DARPAN

• The Union Ministry of Communications has launched DARPAN (The Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India) to improve quality of service, add value to services and achieve financial inclusion of un-banked rural population.
• DARPAN is Information Technology (IT) modernisation project aimed at realising financial inclusion of un-banked rural population. It offers core services to the account holders.

How cyclone ‘Ockhi’ got its name

• The name Ockhi was given by Bangladesh which in Bengali means ‘eye’.
• The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) started the tropical cyclone naming system in 2000. Tropical cyclones are named to provide ease of communication between forecasters and the general public regarding forecasts, watches, and warnings.

All mobile numbers are ten digits. What is the technical reason?

In the world due to technical and user base reasons the mobile numbers at present varied from 10 to 11 digits. Due to technical reasons two countries, UK and China moved to 11 digits in mobile phone numbers. In India all mobile numbers have 10 digits under the government’s National Numbering Plan (NNP).

Whales are air-breathing mammals. However, they die when stranded on a beach for some time. Why?

Most species of whales are very large weighing thousands of pounds and have a brittle and porous skeletal structure.

This is so because in the ocean environment, the water’s buoyancy supports the ‘whale’s enormous weight and the whale is able to swim dive and forage for food

RBI prohibits investments in non-cooperative countries and territories

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has prohibited Indian entities from making direct investments in any entity located in Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCT) as identified by Financial Action Task Force (FATF). 

POEM (Place Of Effective Management)

To determine the residential status of foreign companies, the Finance Act 2015 introduced the concept of place of effective management or POEM. If a company’s place of effective management is India, it will be treated as an Indian resident and its global income will be taxable in India.