flame was combined with a sacred Javanese fire.
• Jakarta and the Sumatran city of Palembang are hosting the games from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2. About 9,000 athletes and several thousand officials and journalists are expected to take part.
• In a ceremony on July 18, 2018 at the 1,000-year-old Prambanan temple, the torch was touched with the Mrapen eternal flame that comes from a natural gas fire in a Javanese village.
• The torch was lit in New Delhi, the host of the first ever Asian Games in 1951, on July 12, 2018 and arrived in Indonesia on July 14, 2018.
• The flame was kept alive in a special lantern during the flight.

10. ‘Oddball’ among 12 new moons discovered around Jupiter

• A dozen new moons have been discovered around Jupiter, bringing its total number of known moons to 79, the most of any planet in our solar system, astronomers announced on other day.
• One of the new moons was described as a “real oddball” by researcher Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institution for Science, because of its tiny size, it measuring just about a half-mile (one kilometer) across. It also “has an orbit like no other known Jovian moon” and is “likely Jupiter’s smallest known moon,” he added. This oddball takes about a year and a half to circle Jupiter, and orbits at an inclined angle that crosses paths with a swarm of moons traveling in a retrograde, or in the opposite direction of Jupiter’s spin rotation. “This is an unstable situation,” said Sheppard.
• “Head-on collisions would quickly break apart and grind the objects down to dust.” The oddball moon, along with two other new moon discoveries, orbit in the prograde, or same direction as the planet’s rotation. The inner moons take about a year to circle Jupiter, while the outer moons take twice as long.
• All the moons may be fragments that broke apart when their larger, parent cosmic bodies collided.