1) Historic Esala Maha Perehera Festival Begins In Sri Lanka
•In Sri Lanka, the ten-day festival of the historic Esala Maha Perehera began in Kandy with a grand procession. The procession set off from the biggest Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, Sri Dalada Maligawa at an auspicious time.
•The Esala Perahera is one of the oldest and grandest of all Buddhist festivals in Sri Lanka, featuring dancers, jugglers, musicians, fire-breathers and lavishly decorated elephants.
2) NOTA Option Not Applicable For Rajya Sabha Elections: Supreme Court
•The Supreme Court ruled that the ‘None of The Above’ (NOTA) option will not be applicable for voting in the Rajya Sabha elections. The ruling was made by a bench of Justices comprising CJI Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud.
•The bench held that the NOTA option is meant only for universal adult suffrage and direct elections and not for the polls held by the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote as done in the Rajya Sabha.
3) Novak Djokovic Wins Western And Southern Open 2018
•Novak Djokovic (Serbia) beat Roger Federer (Switzerland) in straight sets, high-profile championship match at the 2018 Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati. With this win, Djokovic became the first men's tennis player in history to win all nine Masters 1,000 tournaments after finishing as the runner-up in Cincinnati five different times.
•The win gave Djokovic his second title of the year after capturing Wimbledon, while Federer remained at three titles after winning the Australian Open, Mercedes Cup and ABN Amro World Tennis Tournament.
4) Asian Games 2018: Saurabh Chaudhary Wins 10m Air Pistol Gold
•16-Year-Old Saurabh Chaudhary became only the fifth Indian shooter to claim a gold in the Asian Games history, beating a field of multiple world and Olympic champions in the 10m air pistol finals in Indonesia
•Another Indian making his international debut, 29-year-old Abhishek Verma, shot 219.3 to secure bronze.
5) Paytm Partners With Alibaba
•Digital payments firm Paytm has partnered with China's Alibaba to launch AI-based cloud computing platform 'Paytm AI Cloud'. The platform will offer business-centric apps to developers, startups and enterprises that need cloud-computing solutions including customer engagement and easy-to-integrate payments.
•It will process and store all consumer data locally in servers located only in India. The company has committed around Rs 250 crore in this business.
