Find the Weekly Current Affairs for the 2nd week of August 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 August 2nd Week Current Affairs
- The Indian Statistical Institute Bill, 2026 seeks to convert ISI from a registered society into a statutory body, replacing the 33-member Council with an 11-member Board of Governors and expanding its academic mandate into data science, computer science, and cryptology.
- India secured the return of 274 fugitive criminals from 36 countries between 2019 and 2026, aided by mechanisms like BHARATPOL, the Extradition Act 1962, and Interpol cooperation.
- The Parliamentary Standing Committee’s 200th Report on India–US trade relations flagged the rise in US tariffs from 3% to 18% as a threat to India’s US$500 billion “Mission 500” trade target by 2030, and recommended fast-tracking the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA).
- Heatwave and lightning have been added as notified disasters eligible for SDRF/NDRF assistance for the 2026–31 period, following the 16th Finance Commission’s recommendation, taking the total notified disaster categories to 14.
- The Asiatic Lion population has grown from around 100–150 to over 1,000 in six decades, but remains vulnerable due to being confined entirely to Gujarat’s Gir landscape, risking disease outbreaks like Canine Distemper Virus.
- The World Bank’s World Development Report 2026 found only 4.5% of jobs in low- and middle-income countries face AI automation risk (versus 14.2% in high-income countries), while AI could boost productivity in over 16% of jobs in developing economies.
- NOTTO launched the e-Pratyaropan portal on Indian Organ Donation Day to digitally unify hospitals, donors, and recipients for real-time organ allocation; India performed over 20,000 transplants in 2025, ranking third globally.
- The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission was recognised by WHO-SEARN as a Regional Centre of Excellence in Pharmacovigilance and a Technical Centre in Quality of Medicines at SEARN’s 10th anniversary meeting in Kathmandu.
- Cabinet Secretary Dr. T. V. Somanathan received a one-year extension approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, continuing in India’s senior-most civil service post.
- Astrophysicist Annapurni Subramaniam became the first Indian woman to win the COSPAR Vikram Sarabhai Medal 2026, awarded at the 46th COSPAR Scientific Assembly in Florence, Italy.
- The Supreme Court clarified that FIRs filed against protesting students can’t be cancelled by executive order alone — cases can only end via a closure report, court-approved withdrawal from prosecution, or High Court quashing.
- The Union Cabinet approved the GOBARdhan Scheme (₹23,731 crore, FY27–36) to scale up India’s compressed biogas ecosystem, targeting a tenfold rise in domestic CBG production with assured offtake, stable pricing, and credit guarantees.
- India’s EV adoption jumped from 0.08% in FY16 to 8.26% in FY26, with annual sales rising nearly 46x; UP and Maharashtra lead state-wise adoption, and India targets 30% EV sales by 2030.
- India marked the 12th National Handloom Day (7 August), with the President conferring Sant Kabir and National Handloom Awards on 22 recipients; India produces nearly 95% of the world’s handwoven fabric.
- The Lok Sabha passed the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, exempting FIIs and the BIS from tax on interest from government securities and extending incentives for foreign diamond/electronics firms.
- The same Bill amends the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, allowing banks/payment providers to charge MDR on UPI and other notified digital payment modes, removing the earlier restriction.
- The Ministry of Culture launched Har Ghar Tiranga 2026 (9–17 August), featuring “Suryapath Tiranga” — a symbolic flag relay across Indian missions worldwide following the path of the rising sun.
- India hosted the 2nd BRICS Anti-Corruption Working Group meeting in Hyderabad, proposing a BRICS Network of Law-Enforcement Practitioners and a Repository on Informal Cooperation for asset recovery and fugitive tracing.
- India successfully test-fired the Agni-4 ballistic missile (range ~4,000 km) from Chandipur, Odisha, demonstrating high precision via its Ring Laser Gyro-based Inertial Navigation System.
- The Danube River hit its lowest water levels since 1996 due to prolonged European drought, threatening navigation and agriculture along its basin spanning 10 countries and four capital cities.
- Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, a trilateral mutual-security pact treating an attack on one member as an attack on all three, building on the 2025 Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement.
- India renewed diplomatic efforts at the BRICS Culture Ministers’ Meeting to repatriate the 11th-century Vagdevi idol (identified by the British Museum as Ambika) from London, linked to the disputed Bhojshala complex in Dhar, MP.
- The Supreme Court released a new framework, “Judgments and Gender: Sensitivity and Compassion in Writing Judgments,” replacing its 2023 handbook, promoting trauma-informed, survivor-centric adjudication and introducing the SOGIESC framework for LGBTQIA+ dignity.
- The Home Minister paid tribute to Rabindranath Tagore on his death anniversary; Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Gitanjali and authored the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.
- Tamil Nadu’s Legislative Assembly unanimously urged fairer tax devolution from the Union, highlighting fiscal federalism concerns like vertical fiscal imbalance, cesses/surcharges outside the divisible pool, and GST-related revenue constraints.
- A Parliamentary Standing Committee’s 166th Report flagged severe vacancies, rising pendency, and infrastructure/cybersecurity gaps across India’s tribunals, including ITAT, NGT, NCLT and RCT.
- The Union Government opposed extending creamy-layer exclusion to SC/ST reservations, arguing caste-based disadvantage isn’t equivalent to OBC backwardness, citing Indra Sawhney, Nagaraj, Jarnail Singh and Davinder Singh judgments.
- Bengaluru-based Astrobase unveiled EVEREST, India’s first privately developed 800 kN Full-Flow Staged Combustion LOX-Methane rocket engine, joining Russia, the US and China in FFSC technology.
- India supplied the first of three beam catchers for the Super-FRS at FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany, designed by CSIR-CMERI under Bose Institute, Kolkata’s supervision.
- Five captive-bred slender-billed vultures were released into the wild in Assam by BNHS — the world’s first such release of this species, alongside standardisation of 27 place names in Arunachal Pradesh on Survey of India maps.
- PAIMANA, MoSPI’s automated monitoring platform launched in 2025, now tracks 1,847 Central Sector projects worth ₹40.54 lakh crore across 17 ministries, replacing the older OCMS-2006 system.
- The Scheme for Promotion of International Cultural Relations was renamed the Global Engagement Scheme (GES) to strengthen India’s cultural diplomacy through Festivals of India, friendship-society grants, and contributions to bodies like UNESCO.
- The Lok Sabha passed the Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2026, creating a National Tribunals Commission (NTC) for tribunal appointments and a National Tribunals Data Grid (NTDG) to track case pendency and performance.
- The government clarified UPI will stay free for consumers, but a limited Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) may apply to certain high-value transactions, easing the 2020 zero-MDR mandate under Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act.
- CSIR-NBRI established Prakriti Gyan Dham in Lucknow, India’s first eco-educational hub combining botanical research, biodiversity conservation, and cultural heritage through features like the Indian Heritage Garden and Bamboosteum.
- The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways launched E-Samudra, a single-window digital, paperless platform for maritime administration, alongside allied tools like e-NAVIK 24×7 and d-SEA for seafarers.
- The MHA notified 11 new Immigration Check Posts (2 airports, 9 land ports) for e-Visa entry, raising India’s total designated e-visa checkpoints from 77 to 88.
- The XI BRICS Culture Ministers’ Meeting adopted the Bhopal Declaration, covering heritage protection, AI-related copyright safeguards for creators, and India’s new Voluntary Artist Registry, with 14 participating countries.
- NABL launched India’s first accreditation scheme for Mobile Food Testing Laboratories to enable rapid, on-site food-safety testing and strengthen last-mile testing coverage.
- Lake Mead in the US hit its lowest water level in nearly 90 years amid the worsening Colorado River Basin water crisis, while 11 Indian fishermen were rescued near Sri Lanka’s Delft Island in the Palk Strait.
- The government extended PM E-DRIVE incentives for electric two-wheelers until 31 March 2028, offering ₹2,500/kWh up to ₹5,000 per vehicle, alongside a ₹2,000 crore grant to deploy about 72,300 fast chargers.
- The Union Health Ministry’s knowledge paper on AI in MedTech highlighted India as Asia’s 4th-largest MedTech market, projected to reach $50 billion by 2030, while flagging challenges like data bias and fragmented health records.
- Assam’s recurring floods stem from both natural factors (a 580,000 sq km transboundary basin funnelling into a narrow valley, heavy sediment aggradation) and human factors (295 of 423 embankments past their design life, wetland encroachment).
- Government e-Marketplace (GeM) completed 10 years, becoming the world’s third-largest public procurement platform with over ₹20 lakh crore in cumulative GMV and 45.6% of GMV from MSMEs.
- The Union Government proposed the Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme (CMAS), a ₹10,000 crore outlay to raise India’s container manufacturing capacity tenfold to 7.5 lakh TEUs and cut import dependence.
- NASA invited ISRO to join its Moon Base programme near the lunar South Pole under the Artemis Accords, which India signed in 2023, aiming to establish humanity’s first permanent lunar outpost.
- India observed the 119th martyrdom anniversary of Khudiram Bose, executed at age 18 on 11 August 1908 for his role in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy targeting Douglas Kingsford.
- Lebanon abolished the death penalty, becoming the first Arab country to replace capital punishment with life imprisonment involving aggravated hard labour.
- The Centre notified appointments of 30 judges to the High Courts of Madras, Calcutta, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, following the collegium-based recommendation process under Article 217.
- A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia, a country situated in the Pacific Ring of Fire with coastlines on both the Pacific and Caribbean, while the Lok Sabha also passed a bill to rename Kerala as “Keralam” in the Constitution.
- The Supreme Court (Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh) ruled in KPTCL v. Rekha & Ors. (2026 INSC 847) that electricity boards are liable under Strict Liability, not Absolute Liability, for electrocution deaths.
- The case arose from two Karnataka incidents: N. Subramanya’s death by electrocution in 2018, and Muizz Ahmad Shariff’s severe injury from contact with a 66KV line while retrieving a cricket ball.
- The Karnataka High Court had earlier applied Absolute Liability and used the Motor Vehicles Act’s “Multiplier Method” to award over ₹25 lakhs and ₹44 lakhs compensation in the two cases.
- KPTCL challenged this, arguing Writ Petitions weren’t maintainable due to disputed facts (like contributory negligence) and that the Multiplier Method didn’t apply to electrocution cases.
- The Supreme Court held that Article 226 writ jurisdiction is discretionary and inappropriate when “complex disputed questions of fact” exist — such cases should go to a Civil Suit instead.
- The Court distinguished Absolute Liability (from the Oleum Gas Leak case, with no exceptions) from Strict Liability (from Rylands v. Fletcher, which allows defenses like Act of God or victim’s own fault) — and ruled Strict Liability is the correct standard for electricity boards.
- The Court rejected automatic (“mutatis mutandis”) application of the MVA Multiplier Method to electricity cases, stating compensation must be “just and reasonable” but not forced into a borrowed statutory formula.
- The Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s judgments and allowed the appeals, giving victims liberty to pursue Civil Suits or other remedies.
- As an equity measure, the Court directed that the ₹5 lakh interim compensation already paid to the families need not be returned, regardless of future litigation outcomes.
- The ruling establishes three key principles: writ jurisdiction is excluded where negligence must be proven, electricity boards face strict (not absolute) liability, and damage calculations must be case-specific rather than formula-driven.
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8 to 14 August 2026 (Weekly Current Affairs Quiz)