Daily Briefing: A shaky ceasefire in Gaza; Delhi air quality dips after Diwali

Recap: Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to a 20-point peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump. The plan envisaged an immediate ceasefire, and the rebuilding of a ‘New Gaza’.

As it happened: Israel said it would reopen the borders, which were closed on Sunday, to let in crucial aid into Gaza. It has also begun pulling back troops in phases. The first phase requires Israeli troops to draw a physical ‘yellow line’ across the Strip. Three people were killed near this line, who the Israeli military said were militants attempting to cross the demarcated area. However, residents have said that there was confusion over the boundary’s location.

Shaky ground: Sunday’s attacks have laid bare the shortcomings of the plan. Crucial questions on Hamas disarming and future governance remain unresolved, while Trump maintained that the US was taking many steps to maintain the ceasefire.

⚡Only in Express

The Mahayuti government in Maharashtra began the flagship Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana in June 2024, just four months before the Assembly elections. As part of the scheme, the government would give women Rs 1,500 every month if they were aged 21-65 and belonged to families earning less than Rs 2.5 lakh annually. However, information accessed by The Indian Express through the Right to Information Act shows that a sum of Rs 164.52 crores overall was disbursed to over 12,000 men and 77,900 ineligible women under the scheme before the were identified and removed as beneficiaries. Read.

📰 Top news

A daring day-light heist unfolded at the iconic Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday morning. Thieves armed with chainsaws broke into the museum with the help a crane mounted on a truck. In a robbery that lasted a mere four minutes, the assailants smashed the glass and grabbed priceless Napoleonic jewels. The world’s most-visited museum was promptly shut down, and will remain closed today as investigators hunt the perpetrators. Read how the events unfolded.

A day after Diwali, smog settled over the national capital. Delhi’s air quality index (AQI) continued to be “very poor” at 346. This year, the Supreme Court had lifted the ban on firecrackers, allowing ‘green’ crackers to be burst.

Cave-dwellers are not a just a thing of the past. The caves in the Sahyadri hills at Maharashtra’s Satewadi are home to cattle and their herders for a half year. Between June to January, these families move into the hills, with the permission of the forest department, to find a dry space for their animals to live in. This is their story.

📌 Must Read

Mother tongue: Have you heard of the Ho language? It’s part of the Austroasiatic language family, which includes Vietnamese, Khmer and Santhali. Closely related to Mundari, it is also spoken in parts of West Bengal, apart from Odisha and Jharkhand. For long, the Ho community has demanded the inclusion of its language in the Constitution’s Eighth Schedule to help protect their cultural identity. Now, a 29-year-old PhD scholar is working to preserve the Ho language using artificial intelligence (AI).

Made-in-India: In its latest Swadeshi push, the government is turning to Zoho Mail and Zoho Office Suite for official work. The homegrown Sridhar Vembu-led Zoho Corporation is the latest corporate beneficiary of the government’s Swadeshi mission. A similar push for Koo in 2020-21, however, had failed to take off. Arjun Sengupta traces the roots of the Swadeshi idea, and its 150-year-long political journey.

⏳ And Finally…

Pop culture @ protests: This year, dissent has a new label: ‘Gen Z protests’. Like their predecessors, the youth today have taken up the fight against corruption and social inequality. Across borders, from Nepal to Madagascar, they have banded behind one symbol borrowed from a Japanese anime: a skull and crossbones, wearing a straw-hat. I leave you with the latest Fresh Take on the anime flag’s significance, and how pop cultural references often show up at protests.

That’s all for today, folks! Until tomorrow,
Sonal Gupta

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