Union government has announced to sell up to 10 per cent stake in state owned Coal India Limited (CIL) on 30 January 2015. This decision was cleared by high-powered ministerial panel headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
It will help the government to raise revenue of 24,000 crore rupees at the current market price and meet the fiscal deficit. Government is planning to divest 5 per cent stake in the company via share sale and the remaining 5 per cent through the green-shoe option.
Currently, the government holds 89.65 per cent stake in CIL. As per the minimum shareholding norms for listed companies, the government needs to lower its stake to 75 percent.
Supreme Court (SC) has directed search engines like Google India,
Yahoo and Micrsoft’s Bing to block advertisements on sex determination and strictly comply with the laws.
This ruling was given by SC bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant on public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Dr. Sabu Mathew George in 2008.
PIL had highlighted that the use of Internet and popular search engines to promote sex determination technologies violates laws.
SC directions to search engines
Background
Union Government has appointed Subrahmanyam
Jaishankar as the new Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs (i.e. Foreign Secretary).
His name was cleared by Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He will be replacing incumbent Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh whose tenure was curtailed with immediate effect. She had assumed office in August 2013 and was due to retire in August 2015.
About Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
Eminent singer, composer, lyricist and actor Shekhar Sen has been
appointed as the chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA).
His appointment was announced by Union Ministry of Culture and will have term five years with immediate effect.
This post was vacant since September 2014, after then Chairman Leela Samson had resigned.
India is going to host International Cricket Council (ICC) World Twenty20 in 2016.
It was announced by ICC Board meeting chaired by Chairman N. Srinivasan held in Dubai. ICC Board meeting also scheduled the ICC events during the period 2015-2019.
Following schedule was announced
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has made packaging of foodgrains& sugar in jute material mandatory for jute year 2014-15.
In this regard CCEA mentioned that packaging with jute material will be mandatory for minimum 90 per cent of production in case of food grains and 20 per cent in case of sugar production.
With this decision, government is seeking to help the jute sector which generates a lot of livelihoods for farmers and workers.
CCEA also has approved providing financial support to the Jute Corporation of India (JCI). In this regard, government will provide subsidy to JCI on a continuous basis to off-set the losses on account of Minimum Support Price (MSP) operations.
The quantum of subsidy will include the difference between the Purchase and Sale Price of MSP Raw Jute.
On 28 January 2015, nation paid tributes to national martyr of
freedom movement, Lala Lajpat Rai on his 150th birth anniversary.
Events marking this day: Various seminars and symposia were organised at many places in Punjab to remember Lala Lajpat Rai. Special programme and sports meet was organised in his ancestral village Dhudike of Moga district where thousands of people paid their tributes to national martyr at the memorial. While, intellectual’s apprised young generation about Lala and his sacrifice for the nation.
US technology giant Apple, has reported the biggest quarterly profit of 18 billion US dollar. It is the biggest quarterly profit ever made by any public company in World and broke the previous record of ExxonMobil which had earlier topped by making $15.9 billion profit in 2012.
Apple’s revenue had grown to $74.6 billion in 2014 from $57.6 billion in 2013 i.e. reporting 30% increase in profit.
The main reason for Apple’s profit is record sale of iPhones. The company has sold 74.5 million iPhones in quarter ending December 2014 with 39.9% profit per product.
Apple’s impressive profit comes after it shifted towards the massive untapped potential of Chinese market and partnering with China Mobile Limited the largest global mobile carrier.
Company sales in China had hit $16 billion in 2014- a 70% increase from 2013 and almost equalling the $17 billion in sales the company recorded in Europe 2013.
Hike Messenger, a home-grown chat application has introduced free voice-calling feature called Hike Calls to its users.
This feature will allow its users to call each other for free, over 2G, 3G and Wi-Fi and across the globe in over 200 countries.
Hike Messenger has introduced this service, after it had acquired free calling application company – Zip Phone earlier in January 2015.
This feature has been launched in beta on Android operating system, which contributes to over 90 percent of Hike’s user base. While, the iOS and Windows versions will be released later.
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