Current Affairs Quiz 29 August 2026

The SCO grew out of the Shanghai Five of 1996, comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, formed to settle post-Soviet border disputes and build military confidence along them. It was formalised as the SCO in 2001 when Uzbekistan joined.
India and Pakistan became full members in 2017, Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024. The organisation’s standing counter-terrorism formulation is the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism and extremism.
The 26th Summit is at Bishkek from August 31 to September 1, 2026, and the next presidency passes to Pakistan.

Every Indian prime ministerial visit to Tashkent since has included the Shastri Memorial, and the current visit of August 29 and 30, 2026 does as well, alongside the Mahatma Gandhi Centre at Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies. Shastri had become Prime Minister in 1964 after Nehru’s death and is associated with the slogan “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan” and with the institutional groundwork of the Green Revolution and the White Revolution, including the founding of the National Dairy Development Board.

The distinction has operational consequences for India. The Gandak is regulated at the Valmiki Nagar barrage in Bihar and joins the Ganga near Hajipur and Patna, whereas the Koshi enters Bihar further east and is barraged at Bhimnagar.
Placing this flood in the wrong basin would direct Indian flood preparedness at the wrong districts. The Sapta Koshi comprises the Sun Koshi, Indravati, Tamba Koshi, Likhu, Dudh Koshi, Arun and Tamor; the Gandaki system comprises the Kali Gandaki, Trishuli, Seti, Marsyangdi, Budhi Gandaki, Madi and Daraudi.

Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology and ICIMOD attributed the Rasuwa event of August 26, 2026 to a combination of an ice avalanche, permafrost movement and a rockslide. A bedrock failure at about 5,200 metres sent a 600-metre-wide section of glacier and rock some 1,200 metres into the valley, displacing an estimated 100 to 200 million cubic metres and damming the Lhende Khola, a stream rising in Gyirong County, Tibet.
Permafrost degradation is the underlying driver: permafrost acts as cement in high-altitude bedrock, and as it thaws the rock loses cohesion, which is why rock-plus-ice failures should be expected to become more common relative to pure moraine-dam GLOFs.

Thresholds are aligned to the ICMR-NIN Dietary Guidelines for Indians, 2024. The warning text must be at least one point larger than the back-of-pack nutrition table font, an anti-evasion provision aimed at the standard industry response of complying in the smallest permissible type.
Phase I covers products breaching two or more nutrient thresholds plus highly sweetened beverages; Phase II extends to a single breach. The proposal was filed as a compliance affidavit responding to a Supreme Court order passed in August 2026, in a PIL by 3S and Our Health Society, a public charitable trust.
The Indian Nutrition Rating star model had itself been put on hold in February 2026. FSSAI is a statutory body under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The talks were held at Beijing on August 25, 2026, co-chaired by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, with the MEA briefing on operationalisation on August 28. The 26th round is to be held in India in 2027.
Critically, the consensus contains no boundary settlement and no agreement on where the Line of Actual Control runs. It is confidence-building architecture layered over an unresolved dispute.
The three border trading points are Lipulekh Pass in Uttarakhand, Shipki La in Himachal Pradesh and Nathu La in Sikkim.

The principal product of the SR mechanism remains the Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question, signed in 2005, which envisaged a three-stage approach of principles, then framework, then delineation and demarcation. India and China have not moved past the first stage in twenty-one years.
The earlier instruments are the Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement of 1993, the Confidence Building Measures Agreement of 1996 and the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement of 2013.

A High-Powered Task Force chaired by Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and founding Chairman of UIDAI, opened public consultation on August 28, 2026 on the conduct, security, design and governance of public examinations including those run by the NTA. Its six heads are institutional systems and processes, examination integrity and security, technology deployment, examination infrastructure, accessibility and inclusion, and student well-being. An earlier committee chaired by K. Radhakrishnan, former Chairman of ISRO, had already examined NTA reform.
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 targets organised paper-leak crime with penalties up to ten years and one crore rupees, and its offences are cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable.

Tamil Nadu notified three elephant corridors in late August 2026 in the Cauvery North Wildlife Sanctuary, Hosur Forest Division, covering over 10,300 hectares, the first tranche of 41 the Madras High Court ordered expedited. The court had directed expedited notification on July 12, 2026, and on July 31 held that removal of encroachments is not a prerequisite for notification, which removed the State’s standing reason for delay.
Critically, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 provides for National Parks, Wildlife Sanctuaries, Conservation Reserves and Community Reserves, but contains no distinct statutory category for a corridor. Elephant Reserves under Project Elephant are administrative designations without the statutory force of a National Park or Sanctuary.

The elephant was declared India’s National Heritage Animal in 2010. Do not transfer the status across species: the African savanna elephant is Endangered while the African forest elephant is Critically Endangered, and they were assessed separately by IUCN only after being recognised as distinct species.
The snow leopard, by contrast, is Vulnerable. The National Board for Wildlife, chaired by the Prime Minister, is constituted under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and the Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun is the technical agency for corridor and population studies.

National Sports Day is observed on August 29, the birth anniversary of Major Dhyan Chand, born on August 29, 1905, and was instituted in 2012. He won Olympic hockey gold at Amsterdam in 1928, Los Angeles in 1932 and Berlin in 1936, and received the Padma Bhushan in 1956.
India’s men have eight Olympic hockey golds in total. Note an important correction for 2026: the National Sports Awards for 2025 were announced on August 18, 2026, not on National Sports Day, and no conferment ceremony is confirmed for August 29.
The other national sports awards are the Arjuna Award (1961), the Dronacharya Award for coaches (1985), the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement (2002), the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar and the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Trophy for universities.

The long period average on the 1971 to 2020 baseline is 87 centimetres for the June to September southwest monsoon. Through August 26, 2026, cumulative rainfall was 13 per cent below the LPA, with 14 states and union territories in deficit.
Month-wise, June was 35.4 per cent below normal, July 1 per cent above, and August 15 per cent below through the 24th. The driver is a strengthening El Nino, the warm phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
Claims that this will be the weakest monsoon since 2009 are projections attributed to IMD officials, not official IMD forecasts.

Government data as of August 25, 2026 showed 45 plants at critical stock, up from 31 at end-July, of which 40 are domestic-coal-fired. Aggregate stocks stood at 30.95 million tonnes, about 10 days of requirement against 12 days in July, a drawdown of roughly 19 per cent from end-July.
The cause was heavy rain in Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh disrupting mining and rail loading, with some plants receiving only about half the five to six daily rakes they need. Monitoring is by the Central Electricity Authority, a statutory body under the Electricity Act, 2003.
Note the apparent paradox: the coal crisis was caused by too much rain in mining States, in a season 13 per cent deficient nationally.

August 29 is the International Day against Nuclear Tests, declared by UNGA Resolution 64/35 in December 2009 on a proposal by Kazakhstan. The date marks both the first Soviet nuclear test at Semipalatinsk in 1949 and the closure of that test site in 1991.
India conducted Pokhran-I, codenamed Smiling Buddha, on May 18, 1974, and Pokhran-II, Operation Shakti, on May 11 and 13, 1998. India maintains a voluntary unilateral moratorium on further testing, a No First Use doctrine and a posture of credible minimum deterrence.
India is also not a party to the NPT of 1968, which it regards as discriminatory. The CTBTO Preparatory Commission at Vienna operates the International Monitoring System even though the treaty is not in force.

COP17 ran from August 17 to 28, 2026 at Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, under the theme “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope.” with 197 Parties, during the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists.
On August 26 Union Minister Bhupender Yadav addressed the Ministerial Dialogue on rangelands, arguing that successful restoration begins with pastoralists as custodians rather than beneficiaries. India hosted COP14 at New Delhi in 2019 and issued the Delhi Declaration; India’s Land Degradation Neutrality pledge is to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.
Note that the “Ulaanbaatar Declaration” associated with COP17 was adopted at the Mayors’ Forum from August 20 to 22, a sub-event, and is not the plenary outcome document.