🔆 CURRENT AFFAIRS – 08 AUGUST 2026
🔆 GEOGRAPHY
📍 Shrinking Danube River
✅ Danube River, Europe’s second-longest river, has reached historic record-low water levels
✅ Flows from Germany to the Black Sea, passing through 10 countries
✅ Volga is Europe’s longest river
✅ Major causes: Sahara-fuelled heatwaves and severe rainfall deficits
✅ Impacts include disrupted supply chains, emergency energy shutdowns and halted tourism
✅ Falling water levels have also exposed buried historical remains
🔆 POLITY & GOVERNANCE
📍 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (Amendment) Bill, 2026
✅ Parliament passed the MSME (Amendment) Bill, 2026
✅ Central Government empowered to notify MSME categories using investment and turnover criteria
✅ Filing of MSME memorandum made voluntary
✅ Governments can establish digital registration platforms
✅ CPSEs and notified entities required to clear MSME invoices through TReDS
✅ Courts may order payment of at least 50% of awarded amount if a challenge remains pending beyond 6 months
✅ Mediation to be completed within 90 days
✅ Minor violations decriminalised; replaced with graded penalties of ₹1,000–₹50,000
📍 All-India Licence for Container Train Operators
✅ Indian Railways modified the Model Concession Agreement
✅ Container Train Operators (CTOs) can operate across all Indian Railways routes under a single licence
✅ Uniform registration fee: ₹25 crore
✅ Earlier route-wise permissions and separate fees removed
✅ Licence may be extended for another 20 years after expiry
🔆 INTERNATIONAL
📍 16th BRICS Trade Ministers’ Meeting
✅ Held in Jaipur, Rajasthan under India’s BRICS Chairship 2026
✅ Theme: “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”
✅ Reaffirmed commitment to a reformed, consensus-based WTO with a functioning dispute-settlement system
✅ Adopted Jaipur Consensus
✅ Launched GVC Action Plan 2026–2030 focusing on SEZs and digital trade documentation
✅ Approved principles for cross-border digitally delivered services
✅ Established BRICS Technical Council alongside BRICS Connect
✅ Reviewed BRICS Economic Partnership Strategy 2030
📍 Ebola Outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo
✅ Confirmed Ebola cases surpassed 4,000 for the first time in the country’s history
✅ Reported as the DRC’s largest-ever Ebola outbreak
✅ Affected provinces: Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele and Tshopo
✅ Capital: Kinshasa
🔆 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
📍 Hybrid Magneto-Rheometer Developed by IIT Patna
✅ IIT Patna developed a custom-designed hybrid magneto-rheometer
✅ Characterises next-generation magnetorheological (MR) fluids
✅ Simultaneously evaluates rheological properties (flow/deformation) and tribological properties (friction/wear)
✅ Tests fluids under combined compression and shear
✅ Generates a high-magnitude constant magnetic field using low electrical current
✅ Applications: automotive, robotics and healthcare
📍 Ancient Catastrophe of Neptune’s Moons
✅ NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detected magnesium-rich clay minerals on Neptune’s small moons and rings
✅ Minerals indicate prolonged interaction between liquid water and rock
✅ Evidence suggests Neptune’s original moon system may have been destroyed by a massive ancient catastrophe
✅ Present inner moons may have re-formed from the shattered remains of an earlier larger world
📍 X-Band Doppler Weather Radar at Wayanad
✅ IMD will commission an X-Band Doppler Weather Radar at Pulpally, Wayanad, Kerala
✅ Collaboration between Ministry of Earth Sciences, KSDMA and Pazhassi Raja College
✅ Coverage radius: 100 km
✅ Operates at 8–12 GHz frequency with 2–4 cm wavelength
✅ Short wavelengths enable detection of light rain, tiny water droplets and fog
✅ Aims to strengthen very-short-range weather forecasting and disaster warnings in the Western Ghats
#CurrentAffairs
