Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam - 01 July, 2014

Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam

The Supreme Court declined to entertain a writ petition seeking direction to the Centre to recover around Rs. 20,000 crore tax dues from the U.K. telecom major Vodafone and to restrain the government from going ahead with arbitration proceedings.
A Bench of Justices H.L. Dattu and S.A. Bobde, however, allowed former Additional Solicitor General Bishwajit Bhattacharyya, who was handling tax matters in the UPA government, to withdraw his petition, with liberty to file a fresh one with supporting documents.
In his petition, Mr. Bhattacharyya submitted that the Centre was not implementing the rule which was amended in 2012 to claim taxes. It amounts to arbitrariness of State action not to enforce law (Section 9 of IT Act) for 27 months after its enactment. This violates Article 14 of the Constitution. Allowing arbitration proceedings under India-Netherland BIPA (Bilateral Investment Protection Agreement) would flagrantly violate rule of law. The IT Act does not recognise conciliation as a dispute settlement mechanism and the tax dispute does not come within the ambit of BIPA.”

Seeking to address data gap problems, a Reserve Bank of India panel, made a case for compilation of separate indices on producer price, labour force, urban wages and household indebtedness with a view to improving monetary policy formulation.
To address major data gaps in monetary policy-making, the committee recommends the compilation of various indicators, such as producer price index, services sector output and price index, labour force survey, urban wages, retail sales, construction activity survey, and surveys of household indebtedness through co-ordination with the relevant government agencies.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld France’s controversial burqaban, rejecting arguments that outlawing full-face veils breaches religious freedom.
In a case brought by a 24-year-old French woman with the support of a British legal team, the court ruled that France was justified in introducing the ban in the interests of social cohesion.

Major car manufacturers, including Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Honda and Mahindra & Mahindra, on Tuesday posted positive growth in domestic sales for June, driven by reduction in prices and positive consumer sentiment post excise duty cuts.
Market leader Maruti Suzuki India’s domestic sales increased 31 per cent in June to 1.01 lakh units, on the back of higher sales in the mini segment cars that includes M800, Alto, A-Star and WagonR. Sales of the compact segment comprising Swift, Estilo and Ritz also grew 6.2 per cent to 22,293 units.

Jitu Rai ranked world No.1 in men’s air pistol in the latest list released by the International Shooting Federation (ISSF).
Jitu Rai had won a silver in the Munich World Cup and the gold in the Maribor World Cup in air pistol to shoot up to the No. 1 rank from No. 26.
Another Indian shooter, Prakash Nanjappa who had won a World Cup bronze medal last year and has been making the finals this season also moved up to the fifth spot in air pistol.
Interestingly, the 26-year-old Jitu also made it to the No. 4 spot in the 50-metre free pistol event, in which he had missed the gold by 0.1 point in the Maribor World Cup.