Current affairs — 6 September 2026

Prelims pointers

• President Droupadi Murmu appointed eight High Court judges as Chief Justices on September 5, 2026.
• The Law Minister said the appointments used constitutional power and involved consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
• Justice Sanjay Kumar Agarwal was appointed Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court.
• Justice Valluri Kameswar Rao was appointed Chief Justice of the Patna High Court.
• Justice Pushpendra Singh Bhati was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

Prelims pointers

• SWIFT is a Belgium-based cooperative messaging network used directly by more than 11,000 institutions across over 200 countries.
• A 2019 BRICS survey reported foreign-exchange margins of 2.5% for Brazilian respondents, 8.5% for payments in Africa, and as high as 20% in some cases.
• The India-Singapore linkage connects India’s UPI and Singapore’s PayNow for remittances.
• Project Nexus was designed by the BIS, transferred to a company set up by six central banks including the RBI, and is not a BRICS initiative.
• India proposed linking BRICS members’ CBDCs for trade and tourism payments while framing the goal as lower costs and faster settlement.

Prelims pointers

• The National Green Tribunal banned hazardous rat-hole coal mining in Meghalaya in April 2014.
• The Supreme Court upheld the ban while allowing scientific mining under strict statutory compliance.
• The accident-involved truck lacked the mandatory Mineral Transport Challan issued by the Directorate of Mineral Resources.
• Meghalaya Police data listed 64 illegal-transport cases and 127 illegal-extraction cases during 2023 to August 2026.
• The committee questioned the lack of confiscation action despite seizure of 92 equipment items and 62 vehicles.

Prelims pointers

• Bihar’s Home Department issued the relevant notification on September 3, 2026 under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946.
• The CBI must obtain Bihar’s prior permission before investigating, searching, interrogating or arresting a public servant posted under the State government.
• Prior consent also applies to personnel of State-owned and controlled corporations, companies or banks and institutions aided by Bihar.
• Bihar will consider CBI proposals involving the covered State personnel on a case-to-case basis.
• The notification says State permission is not required for CBI action against Central government employees.

Prelims pointers

• Anak Krakatau is a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra.
• The volcano erupted for 30 seconds at 3:53 a.m. on September 6, 2026.
• Authorities advised residents and visitors to remain at least three kilometres from the active crater.
• Two ash clouds reached about 20,000 feet and 50,000 feet and moved in different directions.
• Anak Krakatau’s explosive collapse generated a 2018 tsunami that killed at least 430 people in Sumatra and Java.

Prelims pointers

• The 193-member UN General Assembly adopted the child-marriage resolution by consensus on September 4, 2026.
• The resolution designates November 27 as the International Day for the Elimination of Child, Early and Forced Marriage.
• Sierra Leone led the resolution with backing from around 70 nations, and India joined as a co-sponsor.
• India launched Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat on November 27, 2024, aiming to be child-marriage-free by 2030.
• The resolution encourages multisectoral national plans, girls’ education and the empowerment of women and girls.

Prelims pointers

• A 1-GW data centre would in principle have to remove 1 GW of heat if the full power rating applies to the facility itself.
• Liquid-cooled facilities are estimated to carry a 7–10% project-cost premium for piping, leak detection and coolant-distribution equipment.
• The article places air cooling’s thermal limit near 40 kW per rack, while Nvidia Blackwell-based racks can emit 120–150 kW.
• Hybrid 1-GW designs use air cooling for low-density loads and direct-to-chip liquid cooling for high-density AI clusters.
• Google said it would replenish 120% of water consumed for non-cooling operational needs by 2030.

Prelims pointers

• The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope used a four-metre primary mirror to observe the active region NOAA 14060.
• Processed solar images covered 5,800 km by 4,350 km and achieved a spatial resolution of 19 km.
• Plasma coils along granule boundaries measured about 25-170 km in length and were separated by roughly 65 km.
• The fastest vortices grew to 2.7 times their original size in 18 seconds; the observed vortices rotated at about 1.6-2.8 km per second.
• Magneto-hydrodynamic simulations suggested that the observed plasma whirlpools lie 100-400 km below the photosphere.

Prelims pointers

• Gerardus Mercator designed the Mercator projection in 1569 to make fixed-compass rhumb-line courses easier to plot for navigation.
• Mercator is conformal: it preserves local shapes and angles but enlarges high-latitude landmasses and diminishes equatorial regions.
• Africa covers about 30 million sq. km but can appear similar to Greenland on Mercator maps although Greenland is 14 times smaller.
• Equal Earth was created in 2018 by Tom Patterson, Bojan Šavrič and Bernhard Jenny and preserves relative area while altering shapes.
• The African Union endorsed the Correct the Map campaign, while the World Bank said it was phasing out Mercator for Equal Earth.

Prelims pointers

• Certain peptides remained stable in 98% concentrated sulphuric acid for several weeks at room temperature.
• The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on September 4.
• In 98% sulphuric acid, the scarcity of water prevents the usual hydrolysis reaction from shredding peptide bonds.
• Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy showed the peptides folding into an omega loop supported by sulphuric-acid molecules.
• Venus has clouds of concentrated sulphuric acid, giving the peptide result relevance to the search for extraterrestrial life.

Prelims pointers

• New York City’s one-year moratorium covers student-facing generative AI through eighth grade during the 2026-27 academic year.
• The policy affects nearly 600,000 public-school students, while companion chatbots are prohibited across all grades.
• Five limited high-school pilots will use Quill, Edia, Brisk Teaching, Playlab and Intel AI-Ready Schools.
• Norway recommends no generative-AI access for grades one to seven and gradual introduction for grades eight to 10.
• CBSE introduced AI as an optional sixth subject in Class IX in 2019-20 and launched a Classes III-VIII curriculum for 2026-27.

Prelims pointers

• The August 26 disaster followed the collapse of a glacier on the Nepal side of the China-Nepal border.
• Gyirong became the main crossing for trade and travellers between Nepal and Tibet after a 2015 earthquake damaged another route.
• As of September 5, China had confirmed 43 deaths and 519 missing people, including 261 foreigners from 23 countries.
• Forty-nine Indian citizens were among the people reported missing on the Chinese side of the border.
• Chinese scientists have identified more than 3,000 glacial lakes; 187 are classified as high-risk and monitored remotely or on the ground.

Prelims pointers

• Iran claimed it struck an unmanned U.S. vessel trying to enter the Strait of Hormuz on September 6, 2026; the U.S. military denied the claim.
• The U.S. military said it had struck three Iranian oil tankers after Navy warships were targeted with ballistic missiles.
• The report dates the start of the war to February 28 and says a fragile ceasefire agreement was announced in June.
• The U.S. Energy Secretary said an average of nine million barrels of oil per day was passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
• The United States, Britain, France and Germany were seeking to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

Prelims pointers

• The Forest Rights Act’s full title is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.
• The Tribal Affairs Ministry said the FRA and its rules contain no provision requiring gram sabha consent for Stage-II forest clearance.
• Forest-diversion guidelines require potential FRA claimants to be identified, applicable rights recognised and vested, and concerned gram sabhas to issue an NOC.
• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Undertakings reported an average forest-clearance time of 106 months for NHPC projects under construction.
• The Baijayanta Panda-headed committee proposed examining whether consent from 70–75% of affected gram sabhas could suffice for major hydropower projects.