Good, Bad, Ugly, Controversial & Interesting News -- 9th July 2017

Good, Bad, Ugly, Controversial & Interesting News

9^th July 2017

Source: Times of India (Chennai Edition)

GOOD  News

Private sector cardiologists can soon do life-saving stenting and angioplasty in Tamil Nadu government hospitals. The state now plans to pay government doctors to do these procedures beyond duty hours and empanel private doctors to work in its facilities.

Preliminary work for metro rail phase-2 to cover a stretch of more than 107 km with 104 stations estimated to cost about Rs. 85,047crore begins. 80% of the lines will be underground.

Going Green - Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) to operate electric buses soon.

First-time voters, between 18 and 21 years, physically challenged people and eligible voters whose names had been missed out from the voting list can make use of the special camps that would be held at all electoral centers on July 9 and July 27.

No stamp duty for donating land to govt.

Tamil Nadu police will have an exclusive cyber hub which will coordinate with their various departments besides its own digital forensic lab for evidence evaluation.

Penalty for traffic violations will soon go cashless as police personnel will be given card swiping machines to enhance the existing handheld challan equipment.

Govt: No raids on traders without prior permission.

PM Modi seeks UK PM May's aid to bring back Vijay Mallya.

The indirect tax wing of the finance ministry has launched a GST app on the Android platform to help consumers navigate various rates of goods and services. The user can find out the GST rate for a good or a service by entering the name or chapter heading of the commodity or service..

Bad News

The divide between the US and rest of the world on the Paris Agreement on climate change was further formalised with the G20 declaration in Hamburg taking note of the American intent to withdraw from the deal. While leaders of 19 countries, including India, called the Paris deal “irreversible“, the US stood by itself. The US did manage to get its position on fossil fuels inserted in the joint statement through a formulation promising more efforts for “clean and efficient“use without any commitment to its end.

China has issued a month-long safety advisory, starting from July 7, asking its citizens living in India to “pay close attention to the local security situation“ and improve awareness about protecting themselves.

Darjeeling on boil over Gorkhaland issue, 3 killed in `police' firing.

Tamil Nadu was the state with the second highest number of protests in the country in 2016, with 47 protests a day, or 25% of the protests, according to a Bureau of Police Research and Development (BP&RD) report. The statistics show that in TN, there were 1,300 communal protests, 734 student agitations, 1,940 labour protests, 3,461 government employees agitations, 8,312 political party protests and 4,703 protests by others, including NGOs, activists and local residents.

World Bank writes to FM on Kerala minister’s outburst that the World Bank was responsible for the corruption in the Kerala State Transport Project

Ugly News

Hundreds of tourists, who visited the Union territory of Puducherry on 8^th Jul, were left stranded at the Tamil Nadu Puducherry border due to the dawn-to-dusk bandh called by the DMK, Left parties and VCK to register their protest against `undemocratic and autocratic style of functioning' of  lieutenant governor Kiran Bedi.

A 37-year-old farmer in Melpallathur village in Pullur panchayat near Vellore, reportedly attempted suicide after the kangaroo court run by village elders (ooru nattamai) fined him `50,000 for approaching police in connection with a land dispute with his brothers and was ostracised.

Controversial News

Numerous setbacks notwithstanding, the AIADMK government is still hopeful of implementing the monorail project in Chennai. According to the transport department policy note, monorail would be operated over 43.48 km and will be implemented in two phases. The first phase project will be implemented under public-private partnership on design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis with an estimated cost of `3,267 crore and the second phase will be taken up as part of a multilateral funding with an estimated cost of `3,135.63 crore.

Amid strong opposition from lawyers against entry of foreign advocates, Chief Justice of India J S Khehar on 8^th Jul batted for global integration and said the legal sector should not remain closed to foreign players who should be allowed to provide their services.

Residents of Delhi who are unable to have surgeries at any city government hospital can now get free surgery in 48 private hospitals without having to worry about huge bills. The bills, for which no upper limit has been set, will be paid by the Delhi government.

Something has to be done about North Korea, Trump tells Xi at G20 summit. US President calls Pyongyang a `Problem & Menace'



Interesting News

TN state health insurance data shows only 7% of the total procedures were for treatment of heart diseases but accounted for a quarter of the money spent. Further, Rs. 270 crore was spent for stenting and angioplasty procedures, 95% in private hospitals.

According to the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BP&RD) report on the  detailed study of the protests held by left wing groups, students, trade unions, government employees, political parties and others in 2016, the most (21,966) were in Uttarakhand, followed by Tamil Nadu (20,450), Punjab (11,876) and Telangana (8,926) with Chhattisgarh (7), Meghalaya (7), and Nagaland (1) were among those with the least.

While the internet is rife with articles praising the `cure-all', wheatgrass (from the wheat plant Triticum aestivum), which purportedly has the power to cleanse the colon, purify the blood, and detoxify the liver, nutritionists and doctors are a little skeptical about just how potent the leaves are. According to sports nutritionist Shiny Chandran. “It is an alkalizing agent, like other greens, and helps balance acidity caused by stress, oily food and excessive caffeine consumption, but is it a miracle cure? I don't think so“

The state selection committee in-charge of MBBSBDS admissions, had received 50,558 applications, of which 31,323 were admissions to 2,594 seats in 23 state-run medical colleges. The remaining 19,235 applications were for admissions in the 783 government quota seats in 10 self-financing colleges affiliated to the state university .This is more than twice the applications it had received last year. In this year, in a first, the counselling for management quota seats as well will be done by it.

Across the state, the transport corporations operated 22,533 buses in the last financial year, compared to 23,078 the previous year. The distance covered by corporation buses per day had dropped by 1.47 lakh km last year -- from 94.02 lakh km to 92.55 lakh km.

The crime rate is calculated by the NCRB as the number of incidents per lakh of population. In TN, the property crimes stood at 26.4% in 2015, which is 14% less than the national rate. Haryana stands first with 104.7% followed by Maharashtra (73.3%) and Arunachal Pradesh (70.1%).

Ahmedabad gets the tag as World Heritage City. It is also India' first city to receive such an accolade. The Unesco tag will add immense brand value to the city and boost tourism. Of the 287 World Heritage Cities, only two were hitherto on the Indian subcontinent: Bhaktpur in Nepal and Galle in Sri Lanka.

President Pranab Mukherjee yo launch Swayam, Swayam Prabha -- the platform of 32 DTH channels to deliver the courses and National Academic Depository (NAD) which will facilitate online verification of certificates. Swayam aims at taking the best teaching-learning resources to all, bridge the digital divide for students.  Swayam, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform will host courses taught in classrooms from Class IX till post-graduation, which can be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. The courses develop by a group of 7 IITs and IISc are interactive and available free of cost. 10 lakh students would be able to access courses simultaneously.

The government has merged the urban development and housing and urban poverty alleviation ministries. Now this will be known as ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA).

Mallya, who is wanted in India for Kingfisher Airlines' default on loans worth nearly `9,000 crore, has been in the UK since March 2016.In April, he had attended a central London police station for his arrest and was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond worth 650,000 pounds, assuring the court of abiding by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel documents.

In Karnataka, there are 1,035 vacancies of specialist doctors. All the previous attempts by the state government to recruit doctors had been unsuccessful. Online bidding, where doctors are free to quote a pay package and can even negotiate their salaries, is a last-ditch effort to ensure better healthcare in remote areas of the state. The online bidding for docs sees 880 applicants.

Who's benefiting from farm insurance? The insurance companies collected over Rs. 9,000 crore as farm insurance premium for the kharif season in 2016. As per the PMFBY rules farmers only gave Rs. 1,643 crore of this amount with the balance Rs. 7,438 crore being directly given to the companies by the state and central governments. The total claims received by the insurance companies were Rs. 2,725 crore. Even when all these claims are paid out in full, the profit of these companies would be about Rs. 6,357 crore.

Globally, while 60% of the parents are open for online degrees, the highest is in India at 82% and the second lowest is in France at 29% with lowest at 28% in Egypt.

A smartphone app that can detect counterfeit goods--from medicines to car parts -- with 100% accuracy may be available to the consumers by next year, according to UK's Lancaster University researchers. According to them, every year, imports of counterfeited and pirated goods around the world cost nearly Rs 50,000 crore in lost revenue.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research group, between 2025 and 2030, the group predicts, plug-in vehicles will become cost competitive with traditional petroleum-powered cars, even without subsidies, and even before taking fuel savings into account. Bloomberg projects that plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles will make up 54% of new light-duty sales globally by 2040, outselling their combustion engine counterparts.

Research by Treadmill Review found reusable bottles may be hosting a huge number of bacterial cells, “more than 300,000 colony-forming units per square centimeter (CFUsq cm). Slide-top bottles are the worst offender, responsible for hosting 900,000 CFUsq cm followed by squeeze-top bottles.

Chocolate on your face? Here's why they are good: Chocolate is rich in anti-oxidants and can help in reversing the signs of ageing. As they have anti-inflammatory properties, suitable for sensitive and dry skin. Dark chocolate helps in improving skin texture and gives a more smooth skin. They contain flavanols, which can protect skin from UV damage and free radicals. Chocolate facial can reduce wrinkles and fine lines.