APPOINTMENT

Appointment of Deepti Gaur Mukerjee as Higher Education Secretary

• Deepti Gaur Mukerjee, a 1993-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, was appointed Secretary of the Department of Higher Education under the Ministry of Education on 10 August 2026.

• The appointment was made by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) as part of a wider bureaucratic reshuffle involving several senior Union Government positions.

• The Department of Higher Education deals with universities, colleges, technical education and higher-education policy and functions under the Ministry of Education.

• Mukerjee replaced Vineet Joshi, who had been moved to the Ministry of Panchayati Raj in July 2026.

• The earlier 23 July 2026 order appointing Rajasthan-cadre IAS officer Naresh Pal Gangwar to the Higher Education Secretary post was subsequently modified.

• The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is an All India Service under Article 312 of the Constitution, with officers allotted to specific State cadres.

• Mukerjee had previously served as Secretary in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs from 16 August 2024, before being shifted to the Department of Higher Education.

• Other appointments in the reshuffle included Pallavi Jain Govil as Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, and Sunil Paliwal, Chairman of the Inland Waterways Authority of India, as Secretary, Youth Affairs.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Lebanon Abolishes the Death Penalty

• Lebanon’s Parliament voted on 11 August 2026 to formally abolish the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour for future offences.

• The new law also commutes the sentences of prisoners on death row, affecting approximately 84–85 prisoners.

• Lebanon had maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 17 January 2004, with no executions carried out since that date.

• Following the repeal, Lebanon became the first country in the Middle East to legally abolish capital punishment, according to the cited account.

• Lebanon is also described as the second member of the League of Arab States to abolish the death penalty in law, after Djibouti.

• The repeal was passed during a parliamentary session convened by Speaker Nabih Berri; the Hezbollah parliamentary caucus opposed the repeal.

• Justice Minister Adel Nassar and Lebanese MP Simon Abi Ramia were among the political figures associated with the legislative development, while the European Union welcomed the decision.

• Capital punishment refers to the legally authorised execution of a person as a criminal penalty; countries may abolish it completely, retain it only for exceptional offences, or maintain a moratorium in practice.

RANKING AND INDEX

QS World University Rankings 2027: India’s Performance

• The QS World University Rankings 2027, released on 18 June 2026, featured 52 Indian higher education institutions, compared with only 11 institutions in 2015.

• IIT Delhi emerged as India’s highest-ranked institution, securing 118th position globally, improving by five places.

• IIT Bombay ranked 134th, IIT Madras 170th, and IIT Kharagpur 205th globally.

• IISc Bengaluru and IIT Kanpur shared the 221st position, while the University of Delhi ranked 322nd and remained India’s highest-ranked non-STEM institution.

• Of the 52 Indian institutions, 26 improved, 9 remained unchanged, 15 declined, and 2 entered the rankings for the first time.

• 18 Indian institutions achieved their best-ever QS positions, while 13 non-IIT institutions recorded their highest-ever rankings.

• The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), launched by the Ministry of Education in 2015, has been cited as a factor behind the growing representation of Indian institutions in global rankings.

• NIRF evaluates institutions on parameters including teaching and learning resources, research and professional practice, graduation outcomes, outreach and inclusivity, and perception.

SPORTS

India Wins Five Medals on Day 3 of Commonwealth Fencing Championship 2026

• India won five medals on Day 3 of the Commonwealth Fencing Championship 2026 in Lagos, comprising 3 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze in senior individual events.

• The championship began on 9 August 2026 at Rugby School Nigeria, Atlantic City, Lagos, and is scheduled to continue until 14 August 2026.

• After Day 3, India’s overall medal tally reached 29 medals — 8 gold, 7 silver and 14 bronze.

• Kanaglakshmi won gold in the Senior Women’s Foil, while Joys Ashitha secured silver in the same event.

• Rajendran Shanthimol Sherjin won gold in the Senior Men’s Epee, defeating South Africa’s Pieter Kruger in the final.

• Singh Karan Singh clinched gold in the Senior Men’s Sabre final against Australia’s Shim Yoongi.

• Kumaresan Padma Gisho Nidhi won bronze in the Senior Men’s Sabre event.

• Fencing has three standard weapons—foil, epee and sabre—and the sport is governed internationally by the Fédération Internationale d’Escrime (FIE).

India’s Performance at the 23rd International Linguistics Olympiad 2026

• India won 1 gold, 3 bronze medals and 1 Honourable Mention at the 23rd International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) held in Bucharest, Romania.

• Shrilakshmi Venkatraman won the gold medal with a score of 70.0.

• Aarav Anil Rao, Nishanth Shankar Lakshmanan and Advay Misra won bronze medals, while Soham Amit Pednekar received an Honourable Mention.

• The IOL is an annual competition for secondary school students, testing logical analysis through linguistics problems involving grammar, syntax, semantics and language patterns.

• The 2026 edition had 255 individual competitors from more than 40 countries.

• India’s cumulative IOL tally since its first participation in 2009 reached 37 individual medals — 6 gold, 9 silver and 22 bronze.

• The Indian team was selected through the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO), with the final eight-member team trained by the Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC), IIIT Hyderabad.

• In 2026, the IOL awarded 84 medals globally: 14 gold, 30 silver and 40 bronze, along with 44 Honourable Mentions.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

NASA Invites ISRO to Join Moon Base Programme under Artemis Accords

• NASA invited ISRO to join its Moon Base programme under the broader Artemis lunar exploration framework.

• India signed the Artemis Accords on 21 June 2023, supporting peaceful and cooperative civil space exploration.

• The invitation was discussed at the 9th India-U.S. Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting in Bengaluru on 5–6 August 2026.

• India and the U.S. agreed to strengthen cooperation in lunar exploration and open scientific data sharing.

• NASA’s Artemis programme includes Orion, Space Launch System (SLS), Gateway, and future human missions to the Moon.

• The cooperation builds on the NISAR mission, launched in July 2025, for Earth observation using synthetic aperture radar.

• The expanded cooperation is linked with the U.S.-India TRUST Initiative and the February 2025 India-U.S. Joint Leaders’ Statement.

• COPUOS (UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space) deals with international cooperation and the peaceful use of outer space.