Daily Current Affairs| January 2021 | National & International

29 January:

Philanthropist and humanitarian Bilquis Edhi has been declared the ‘Person of the Decade’, along with UN rapporteur on human rights Prof Yanghee Lee and the US ethicist Stephen Soldz by an international organisation( Impact Hallmarks ).

29 January:

Black Lives Matter movement nominated for Nobel peace prize. The Black Lives Matter movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize for the way its call for systemic change has spread around the world.

29 January:

Italy permanently halts arms sales to Saudi Arabia, UAE.Italy has halted the sale of thousands of missiles to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to their involvement in the Yemen conflict, making permanent an 18-month temporary suspension.

28 January:

Pakistan has ranked 124 out of 180 countries with a score of 31 on the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index.Pakistan ranked 124 out of 180 countries — dropping four spots over last year — in the newly released Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International

27 January:

Pakistan has registered 400,000 health workers for coronavirus vaccination, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on National Health Services, Dr Faisal Sultan

26 January:

Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte resigned as political crisis deepened due to coronavirus pandemic and an economic downturn.

25 January:

Titled "Global Climate Risk Index 2021", the report by Germanwatch was released on Monday and showed Pakistan drop from 5th most vulnerable country to climate change, to the 8th position. Pakistan lost 0.52% per unit of its GDP due to climate change and witnessed 173 climate-related events in last 19 years

23 January:

France is setting up a Truth Commission to shed light on the impact of its colonial rule over Algeria. But President Macron is refusing to give an official apology for abuses committed during Algeria's War of Independence between 1954 and 1962, one of the bloodiest conflicts during the time of decolonisation.

22 January:

More than two million people have been forced to flee their homes within their own countries’ borders owing to the violence engulfing Africa’s Sahel region, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.The humanitarian response is “dangerously overstretched” in an area covering parts of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger, the UNHCR said on Friday.

21 January:

Mongolia's Prime Minister Khurelsukh Ukhnaa gives his resignation statement to the media in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia , following protests and public outrage over the treatment of a coronavirus patient and her newborn baby. — AFP

21 January:

Pakistan conducted successful flight test of Shaheen-3 surface 2 surface ballistic missile,having range of 2750 Kms.

20 January:

Joe Biden has moved to reinstate the US to the Paris climate agreement just hours after being sworn in as president, as his administration rolls out a cavalcade of executive orders aimed at tackling the climate crisis. Gina McCarthy, Biden’s top climate adviser, said Biden will in all reverse “more than 100” climate-related policies enacted by Trump. Joe Biden will sign 15 executive actions after he is sworn in as United States president

19 January:

Former French prime minister Edouard Balladur goes on trial on charges that he used kickbacks from arms deals in the 1990s to fund a presidential bid, a case known as the “Karachi affair”.

19 January:

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has announced that Pakistan should withdraw the antidumping duty imposed on Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene Film (BOPP) from the United Arab Emirates.

18 January:

The UAE has suspended its visa-free agreement with Israel till July 1, due to the spread of Covid-19.

18 January:

Egypt unveils 3,000-year-old coffins at Saqqara necropolis

18 January:

Putin critic Alexey Navalny arrested on his return to Moscow

17 January:

117th birth anniversary of G.M. Syed held in Sann

17 January:

Ten Nepalese climbers set a record by scaling Pakistan’s K2 (8,611m), the world’s second highest mountain and the only one among the 8,000m peaks that had never been climbed before in winter.

17 January:

Two female judges shot dead in Kabul as wave of killings continues

17 January:

In his last week in office, US President Donald Trump signed into law an act that would award at least 50 per cent of scholarships under a merit-based higher education scholarship programme to Pakistani women.The new act is named after Malala Yousafzai.

16 January:

The long-running inter-governmental negotiations (IGN) aimed at reforming the UN Security Council (UNSC) will resume on January 25 to build on the work done in the previous meetings

16 January:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU party picked her ally Armin Laschet as its next leader

16 January:

Drap approves AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use in Pakistan

16 January:

The South African cricket team arrived in Karachi to play two Tests and three Twenty20 internationals on their first tour of Pakistan in 14 years.

16 January:

The Sindh Assembly has passed a new succession law that will allow NADRA to issue succession certificates directly to legal heirs. The current system entails legal heirs going to the court for succession certificate, a process that can take years. The succession certificates will have the same validity as other certificates issued under the Succession Act 1925 by the courts, and will apply to the entire country. That means if a resident of Karachi passes away and has property in Islamabad, his legal heirs will be able to claim it with the succession certificate granted by NADRA in Sindh.

15 January:

Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang

13 January:

The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) has issued a decision, regulating the fishing and trade of certain species of fish during their breeding season. The decision prohibits the fishing of goldlined seabream (Rhabdosargus sarba) and king soldier bream (Argyrops spinifer) across the UAE from February 1 to 28. It also bans the sale of these species, regardless of their origin in all fish markets and retail outlets over the same period.

13 January:

Outgoing US president Donald Trump achieved a rare feat as he became the first president to be impeached twice, this time on charges of inciting an insurrection in last week's violent attack in the Capitol.

10 January:

Turkish cult leader Adnan Oktar award over 1,000 imprisonment. A Turkish court on Monday sentenced cult leader Adnan Oktar with over 1,000 years in prison for 10 separate crimes

08 January:

Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa was presented with the Bahrain Order (first class) award by the country's crown prince in recognition of his services to bolster defence cooperation between Pakistan and Bahrain

07 January:

New Turkish satellite "Turksat 5A" carried by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, United States

07 January:

Pakistan’s 20.76 million workforce suffered livelihood losses due to coronavirus-related lockdowns and a large majority of them got back to work after July 2020.

07 January:

Pakistan asked Bangladesh to use the Tripartite Agreement of 1974 to address outstanding issues in the bilateral relationship.

06 January:

The United Arab Emirates could re-open trade and travel links with Qatar within a week under a deal that ended a bitter dispute between the Gulf states.

05 January:

The former chairman of one of China's largest state-controlled asset management firms was sentenced to death for soliciting $260 million in bribes, corruption and also bigamy.

05 January:

South Korea to send delegation to Tehran after Iran seizes tanker. Diplomatic efforts on to secure release of tanker and crew amid tensions over $7bn in Iranian funds frozen in Korean banks due to US sanctions.

05 January:

Saudi Arabia's AlUla hosted the 41st summit of Gulf Cooperation Council GCC leaders

05 January:

Gulf leaders signed a “solidarity and stability” deal after the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar publicly embraced, bringing Doha back into the regional fold after a three-year rift.

04 January:

Pakistan has approached the UN secretary general in New York and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva to seek an immediate release of Kashmiri activist and political leader, Asiya Andrabi, who is incarcerated in the infamous Tihar Jail in India.

03 January:

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has approved Rs24 million funds for the purchase of the decaying ancestral homes of Bollywood legends Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar in the walled city of Peshawar.

02 January:

Stanley Johnson, father of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is looking to acquire French citizenship as the United Kingdom bids farewell to the European Union.

02 January:

Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had signed off on parliamentary ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – a document that commits signatories to the abolition of capital punishment.

02 January:

Three Chinese companies will be booted off the New York Stock Exchange this month under an executive order signed in November by President Donald Trump. The exchange says China Telecom Corp. Limited, China Mobile Limited, and China Unicom Hong Kong Limited will be delisted from the exchange

02 January:

200,000 computerised national identity cards (CNICs) fraudulently obtained by Afghan nationals have been cancelled

02 January:

India becomes non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) at its headquarters for two years

02 January:

American citizen named Edward Joseph Hudson hunted down the longest horned Markhor in the Toshi Shasha conservation area in Chitral

01 January:

The federal government has offered a package to the independent power producers (IPPs) in a bid to clear Rs450 billion circular debt, which has plagued the entire energy chain. The circular debt in the power sector stood at Rs2.3 trillion by end June 2020 against Rs1.6 trillion during the same period in 2019.

01 January:

The federal cabinet has approved payment of $28.7 million in damages to the Washington-based asset recovery firm Broadsheet LLC

01 January:

Fifth Afghan journalist killed in two months Bismellah Adel Aimaq, 28-year-old editor-in-chief of Sada-e-Ghor radio station, has been killed near Firoz Koh city.