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• Days after former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa named his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa as opposition presidential candidate, the battle over candidacy within the United National Party (UNP) has intensified, with no indication of a decision yet.<


• While UNP legislators point to at least three different positions on who their party must field, much of the disagreement in the last few days is over the clashing interests of party leader and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and deputy leader Sajith Premadasa, who are both presidential aspirants. At this point, neither seems willing to give way to the other, say members with evident anxiety over the delay.

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• China said Hong Kong’s protest movement had reached “near terrorism” on Wednesday, after a night of ugly clashes at the city’s airport where demonstrators set upon and detained two men they suspected of being government sympathisers.


• Flights out of the financial hub resumed after two days of disruptions caused by thousands of protesters swarming the terminal at one of the world’s busiest airports, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of departures.

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• Facebook has paid hundreds of contractors to listen to and transcribe snippets of users’ conversations, U.S. media reported.


• Facebook acknowledged the transcriptions, which were first reported by Bloomberg, telling the news agency in a statement that they were made with users’ permission, but that the practice has nonetheless been stopped.

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• Former Chief Ministers and the local MPs are unlikely to attend the first-ever Independence Day celebrations in J&K after its special status was revoked on August 5, as the current dispensation has put in place stringent security measures for celebrations in all districts.


• Asked if the regional party leaders, including incarcerated National Conference president and Srinagar MP Farooq Abdullah and two former Chief Ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, would be allowed to attend the function in Srinagar, J&K government spokesman Rohit Kansal avoided a direct answer.

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• The country is celebrating its 73rd Independence Day today. Prime Minister Modi will deliver his address to the nation from the Red Fort shortly.


• Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to deliver his sixth straight Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort in a matter of hours.

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• Concerned over reports of some schools enforcing caste-based wristbands on students, the Tamil Nadu directorate of school education issued a directive proscribing the practice and requiring education authorities to monitor the same take punitive action for any violation.


• In a notification dated July 31, director of school education S Kannappan, has ordered chief educational officers of every district to take stringent action against schools where the practice of students wearing wristbands are enforced to differentiate them according to their caste. This followed a representation to the government from officer trainees of IAS of the 2018 batch.

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• Calcutta University on Wednesday declared the results of Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Science (BSc) and Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) Part III (General ) examination, 2019. The results have been declared under the 1+1+1 system.


• The results were declared around 3.30pm on the West Bengal Examination results 2017 website at wbresults.nic.in.

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• Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has further extended the last date for submission of online and offline admission forms for all programmes for July 2019 session.


• The last date for submission of forms for all Programmes for July 2019 session has now been extended to August 27, 2019. Earlier, the last day to apply for IGNOU admissions for July 2019 sessions had been extended to August 14.

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• IDBI Bank’s net loss widened to ₹3,801 crore in the first quarter ended June 30, 2019, against ₹2,410 crore in the year-ago period, as it continued to reel under the burden of heavy loan-loss provisions and grappled with asset-quality issues.


• In the reporting quarter, the bank made a whopping ₹7,009 crore loan-loss provision, against ₹4,603 crore in the year-ago period. Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) had acquired 51 per cent stake in IDBI Bank from the government in January 2019.

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• 22 year old American Artistic gymnast Simone Arianne Biles became the first woman in the world to make a “triple-double” floor exercise landing which is a finale featuring two flips and three twists at the 2019 US(United States) Gymnastics Championships held at Kansas city, Missouri, US.


• The triple double involves two flips and three twists in the air( only 2 men in the world have done the move successfully).

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• Union Home Minister’s Medal for Excellence in Investigation 2019 was conferred to 96 police personnel, including 15 Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers. The award was instituted in 2018 to promote high professional standards of investigation of crime and to recognize such excellence in investigation by officers.


• 11 were from Maharashtra Police, 10 from Uttar Pradesh Police, 9 from Kerala Police, 8 from Madhya Pradesh Police, 6 from Delhi Police and Karnataka Police and the remaining were from the other States/Union territories and Central Investigating Agencies.

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• Queen of Indian athletics, P T Usha (Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha) from Payyoli (Kerala) has appointed as one of the six members of the Asian Athletics Association’s (AAA) Athletes Commission, in recognition of her outstanding achievements at the continental stage. This is the 2nd time she has been appointed a member of the Commission.


• Other members: The commission will be headed by Andrey Abduvaliyev (Uzbekistan),a1992 Olympics gold medallist hammer thrower. other members of the commission include Wang Yu (China), Olga Rypakova (Kazakhstan), a 2012 London Olympics gold medallist triple jumper, Lee Hup Wei (Malaysia) and Saad Shaddad (Saudi Arabia).

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• vorian musician DJ Arafat (Real name: Ange Didier Huon), aged 33, passed away in a road crash at a hospital in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.


• Born on January 26, 1986 in Yopougon, Ivory coast, he had issued 11 albums, mainly of “coupe-decale” – a dance music form combining rapid percussion, choppy rhythms with hip hop-style vocals.