New Delhi, Oct 4: Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with a group of about 40 enthusiasts with experience in mountaineering, who are embarking on an expedition to raise awareness on cleaning the River Ganga. The group includes 8 mountaineers who have successfully climbed Mount Everest, and is led by Ms. Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Besides, professionals from backgrounds as diverse as engineering, environmentalists, science etc. are part of the expedition team that is prepared to meet all challenges that they may encounter during the expedition. The team during its stay in the towns will carry out cleanliness drives at ghats and surrounding areas by engaging and motivating more and more people.

Prithvi Shaw at 18 years and 329 days became the youngest Indian to score a hundred on Test debut against West Indies in Rajkot. Overall, he is the 15th Indian batsman to score a hundred in his first Test and the second youngest Indian to score a Test century. The record is still held by Sachin Tendulkar (17 years, 107 days).

With his scintillating hundred on debut, Shaw has joined the likes of famous Indian batsmen: Lala Amarnath, Deepak Shodhan, AG Kripal Singh, Abbas Ali Baig, Hanumant Singh, Gundappa Vishwanath, Surender Amarnath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Pravin Amre, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma.

Shaw is now the seventh youngest player in Test cricket history to score a hundred on debut.

In a sudden development, Chanda Kochhar today quit as CEO of ICICI BankNSE 3.44 % after her plea for early retirement was accepted by the bank. ICICI bank has appointed Sandeep Bakhshi as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. His appointment will be for a period of five years until October 3, 2023, subject to various approvals.

The bank also clarified that Kochhar's post retirement benefits would be subject to inquiry outcome.

The bank also said that the enquiry pr ..

A day after farmers demanding higher MSP prices and uniformity in loan waivers clashed with police at the UP Gate-Delhi border, the Cabinet on Wednesday hiked the minimum support price of Rabi crops for 2018-19.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in its meeting approved the hike in minimum support prices (MSP) of wheat by Rs 105 per quintal, masaur Rs 225,/quintal, safflower by Rs 845/quintal, and gram by Rs 220/quintal.

The MSP has been increased in accordance to the recommendations of farm advisory body CACP and is in line with the government’s announcement to provide farmers a 50 per cent profit over the cost of production.

“It will give additional return to the farmers of Rs 62,635 crore by way of increasing MSP of notified crops to at least 50 per cent over cost of production and will aid in doubling farmers’ income,” the Cabinet said in a statement.

As part of the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi, the state government has planned various activities that will commence from next month. These include organising a khadi festival in all the 35 districts — sale and promotion of khadi clothes on two days of every week on roads named after Gandhi in major cities, one teacher adopting one student for improvement, a mobile app to spread Gandhiji’s literature and setting up a Mahatma Gandhi Resource and Training Centre in Wardha.

Besides, the government has also planned to put up banners with the tagline, Mujhme hai Gandhi, at prominent locations. “So far, we have held three meetings to chalk out plans for celebrations,” said an official from the Rural Development Department.

The official further said the Union government had planned national and international-level celebrations to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhiji. “We are working on some of the activities suggested by the Union government’s culture ministry in July,” added the official.

Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), has launched a national level entrepreneurship awareness campaign--Udyam Abhilasha, in 115 aspirational districts identified by NITI Aayog in 28 States reaching to around 15,000 youth. An official release said, SIDBI will join to contribute to the transformation mission unleashed for the districts. The six-day campaign would be running parallelly from 3rd October across India.

It would create and strengthen cadre of more than 800 trainers to provide entrepreneurship training to the aspiring youths, encouraging them to enter the admired segment of entrepreneurs.

SIDBI has partnered with Common service centres, e-Governance Services India Limited, a Special Purpose Vehicle, set up by the Ministry of Electronics and IT for implementing the campaign.

SIDBI is the principal financial institution for the promotion, financing and development of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise sector.

The Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in the national capital has been ranked third among the government institutions followed by Algappa University in Tamil Nadu’s Karaikudi and Acharya Nagarjuna University in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur.

“Cleanliness must be a habit among students and it can be developed only in educational institutions. Therefore the ministry is promoting and awarding universities for their efforts to promote cleanliness on campuses,” Javadekar said.

“We should educate our children and society about solid waste management, electric waste management and water harvesting techniques to make our country eco-friendly and more clean,” he said.

Among the residential campuses of private universities, Pune’s Symbiosis International University has been ranked at the top followed by O P Jindal Global University in Sonipat, Haryana, KLE Academy of Higher Education and Research in Karnataka’s Belagavi and Manipal University in Jaipur.

Raipur’s ITM University has been ranked at the top among non-residential campuses of private universities. The Northcap University in Gurugram and Dr C V Raman University in Bilaspur have been ranked second and third respectively in

Alibaba and SoftBank-backed Paytm on Monday said it registered over 137 million UPI transactions in September, becoming the leading contributor to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments with over 33 per cent of the overall market share.

One97 Communications Limited, that owns the brand Paytm, said the company is enabling BHIM UPI for offline payments and over five million offline merchants, out of its 9.5 million merchant-base, now accept Paytm UPI.

"It is encouraging to see the widespread adoption of Paytm BHIM UPI as it is fast becoming a preferred payment method for millions of users, making us the leader in UPI payments," said Deepak Abbot, Senior Vice President, Paytm. More than 20 per cent of all payments on Paytm are made using BHIM UPI for mobile recharge and payments, electricity and water bills and DTH recharges, among others.

"We will continue to invest our efforts to introduce more consumers and merchants to the convenience of Paytm UPI for online and offline use cases," said Abbot.

The company also announced the launch of its Spam-proof "SMS Inbox" as part of its "Paytm Inbox".

The "Spam-proof SMS Inbox" uses Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to classify SMS into personal, transactional and promotional categories.

Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) today signed $240 million loan for providing safe and sustainable drinking water to about 1.65 million people in three districts of the state of West Bengal affected by arsenic, fluoride, and salinity.

The signatories to the West Bengal Drinking Water Sector Improvement Project were Mr. Sameer Kumar Khare, Additional Secretary (Fund Bank and ADB), Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, who signed for the Government of India; and Mr. Kenichi Yokoyama, Country Director of ADB’s India Resident Mission, who signed for ADB.

Heavy reliance on groundwater puts most of the rural population in West Bengal at risk from arsenic and fluoride contamination that can lead to health problems including cancer and bone diseases. The project aims to mitigate these risks through provision of continuous potable water through metered connections to about 390,000 individual households in three districts – Bankura, North 24 Parganas, and Purba Medinipur.

“The project addresses the concerns relating to excessive use of groundwater to sustainable surface water based piped schemes,” said Mr. Khare. “This will help mitigate the health risks from using groundwater with elevated levels of arsenic and fluoride.”

Mr. Yokoyama said, “Besides reducing the burden of diseases from contaminated groundwater, the project will promote higher service levels compared with rural schemes in India with individual household connections and district metering area based metered continuous water supply, and use of advanced technology for smart water

With an aim to reduce the rising number of ATM fraud cases and give a boost to digital transactions, the State Bank of India (SBI) halved the daily ATM withdrawal limit from Rs 40,000 to Rs 20,000. The limit will be effective from October 31, the Economic Times reported.

"In view of the increase in the number of complaints received by banks around fraudulent transactions at ATMs and to encourage digital and cashless transactions, it has been decided to decrease the cash withdrawal limits of debit cards issued or being issued on Classic’ and Maestro’ platforms", SBI said in a communication sent to its offices as reported by the Economic Times.

The announcement by the largest lender in the country comes just weeks before the festivals and will be effective days before Diwali.

"Our internal analysis shows most actual withdrawals are of smaller amounts. So, Rs 20,000 should be adequate for most customers. We are trying to see whether smaller withdrawals could minimise frauds," SBI managing director PK Gupta told the Economic Times.

The customers who want higher withdrawal limit can request for cards variants with such offers and such cards can be issued to account holders with the required higher minimum balance in their accounts.

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