Top news of the day: October 25, 2023
The Hindu‘Too premature to comment.’: NCERT on reports about move to change ‘India’ to ‘Bharat’ in textbooks The National Council of Educational Research and Training on October 25 said that “it is too premature to comment” on reports in sections of media concerning changing ‘India’ to ‘Bharat’ in its textbooks and noted that development of new syllabus and textbooks is in the process for which groups of domain experts are being notified by it. He said, “Under the ‘Grah Laxmi Guarantee’, the woman head of a family will be given ₹10,000 a year.” Mr. Gehlot also promised to slash cooking gas cylinder price to ₹500 to 1.05 crore families. Meanwhile, the Hezbollah in Lebanon said that its leader Hassan Nasrallah met with senior officials from the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and discussed “achieving “real victory” in their war with Israel.” The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned that without immediate deliveries of fuel, it will soon have to sharply cut back relief operations across the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded and hit by devastating Israeli airstrikes. Israel to amend budget, war in Gaza direct cost at $246 million daily Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on October 25 that the 2023-2024 national budget was “no longer relevant” given the Gaza war and would be amended, and sounded unfazed by S&P Global’s downgrade of Israel’s outlook to “negative” from “stable”.