i. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed an Indian heads of mission meet in New Delhi, which is brainstorming key foreign policy issues and challenges including India’s engagement with major powers as well as strain in ties with Pakistan and China.

ii. The four-day conference, was formally inaugurated by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

i. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highway Nitin Gadkari inaugurated the country's first bio-refinery plant which produces ethanol from the variety of biomass.

ii. The project is situated at Rahu in Pune district. Mr. Gadkari stated that Plant can produce one million litre of ethanol per annum by processing a variety of agro-residue like rice and wheat straw, cotton stalk, cane trash, corn cobs with superior product yield

i. India has organized a cultural festival in Egypt to mark the 156th birth anniversary of the famous Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore.

ii. The Tagore festival is being organized by the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture, the cultural wing of the Indian Embassy in Cairo which is conclude on May 12 with ‘Rituranga -Play of Seasons’ and will be performed by members of the Indian community at the Hanager Theatre.

iii. Rabindranath Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He was the first non-European to win this prestigious award, in recognition for his collection of poems, ‘Gitanjali’.

i. The Hinduja brothers have topped the 2017 list of the richest 1,000 people in the UK with an estimated fortune of 16.2 billion pounds, a massive 3.2 billion pound hike in their fortunes over the previous year.

ii. Besides brothers Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja there are over 40 Indian-origin super-rich in this year's (2017) list which also includes a record number of British billionaires with 14 new ones emerging over the last year.

i. Three Indian Scientist have been elected as the Fellows of The Royal Society, a premier scientific academy of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, for their “outstanding contributions to science“.

ii. Krishna Chatterjee from Cambridge University has been recognised for his discoveries of genetic disorders of thyroid gland formation.

iii. Subhash Khot from New York University has been credited for throwing insight into unresolved problems in the field of computational complexity.
iv. Yadvinder Malhi from Oxford University is recognised for his works on understanding the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems and its response to the pressures of global change, including climate change, degradation and loss of large animals

i. Renowned tea planter from Assam Prabhat Kamal Bezboruah has been named the new chairman of the Tea Board of India by replacing Shri Santosh Sarangi, stated by the Union government.

ii. With this, Bezboruah becomes the first non-IAS and an industry insider to be at the helm of the Kolkata-headquartered Tea Board, the governing body of the industry.

i. Facebook has launched its 'Express Wi-Fi' commercially in India and the service is now available via 700 hotspots across four states of Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Meghalaya.

ii. For the expansion of service, Facebook has announced a partnership with Bharti Airtel for setting up an additional 20,000 hotspots covering millions of Indians over the next few months

i. Pro-European centrist leader Emmanuel Macron has been elected as President of France.

ii. Mr. Macron will also become the first President from outside the two traditional main parties since the modern republic’s foundation in 1958.