Daily Top-10 Current Affairs MCQs / News (August 24, 2022) for CSS

Table of Contents

6. India forced Twitter to put agent on payroll, says whistleblower

• A former Twitter Inc security chief has alleged that the Indian government forced the social media firm to put a government agent on the payroll, according to a whistleblower disclosure with US regulators.
• Peiter `Mudge` Zatko raised the issue with the US Securities and Exchange Commission among other security lapse claims at Twitter.
• He said the government agent would have had access to sensitive user data due to Twitter`s weak security infrastructure, according to a redacted version of the complaint uploaded by The Washington Post newspaper and verified by Zatko`s attorney at Whistleblower Aid.
• A company source said that the allegations about the India government had surfaced previously within Twitter, without elaborating further

7. UK spies under fire over arrest of Sikh blogger in India

• Human rights groups on August 23, 2022 said UK intelligence agencies may have shared information with India that led to the arrest and torture of a Sikh blogger from Scotland.
• Jagtar Singh Johal, 35, has been held in detention in India for more than four years.
• He is accused of being part of a terror plot against right-wing Hindu leaders and has been charged with conspiracy to murder.
• `Our investigators have uncovered critical information that in 2017, the UK government may have authorised MI5 and MI6 to share information about UK citizen Jagtar Singh Johal,` two organisations, Reprieve and Redress, said in a joint statement

8. Solar-powered drone crashes in US after record 64-day flight

• An unmanned solar-powered aircraft crashed after flying for 64 days, more than doubling the record for a pilotless plane, the US army and media sources said on August 23, 2022.
• The Zephyr-8 drone, made by Europe`s Airbus, `encountered events that led to its unexpected termination` over a desert test facility in Arizona on Aug 18, the Army Futures Command said in a statement.
• The statement did not provide details, but the Simple Flying website, studying online flight tracking data, said the gangly high-tech aircraft was flying in S-shaped patterns over south-western US at 45,00050,000 feet when it suddenly descended at an accelerated rate

9. Record 1,295 migrants cross Channel to Britain in one day

• The number of people crossing the Channel to the UK from northern France in small boats has hit a new high, the government in London said on August 23, 2022.
• Some 1,295 migrants were detected on Monday, beating the previous single-day record of 1,185 on November 11, 2021, the Ministry of Defence said.
• The issue has caused a major political headache for the UK government, which promised tighter border controls after leaving the European Union.
• Tensions have risen between London and Paris, with the UK government accusing France of not doing enough to stop the crossings. So far this year there have been some 22,670 crossings. At the same point in 2021, nearly 12,500 had been intercepted making the journey. Last year, the UK authorities brought ashore a total of 28,526 people as they tried to cross the busy shipping lane

10. Apple to start iPhone 14 production in India

• Apple Inc plans to start making the iPhone 14 in India about two months after its release out of China, in a move that will narrow the gap from the typical six to nine months for previous launches, Bloomberg News reported on August 23, 2022.
• The company has been working with suppliers to ramp up manufacturing in India and the first iPhone 14s from the country are likely to be finished in late October or November, following the initial September release, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
• Apple`s Taiwan-based supplier Foxconn has studied the process of shipping items from China and assembling the iPhone 14 at its plant outside southern Indian city of Chennai, it reported