Quick notes: LCH | Gladiator diet ...

• Ideal for mountain warfare: For mountain war against China, is India’s LCH helicopter superior to AH-64E Apache? .. Against armor on open ground, Apaches would devastate Chinese and Pakistani tanks. But in the Himalayas, where terrain and climate conspire to limit troop deployments, a flying arsenal probably isn’t needed. Just an armed helicopter that can fly above the mountains.



• India-Pak rivalry plays out in South Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Turkey and Pakistan conducted a joint exercise named 'Three Brothers' last year in the name of Islam. India's military assistance to Armenia comes against the backdrop of Pakistan's bonhomie with Azerbaijan
  
  However, in spite of these developments, an interesting fact is that India has stronger economic ties with Azerbaijan than with Armenia. ONGC has also invested heavily in Azerbaijan's gas sector.



• Fewer awards will rust scientific temper: In one silent stroke, the Union govt has decided to do away with over 200 awards, including scholarships, fellowships and internal awards for scientific excellence.



• Hordearii ("barley eaters"): Roman gladiators were mostly vegetarian.




• The first laptop with a RISC-V processor goes on sale: The laptop is the result of a partnership between China’s DeepComputing and Xcalibyte, and it’s powered by a new Alibaba T-Head TH1520 processor. It features four 2.5 GHz Xuantie C910 64-bit RISC-V processor cores, a neural processing unit with up to 4 TOPS performance, and an Imagination GPU.



• NOT white man's burden: UK defies climate warnings with new oil and gas licences. The decision is at odds with international climate scientists who say fossil fuel projects should be closed down, not expanded.