Kerala flood toll jumps to 324, Remembering Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and more top news

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The death toll from Kerala’s devastating floods has gone up to 324. Nearly 2 lakh people have been displaced and there's oxygen shortage in many hospitals. "In some areas, airlifting is the only option ... thousands are still marooned," said Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala Chief Minister. Twelve additional teams of the National Disaster Response Force have been sent to the state and all three wings of the armed forces were deployed. Educational institutes will remain shuttered until August 29 while the Kochi airport has suspended operations for another 10 days.

Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has passed away at 93. The BJP patriarch — also the first non-Congress PM to complete a full term in office — is said to have played a pivotal role in turning India into a nuclear-armed nation. Vajpayee was also a policy reformer: he created the disinvestment ministry which privatised 32 state-owned companies (and hotels) between 1999 and 2004. Though GST was launched in 2017, the idea of a harmonised tax structure was first mooted by Vajpayee, experts say. The government has announced 7 days of state mourning.

Insurers can no longer exclude psychiatric illnesses from medical policies. Sector regulator IRDA has invoked provisions of the Mental Healthcare Act and directed companies to view mental sicknesses on par with physical ones. The move will ensure a life of dignity to people with such disorders, normalise diagnoses and reduce associated myths, Jyoti Punja of Cigna TTK Health Insurance Company told Economic Times. A 2016 study showed that 15 crore Indians need help for different levels of mental problems.

Mobile phone prices are likely to rise in the upcoming festive season. The Economic Times reports that input costs on phone component imports from China have gone up by 4-6% due to the tumbling rupee. Some handset makers could mask the price hike with aggressive marketing, buyback promotions and financing offers, said Navkendar Singh, an associate research director at IDC India. But companies that play in the sub ?20,000 price band may have little elbowroom to manage costs as they operate on wafer-thin margins.

These tiny spider bots could change everything. Scientists at Harvard and Boston University have developed a soft, millimeter-size robot that’s flexible and versatile enough to one day conduct surgery inside your body. Previous bots have only been able to perform a single movement, but this spidery creation has 18 degrees of freedom, vastly expanding the tasks it can perform. Such bots could one day administer drugs and perform biopsies from inside the body, or discover and treat victims during search and rescue operations.

Idea of the Day: Feeling pressed for time can hinder creative thinking, but if we better understand the psychology of time, we can start to make it work in our favour, says Ogilvy chief strategy officer Kevin Chesters.

“We can’t create time. Or bend time. And until they invent one of those Hermione Granger time-turners we can’t make it run backwards either. But we can change our relationship with it.”

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