Good, Bad, Ugly, Controversial & Interesting News -- 10th July 2017

Good, Bad, Ugly, Controversial & Interesting News

10^th July 2017

Source: Times of India (Chennai Edition)

GOOD  News

After a delay of one year, the Union ministry of environment and forests has granted environment clearance to the Tamil Nadu government's Integrated Cooum River Eco-restoration Project for a 9.6-km stretch between the mouth of the river and Chetpet Railway Bridge. 20 Sub-Projects such as inclusion of interceptors and diversion of sewage to improve the water quality, river channel improvement to enhance ecological flow of the river, development of parks and maintenance of pathways, river bank vegetation and mangrove plantations are also planned to enhance diversity of flora and fauna in the riverine system are planned under this Rs 105Cr Scheme.

PM Narendra Modi plans to meet all chief secretaries together `probably for the first time' with the aim to fast-track all-round development of states by taking a cohesive approach.

Nearly 300 fertilizer retailers across six districts in, HP , Rajasthan, Telangana and AP have not renewed their licences after the linking of Aadhaar for availing subsidy benefits removed fake beneficiaries from welfare schemes.

India topped the medals tally for the first time in the last 44 years as the Asian Athletics Championships concluded at Bhubaneswar's Kalinga Stadium.

Lower berth in 3AC coach to be reserved for disabled.

Bad News

52 accident case files of one Chennai lawyer go missing from six city courts. The incident points to professional rivalry among lawyers, as well as collusion among lawyers, court officials and brokers thriving on `accident compensation' cases.

Jharkhand Chief Justice retires, finds his order overruled.

Porur lake has shrunk from 800 acres to just 240 acres in the past three decades and is filled with sewage.

The row over fishing between Sri Lankan and Indian fishermen has worsened in the past, resulting in shootings, detention and apprehension of boats and fishing gear. At last count, there were 70 fishermen and 146 fishing crafts of Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry in Sri Lankan custody. Now the Sri Lankan government amending its Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act, tightening rules against trawling in Sri Lankan waters and to penalise fishermen indulging in trawling with an imprisonment of two years and Rs. 50,000 fine, has put Tamil Nadu fishermen in a spot.

The flood situation in Assam continued to be grim. 16 districts are affected with Lakhimpur being the worst hit district with the number of affected rising to 1.21 lakh. The total area under cultivation affected by the deluge stood at 41,239.19 hectares, affecting the livelihood of thousands of farmers across the state. The Brahmaputra and its tributaries (Dhansiri, Dikhow and Jia Bharali in Assam and Siang in Arunachal Pradesh) continued to flow above the danger level, while the Kushiyara in Karimganj district was in spate.

Sikkim is being virtually choked due to the Gorkhaland statehood agitation in Darjeeling and disruptions in Siliguri and facing an acute shortage of supplies, especially essential commodities such as medicines, baby milk powder, vegetables and petrol,  diesel, due to closure of the national highway-10.

Ugly News

Unable to buy a pair of oxen due to acute poverty, a farmer from the home district of Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has been using his two minor daughters in place of the oxen to pull the plough for the last two years..

Controversial News

After securing approval to expand Chennai International Airport, Airport, Airports Authority of India (AAI)  plans to demolish the old terminals and expand the airport to increase passenger capacity to 30 million per year. As a portion of the international terminal building is less than 15 years old, AAI to seek permission from public investment board.

The Gujarat government is scheduled to discuss with lenders on Monday a future course for the Tata and Adani groups' imported coal fired power plants that have fallen into dire straits. Union power ministry is on ways to prevent these projects, with a collective capacity of over 8,000 mw, from turning into non-performing assets (NPAs) for lenders. In an act of desperation, the promoters have offered 51% stake in the project to the state government for Re 1.

A Chinese expert has argued that his country's troops would be entitled to enter the Indian side of Kashmir by extending the logic that has permitted Indian troops to enter an area disputed by China and Bhutan. It is claimed that China is not just interfering, it is building roads and other infrastructure projects right inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Why you pay 2 to 5 times the wholesale price: With over 5,000 devices estimated to be in use in healthcare only three are price controlled. The disposable syringes market is estimated to be about Rs 1,800 crore. This estimate is based on retail sales or the MRP, which, as the investigation revealed, is on average 250% more than the price to the wholesaler. Even if the central government and the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority were to control prices of all the medical devices recommended by the state drug authorities of Maharashtra and Odisha, it would barely cover 15% of India's medical device market estimated to be worth approximately Rs 25,000 crore in 2015 and projected to double by 2020. There is no price control on a single item in the category of diagnostic imaging, which includes CT scans, MRI and X-ray , constituting 30% of the devices market and the broad category of `others', which includes ECG machines, dialysis machines, endoscopes and laparoscopes, constituting another 24%.

With the Supreme Court being told that the vault `B' of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, one of the richest shrines in the country, should be opened, a debate has started.

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he and Russia's president had discussed forming a cybersecurity unit, an idea harshly criticised by Republicans who said Moscow could not be trusted after its alleged meddling in the 2016 US election.

Qatar is forming a committee to pursue compensation for damages stemming from its isolation by four Arab countries. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties and severed air, land and sea links with natural gas-rich Qatar last month, accusing it of grievances, including backing extremism.

GST to hit wholesale biz in short term. GST will be good for the cash-and-carry business in the long term, it will lead to some small competing businesses shutting shop due to non-compliance: Metro

Interesting News

From begging to national Lok Adalat bench at Uttar Dinajpur's Islampur court in 7 years, transgender Joyita beats the odds.

Scores of students from across the country are choosing Chennai for UPSC coaching. There are around 50 UPSC training institutes in Anna Nagar, which has become a hub for civil service coaching.

Chennai is supposed to get 80cm of rain from the northeast monsoon, enough to fill the city's four reservoirs.

The GST provision, called the e-way bill, requiring any good more than Rs. 50,000 in value to be pre-registered online before it can be moved, is likely to kick in from October.

Breaking into male bastion, around 300 women have turned well-diggers in a nondescript village in northern Palakkad district of Kerala to find a solution to the acute water scarcity in the hamlet and earn a living. Battling challenges, these homemakers, aged between 35 and 70 years, have dug up over 190 wells across the drought-hit village since last August under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

Harvard University study has projected a dramatic fall in China's economic growth, to 4.41 per cent, in the coming years until 2025 while India would perform extremely well, growing at 7.72% during the period.

A 31-year-old musician of Goan origin, Oscar Castellino, has composed a song for the Red Planet, called `Rise to Mars'.His creation was named the `Mars Anthem' by the Mars Society, the world's largest and most influential advocacy organisation for Mars.

Supreme Court judge Justice Kurian Joseph has asked the Centre to revise Leave Travel Concession (LTC) rules for judges of the apex court and grant them eight LTCs in a year, one almost every month considering that the SC has three months of vacation in a calendar year. At present, SC judges are allowed three LTCs every year.

A 21-year-old man has become the first in Britain to give birth after he put his sex transition on hold to get pregnant by a sperm donor.

Bread used to celebrate the Eucharist during Roman Catholic masses must not be gluten-free, although it may be made from genetically modified organisms, the Vatican has ruled.

`Emotional Infidelity' On Social Media Distresses Women More, While Men Get Upset Over Sexual Revelations

Abrain freeze, a quick and intense headache felt when we consume ice cream or chilly treats too quickly, happens when “cold food touches a bundle of nerves in the back of the palate,“ said Stephanie Vertrees, assistant professor at the Texas A&M University, US

Edinburgh-based Celtic Renewables has developed a process to manufacture the biofuel, biobutanol, from draff and pot ale -- barley kernels and a yeasty liquid that are produced when whisky is made and then usually thrown away.

Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research predicted the country's population of 127 million would decline by 40 million by 2065. The fertility crisis has left politicians scratching their heads. Nearly half of Japanese people are entering the ir 30s without any sexual experience, according to new research, as the country faces a steep population decline with a growing number of youngsters avoiding romantic relationships. A survey revealed that nearly a quarter of Japanese men at the age of 50 were yet to marry . It also found one in seven Japanese women aged 50 were yet to tie the knot. The shrinking of the country's population -deaths have outpaced births for several years -has been called a “demographic time bomb“ and is affecting the job and housing markets, consumer spending and long-term investment plans.

Dating app users getting tricked of millions. Fraudsters are using a technique known as catfishing, where a person uses a fake identity to attract those looking for genuine dates, to trick victims into sending them money. Users of dating apps and websites in the UK were conned out of over £39million in 2016, according to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have pumped 19 times nearly $23 billion (nearly Rs 1.50 lakh crore) into the capital markets in January-June 2017

The number of items available on Amazon Prime has gone up to 2.1 million now from 1.3 million at the time of launch.

Customers' complaints about problems like cash withdrawal and exchange of old notes faced after demonetisation cannot be entertained under the Banking Ombudsman (BO) scheme:  Reserve Bank of India.

India-born former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, who served a two-year prison term on insider trading charges, has admitted that he made “errors and misjudgments“ and apologised for letting his friends and fellow IIT associates down.