13th August, 2026

1. IBM, MIT Bengaluru and Christ University Partner to Establish AI Centres in India
2. PMS Bazaar and NDML Accreditation Agency Partner to Expand Access to SEBI-Accredited Investor Certification
3. 2026 Hurun India Most Valuable Family Businesses: Ambani Family Tops; Adani Leads Among First-Generation Families
4. Hungary Elects Former Supreme Court Chief András Baka as President
5. Indian Navy Launches Next-Generation Offshore Patrol Vessel ‘Shruti’ at GRSE, Kolkata
6. Skyroot Aerospace Signs Multi-Launch Agreement with HEX20 for Vikram Missions
7. Hall of Fame Coach and Five-Time NBA Champion Don Nelson Passes Away
8. Renowned Nuclear Scientist and Marxist Theorist M. P. Parameswaran Passes Away at 91
9. International Youth Day 2026 – August 12
10. World Elephant Day 2026 – August 12
11. Gujarat Government Approves ₹20 Crore for Four Centres of Excellence in Natural Farming
12. Indian Navy’s ‘Shruti’ Next-Generation Offshore Patrol Vessel Launched at GRSE, Kolkata
13. ICC ODI World Cup 2027: 10 Teams Qualified; Namibia Faces Qualifier Route
14. Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards 2024-25: President to Honour 115 Artists
15. India Wins One Gold and Three Bronze Medals at Linguistics Olympiad 2026
16. Uttar Pradesh Becomes India’s Largest Milk-Producing State
17. Ministry of Textiles to Organise ‘Srijan: Voices from the Loom’ to Celebrate Women Weavers
18. DoT Selects Three Sanchar Mitras as India’s Youth Envoys to the ITU
19. Parliament Passes Bill to Strengthen Funding and Development of the Cooperative Sector
20. HM Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh Pay Tribute to Ahilyabai Holkar on Her Death Anniversary
21. Railways Approves Kavach Version 4.0 at an Estimated Cost of ₹295 Crore
22. PM Modi Says India Is Home to Over 60% of the World’s Wild Asian Elephants on World Elephant Day
23. India and Nepal Sign MoUs for Eight Development Projects in Education, Health and Agriculture
24. Dr. Bhooma V. G. Selected for Vice-Chancellor Post at Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute in Mauritius
25. Ladakh Hosts First-Ever Black-Necked Crane Festival to Promote Conservation of the Endangered Species
26. India’s $30 Trillion Economy Vision by 2047 Offers Major Opportunities for Businesses, Says Commerce Minister

National News

IBM Partners with MIT Bengaluru and CHRIST University

• What: International Business Machines (IBM) has partnered with Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) Bengaluru and CHRIST Deemed to be University to establish Artificial Intelligence (AI) focused centres for advanced research and skilling.
• Tell me more:
  • MIT Bengaluru inaugurated the IBM-MIT AI Lab on its campus to provide advanced computing resources and digital skilling opportunities.
  • The facility features a High-Performance Computing (HPC) system that supports 30 workloads simultaneously while offering training through the IBM SkillsBuild program.
  • CHRIST Deemed to be University established the IBM Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence to advance research in generative AI and automated systems.

Textiles Ministry Organises Event Celebrating Women Weavers

• What: The Office of the Development Commissioner (Handlooms) under the Ministry of Textiles is organising ‘Srijan: Voices from the Loom’ at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
• Tell me more:
  • The event brings together over 100 women weavers from six handloom clusters across India to highlight their role in traditional weaving.
  • UN Women India Deputy Country Representative Kanta Singh will attend the programme as the Guest of Honour.

Parliament Passes National Co-operative Development Corporation Bill

• What: Parliament passed the National Co-operative Development Corporation (NCDC) (Amendment) Bill, 2026 after Rajya Sabha approved the legislation to amend the National Co-operative Development Corporation Act, 1962.
• Tell me more:
  • The Bill allows NCDC to expand operations into industrial goods and provide loans or grants directly to cooperative societies.
  • State governments can now extend NCDC funding to any entity engaged in cooperative development.
  • Minister of State for Cooperation Murlidhar Mohol stated financial assistance increased from ₹45,000 crore pre-2014 to around ₹4 lakh crore over the last 12 years.
  • India possesses over eight lakh cooperative societies with 30 crore members, including 80,000 computerised Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS).
  • Tribhuvan Sahkari University, Gujarat will train 17 lakh young people over the next five years to supply skilled manpower.

Union Ministers Pay Tribute to Ahilyabai Holkar

• What: Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid tributes to social reformer Ahilyabai Holkar on her death anniversary, highlighting her contributions to heritage preservation, governance, and women empowerment.
• Tell me more:
  • Ahilyabai Holkar was the Holkar Queen of Malwa and later ruling queen of Indore in the Maratha Empire, who made Maheshwar the Holkar Dynasty’s seat.
  • She was born on 31 May 1725 in Chondi and died on 13 August 1795 in Indore at the age of 70.

State News

Gujarat Approves Centres of Excellence for Natural Farming

• What: The Gujarat Government has approved the establishment of four Centres of Excellence across Navsari, Morbi, Bhavnagar, and Chhota Udepur districts with an allocation of ₹20 crore for the year 2026-27.
• Tell me more:
  • Gujarat Prakrutik Krishi Vikas Board will implement the scheme to establish model natural farming campuses in Nani Bhamti, Halvad, Valavad, and Chudel villages.
  • Each centre will train 100 farmers at a time while producing bio-inputs like Jeevamrut, Ghan Jeevamrut, Beejamrut, and Neemastra at nominal prices.

Uttar Pradesh Advances White Revolution Through Dairy Transformation

• What: Uttar Pradesh (UP) has strengthened its position as India’s largest milk producer by increasing milk output from 277 lakh tonnes in 2016–17 to around 388 lakh tonnes in 2024–25, contributing roughly 16% of the country’s total output.
• Tell me more:
  • The Uttar Pradesh Dairy Development and Milk Products Promotion Policy, 2022 aims to attract investments worth ₹5,000 crore by offering capital, interest, and stamp duty subsidies to dairy units.
  • The ₹1,000-crore Nand Baba Dugdh Mission and National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) support women-led milk producer organisations across Bundelkhand, Purvanchal, Awadh, Gorakhpur, and the Terai regions.
  • Pradeshik Cooperative Dairy Federation (PCDF) upgraded cold-chain infrastructure, electronic milk analysers, and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) systems to ensure direct, transparent farmer payments.
  • Breed improvement, veterinary healthcare, green fodder cultivation, and integration with central schemes like Rashtriya Gokul Mission have significantly raised livestock productivity.

Indian Railways Approves Kavach 4.0 for Izzatnagar Division

• What: Indian Railways approved the provision of Kavach Version 4.0 across 660 Route Km of the Izzatnagar Division under North Eastern Railway (NER) at an estimated cost of ₹295 crore.
• Tell me more:
  • The project falls under the initiative for installing Kavach with a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) communication backbone on balance sections.
  • Kavach functions as India’s indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system to prevent Signal Passed at Danger (SPAD) incidents and collisions.

Ladakh Hosts First Ever Black-Necked Crane Festival

• What: Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena inaugurated the three-day long first-ever Black-necked Crane festival in Ladakh to highlight conservation importance and raise awareness about this threatened species among conservationists, researchers, and experts.
• Tell me more:
  • The Changthang Cold Wildlife Sanctuary in Ladakh has wetlands like Tsokar and Hanle, at 2,500 to 5,000 metres elevation, and is India’s only breeding ground for the Black-necked Crane.
  • The species represents the only alpine crane in the world with 16,000 birds distributed across Eastern Ladakh, Bhutan, Nepal, and China.
  • The Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh officially declared the Black-necked Crane as its State Bird due to its ecological, religious, and cultural significance.

Banking and Economy

PMS Bazaar Partners with NDML Accreditation Agency

• What: PMS Bazaar has teamed up with NSDL Database Management Limited to help eligible investors get SEBI’s Accredited Investor certification.
• Tell me more:
  • The partnership offers full certification support at no extra cost, giving certified investors lower minimum investment limits for PMS and AIF schemes.
  • NDML issues certificates within one day after receiving documents and payment, and the platform also helps asset managers, wealth managers, family offices, and distributors certify their clients.
  • This move aims to grow investor participation and build a more informed investor base in India.

Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Urges Fair Trade and Circular Economy

• What: Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal urged businesses and citizens to adopt fair trading practices, promote recycling, and advance a circular economy at the Bharatiya Vyapar Mahotsav.
• Tell me more:
  • Nine free trade agreements opened international markets and provided preferential access to Indian industries, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), and farmers.
  • India reached a record $863 trillion in total exports last year, including $442 trillion in merchandise and $421 trillion in services.
  • Exports registered ~73% growth over six years, with a 15% growth between April and July towards achieving $1 trillion this year.
  • India aims to transition from its current $4 trillion economy into a $30 trillion economy by 2047 through self-reliance and digital transformation.

Reports and Indices

Hurun Releases India Most Valuable Family Businesses Ranking

• What: Barclays Private Clients Hurun India released its Most Valuable Family Business List 2026, showing that India’s top 300 family-run businesses together are worth ₹138 lakh crore.
• Tell me more:
  • Hurun India Most Valuable Family Businesses Ranking 2026:

Defence News

Indian Navy Launches Next Generation Vessel Shruti

• What: Indian Navy launched its indigenously designed Next Generation Offshore Patrol Vessel (NGOPV) named Shruti at Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd (GRSE) in Kolkata.
• Tell me more:
  • GRSE is constructing four NGOPVs as part of the Indian Navy’s overall eleven-ship NGOPV programme.
  • The vessel will support multi-domain operations like maritime surveillance, search and rescue, asset protection, disaster relief, and anti-piracy missions.

Science and Technology

Skyroot Aerospace Signs Multi Launch Agreement with HEX20

• What: Skyroot Aerospace has signed a multi-launch agreement with Kerala-headquartered space technology company HEX20 for three dedicated Vikram-series rocket missions starting in the fourth quarter of 2027 to deploy satellite constellations into orbit.
• Tell me more:
  • The missions will support the Earth-observation constellation and in-orbit payload demonstration projects of HEX20 while providing rideshare capacity for third-party spacecraft.
  • This deal follows the successful maiden orbital launch of Vikram-1 on July 18, 2026, which represented India’s first privately developed orbital-class rocket.
  • Skyroot Aerospace plans to scale its launch operations to 12 annual missions using small-satellite launch vehicles built with in-house propulsion systems in Hyderabad.

Awards

President Confers Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships and Awards

• What: The President of India will confer the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships and Awards for the years 2024 and 2025 on 115 eminent performing artists at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi.
• Tell me more:
  • The awardees represent different States and Union Territories across performing art forms like music, dance, drama, folk and tribal art, and puppetry.
  • Conferred since 1952, these national honours recognize sustained individual work and the highest standards of achievement.
  • Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellows receive a purse money of ₹3,00,000, while Akademi Awardees receive ₹1,00,000 along with a Tamrapatra and Angavastram.
  • Selected Fellows include Ramlal Bareth, A V Anand, Rita Ganguly, Puru Dadheech, Chittaranjan Jyotishi, Pasumarthi Rattaiah Sarma, and Sudharani Raghupathy.

Indian Students Win Medals at Linguistics Olympiad

• What: Indian pre-university students won five awards, including one gold medal, three bronze medals, and one honourable mention, at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) 2026 held in Romania.
• Tell me more:
  • Shrilakshmi Venkatraman secured the gold medal, while Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan, and Advay Misra won bronze medals, and Soham Amit Pednekar earned an honourable mention.
  • The Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO), coordinated through International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H), selected and trained the national delegation via multi-stage contests and residential camps.
  • India has participated in IOL since 2009, bringing its total tally to 37 medals, including six gold, nine silver, and 22 bronze medals.
  • The competition tests analytical reasoning, pattern recognition, and computational thinking by requiring participants to decode rules of unfamiliar languages.

Important Days

International Youth Day 2026 – August 12

• 2026 Theme: Different Contexts, Common Aspirations
• The 2026 sub-themes are Global Solidarity (shared responsibility for youth development), Shared Challenges (interconnected issues like education, climate, and mental health), and Youth Innovation (young people’s creative solutions to global problems).

World Elephant Day 2026 – August 12

• What: The Synchronous All India Population Estimation of Elephants (SAIEE) 2021–25 estimated India’s wild elephant population at 22,446 using the first DNA-based synchronised census.
• Tell me more:
  • India hosts nearly 60% of the wild Asian elephant population, protecting them across 33 Elephant Reserves and 150 identified corridors.
  • The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) implements Project Elephant in 1992 to support habitat protection and mitigate human-elephant conflict.
  • Mititative technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled Distributed Acoustic Sensing systems helped reduce train-hit elephant deaths from 26 in 2013 to 12 in 2024.
  • The government launched the Gajah Suchana mobile application and notified the Captive Elephant (Transfer or Transport) Rules, 2024 to regulate captive elephant movement.

Sports

Associate Nations Compete for 2027 World Cup Qualification

• What: Associate cricket nations are competing for four remaining spots in the One Day International (ODI) World Cup 2027, scheduled for November 2027 in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, after ten teams already secured qualification.
• Tell me more:
  • Eight teams in the ODI Super League 2 will play 36 matches over three years, with the top four teams advancing directly to the Cricket World Cup (CWC) Qualifiers.
  • Twelve teams in the Challenge League will play 15 matches across two pools to qualify four teams for the Qualifier Play-off.
  • The bottom four Super League 2 teams and top four Challenge League teams will compete in the Qualifier Play-off for four CWC Qualifiers spots.
  • Ten teams, including Ireland and West Indies, will battle in the CWC Qualifiers to secure the final four World Cup places.

Memorandum of Understanding

India and Nepal Sign MoUs for Eight Projects

• What: The Embassy of India in Nepal signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with Nepali government bodies to execute eight development projects in health, education, and agriculture through Indian grant aid.
• Tell me more:
  • The eight developmental initiatives carry an estimated total value of 803 million Nepali Rupee.
  • The schemes fall under India’s High Impact Community Development Projects (HICDPs) framework to bolster progress in priority sectors.
  • The Embassy of India in Kathmandu signed agreements with Nepal’s Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives, Federal Affairs and General Administration alongside project execution authorities.

Appointments

Hungary Elects Former Supreme Court Chief as President

• Hungary’s parliament elected former Supreme Court chief Andras Baka as the country’s next President to serve in a largely ceremonial role.

Three Sanchar Mitras Selected as ITU Youth Envoys

• What: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) facilitated the selection of three Sanchar Mitras as Generation Connect Youth Envoys (GCYE) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the 2026–2030 term.
• Tell me more:
  • Ankit Kumar Pal, Manish Kumar Mandal, and Susmita Sain joined the third cohort of ITU GCYE in recognition of their contributions under the DoT Sanchar Mitra scheme.
  • The GCYE programme enables young leaders to contribute to global discussions on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and digital inclusion.
  • The Sanchar Mitra scheme engages technical institute students to spread awareness regarding telecom services, mobile security, and fraud prevention across India.

Dr Bhooma Selected Vice-Chancellor of AIPSI Mauritius

• What: The Ministry of External Affairs officially announced the selection of Dr Bhooma VG as Vice-Chancellor at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Public Service and Innovation (AIPSI) of Mauritius.
• Tell me more:
  • AIPSI, formerly the Civil Service College of Mauritius, was jointly inaugurated by PM Modi and Mauritius PM Ramgoolam in March 2025 to serve Africa as a training agency.

Miscellaneous

Basketball Legend Don Nelson Passes Away at 86

• What: Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Don Nelson, who won five National Basketball Association (NBA) titles as a player and three Coach of the Year awards, died at 86.
• Tell me more:
  • The National Basketball Coaches Association (NBCA) honored him with the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award in June 2025.

Former Nuclear Scientist MP Parameswaran Passes Away

• What: Former nuclear scientist and communist theorist MP Parameswaran, who was one of Kerala’s most influential advocates of people’s science and decentralised development, passed away in Thrissur at the age of 91.Tell me more:
  • The activist wrote around 100 books on nuclear energy, ecology, and education, invented the smokeless stove, and authored his famous book Fourth World.

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