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The Morning Wrap: Sakshi Malik Wins India's First Medal; Ranbir Kapoor Calls Katrina Kaif His 'Inspiration'

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
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The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

India announced that it was willing to send its diplomat to Pakistan to discuss cross-border terrorism, and foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is set to attend talks on the invitation of his Pakistani counterpart. The invitation came close on the heels of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech on Independence Day, when he brought up the subject of State repression in Pakistan's Balochistan province.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ― two leading global authorities on climate ― both say July 2016 was not only the hottest July on record, but the most sizzling month in the history of record-keeping. NOAA on Wednesday said July's global average temperature was 62.01 degrees, 1.57 degrees above the 20th-century average. NASA, which uses a slightly different methodology, said Monday the average global temperature in July was 1.51 degrees above average. Both agencies pegged July as the hottest month since monitoring began in 1880.

An unending stream of stories of injustice towards Dalits floods our consciousness every day, the literature regarding their lives is limited. HuffPost India has compiled a list of five books that will help people understand Dalit lives better. The list includes titles such as Unclaimed Terrain by Ajay Navaria and Samskara by UR Ananthamurthy, among others.

On Thursday, India will woke up to the news that wrestler Sakshi Malik had defeated Kyrgyzstan's Aisuluu Tynybekova in Women's freesyle 58 Kg wrestling, claiming India's first medal at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Malik defeated Tynybekova (8-5) in a nail-biting contest contest for the Bronze medal in which she fought back from 0-5. After catching up 5-5 in the second period of the match, scoring two points by throwing Tynybekova on the mat, she pulled ahead by pinning down her rival in the final moments of the match.

Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Wednesday announced four new categories within the Indian Railways. The Antyodaya Express will be an unreserved, super-fast train for the 'common man' and will operate on busy routes; Humsafar will be an three-tier AC train; Tejas will be an elite train which will offer local cuisine and WiFi, and will run ant 130 kmph; and UDAY (Utkrisht Double-Decker Air-conditioned Yatri) will be overnight train plying on the busiest routes to increase capacity by 40 per cent.

Two persons, including a minor, were charred to death on Wednesday night and another four injured, when the raw materials used in preparation of crackers exploded in Kothapalli village, Andra Pradesh.

A seven months pregnant woman who was flying from Dubai to Philippines went into labour and gave birth to a baby girl. The Cebu Pacific Airlines plane was forced to land in Hyderabad following the incident. The baby girl was reported 'perfectly healthy' and the mother had a normal delivery. Cebu Pacific Airlines has gifted the girl 10,00,000 'Get Go Points' which would pay for almost all of the air trips the she can take in her lifetime.

Punjab's Fatehgarh Sahib district, which has a really low child sex ration has come out with an unique initiative to mark the occasion of Raksha Bandhan. The administration has distributed an undertaking which men and boys are encouraged to sign. The document says that the person, in front of their sister, will 'promise' to behave respectfully towards women.

In an interview with a noted film critic, Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor talked about his much-publicised break-up with actress Katrina Kaif. He also admitted that after his parents, she has been the 'most influential, inspirational entity' in his life.

The BJP must be delighted that the Congress government in Karnataka, led by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, booked Amnesty International India for sedition after it hosted an event in Bengaluru to discuss human rights violations in Kashmir, writes Betwa Sharma for HuffPost India. "The actions of the Siddaramaiah government show that the Congress isn't all that different from the BJP when it comes to dealing with dissent in troubled times, which is when our freedoms are truly tested. This also makes it harder for the Grand Old Party to mouth pieties the next time that the BJP government cracks down on civil liberties," she writes.

There is no substitute to good teacher preparation; unless teachers are well prepared, their capacity to perform is limited, writes Anurag Behar in Mint. "The large majority of countries which are dissatisfied with the state of their school systems think they need fundamental and big changes. This list is large and has a wide range, from countries as developed as the US, UK and Sweden to developing countries such as India, China and Malaysia — and also the most disadvantaged countries, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa. To be sure, this is a very rough categorisation. It also doesn't reflect many important dimensions of this issue, like the reasons for dissatisfaction, including high dropout rates, poor learning levels, overburdened children, a sense of getting 'left behind' in the global school education 'race', etc," he writes.

The truth in India's new position regarding Balochistan is this — we have acknowledged that India, Pakistan are deeply hyphenated, writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta in The Indian Express. " The flip side of saying we will go after each other, we will reopen the territorial settlements on the ground, is also saying that we cannot solve our problems without the full cooperation of the other. South Asia needs a common culture of the pacification of violence and commitment to human rights, not another round of mega- and sub-nationalisms, whose only dénouement will be more violence and ethnic cleansing. Both countries now externalise their problems onto each other," he says.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.