Find the Weekly Current Affairs for the 1st week of September 2026. Stay informed with the most important news and events from around the world. Our curated updates provide a comprehensive summary of the week’s key happenings, covering politics, economics, science, technology, sports, and international affairs.
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Highlights of September 1st Week Current Affairs
- India and Uzbekistan upgraded ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership during PM Modi’s visit, concluding a long-term uranium supply deal and setting a bilateral trade target of $5 billion by 2030.
- Uzbekistan conferred its highest state honour, the ‘Oliy Darajali Do’stlik’ (Order of Friendship), on PM Modi, alongside agreements on critical minerals, UPI–UZQR digital payment interoperability, and Aral Sea restoration support.
- The PARIVARTAN Scheme, with a ₹9,585 crore outlay, has onboarded 42 banks/NBFCs and 15 OEMs to replace over 2 lakh old BS-IV commercial vehicles in Delhi-NCR with BS-VI or electric alternatives.
- India’s higher education sector saw universities grow 69.6% and PhD enrolment surge 192.89% between 2014-15 and 2023-24, though graduate employability stands at only about 56.35% per the India Skills Report 2026.
- PMFBY (Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana) completed a decade, insuring over 92.46 crore farmer applications and paying claims exceeding ₹2.06 lakh crore since its 2016 launch.
- The Per Drop More Crop (PDMC) initiative has expanded micro-irrigation coverage to about 8.11% of India’s net sown area, offering up to 55% subsidy for small and marginal farmers.
- The government notified the Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026, making IST the uniform legal/commercial time reference, supported by NavIC and CERN-origin White Rabbit synchronization technology.
- Nepal faces renewed flood risk from a barrier lake formed near the Nepal-Tibet border after a glacier collapse blocked river confluence, raising fears of a Landslide Lake Outburst Flood (LLOF).
- The Indian Army signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance with the US to procure Javelin anti-tank missile systems (developed by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon) via the Foreign Military Sales route.
- NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket to study black holes, exoplanets and galaxies, while CosmoCube, a proposed lunar far-side mission, aims to detect radio signals from over 13.5 billion years ago.
- The Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled the Indus Waters Treaty remains in force regarding the Ratle project, but India rejected the proceedings, citing the tribunal’s lack of jurisdiction and improper constitution.
- The Northern Sea Route along Russia’s Arctic coast is gaining traction as a seasonal alternative to the Suez Canal, potentially cutting Asia-Europe transit distance by up to 40%.
- India’s Ethanol Blended Petrol programme is raising food-security concerns, as diverting sugarcane, maize and rice toward ethanol production risks pushing up sugar prices and animal feed costs.
- ICAR-IARI developed Pusa Rice DST1, India’s first genome-edited rice variety using CRISPR-Cas9 (SDN-1) technology, offering 10-30% higher yields under drought and saline conditions without foreign DNA.
- The 2026 Ramon Magsaysay Awards went to Tommy Koh (Singapore, international law/UNCLOS), Runa Khan (Bangladesh, riverine community development), and Bo Kyi (Myanmar, political prisoner rights).
- Bihar and Jharkhand signed an MoU ending a 25-year Sone River water dispute, splitting the 7.75 MAF allocation from the 1973 Bansagar Accord as 5.75 MAF to Bihar and 2 MAF to Jharkhand.
- India’s fiscal deficit reached 26.8% of its FY2026-27 target (4.3% of GDP, about ₹16.96 lakh crore) during April–July 2026, per CGA data.
- Nepal’s flash floods spotlighted the danger of “hanging glaciers” — ice masses on steep slopes that can collapse and trigger cascading floods (LLOFs/GLOFs) in the Himalayas.
- India reaffirmed plans to conclude a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with Chile, the world’s largest copper producer, by end-2026, while Rani Avantibai Lodhi’s martyrdom day recalled her 1857 revolt leadership at the Battle of Kheri.
- Uzbekistan became the 11th country to enable UPI-based cross-border merchant payments, allowing Indian travelers to pay via UZQR codes linked directly to their Indian bank accounts.
- The Supreme Court’s Sukanya Shantha v. Union of India (2024) ruling expanded Article 17’s untouchability prohibition to cover caste-based notions of purity and stigma, not just physical exclusion, amid renewed debate over a shuddhikaran ritual controversy.
- The Delhi High Court, in Rakhi Bisht vs. Union of India, ruled that maternity leave cannot be grounds for demotion, holding that maternity protection covers professional status, managerial authority and career progression, not just pay and job continuity.
- At the 26th SCO Summit in Bishkek, chairmanship passed to Pakistan for 2026–27, with the Bishkek Declaration reaffirming Iran’s sovereignty and condemning US-Israel actions against it as violating international law.
- MeitY notified India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 (Semicon 2.0) with a ₹1,27,500 crore outlay across six pillars — design, machines/materials, fabs, packaging, R&D and talent — aiming to train 1 lakh additional semiconductor engineers.
- The Department of Pharmaceuticals launched the second call for the ₹5,000 crore PRIP Scheme to boost pharma-MedTech research, split between Centres of Excellence at NIPERs (₹700 crore) and industry/startup support (₹4,250 crore).
- The transition from MGNREGA (100 days, 100% Centre-funded wages) to the VB-G RAM G Act (125 days but with a possible 60-day blackout and 60:40 Centre-State cost sharing) has raised concerns about rights regression, linked to a reported 68% decline in rural employment generation in July–August 2026.
- The GCRMN’s 7th “Status of the World’s Coral Reefs” report found global hard coral cover has declined about 9.5% since 1980-2009, with 87% of reefs experiencing unprecedented heat stress in 2024.
- India’s Aditya-L1 solar observatory detected brief atmospheric brightenings that can precede major solar flares by several hours, potentially enabling early space-weather warnings.
- The V-Dem Report 2026 classified India as an “electoral autocracy,” ranking it 106th of 179 countries on the Electoral Democracy Index — its lowest score since the 1975 Emergency — a classification that has drawn methodological criticism.
- The 37th anniversary of the Baltic Way (1989) was marked, recalling the Singing Revolution where about 2 million people formed a 676-km human chain across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania demanding independence from the Soviet Union.
- India’s river-interlinking (ILR) programme, dating to Sir Arthur Cotton’s 19th-century proposal, envisions 30 inter-basin links at an estimated ₹5 lakh crore cost, but faces criticism over climate-driven unreliability of “surplus” basin classifications and ecological/displacement concerns, as seen in the flagship Ken-Betwa project.
- The Supreme Court sought the government’s response on introducing totaliser machines to aggregate EVM votes across multiple booths, aiming to protect voter privacy while raising concerns about reduced booth-level verifiability.
- India’s real GDP growth accelerated to 7.8% in Q1 FY2026-27, beating RBI’s 7.0% projection, driven by manufacturing (9.2%), investment (11.9%) and exports (12.0%), though critics flag the real-nominal growth gap and jobless-growth concerns.
- India’s national income accounting now uses a 2022-23 base year, incorporating MCA-21 corporate data, GST returns, and double deflation methodology to better capture the post-pandemic economy.
- The Indian Copyright Office rejected the claim that AI can independently qualify as an “author” under the Copyright Act, 1957, holding that copyright requires human creative intent, though AI-assisted works with sufficient human authorship may still qualify.
- During his Kyrgyzstan visit, PM Modi gifted Bibek Debroy’s Mahabharata translation, a Ladakhi Tsug-dul blanket, and Dokra metalwork, highlighting parallels between the Mahabharata and Kyrgyzstan’s Epic of Manas.
- A UN report reportedly confirmed Syria was developing a nuclear reactor at Deir el-Zour under Bashar al-Assad, drawing attention to the region’s strategic position near the Iraq border.
- The Belgian Prime Minister visited New Delhi for three days, highlighting growing India-Belgium ties; Brussels hosts NATO headquarters and is a major EU institutional hub.
- The Supreme Court invoked Article 142 to quash nationwide FIRs against July 2026 NEET protesters, exercising its “complete justice” power as it previously did in the Bhopal gas tragedy settlement and the Ayodhya judgment.
- A new deep-sea skate species, Dipturus dhritiae, was discovered in the Arabian Sea under India’s Deep Ocean Mission, named after ZSI’s first woman director Dhriti Banerjee.
- Belgian PM Bart De Wever’s visit to India—the first in nearly two decades—resulted in a Letter of Intent on Defence Cooperation, a CBI-Belgian Federal Police security agreement, and a goal to double bilateral trade in five years.
- India and Belgium formalized the SFPIM–NIIF investment partnership and encouraged semiconductor collaboration between Indian firms and Belgium’s imec, alongside clean energy cooperation in green hydrogen and offshore wind.
- India’s data centre capacity has tripled since 2020 to about 1.5 GW (projected to reach 6.5 GW by 2030), raising concerns over water consumption (up to 358 billion litres annually by 2030) and localized heat effects from AI computing.
- India’s three-stage nuclear programme (PHWRs → Fast Breeder Reactors → Thorium-based reactors) aims for 100 GW capacity by 2047, backed by the new SHANTI Act, 2025, which allows greater private-sector participation.
- The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports announced the 2024 Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Awards, honoring Baljeet Kaur, Skalzang Rigzin, Rimo Saha, and Shiv Prasad Chamoli for achievements in mountaineering and para-swimming.
- The Supreme Court directed Tamil Nadu to establish a navigation channel through territorial waters for purse seine fishing vessels heading to the EEZ, highlighting the Centre-State fisheries jurisdiction split (Union List Entry 57 vs State List Entry 21).
- The Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCR) upgraded India’s sovereign credit rating from ‘BBB+’ to ‘A-‘ with a stable outlook, citing strong growth, fiscal consolidation, and improved banking-sector health.
- The little-used constitutional provision allowing a “distinguished jurist” to be appointed as a Supreme Court judge under Article 124(3) has drawn attention, despite lacking any defined eligibility criteria for over seven decades.
- ISRO launched EOS-05 (formerly GISAT-1A) via GSLV-F17 into geosynchronous orbit, capable of revisiting priority targets every 5 minutes and imaging all of India within 30 minutes for agriculture, disaster management and security applications.
- PM Modi congratulated Kyrgyzstan on its Independence Day, and the Defence Ministry unveiled ‘RAKSHA’, a 10-year roadmap for expanding India’s international defence diplomacy partnerships.
- Minilateralism (small-group cooperation like Quad, BRICS, G20) is gaining traction as traditional multilateral bodies like the UN and WTO face gridlock, though critics warn of fragmentation and limited legitimacy.
- India’s cotton production has fallen from around 350 lakh bales to 290.91 lakh bales in 2025-26, with Punjab’s cotton acreage shrinking 37.5%, pushing India toward becoming a net raw cotton importer.
- UNEP’s “Limiting Overshoot” report warns global warming could temporarily hit 1.8°C even under ambitious action (2.6°C under current policies), proposing an “Overshoot, Peak and Decline” pathway to return below 1.5°C by 2100.
- The Tamil Nadu Assembly’s push to make Tamil the principal Madras High Court language spotlighted Article 348, under which English remains default while states can introduce regional languages with presidential consent.
- Only about 28% of India’s ~72,368 MLD urban sewage is treated, and just 17% is safely reusable, prompting UP and Uttarakhand to promote treated wastewater reuse under the “Apna Jal” branding.
- A UN report presented at the Pacific Islands Forum found global sea levels rose 5.9mm in 2024 and could rise at least 0.5m by 2100, threatening over 14 million people in Mumbai, Kolkata and Dhaka with inundation.
- The Indian Air Force conducted the maiden drop test of Khagantak-243, a 300-kg indigenous precision-guided glide bomb with over 120km range, developed by JSR Dynamics and BEL.
- India’s Cotton Productivity Mission “Kapas Kanti” targets raising productivity to 755 kg/ha through an integrated Farm-to-Fashion value chain approach, alongside initiatives like PM MITRA and Kasturi Cotton India.
- Namami Gange’s Hybrid Annuity Model ensures 15-year private-sector operation and maintenance of sewage treatment infrastructure to prevent plants from becoming dysfunctional after construction.
- Declining Bt cotton pest resistance (since ~2006) and assured MSP-linked paddy procurement have driven northern Indian farmers away from cotton, with Pink Bollworm-hit yields falling to 1.5-2 quintals/acre against a 7-quintal break-even level.
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