Current Affairs : 01 July 2014

Current Affairs : 01 July 2014

Written By Admin on July 2, 2014 | Wednesday, July 02, 2014

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.”