Former Tripura and Bihar governor and education pioneer Dr D Y Patil died in Kolhapur on Tuesday. He was 90. Patil leaves an enduring mark in social, political and educational fields as well as that of sports.

Born on October 22, 1935, in Ambap, a small agrarian village in Kolhapur district, Dnyandeo Yashwantrao Patil carved a niche for himself primarily in the field of education.

Dnyandeo, popularly known as Dr D Y Patil, began his political career with the Congress but later stepped away from active politics to focus on education. He served as the mayor of Kolhapur from 1957 to 1962, and was elected as an MLA from Panhala constituency in 1967 and 1978.

Widely recognised in Maharashtra as Shikshanmaharshi, or visionary educationist, Patil held the additional charge of governor of West Bengal.

China has unveiled its first self-developed boring and blasting machine, named Xianglong, marking a new step in underground construction technology. The giant machine rolled off the production line at the China Railway Science and Industry Group's manufacturing base in Wuhan on August 1. It is designed to handle tunnels passing through difficult geological conditions by combining mechanical excavation with controlled blasting.

According to Xinhua, Xianglong is China's first integrated machine to combine the country's two main tunnel construction methods into a single system. The development is expected to fill a long-standing gap in equipment used for large infrastructure projects where changing rock conditions often slow construction.

The Supreme Court orally clarified on Tuesday that a direction banning mining activities within a 10 km radius of the Asan wetland conservation reserve, a Ramsar site in the State of Uttarakhand, would apply to other wetland conservation reserves across the country for the sake of parity.

“Wherever it is a community or a wetland conservation reserve, Asan [directions] will be applied. Wetlands are in a different category… We are conscious of the extent to which we are laying down parity. It is not that it [directions] would apply to Madhya Pradesh or would apply to West Bengal only…” Justice Joymalya Bagchi, part of the Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, observed.

The court was hearing an application filed by the State of Himachal Pradesh arguing that the 10-km radius restriction imposed in Uttarakhand should not apply to it.

Sticky “hairs” on two plant species in the Saxifraga genus led famed British naturalist Charles Darwin to wonder: Could some plants in this genus be carnivorous? He couldn’t prove it then, but more than 150 years later, scientists have shown that Darwin’s suspicions were correct.

Darwin proposed in 1875 that Saxifraga rotundifolia and S. umbrosa were insect-eaters; their hairlike structures called glandular trichomes ooze a sticky goo and resemble hairs found in some carnivorous plants. However, to be carnivorous, a plant must lure, trap and consume insects, and Darwin’s experiments with Saxifraga plants couldn’t conclusively demonstrate that the plants fit the bill.

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers tested Darwin’s hypothesis by experimenting with Saxifraga candelabrum, a flowering mountain plant that grows at high altitudes on the southern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and in the Hengduan Mountains in China’s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.

India has achieved a historic milestone in healthcare by performing 20,138 organ transplants in 2025, crossing the 20,000-mark for the first time, according to the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation's (NOTTO) latest annual report. The achievement represents a 6.5 per cent increase over the previous year and a remarkable fourfold rise from 4,990 transplants in 2013, reflecting the rapid expansion of the country's transplant programme.

However, while the numbers are encouraging, health experts say one major challenge continues to limit lifesaving transplants: the shortage of deceased organ donors.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has appointed Smt. Monisha Chakraborty as Executive Director (ED) with effect from August 3, 2026. Prior to being promoted as ED, Smt. Monisha Chakraborty was serving as Chief General Manager in Charge in the Department of Supervision.

As a career central banker, Smt. Monisha Chakraborty has experience of over three decades in the Reserve Bank, having worked in the areas of supervision, foreign exchange, and government and bank accounts.

She was associated with a technical committee set up to review the format of the RBI’s balance sheet and profit and loss account. Smt. Chakraborty has also served as Banking Ombudsman.

As Executive Director, Smt. Monisha Chakraborty will look after the Foreign Exchange Department and Financial Markets Regulation Department. Smt. Monisha Chakraborty has a degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Business Economics, both from Delhi University.

GIS major Esri India has signed a pact with Navratna central public sector enterprise Bharat Electronics to collaborate on defence projects and programmes involving geographic information systems, location intelligence and GeoAI, the company said on Monday.

BEL and Esri India have already delivered projects for the Indian defence services, and the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between them will further strengthen the collaboration.

Esri India Managing Director Agendra Kumar said geospatial intelligence has evolved from being a support capability to becoming a strategic decision advantage in defence, enabling commanders to see, analyse and respond with greater speed and precision.

Larsen & Toubro's (L&T's) offshore hydrocarbon business has secured an order worth more than ₹15,000 crore from ADNOC Offshore for a major project in the West Asia, the company said on Tuesday.

L&T Energy Hydrocarbon Offshore (LTEH Offshore) will execute the project through a consortium arrangement and serve as its lead partner. The project involves developing multiple offshore facilities.

LTEH Offshore will execute the major share of the project scope, including the engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning of offshore facilities. The work also includes upgrading existing facilities.

A significant portion of the fabrication work will be undertaken at L&T's fabrication yards, drawing on the company's integrated engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning capabilities.

Modernist Satish Gujral only ever painted four rarely seen self portraits in his seven-decade-long career. One of them will now enter public circulation in the form of a postage stamp, which the Department of Posts, Government of India released on Monday to commemorate the modern master’s centenary.

Painted in 2010, it shows a confident Gujral sitting on a sofa holding a paintbrush. The palette is quintessentially his — rich and colourful — but his face and arms are painted in black and white, giving the composition a photo-realistic finish.

Gujral didn’t make many portraits during his career. One of his first portraits was that of Lala Lajpat Rai, commissioned by a committee for the Parliament. It was a breakthrough moment not because it was appreciated but because it got rejected. Word reached Jawaharlal Nehru, who asked to see the work. Impressed, he commissioned Gujral to make portraits of himself and his daughter Indira Gandhi. “That started a spark. Then, he made a few more portraits — one each of his parents, my mother, me and my sister. He also painted his first self-portrait in the 1950s,” said the artist’s daughter and interior designer Raseel Gujral.

India and Uzbekistan have set ambitious targets to sharply expand bilateral trade and investment, with New Delhi proposing to double two-way trade over the next three years, from about $1.3 billion at present, while Tashkent said it hoped to raise the figure to $2 billion by next year.

At a business forum meeting on Monday, the two countries identified mining, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, information technology, food processing and the digital economy as priority sectors for deeper collaboration. Uzbekistan also pitched opportunities in metallurgy, chemicals, energy, automobiles and digital infrastructure.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said the recently signed bilateral investment treaty would boost investor confidence. “The recent bilateral investment treaty between India and Uzbekistan generates greater investor confidence. Areas to build strong collaboration between the two countries include mining, textiles, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, agriculture and food processing along with IT and digital economy,” the Minister said. The event was organised by industry chamber FICCI in partnership with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade.