ASSAM

Some of the key provisions of the bill stress on making the safety belt mandatory for children below 14 years with a penalty of Rs 1,000 and disqualification of the driving licence for not wearing helmets.

According to the latest ‘Road Accidents in India-2016’, Assam, Bihar, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh have seen an increase in road accident fatalities between 2-8% during this period. The age profile of accident victims for 2016 revealed that youths between 18 and 35 accounted for 46.3% of the victims.

In Assam, deaths in road accidents have shown an increasing trend. In 2016, 2,572 people lost their lives while it was 2,397 in 2015.

INTERNATIONAL

Saudi Arabia has invited women to a sports stadium for the first time to attend the kingdom’s 87th National Day celebrations with their families.

This marks a shift from previous celebrations in the kingdom where women are effectively barred from sports arenas.

Saudi Arabia has strict restrictions for women, including barring them from driving.

· Angela Merkel Wins 4th Term as Chancellor of Germany

Angela Merkel won a fourth term as chancellor in Germany elections that lifted the far-right party Alternative for Germany into parliament for the first time since the immediate aftermath World War II.
Her nearest rivals, the Social Democrats, and their candidate Martin Schulz came in the second position with a post-war record low 20.8 percent.

· Australia announces new space agency to develop domestic space industry

Australia will establish a national space agency as part of long-term plan to develop the country’s domestic space industry.
Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham made the announcement at the International Astronautical Congress.
The global space industry sector has been growing at a compound annual growth rate of52 percentfrom 1998 to 2015.

NATIONAL

A new project of the Department of Biotechnology aims at starting a lab on boat on Bramhaputra river for biological analysis of the river system.

The ambitious project also proposes to have multiple mobile laboratories on the river and its tributaries along with providing access to local research institutions.

The first laboratory under the Bramhaputra Biodiversity Biology Boat (B4) initiative will cover Pasighat, Dibrugarh, Neemati, Tejpur and Guwahati in Assam.

Gk bit– Brahmaputra River

The nearly 3,800 kms long river, one of the longest in the world, traverses three countries China, India and Bangladesh to empty itself in the Bay of Bengal.
Its origin is in the Angsi glacier.
It flows southwest through the Assam Valley as Brahmaputra and south through Bangladesh as the Jamuna (not to be mistaken with Yamuna of India). In the vast Ganges Delta, it merges with the Padma, the popular name of the river Ganges in Bangladesh, and finally the Meghna and from here it is known as Meghna before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

As people have a better connect with immediate neighborhood, Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs Shri Hardeep Singh Puri unveiled ‘My Home-My Neighborhood’ (Ghar Bi Saaf-Pados Bhi Saaf) campaign with the following six components:
Segregation of waste at source

Motivating the residents of neighborhood against throwing garbage in open spaces.

State Bank of India is planning to throw open its new banking personnel training institute for employees of other banks in India and other South East Asian countries.
The institute will impart leadership training to people in the mid-management level and above with thrust on risk mitigation, banking regulation and technology.
The focus will be on action-based and result-oriented research and capacity building, Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said.

Union Minister for Minority Affairs Shri Mukhtar Abbas Naqviis working to establish “Hunar Hub”across the country to provide a platform to master artisans and craftsmen to display as well sell their products.
The ‘Hunar Haat’ is being organised at Craft Bazaar, Gandhi Thidal Beach, Goubert Avenue and will continue till September 30 in which master artisans from 16 states including Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, New Delhi, Kerala, Karnataka, Puducherry, Assam, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland and Andhra Pradesh will be showcasing their traditional talent.
They prepared an E-Portal to provide national as well as international markers to artisans and craftsmen from across the country.
A data bank of artisans and craftsmen will be prepared by this year-end, thousands of artisans from various parts of the country have already been registered.