General Awareness

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - June 2018

Jun 2018

May 09, 2019

Iran Rolls Back Part of Nuclear Pact

Iran said that it had started scaling back parts of its commitments under its 2015 nuclear deal on Wednesday and threatened to do more if world powers did not protect it from U.S. sanctions, a year after Washington pulled out of the pact.
President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran would move on to resuming high level uranium enrichment if the remaining signatories - Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia - did not make good on promises to shield its oil and banking sectors in the next 60 days.
France`s defence minister said that he wanted to keep the nuclear deal alive but warned Iran it could face more sanctions if it did not honour its part of the deal.

Asia Bibi Leaves Pakistan

Asia Bibi, a Christian woman acquitted by the Supreme Court in a blasphemy case in 2018, left Pakistan.
Her counsel, Saiful Malook, confirmed that Bibi had left Pakistan and reached Canada. While US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said that Bibi is free and has been reunited with her family, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declined to say if she is in Canada, citing "sensitive privacy issues and security issues.
The allegations against Bibi were made in June 2009 when she was labouring in a field and a row broke out with some Muslim women she was working with.

May 08, 2019

Britain to Hold Elections to EU Parliament

Britain will now be forced to hold elections to the European Parliament on May 23, a situation that Prime Minister Theresa May had hoped would not arise if MPs were able to agree on a Brexit agreement.
Having to hold the elections in a bitterly divided member-state that has already voted to leave the European Union reflects the failure of Westminster politics that jostled for nearly three years on leaving the bloc.
May has been dealing with voices in her party against her leadership and trying to reach a consensus with the opposition Labour on the Brexit agreement.

Myanmar Frees Retuers Journalists

Two Reuters journalists jailed for their reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar walked out of prison, freed in a presidential amnesty after a vigorous global campaign - and back room diplomacy - for their release.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were mobbed by the media as they stepped out of Yangon's Insein prison after more than 16 months in detention.
Stories based on their reporting were published while they were in prison and the two last month were part of a Reuters team that won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, one of journalism's highest honours.
Their December 2017 arrests made them an international cause celebre and a sign of Myanmar's deteriorating press freedoms under Nobel laureate and civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
They were freed in an amnesty that included more than 6,000 prisoners.
The duo were convicted on charges of violating the Official Secrets Act and sentenced to seven years each.
At the time of their arrest, they had been reporting on a September 2017 massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslims in conflict-hit Rakhine state, where the Myanmar army forced some 740,000 to flee to Bangladesh.

Application Fee for H1B Visas Set to be Increased

The Trump administration proposes to double a component of the filing fee for H-1Bs, a visa programme popular among Indians hoping to work and live in the United States, that could push up costs by $750 or $1,500 for each application, depending on the size of the employer company.
The proposed hike is for a fee the US charges for each H-1B application to fund a training programme for Americans for jobs currently been performed by foreign workers, especially in the so-called STEM sectors that comprise science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
It is currently $750 each for petitions filed by an employer with 25 or fewer full-time employees, and $1,500 for employers with 26 or more.
The plan is to double it to $1,500 and $3,000 respectively, through a legislation, which, typically, could take time.
Called the ACWAI fee — named after American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act, a 1998 law aimed at reducing the need for foreign workers — is 13% of the total H-1B fee.
The rest are a $460 basic fee, $500 anti-fraud fee, $4,000 fee for employers that have more than 50 workers with half or more of them on H-1B or L-1 (for intra-company trans85,000 fers).
For premium 15-day processing, which is optional, the fee is $ 1,410. Employers pay these charges. These is no proposal to change these other charges.
The H-1B programme allows US-based companies to employ foreign workers for high speciality jobs on temporary non-immigrant visas.
There is an annual cap of on the number of these visas, more than 70% of which have gone to Indians, hired both by US companies such as Microsoft Corporation, Facebook,Google and US-branches of Indian companies such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services.

Chinese Team Heads To US to Salvage Trade Deal

Efforts to end a US-China trade war are in shambles after the US accused China of reneging on its commitments and prepared to raise import taxes on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
A Chinese delegation is headed to Washington to salvage talks aimed at resolving a dispute over China's aggressive push to challenge American technological dominance.
China confirmed its economy czar, vice-premier Liu He, will lead China's delegation, ending speculation that he'd skip the talks or that the Chinese team would back out altogether.
The announcement suggests President Xi Jinping's government is putting its desire to end a conflict that has battered Chinese exporters ahead of the political need to look tough in the face of US pressure.
The decision to have Liu take part in talks might keep alive hopes the two biggest global economies could make peace.
The American side is led by trade representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

May 07, 2019

Ceasefire along Gaza

Palestinian leaders in Gaza announced a ceasefire with Israel to end a deadly two-day escalation in violence that threatened to widen into a fourth war between them since 2008.
Egypt brokered the agreement to cease hostilities.

Re-poll Ordered for Istanbul Election

Turkey's top election body ordered a re-run of the Istanbul mayoral election after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's party complained about its shock defeat.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) narrowly lost in the March 31 local election for Mayor.

May 05, 2019

Trump and Putin Discuss New Nuclear Accord

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the possibility of a new accord limiting nuclear arms that could eventually include China in what would be a major deal between the globe's top three atomic powers.
The 2011 New START treaty, the only U.S.-Russia arms control pact limiting deployed strategic nuclear weapons, expires in February 2021 but can be extended for five years if both sides agree.
Without the agreement, it could be harder to gauge each other's intentions, arms control advocates say.

Hand Over Sharp Weapons

Sri Lankan police directed the public that those who are in possession of any sharp-edged weapons like swords or Kris knives, and uniforms similar to that of the Army and the police, should deposit them at the nearest police station by 6th May.
The move was taken after police recovered a large haul of weapons, including swords, during searches of mosques following the Easter Sunday's suicide attacks.

Rockets Fired from Gaza

Gaza militants fired a barrage of dozens of rockets at Israel, which responded with strikes that killed a Palestinian as a fragile ceasefire again faltered.
The latest flare-up came with Hamas seeking further concessions from Israel under the ceasefire.
Israel said that around 90 rockets were fired from the Palestinian enclave and its air defences intercepted dozens of them.
According to the police, a house near the Israeli city of Ashkelon close to the Gaza border was damaged, but no one was injured. Other rockets hit open areas.
The Israeli Army had targeted two rocket launchers in Gaza with an air strike in response and its tanks had hit a number of military posts used by Hamas.

May 04, 2019

Malaysia Frees Vietnamese Woman Accused in Killing

A Vietnamese woman who spent more than two years in a Malaysian prison on suspicion of killing the half-brother of North Korea's leader was freed.
Doan Thi Huong was charged along with an Indonesian woman of poisoning Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with liquid VX, a banned chemical weapon, at Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017.

North Korea Fires Short-range Missile

As per the Soth Korean military, North Korea fired several short-range projectiles from its east coast.
Analysts said that the country is stepping up pressure against the United States after February`s failed nuclear summit in Bangkok.
The South Korean military initially described it as a missile launch, but subsequently gave a more vague description.
If the unidentified projectiles were missiles, it would be the first missile launch since the North fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in November 2017.
Soon after that missile test, the North declared that its nuclear force was complete, after which Pyongyang extended an olive branch to the South and the United States.

Labour and Tories Suffer Losses

Britain's two major political parties suffered heavy losses in local elections that took place across England and Northern Ireland, in a development that some attributed to their stance on Brexit, while others saw it as a continuation of the fragmentation of politics that had been under way before the Brexit referendum, but saw a temporary halt after it.
The heaviest losses were suffered by the Conservatives, who had lost over 510 Councillors in seats up and down the country, while Labour had lost over 70. Substantial gains were made by both the Liberal Democrat and Green parties, which have gained over 300 and 60, respectively.

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