More than 100 organizations came together at National India Hub, the World's Largest Indian Community Center, for INDIA FEST 2026, joined by India's dance icon Prabhu Deva, Chitra Tripathi and Lt. Gen. K.J.S. Dhillon and several Elected Officials turning August 15 into a powerful celebration of unity, volunteerism and community service.

The celebration became historic when Illinois State Senator Ram Villivalam, joined by six other State Legislators, presented an Illinois Senate proclamation recognizing August 15 as "National India Hub Day," honoring National India Hub's growing community impact and commitment to service.

At the heart of National India Hub is a unique model that has brought more than 150 organizations onto one collaborative platform. Each organization maintains its own identity and mission while sharing space, volunteers, knowledge, connections, and resources to collectively serve more people.

Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has introduced an Information Technology Resilience Index (ITRI) for market infrastructure institutions (MIIs), including stock exchanges and depositories, as part of efforts to strengthen the resilience and oversight of their IT systems.

Under a circular issued on August 24, the regulator said the index would assess MIIs across nine parameters, including availability, security, integrity, governance, reliability and monitoring, business continuity, modularity and flexibility, scalability, and other relevant factors.

Availability and security would carry the highest weightage of 20% each, followed by integrity, governance, reliability and monitoring, business continuity, and modularity and flexibility at 10% each. Scalability and the remaining parameter, including incident handling, would account for the remaining 5% each.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will complete 10 years of operations on August 25, marking a decade of transformation in India’s digital payments ecosystem and emerging as a globally recognised real-time payments platform.

Launched on August 25, 2016, by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under the regulatory oversight of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), UPI has become a key pillar of India’s Digital Public Infrastructure and a major driver of financial inclusion.

According to data released by the government, annual UPI transaction volume increased from 1.78 crore in FY 2016-17 to more than 24,162 crore in FY 2025-26, registering an almost 13,000-fold increase.

Vice President C P Radhakrishnan will visit Musunuru village in Eluru district of Andhra Pradesh today. During his visit, the Vice President will launch India’s first non-Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) high-expansion popcorn maize hybrid seed in Musunuru. He will also felicitate farmers and address agricultural stakeholders and other participants.

In a major step towards protecting country’s rich animal genetic heritage, the scientists of Indian Council of Agricultural Research –National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (ICAR-NBAGR), Karnal, have registered 16 new indigenous livestock and dog breeds, belonging to nine species across 13 states and one Union Territory (UT).

As per the scientists, the registration gives these indigenous breeds formal scientific recognition and strengthens the framework for their conservation and future development. Besides, it strengthens the national effort to reduce the proportion of non-descript livestock populations through systematic breed identification and documentation for ensuring that valuable locally adapted populations are scientifically recognised and brought within appropriate conservation and sustainable utilisation programmes.

ICAR-NBAGR is a nodal institution responsible for registration of livestock and poultry breeds in India. It has assigned unique accession numbers to all the newly registered breeds, providing formal recognition and strengthening their scientific documentation and conservation framework, said Dr N.H. Mohan, Director, ICAR-NBAGR.

India and Mauritius have deepened their energy partnership with a five-year agreement under which Indian Oil Corporation will supply the island nation's entire import requirement of petrol, diesel and aviation turbine fuel, strengthening New Delhi's role as a key energy-security partner in the Indian Ocean.

The agreement was exchanged during Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri's official visit to Mauritius on August 20-21, alongside a government-to-government memorandum of understanding (MoU) to expand cooperation in oil and gas, including petroleum product supplies, training and capacity building, and biofuels.

The long-term sales and purchase agreement between IOC and Mauritius' State Trading Corporation is designed to provide Mauritius with assured supplies and reduce its exposure to price volatility, an official statement said.

India is working to establish its own space station by 2035, with the first module of the proposed Bharatiya Antariksha Station (BAS) already approved, ISRO Chairman Dr V Narayanan said on Sunday, ANI reported.

Speaking at the third National Space Day celebrations in Ahmedabad, Narayanan said India's space programme has expanded significantly since its launch 64 years ago, with space-based applications now being used across more than 50 areas that directly benefit citizens.

"Today, we are celebrating the third National Space Day. The theme is very important: innovation, collaboration, and aspiring for global leadership in the space sector," Narayanan said.

The Assam government is in an advanced stage of evaluation to select a partner from the private sector to launch its own satellite, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

Claiming that Assam will be the first state in India to have its own earth observation system, he said the satellite will come up under the 'DBLOTT model' - Design, Build, Launch, Operate, Train and Transfer.

"Earlier this year, we invited Expressions of Interest to select an implementation partner under the DBLOTT model. Following strong interest from India's private space sector companies, we are now in the final and critical stage of partner selection, with dedicated committees evaluating the proposals," Sarma said in a social media post on Sunday.

He said 'AssamSAT' marks a landmark shift -- from Assam being a user of satellite data to an active participant in the space-tech ecosystem, enabling faster and evidence-based governance.

AI is getting better at mimicking the way humans think, but the computers running it are still very much machines. They get their power from silicon chips made by companies like Nvidia. These chips process information using electronic circuits, a bit like how neurons in the human brain process information. However, a Singapore-based team is now working on using living human brain cells as part of the computer itself.

The prototype of this supercomputer has been developed by the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine), data-centre operator DayOne and Australian biological computing company Cortical Labs. The team has put living human neurons into a server rack, with NUS calling the 20-unit setup the world’s first independently operated biological server rack.

he Supreme Court today directed that no construction or development activity shall be permitted within 100 metres of the edge of the Jojari River in Rajasthan, as an interim measure to protect the river ecosystem from further ecological degradation.

A bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta stated that the restriction would remain in force until completion of a scientific exercise to determine and demarcate the High Flood Line and the requisite ecological buffer zones.

“In view of serious ecological degradation, it is necessary to put in place an interim measurable area of protection to adequately safeguard the river ecosystem during the pendency of the scientific exercise for determination and demarcation of the high flood line and the requisite ecological buffer zones,” the Court said.