1. Digital India
huge opportunity for health, education: Anil Agarwal
i. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi's 'Digital India' drive will open up huge opportunities
in health and education for rural areas, creating a large number of jobs.
ii. The
initiative aims to digitally deliver all the essential services to citizens and
transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy by
leveraging IT.
iii.
Agarwal, who heads the mining giant Vedanta Resources Plc, is the Non-Executive
Chairman of Sterlite Technologies Ltd which is involved majorly in laying the
optical fibre network to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchyats.
iv. It is
undertaking Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) deployment in India to enable high speed
broadband connectivity and is developing several transmission infrastructure
projects spanning over 5,000 Circuit Kms across India.
2. World Bank
approves $650 mn loan for Eastern Freight Corridor
i. The
World Bank said on Wednesday it had cleared a $650 million loan for a huge
Indian freight rail corridor that will span 1,840 kms (1,140 miles) across the
northern heartland of the country.
ii.
Construction of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor will help speed up the
carrying of goods between Ludhiana in the western region and Kolkata in the
east, and is part of a series of new freight lines the World Bank says India
needs to ease congestion on its network.
iii. The
loan is the third from the World Bank to help fund the freight corridor. Last
year the bank approved a $1.1 billion outlay and in 2011 $975 million.
iv. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi's government, banking on big investment in
infrastructure to boost the economy, approved a $137 billion investment plan
for the railways in February.
3. BHEL commissions
Sudan's largest power project
i.
State-owned power equipment maker Bhel today said it has commissioned Sudan's
largest power plant.
ii. Bhel
has executed this project on Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC)
basis. It has designed, manufactured, supplied and installed the complete power
project (4 units of 125 MW each) including associated civil works.
iii. The
project uses crude oil from South Sudan as fuel, for which Bhel has designed
special boilers. All the major equipment for the project -- boilers,
steam-turbines, generators, Controls & Instrumentation (C&I),
transformers -- have been manufactured in-house.
iv. The
company has also constructed a canal from the White Nile River to supply water
for the project. The project is funded by the India's Line of Credit of USD 350
million.
v. The
Kosti plant is Bhel's largest oil-fired thermal power plant in the overseas
market. It is also Bhel's first crude oil fired thermal power plant in Africa
and comes on the heels of the successful completion of Bhel's 28 MW Nyaborango
Hydro project in Rwanda.
4. SBI partners
with MakeMyTrip for travel biz
i. In its
series of digital initiatives and tie-ups, State Bank of India, country’s
largest bank, partnered with online travel company MakeMyTrip.com to capitalise
on the business opportunities of the booming e-commerce and m-commerce
ecosystem.
ii. The
alliance includes partnership with personal banking unit for consumer facing
propositions – including EMIs on purchase of holidays & international
travel, customized travel products like Forex cards and travel products that
inspire SBI customers to travel.
iii. It
also includes partnership with SME & Acquiring Business -- MMT suppliers,
such as 2-3 star hotels, franchisees, Trade & Travel partners will get
access to SBI products, loans, bank guarantees, PoS payment instruments at
preferential rates and partnership with cards for promoting card usage which will
help in pushing the agenda of a less cash economy.
iv.
MakeMyTrip constitutes about 46% of the bookings in the online space and a lot
of product work is being done in the $22-23 billion travel industry ecosystem.
5. Shimla Rs 643 Cr
water scheme cleared for World Bank funding
i. Chief
Minister Virbhadra Singh here disclosed that a Rs 643 crore project for
augmenting the water supply to the growing hill city had been approved by the
union government.
ii. The
project got the union finance ministry nod yesterday (29.6.2015) and it would
be placed before World Bank for funding purposes, said a government spokesman.
PC Dhiman, additional chief secretary, on behalf of the state attended the
meeting.
iii. The
loan component would be Rs 514 crore and the state government would be
contributing Rs 129 crore for funding the project.
iv. The
new project involves lifting water from Kol Dam reservoir on River Satluj and
it would meet the water needs of Shimla municipal corporation as well suburban
areas under the special planning area.
6. Railway Minister
Suresh Prabhu Inaugurates Integrated Security System in Mumbai
i. Union
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu inaugurated the Integrated Security System (ISS)
at 6 railway stations in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The system was inaugurated
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), Dadar, Kurla and Lokmanya Tilak Terminus
(LTT), Kalyan and Thane.
ii. The
ISS is advanced security systems that aims at improving security on Railway
premises and also ensure safety of the people and avert terror attacks in
extreme case. The system has a total of 118 CCTV cameras. They will beam the
live images of railway stations under its coverage on six monitors.
iii. In
the first of the project which was completed in June 2015 it covered four
stations CST, Dadar, Kurla and LTT.
iv. The
second phase is expected to be completed by December 2016. Apart from this, he
also inaugurated a modified foot over bridge (FOB) to facilitate passenger
movement at Diva.
7. Matti Makkonen,
Father of SMS technology passes away
i.
Finnish telecom engineer and father of messaging service (SMS) technology Matti
Makkonen passed away following serious illness.
ii. He
was 63. In 1984, he had pioneered the idea of sending messages via mobile
networks but failed to patent it was merely idea and was not actual
implementation.
iii.
Matti Makkonen was born on 16 April 1952 in Suomussalmi, Finland. He had
graduated as an electrical engineer from the Oulu technical college in 1976.
iv. He
had served as vice president of PTL and was actively involved in the
development of the GSM-technology from 1984 to 1988. In 1989, he was appointed
as President of the mobile communication unit which was later renamed as
Telecom Finland.
v. he was
awarded The Economist’s Innovation Award in the computing and
telecommunications category.
8. Abhijeet Gupta
wins 19th Commonwealth Chess Championship
i. Former
world junior champion and Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta won the 19th Commonwealth
Chess Championship.
ii. He
won the gold medal after settling for a quick draw with his opponent Arghyadip
Das in the ninth and final round played at Mumbai, Maharashtra.
iii. In
this Chess Championship, Arghyadip Das came second winning the silver medal and
M R Lalith Babu won the bronze medal in men’s section.
iv. In
the women’s section, Padmini Rout won the gold medal. While S Vijayalakshmi and
S Meenakshi won silver and bronze medal respectively. In this championship both
Vijayalakshmi and Meenakshi had won the last six games.