India to map genes of local cattle breeds to boost milk yield

• India is the world’s largest producer of milk, due partly to importing European cows and cross-breeding them with local varieties as well as a successful decades-long programme to source milk from small farmers via cooperatives.
• the milk productivity of its cattle, ranging from 2-4 kg a day, is much lower than the 25-38 kg a day of cattle in the U.S., Europe or Israel.
• India is home to the largest cattle population (13.1 % of world’s cattle population) in the world which constitutes 37.3 % of its total livestock.

Thousands apply for the ‘Narendra Modi Scholarship for Muslim Students’

• The scholarship, named after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was constituted in May by an Aligarh-based group of Muslim intellectuals, the Forum for Muslim Studies and Analysis (FMSA), and is meant for economically backward Muslim students.
• The largest chunk of the 15,956 applications came from girl students. The applicants compete for a total number of 100 annual scholarships of Rs. 5.000 each.
• According to Dr. Jaseem Mohammad, the large number of the applications showed the “extent of desire among Muslims to study”.
• “The Narendra Modi Scholarship for Muslim Students was launched this year considering the weak economic condition of Indian Muslims because of which a large number of Muslim children remain uneducated or fail to have higher education.

Kashmir a matter for India, Pak to sort out: British PM

• British Prime Minister Theresa May has said that the UK’s stand on Kashmir remains unchanged and it is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan to address.
• I take the same view as this government has since it came into power, and indeed previously, which is that the issue of Kashmir is a matter for India and Pakistan to deal with and sort out.
• The British PM is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi on November 6 for her first overseas bilateral visit outside Europe.
• Besides inaugurating the India-UK Tech Summit alongside Modi, she will be holding talks with her Indian counterpart before heading to Bengaluru.

Russia to destroy all of its chemical weapons by end of 2017

• A top Russian official has said his country will destroy all of its chemical weapons by the end of next year, a year earlier than previously announced.
• Col.-Gen. Valery Kapashin, a military official in charge of storage and elimination of Russia’s chemical stockpiles, told news agencies on Thursday that the remaining weapons will have been disposed of by December 2017.
• As a signatory of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia already has destroyed about 93 per cent of its chemical weapons.

Urban centres will drive Indian growth over next two decades: Jaitley

• Urban centres in India will become the hubs of growth over the next two decades.
• “Today, we have over 31 per cent of our population in urban areas,” Mr Jaitley said while delivering the keynote address at the Asian Think Tank Development Forum 2016. “
• one of them grew in urbanisation also. Following a different model of low-cost mass production, using urbanisation as an important tool, China replicated in some ways the same experience for itself.”
• Overall, Mr. Jaitley said that while there is a lot of generic talk about using all the tools available with the government — monetary, fiscal, structural — to prepare India in this time of poor global growth, but there are few ideas on how to actually do so.