Maharashtra
- Maharashtra government seeks 15 day extension of crop insurance scheme.
- State agriculture minister Pandurang Phundkar told the state council on Monday that he has asked the Centre for a 15 day extension for applications from the state for the Prime Minister’s crop insurance scheme. The deadline ended on July 31st.
- Phundkar said if banks were not cooperating on the scheme, the state would inquire against them. “There has been a good monsoon this year so the applications for the crop insurance scheme have reduced. But the government is trying to ensure that the deadline is extended.
- Maharashtra tops all states in signing up for RERA.
- Maharashtra has taken the lead among states and Union Territories for the number of registrations under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (RERA), with the regulator here receiving applications for 9,687 real estate projects. About 7,200 real estate agents in the state have also applied for registration. Monday, July 31, was the deadline for signing up.
- Maharashtra government to form panel to probe techie layoffs.
- The state government is to form a committee to probe the alleged illegal and mass-scale layoffs in the information technology (IT) sector.
- A few employees have also come together and are in the process of establishing a formal union – to take up such causes formally.
INTERNATIONAL
- Ramon Magsaysay award , 2017
- The six winners of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awards, regarded as Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize.
- A Japanese (Ishizawa, Yoshiaki) historian who helped Cambodians preserve the Angkor temples
- A Sri Lankan teacher (Shanmugam Gethise) who counselled war widows and orphans to overcome their nightmares are among an Indonesian working for the return of large tracts of forest land to indigenous communities
- A Singaporean (Tay,Tony) who leads the cooking of 6,000 meals a day for the destitute
- A Philippine (Philippine Educational Theatre Association) theatre group which stood up to a dictatorship and a Filipino who oversaw the opening of job-generating export processing zones.
- One more Philippine (De Lima, Lilia) for harnessing sustained, non-stop and credible public service.
- An Indonesian (Nababan, Abdon) For giving compelling face and voice to Adat communities and their rights.
- The awards, named after a Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash, are to be presented in Manila on August 31.
- Switzerland – World’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge opens.
- The world’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge the Europaweg(Europe Bridge) a ribbon-thin span nearly a third of a mile long at in Randa, Switzerland.
- It measures 1,620 feet long and rises as high as 278 feet above the Grabengufer ravine.
- It replaces an older bridge which was closed in 2010 after it was damaged by falling rocks.
NATIONAL
- Supreme Court bans four toxic chemicals from crackers
- Ahead of the festive seasons of Dussehra and Deepavali, the Supreme Court prohibited the use of five chemicals, labelled as toxic by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), in the manufacture of firecrackers.
- No firecrackers manufactured by the respondents shall contain antimony, lithium, mercury, arsenic and lead in any form whatsoever. It is the responsibility of the Petroleum and Explosive Safety Organisation (PESO) to ensure compliance.
- The court had earlier pointed out a lack of clarity on the pollutive impact of explosive substances used in firecrackers.
- SBI cuts interest rate on saving a/c deposits.
- Accounts with balance ₹1 cr or less will earn 3.5% per annum, those above ₹1 cr will continue to earn 4%
- The revision would enable the bank to maintain its Marginal Cost of funds-based Lending Rate (MCLR) at existing rates.
- 29 Indian cities and towns highly vulnerable to earthquakes.
- Twenty-nine Indian cities and towns, including Delhi and capitals of nine states, fall under “severe” to “very severe” seismic zones, according to the National Centre for Seismology (NCS).
- A majority of these places are in the Himalayas, one of the most seismically active regions in the world.
- Delhi, Patna (Bihar), Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), Kohima (Nagaland), Puducherry, Guwahati (Assam), Gangtok (Sikkim), Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), Dehradun (Uttarakhand), Imphal (Manipur) and Chandigarh fall under seismic zones IV and V.
- The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has classified different regions in the country into zones II to V, taking into consideration earthquake records, tectonic activities and damage caused, the director of the NCS, Vineet Gauhlat, said.
- Bureau of Indian Standards, based on the past seismic history, grouped the country into four seismic zones, viz. Zone-II, -III, -IV and –V. Of these, Zone V is the most seismically active region, while zone II is the least. The Modified Mercalli (MM) intensity, which measures the impact of the earthquakes on the surface of the earth, broadly associated with various zones, is as follows:
Gk bit – Seismic Zone Intensity on MM scale:
| ð Seismic Zone | ð Intensity on MMI scale | ð % of total area |
| ð II (Low intensity zone) | ð VI (or less) | ð 43% |
| ð III (Moderate intensity zone) | ð VII | ð 27% |
| ð IV (Severe intensity zone) | ð VIII | ð 18% |
| ð V (Very severe intensity zone) | ð IX (and above) | ð 12% |
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