PM launches Rs 1 trillion R&D fund
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched the Rs 1 trillion Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund to promote a private sector–driven research and development ecosystem in the country. He announced this during his address at the first Emerging Science Technology and Innovation Conclave (ESTIC), which is being organised from November 3 to 5 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. The Department of Science and Technology will manage the RDI Fund through a two-tier structure. At the first level, a special purpose fund will be established under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) to hold and manage the Rs 1 trillion corpus. This fund will not be invested directly into industries and start-ups. Instead the RDI Fund will channel the capital through second-level fund managers such as Alternative Investment Funds (AIF), Development Finance Institutions (DFI) and Non-banking Finance Companies (NBFCs). The Prime Minister pointed out that India’s R&D expenditure had doubled in the last decade, while the number of registered patents had increased 17 times.
Names of 5 million of 6 million Jews killed in Holocaust now identified
Five million of the more than six million Jews killed in the Holocaust have now been identified, and with the further help of artificial intelligence (AI), even more names could be recovered, Israeli researchers said. Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, said the milestone marks seven decades of work and is at the heart of its mission to recover the identities of those murdered by the Nazis during World War-II. Some one million Jewish victims are still unknown "and many will likely remain so forever," Yad Vashem said. But with tools such as AI and machine learning, it believes it could recover another 250,000 names by analysing hundreds of millions of documents that have been too extensive to research manually. With the number of Holocaust survivors shrinking and the world soon to be without first-hand witnesses, Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan said reaching the five million milestone was a reminder of an unfinished obligation. "Behind each name is a life that mattered - a child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever," Dayan said. "It is our moral duty to ensure that every victim is remembered so that no one will be left behind in the darkness of anonymity."
In May 2024, Yad Vashem had said it had developed its own AI-powered software to comb through piles of records to try to identify hundreds of thousands of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust whose names are missing from official memorials. The names of Holocaust victims, as well as personal files that tell about the lives of many of them, are compiled in an online Yad Vashem database in six languages. This database, it noted, has helped countless families reunite with lost relatives and families to commemorate loved ones, particularly as most victims were left without graves.
Fair, country-specific adaptation metrics top agenda for COP30
The rationalisation of adaptation indicators will be a major issue at the upcoming UN climate conference (COP30) in Brazil's Belem, the environment ministry said on Monday, stressing that these indicators must not disadvantage developing countries and should reflect national circumstances. The ministry said that the framework should also enable transparent tracking of finance, technology transfer and capacity building support from developed nations.
Climate adaptation means preparing communities for rising temperatures, floods, droughts and storms, for example, by building sea walls, restoring forests or planting resilient crops. But global progress on adaptation has been slow, limited and fragmented. To change this, countries created the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) under the Paris Agreement to track and strengthen adaptation efforts. Although agreed upon in 2015, the goal only took shape at the 2023 UN climate summit (COP28) in Dubai, UAE, where nations set a broad framework for action.
However, it still lacks clear targets and adequate support in finance, technology and capacity building.
At COP30 in 2025, countries must refine the GGA by agreeing on measurable indicators so that the world can fairly track progress and scale up protection for vulnerable communities.
The ministry also said the climate conference in Brazil will be crucial for the future of multilateralism.
COP30 is taking place against a complex geopolitical backdrop, with the United States withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and several developed countries reassessing their climate strategies amid economic and energy security pressures.
