1) Tehelka
founder Tarun Tejpal granted bail by Supreme Court: The Supreme Court on 1
July 2014 gave regular bail to Tehelka founder editor Tarun Tejpal, accused of
sexually assaulting his junior colleague and warned him it could curtail his
liberty if there was attempt to contact witnesses including the complainant of
the case. A bench of justice HL Dattu and justice SA Bobde directed Tejpal not
to seek any “unnecessary adjournments” in the case and fixed a deadline of
eight months for the court in Goa to conclude the trial.
2) Google
shutting down Orkut social network, to focus on more popular services:
Orkut, Google's first social networking site, will cease to exist after
September, with the Internet giant deciding to shut down the service launched
10 years ago. Google said it will shut down Orkut, which is very popular in
India and Brazil, on September 30. The service, however, did not do so well in
other parts of the world and lost sheen to rivals like Facebook. Orkut, which
popularised posts or "scraps" between friends, did not disclose the
number of users on the website. However, according to its website about 50.6
per cent of its users were from Brazil. Another 20.44 per cent came from India,
while the US and Pakistan accounted for 17.78 per cent and 0.86 per cent, respectively.
"Over the past decade, YouTube,
Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every
corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced
Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell," Google said in a
post on the Orkut blog. Orkut was launched in 2004, the same year when Facebook
was founded. Facebook is now the world's largest social network with 1.28
billion users.
3) SBI
launched six digital banking branches: The State Bank of India on 1 July 2014
launched six digital branches across the country as part of its programme to
offer next generation banking solutions to the growing mobile phone and
internet savvy customer base. These branches, named sbiINTOUCH, will facilitate
services such as instant account opening with personalised debit cards, instant
loan approval for car and home, remote expert advisors available via video
links, along with interactive walls and table displays. Besides Delhi, where
sbiINTOUCH branch was inaugurated by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, the other
such branches are located in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Ahmedabad.
4) IDBI
Bank launched mobile banking service: IDBI Bank on 1 July 2014 introduced
mobile banking service for its customers. This facility enables the customer to
meet all banking needs such as fund transfer, bill payments, visa money
transfer, DTH/ mobile recharge and much more from any destination. To
commemorate 50 years of its journey in the Indian financial sector, the public
sector bank’s Chairman & Managing Director M.S. Raghavan also opened 50 new
branches pan-India through e-inauguration. With the opening of these new
branches, IDBI Bank now has 1,467 branches, and 2,535 ATMs spread across 1,046
geographical locations of the country.
5) India-England
to play five-Test rubbers in future: From 2016 onwards an India-England
series will always be a five-Test affair home and away. It would be a four-Test
series against Australia and a minimum of three Tests against South Africa. The
new FTP agreements and MOUs have been inked by all the ten full Test playing
members of the revamped International Cricket Council at its annual meeting in
Melbourne recently. As per the new FTP, India would have two home Test series
every season between October and March unless they have to visit Australia
which has retained the right to host the Boxing Day Test match at Melbourne,
the BCCI official informed.
6) Jitu
Rai becomes world's no. 1 pistol shooter: Jitu Rai's exploits at the
recently-concluded editions of the World Cup in Munich and Maribor has seen him
rise to World No. 1 spot in the men's 10m air pistol category, according to the
ISSF rankings released on Tuesday.
7) President
Pranab Mukherjee now on Twitter: President Pranab Mukherjee has joined the
Twitter bandwagon, attracting thousands of followers on the website within an
hour. He is the first serving president of India to join Twitter. Former
president Abdul Kalam is already on Twitter with the handle @apj_abdul_kalam.
President Mukherjee already has a Facebook page with over five lakh followers
on the world's biggest social network.
8) New
Zealand's Lou Vincent Gets Life Ban for Match-Fixing: The England and Wales
Cricket Board (ECB) announced a life ban on disgraced former New Zealand
cricketer Lou Vincent on Tuesday, just hours after the player admitted he was a
"cheat" and had shamed his country and the sport by fixing matches.
9) Twitter
buys Tap Commerce, a mobile ad retargeting startup: Twitter announced
Monday that it has cut a deal to buy mobile ad firm Tap Commerce to bolster
money-making tools at the popular one-to-many messaging service. San
Francisco-based Twitter did not disclose how much it paid for Tap Commerce,
which is located in New York City, but technology news website Recode.net reported
the deal to be valued around $100 million.
10) Suresh
Prabhu to head panel on power: The National Democratic Alliance government
has appointed the former Cabinet Minister, Suresh Prabhu, as the head of a
high-level panel on power revamp — “Advisory Group for Integrated Development
of Power, Coal and Renewable Energy.”
