Current affairs — 28 August 2026

Prelims pointers

• Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio filed separate complaints with the Whitefield CEN Crime Police.
• The Airtel case was registered on August 26 under provisions of the IT Act, BNS and Telecommunications Act.
• A SIM Box/GSM Gateway can convert VoIP and international traffic into local Indian calls and messages.
• Jio said the conversion could conceal users' actual source and identity; the complaints also raised cyber-fraud and lawful-interception concerns.
• The companies sought seizure of SIM boxes, SIM cards, networking devices and related digital evidence.

Prelims pointers

• The Supreme Court was hearing challenges to the CBSE's three-language formula when the linguistic issue arose.
• The formula requires two of the three languages to be native Indian languages, a category excluding English.
• The Bench discussed English's long Indian history and its role as a link language in governance and higher education.
• Apoorvanand is a professor in the Hindi department of the University of Delhi.
• Ganesh Devy is a former English professor associated with the People's Linguistic Survey of India project.

Prelims pointers

• E10 motor spirit contains 10% ethanol, while the existing E20 petrol contains a 20% ethanol blend.
• BPCL clarified that there was no proposal to replace the existing E20 petrol with an E10 variant.
• Bharat Petroleum estimated Russian oil at about 35-40% of Indian oil marketing companies’ oil basket.
• BPCL had secured its crude requirements for September and was about 50-55% complete for October.
• The Mumbai-headquartered refiner was securing around 60% of its crude requirements through spot purchases.

Prelims pointers

• Satellite analysis, including by ISRO, pointed to a glacier collapse or ice-rock avalanche in Tibet as a possible trigger of the Nepal flood.
• Nepalese authorities reported damage to 35 motorable bridges, 45 suspension bridges and about 40 kilometres of roads.
• The Indian Himalayas have nearly 7,500 glacial lakes and about 15,000 glaciers, some of which are monitored through remote sensing.
• The October 2023 South Lhonak Lake disaster in Sikkim was a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood that damaged the State’s largest hydropower project.
• Field expeditions to assess remote Himalayan glacial lakes are generally feasible only from July to September.

Prelims pointers

• On August 27, 2026, onions were priced at ₹62 per kilogram in Delhi, while the government announced discounted retail sales at ₹35 per kilogram.
• NAFED and NCCF were assigned onion sales through their retail stores and Kendriya Bhandars under price-stabilisation measures.
• The Union government attributed the price rise to black marketing, hoarding and profiteering and said adequate supply existed for festive demand.
• Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare said the government was not considering an onion export ban because there was no supply problem.
• A calibrated onion-buffer release begun on August 26 used a hybrid of railway rakes and road transport to supply major consumption centres.

Prelims pointers

• NCLT approved a repayment plan in Subhash Chandra’s personal insolvency resolution process involving admitted creditor claims of ₹22,006.57 crore.
• The approved plan permits payment of ₹6.5 crore against those admitted claims, which the report calculates as a lender haircut of nearly 99.97%.
• The article defines a financial haircut as the percentage difference between the sum creditors are owed and the smaller amount repaid by the debtor.
• Jairam Ramesh argued that the settlement made a mockery of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.
• Randeep Singh Surjewala asked the Finance Minister to disclose bank losses from haircuts under NCLT proceedings over the preceding 12 years.

Prelims pointers

• The flood's probable source was an ice-rock avalanche near Langtang Lirung, rather than heavy rainfall or a tectonic earthquake.
• The collapsing mass detached at about 5,200 metres and fell roughly 1,200 metres into the Lhende Khola system.
• A signal detected around 8:37 a.m. was first treated as a magnitude-4.4 earthquake, but later analysis attributed it to the collapse.
• USGS estimated that the initial collapse released seismic energy equivalent to about a magnitude-5.2 earthquake.
• NRSC compared Sentinel-2 imagery from August 24 with Resourcesat-2A imagery to document physical change at the suspected source.

Prelims pointers

• NCGTC said ECLGS 5.0 would operate only until its allocated guarantee cover of ₹2.5 lakh crore was reached.
• Applications for guarantee cover were to be considered on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability.
• An August 18, 2026 communication said sanctions beyond the available guarantee cover would not be admissible under ECLGS 5.0.
• On August 3, NCGTC asked lenders to stop processing fresh non-MSME loans and reserve the remaining amount for MSMEs.
• The guarantee ceiling applied to MSMEs and non-MSMEs, with domestic airlines identified as an exception.

Prelims pointers

• Water levels in the affected rivers rose by as much as 9 metres in 30 minutes after the upstream glacial detachment.
• The Hindu Kush Himalaya contains more than 63,000 glaciers feeding at least ten major Asian river systems.
• About 78% of the region's glacier area between 4,500 and 6,000 metres is described as highly exposed to warming.
• Research cited in the article found that glacier ice-loss rates across the Hindu Kush Himalaya have doubled since 2000.
• United Nations reports estimated global glacier loss at 267 gigatons per year during 2000-2019.

Prelims pointers

• The Mecca Pact is a trilateral defence agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on August 7, 2026.
• Its mutual-defence clause treats an attack on any one signatory as an attack on all three.
• Bangladesh said it would consider membership positively if invited, but no formal proposal had been made and accession was not under discussion.
• Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and the National Citizen Party supported consideration of joining the pact.
• The NCP urged assessment of long-term national interest, security and strategic capability before Bangladesh joined any collective-defence framework.

Prelims pointers

• India and Canada reiterated a shared commitment to conclude Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement talks by the end of 2026.
• The statement followed the inaugural India-Canada Finance Ministers' Economic and Financial Dialogue held in Toronto.
• India expressed readiness to begin negotiations on a Bilateral Investment Treaty at the earliest.
• The two Prime Ministers' aspiration is to expand bilateral trade from ₹70,354 crore in 2025-26 to ₹4.65 lakh crore by 2030.
• The financial dialogue covered payments modernisation, financial stability, FinTech, capital markets development and efforts against financial crime.

Prelims pointers

• Betelgeuse B appears to be a young star around 2.6–3.1 times as massive as the Sun.
• The proposed companion may explain Betelgeuse’s six-year brightness cycle by periodically blocking some light.
• Children aged 0–9 face roughly three times as many additional heat-stress days as adults in their 60s.
• The solar-farm study analysed data from 2,344 counties in China between 2014 and 2023.
• Solar installations increased ground vegetation, but the growth often lacked habitat variety needed by many bird species.

Prelims pointers

• The vaccination campaign was launched in Kisangani, capital of Tshopo Province, with frontline workers and patient contacts prioritised.
• The current outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo Ebola virus, while Ervebo is approved against Zaire ebolavirus.
• WHO approved 70,000 Ervebo doses: about 50,000 for frontline and health workers and 20,000 for a clinical trial.
• Ervebo is being used through compassionate use because no vaccine is specifically approved for Bundibugyo Ebola.
• The campaign is expected to cover 14 health zones in Tshopo, Bas-Uele and Haut-Uele provinces.

Prelims pointers

• India's Index of Industrial Production grew 6.7% in July 2026, compared with a revised 8.8% in June 2026.
• June's IIP growth estimate was revised upward from the provisional 7.3% to 8.8% in the latest release.
• Consumer durables grew 10.5% in July, while consumer non-durables contracted by 1%.
• Capital goods output grew 16.1%, marking a fourth consecutive month of double-digit expansion.
• Mining contracted 0.9% in July 2026, compared with 10.7% growth in July of the previous year.

Prelims pointers

• The Ebola outbreak had reached 60 health zones in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by August 28, 2026.
• Biena and Manguredjipa were the two newly affected health zones, both located in North Kivu Province.
• Congo's Ministry of Health recorded 5,794 confirmed cases in the outbreak at the time of the update.
• The government count included 2,786 deaths, with an overall case-fatality rate of 48%.
• Case-fatality rates in the two newly affected zones were higher than the overall rate, partly because response efforts were delayed.

Prelims pointers

• A Bayonne court's July 2026 ruling was described as the first recognition of breast cancer as an occupational disease in France's aviation industry.
• Sophie Lainault logged 12,600 flight hours, including 6,500 at night, while working for Air France from 1989 to 2019.
• A study of nearly 13 million U.S. death certificates covered 503 occupations and the period from 2020 to 2024.
• Radiation-related cancers accounted for about 6.9% of flight-attendant deaths and 6.7% of pilot deaths in the study.
• The CDC estimate cited is 3-6 millisieverts of cosmic radiation yearly for aircrew, versus about 0.4 millisieverts for the comparison traveller.

Prelims pointers

• CWRC was established on August 28, 2002, at Panbari near Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve.
• The Assam Forest Department and Wildlife Trust of India jointly run CWRC in partnership with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
• CWRC and allied mobile veterinary units have treated more than 10,000 rescued animals and returned about 68% to the wild.
• The centre helped reintroduce one-horned rhinoceroses to Manas National Park by rehabilitating rescued individuals.
• CWRC's cited rehabilitation work covers Asiatic black bears, wild buffalo and hoolock gibbons across several Assam protected areas.

Prelims pointers

• Losing Words, Losing Worlds found nearly 100 fading or lost environmental terms across 22 Indian languages.
• The analysis used a survey of around 100 people conducted by Marisha Karwa and 101Reporters in October-November 2025.
• Farmers, fishers and forest-dependent people across 15 States linked vernacular word loss with disappearing ecological literacy.
• Patar bhonra denotes seasonal wild-bee movement, while shenvti hawa is a southern breeze once used to anticipate pomfret movement.
• Purattasi mazhai means September-October rain important to samba paddy and crab larvae; it failed in four of the past six years.

Prelims pointers

• OBC creamy-layer exclusion in this dispute has two components: the income or wealth test and equivalence of posts.
• The Supreme Court found hostile discrimination in the DoPT's different treatment of salary income for two categories of OBC candidates.
• The Court directed exclusion of salaries from the test for the affected category and creation of supernumerary posts for wrongly excluded OBC candidates.
• The government had six months to implement the directions but sought clarification on retrospective application.
• The Centre said equating all existing State PSU posts with government posts could itself take up to two years, while private-sector posts could take longer.

Prelims pointers

• Andhra Pradesh aims to raise overall green cover to 50% of its geographical area by 2047.
• The State’s current forest cover was stated to be 22.96% when the chairman assumed charge.
• The programme includes agricultural land, villages, cities, roads, canal bunds, institutional premises, industrial areas and suitable wastelands.
• Nine named departments, including Agriculture, Panchayat Raj, Water Resources and Forests, are expected to coordinate implementation.
• A special monitoring mechanism is proposed to track survival and maintenance of planted trees, not merely plantation counts.

Prelims pointers

• The two newly formed glacial lakes were reported to cover 19.80 hectares and 7.28 hectares, while their water volumes remained unknown.
• Suhora Technologies estimated one new water body at about 20.25 hectares using high-resolution optical satellite imagery.
• The Suhora image was acquired on August 27 at 04:22 UTC at roughly 70 cm resolution in the Lhende Khola region.
• Experts said ice, rock and debris detached at about 5,200 metres and fell roughly 1,200 metres before becoming a debris flow.
• An NDMA-linked official said early warning could be possible 30 to 45 minutes in advance, though such warning cannot prevent all physical damage.

Prelims pointers

• DDWS under the Ministry of Jal Shakti asked States and Union Territories to involve local academic institutions in documenting JJM 2.0 practices.
• The target is at least one student tour and one published case study or best practice in each district by end-September 2026.
• Potential tour sites include Multi Village Schemes, Water Treatment Plants, intake wells and NABL-accredited water-testing laboratories.
• Students may also receive exposure to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems and Internet of Things technologies used in water supply.
• District Water and Sanitation Missions and Gram Panchayats are among the local institutions expected to coordinate case studies and tours.

Prelims pointers

• DoT and C-DOT signed a five-year agreement on August 27, 2026, for an End-to-End Optical Network Test Bed.
• The DoT-funded and supported test bed will be located at the C-DOT campus in New Delhi.
• The facility will cover optical-core, optical-access and quantum-security technologies along with advanced test and measurement tools.
• Years one and two constitute the set-up phase, including infrastructure creation and the formal rollout of the test bed.
• Years three to five constitute the operations and maintenance phase, including user support and educational outreach.

Prelims pointers

• At end-July 2026, India had 1,354.28 million telephone subscribers: 1,306.27 million wireless and 48.01 million wireline.
• Total telephone subscriptions increased by 6.20 million during July 2026, representing monthly growth of 0.46%.
• Broadband subscriptions were 1,094.48 million including M2M cellular connections and 1,005.72 million without them.
• The peak Visitor Location Register recorded 1,204.01 million active wireless mobile subscribers in July 2026.
• During July 2026, 15.98 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability.

Prelims pointers

• Ex-mill sugar prices fell by around 20% in recent days, while retail prices had also begun declining by August 28, 2026.
• From September 2026, fortnightly sugar allocations will replace the existing monthly quota system.
• Under the fortnightly system, mills must sell at least 40% of their allocation in the first week and the remainder in the succeeding week.
• Sugar mills have been directed to dispatch sugar within seven days of sale to speed movement through the supply chain.
• Crushing for the new season is to begin on October 15, with over 10 LMT expected in October and about 45 LMT in November.

Prelims pointers

• The first India-Kuwait Joint Defence Committee meeting was held in New Delhi on August 28, 2026.
• The committee operationalises the Defence Cooperation MoU signed during the Indian Prime Minister's Kuwait visit in December 2024.
• The cooperation agenda includes training, military exercises, military medicine, staff talks, defence industry and research and development.
• Joint Secretary Amitabh Prasad and Brigadier General Raed Alsakran co-chaired the inaugural committee meeting.
• India and Kuwait established diplomatic relations in 1962 and upgraded their relationship to a Strategic Partnership in December 2024.

Prelims pointers

• OGEL is a standing one-time authorisation allowing eligible exporters to self-generate approvals for multiple consignments of specified defence items.
• Three OGEL SOPs—for major platforms, parts and components, and intra-company technology transfer—have been consolidated into one framework.
• The validity of an Open General Export Licence has been increased from two years to three years.
• OGEL country coverage expanded from 41 to all countries except sensitive nations and those under UN Security Council sanctions or arms embargoes.
• India's defence production reached Rs 1.78 lakh crore and defence exports reached Rs 38,424 crore in FY 2025–26.

Prelims pointers

• IPC held the conclave on Indian Pharmacopoeia 2026 at NIPER Guwahati on August 27, 2026, the first such event in the Northeast.
• IPC launched seven Indian Pharmacopoeia Phytochemical Reference Standards and five Botanical Reference Standards.
• The phytochemical standards include Andrographolide, Capsaicin, Embelin, Eugenol, Scopoletin and Umbelliferone.
• The botanical standards include Terminalia arjuna, Bacopa monnieri, Tinospora cordifolia, Centella asiatica and Ocimum sanctum.
• The new standards support evidence-based development, quality control, therapeutic evaluation and regulatory assessment of plant-derived medicines.

Prelims pointers

• Sanchar Saathi enabled the recovery of more than 75,000 lost or stolen handsets in one month across India for the first time since inception.
• Monthly handset recoveries rose by 201% between April 2025 and July 2026, according to the Department of Telecommunications.
• A handset reported through the portal or app is blocked across Indian telecom networks, and later use generates alerts for the citizen and police.
• Traceability reports provide citizens the concerned police station's name through SMS, email, the portal and the mobile app.
• DoT's Digital Intelligence Unit and Licensed Service Area field units coordinate with telecom service providers and State or Union Territory police.

Prelims pointers

• India recorded a nearly 80% decline in malaria cases and deaths between 2015 and 2025.
• The number of high-burden malaria districts declined from 155 to 33, while 160 districts reported zero indigenous cases during 2022–2025.
• The 33 high-burden districts across nine States and Union Territories accounted for 64% of cases and 54% of deaths in 2025.
• The ministry emphasised Test, Treat and Track, active surveillance, complete treatment and uninterrupted diagnostic and drug supplies.
• Asymptomatic cases found through mass screening should be separately reported and excluded from API and ABER calculations.

Prelims pointers

• PMJDY was announced on August 15, 2014, and formally launched on August 28, 2014, as a National Mission on Financial Inclusion.
• The scheme provides a basic bank account and access to need-based credit, remittances, insurance and pension facilities.
• A PMJDY account can be opened at a bank branch or Business Correspondent outlet and does not require a minimum balance.
• PMJDY accounts are maintained on banks' Core Banking Systems, while USSD supports mobile banking on basic feature phones.
• The mission is monitored through a central structure headed by the Finance Minister and implementation committees at State and district levels.

Prelims pointers

• The Prime Minister's state visit to Tashkent on August 29–30, 2026, was to be his fourth visit to Uzbekistan.
• The bilateral agenda with Uzbekistan covered trade and investment, defence, digital connectivity, energy, education and people-to-people ties.
• The 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit was scheduled in Bishkek for August 31–September 1, 2026.
• The 2026 SCO Summit marked the organisation's 25th anniversary, and India has been a full SCO member since 2017.
• India's priorities for the SCO forum were stated as Security, Connectivity and Opportunity.

Prelims pointers

• President Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed Mazloum Abdi, named Mustafa Khalil Abdi in the decree, as a presidential adviser.
• Abdi announced the SDF’s dissolution after integrating its forces into brigades of the Syrian army.
• The Syrian Democratic Forces were formed in 2015 and were backed by the United States.
• The Education Ministry authorised Kurdish-language classes alongside Arabic and English in specified schools.
• The article estimates that Kurds number about two million within Syria’s population of twenty million.

Prelims pointers

• India’s total foreign-exchange reserves stood at $729.328 billion on August 21, 2026, after a weekly increase of $12.422 billion.
• Foreign-currency assets were $591.333 billion and gold reserves were $114.218 billion on August 21, 2026.
• Scheduled commercial-bank aggregate deposits stood at ₹2,69,31,346 crore on August 15, with 14.7% year-on-year growth.
• Bank credit was ₹2,20,07,764 crore on August 15, 2026 and recorded 18.3% year-on-year growth.
• Broad money M3 stood at ₹3,22,94,503 crore and was 14.2% higher year-on-year.

Prelims pointers

• By August 28, the reported toll was 579 dead, nearly 2,000 missing and more than 4,500 rescued.
• Of 183 Indian tourists reported missing, 85 had been rescued and 98 remained unaccounted for.
• Lhende Khola originates in Gyirong County in Tibet and joins Nepal’s Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river systems.
• Satellite imagery indicated a possible combination of ice avalanche, permafrost movement and rockslide.
• Nepal decided to accept limited foreign specialists for tunnel rescue, DNA testing and forensic examinations.

Prelims pointers

• The dated-securities buyback has an aggregate face-value ceiling of ₹30,000 crore.
• Four securities are listed, with maturities ranging from October 30, 2026 to February 15, 2027.
• No separate notified amount is assigned to any individual security within the aggregate ceiling.
• The auction will use the multiple-price method and accept E-Kuber offers on September 3, 2026.
• Results are due on September 3, while settlement is scheduled for September 4, 2026.

Prelims pointers

• The August 26 event was attributed by the USGS to a glacial collapse and landslide, not to tectonic shifts.
• The landslide signal was later registered as equivalent to a magnitude-5.2 earthquake.
• Nepal lost 475 megawatts of electricity-generating capacity after bridges and hydropower stations were destroyed.
• Gyirong Port was upgraded from a bilateral crossing to an international gateway in August 2017 and cost $175.8 million.
• The Indian Air Force sent more than 47.5 tonnes of emergency relief material, including medical supplies, rations and tents, to Nepal.