1. Public Accounts Committee led by
K.C. Venugopal directed the government to review existing rules regarding toll
tax on National Highways (NH).
2. Hyderabad is developing a Bird
Atlas to map and monitor bird distributions and populations through seasonal
surveys, with 170 species already recorded across 51 of 180 regions.
3. The Prime Minister of India met
with the President of Estonia, a member of the NB8, an informal cooperation
group consisting of Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
Sweden) and Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).
4. The Supreme Court recently
dismissed the Centre's plea to levy service tax on lottery-related activities,
upholding the 2012 Sikkim High Court ruling based on the doctrine of Pith and
Substance, which resolves ambiguities in legislative powers between union and
state governments.