Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 25 August 2016

:: National ::

India began multiple investigations to determine the extent of damage caused by the reported leak of huge quantity of secret data detailing the combat and stealth capabilities of soon-to-be-inducted Scorpene submarines.
The Navy, in its early response, said the leak was from outside India while downplaying the operational impact of the leak.
The source of the leak, if confirmed, can have a serious bearing on the significantly large defence ties between India and France with French companies in the race for deals worth billions of dollars including the Rafale fighter deal.
The incident emerged in a news report in The Australian , which also released a few sample documents.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to conduct air-breathing propulsion experiment using its RH-560 rocket fitted with a supersonic combustion ramjet (Scramjet) engine on August 28 from Sriharikota.
ISRO is looking forward to conducting the air-breathing propulsion test using the two-stage, three-tonne RH-560 rocket because it involves cutting edge technologies.
The test was to have been done on July 28 but the search by the Indian Air Force and the Navy for the IAF’s transport aircraft An-32, which disappeared over the Bay of Bengal has delayed it by a month.
The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram, has developed the engines to be used in the RH-560 rocket: the booster engine in the first stage; and the sustainer and the scramjet engines in the second stage.
Air-breathing propulsion along with re-usable launch vehicles is the key to low cost access to space.

The Union Cabinet cleared the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016, banning commercial surrogacy in India.
The Bill also bars foreigners, homosexual couples, people in live-in relationships and single individuals, making only childless, straight Indian couple married for a minimum of five years eligible for surrogacy.
Eligible couples will have to turn to close relatives, not necessarily related by blood for altruistic surrogacy — where no money exchanges hands between the commissioning couple and the surrogate mother.
Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj defended making homosexuals ineligible for surrogacy.
The Bill also prohibits couples who already have biological or adopted children from commissioning babies through surrogacy.

Using satellite data and regional climate models, IIT Bombay researchers have found that deforestation in north-east India and north-central India has led to a 100-200 mm reduction in summer monsoon rainfall in these two regions.
The land use information is based on satellite data for two time periods — 1980-1990 and 2000-2010. The results were published on August 24 in the journal Scientific Reports
During the initial phase of a monsoon, oceanic sources play a major role in bringing rain and charging the soil with moisture.
But at the end of the monsoon period, evotranspiration from vegetation contributes to rainfall. Evotranspiration is a local moisture source for rainfall.
Recycled precipitation contributes to 20-25 per cent of the total monsoon rainfall during the end of the monsoon and is very prominent in the Ganga Basin and north-east India.

A powerful earthquake rattled a remote area of central Italy, leaving at least 120 people dead and scenes of carnage in mountain villages.
With 368 people injured and an unknown number trapped under rubble, the figure of dead and wounded was expected to rise in the wake of the pre-dawn quake.
The devastated area is just north of L’Aquila, the city where some 300 people died in another quake in 2009.
The shocks were strong enough to be felt 150 km away in Rome, where authorities ordered structural tests on the Colosseum.

Air passengers will soon be able to use Wi-Fi services on board while flying anywhere across the country.
The Union civil aviation ministry is working with the telecom ministry and the home ministry to allow passengers to use Wi-Fi services during the course of a flight.
The Department of Telecom has taken up the matter and we are working on it. In order to enable Wi-Fi services, the government was working towards allowing security agencies to monitor the call and data transmission.
Globally, it is a standard offering and is a win-win for passengers and airlines.
It will help common passengers with in-flight entertainment, business travellers to work on last-minute presentations and help airlines earn money.

The Cabinet approved the revised Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with Cyprus, a move that gives India the right to tax capital gains on investments routed through Cyprus prospectively from April 1, 2017.
The fresh DTAA with Cyprus, which is considered a haven for money laundering, round-tripping, and profit-shifting, assumes significance coming soon after the signing of the revised pact with Mauritius.
India is also in the process of revising its treaty with Singapore.
With the revision of the treaty now approved by the Cabinet, capital gains will be taxed in India for entities resident in Cyprus, subject to double tax relief. In other words, India will have the right to tax capital gains arising in India.
The revision of agreements with Mauritius and Cyprus could see this debt-restructuring business moving from the latter to the former.
Cyprus used to have a DTAA with India but was blacklisted on November 1, 2013, by the Indian government for non-cooperation.
Difference between the Cyprus and Mauritius treaty is the limitation of benefit clause.
A limitation of benefit clause is meant to prevent the misuse of treaties in which they have threshold saying if you invest a particular amount in a country then you are not a shell or paper company.