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• Colombia's president has vowed to hunt down Farc rebel commanders who have called on followers to take up arms after three years of peace.


• President Iván Duque offered $882,000 (£725,000) for the capture of each of the rebels who appeared in a video with former Farc commander Iván Márquez.


• He was one of the main negotiators of the 2016 peace deal, which ended 50 years of conflict.

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• US President Donald Trump has launched a new Pentagon command focused on warfare in space.


• It comes as US military chiefs see China and Russia making advancements in the military final frontier.


• The command will focus on defending American interests in space, such as the hundreds of satellites used for communication and surveillance.

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• A wooden statue of the US president has been built in his wife's home country of Slovenia, dividing opinion there.


• The nearly 8m (26ft) tall statue was constructed on private land and depicts Donald Trump with a square head and jaw, raising his fist in the air.


• The artist behind the statue told AFP news agency he wanted it to serve as a comment on populist politics.


• It comes after a tongue-in-cheek statue of Mr. Trump's wife was erected in the country.

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• President Donald Trump said that U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan will drop to 8,600 if a deal is reached with the Taliban and that a permanent presence will remain.


• “We’re going down to 8,600 and then we make a determination from there,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News radio. “We’re always going to have a presence.”

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• U.S. President Donald Trump canceled a visit to Poland on Thursday and Florida's governor expanded a state of emergency to prepare for Hurricane Dorian, which is forecast to make landfall on the Atlantic coast Monday as a dangerous Category 4 storm.


• Trump said Vice President Mike Pence would make the trip to Poland in his place so that he could remain in the United States to make sure federal resources were properly directed at the arriving storm.

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• The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has approached the office of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla for sanction to prosecute three Trinamool Congress MPs and one former parliamentarian in the Narada News sting operation case, said the agency.


• A CBI official said the approval had been sought with respect to MPs Saugata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh, and Prasun Banerjee, besides former MP Suvendu Adhikari. Mr. Adhikari is currently the Transport Minister of West Bengal.

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• Companies operating news portals expressed disappointment with the government’s new Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy capping the investment in digital media at 26% and asserted that the measure would impact both existing digital platforms as also affect new platforms that may be looking to expand.


• Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal announced that the Cabinet had cleared FDI up to 26% under the “government route” for digital media companies that upload or stream news and current affairs.

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• With 60,000 children going missing in India every year, social media has propelled child lifting fear.


• On average, a child goes missing every 10 minutes in India, according to the women and child development ministry website for tracking missing children. At this rate, around 54,750 children would have been reported missing in the last one year in India and only about half of them would have been traced, if one goes by the police record on the missing children.


• This startling data could be considered nemesis of the mob lynching incidents over suspicion of the child lifting gangs in the Hindi heartland, which has a high incidence of children going missing for a population of one lakh than other parts of India.

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• An NGO batting for the Assamese community on Thursday said the National Register of Citizens (NRC) 2019 should be accepted as the primary document for Indian citizens of Assam while an umbrella body of tribal organisations said the NRC would be redundant if a “single aborigine” is kept out of it.


• Leaders of the Axom Nagarik Samaj (ANS) made up of retired government officials, social entrepreneurs and journalists did not rule out discrepancies in the NRC to be published on August 31.

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• Central Selection Board of Constable (CSBC) Bihar has declared the results of forest guard recruitment exam 2019. Candidates who had appeared for the CSBC written exam can check their results at csbc.bih.nic.in


• CSBC had conducted the written exam for forest guard recruitment on June 16, 2019. 3,11,425 candidates had taken the CSBC forest guard exam.


• Candidates who have cleared the written exam are eligible to appear for the physical efficiency test (PET) that will be held in the month of October. The schedule for the same will be released later.

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• The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) has witnessed a better gender balance in the current academic year with overall 1,619 female candidates gaining admission as against 1,349 in 2017-19.


• As per data shared by the Human Resource Development Ministry in Rajya Sabha last month, the percentage of female students to the total students admitted in IIMs for the year 2017, 2018 and 2019 are 25.69 per cent, 26.85 per cent and 30.61 per cent, respectively.

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• Nearly three years after demonetisation, currency in circulation continues to grow sharply. This is true for both banknotes as well as coins in circulation, although the number of ₹2,000 notes has reduced in the last one year.


• According to data in the RBI’s annual report, the number of banknotes in circulation at the end of March jumped to 10,875.9 crore pieces.


• In 2017-18 and 2016-17, it was largely unchanged at 10,239.5 crore pieces and 10,029.3 crore pieces, respectively.

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• Even as digital transactions rise, a survey on Retail Payment Habits of Individuals by the Reserve Bank of India found that cash continues to be the preferred mode, followed by debit card.


• “96.3 percent of respondents were aware of digital payments...cash was the most preferred mode of payment, followed by digital mode, mainly debit card,” found the survey conducted in six cities – Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Kolkata, and Mumbai.

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• All-rounder Hardik Pandya, who was rested for the tour of the West Indies because of lower-back issues, has been picked for the three-match T20I series to be played against South Africa.


• Hardik has replaced seamer Bhubaneswar Kumar who was in the team for the T20I series against the West Indies.

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• Rishabh Pant will be desperate to pay back the faith reposed in him by the team management when India look to steamroll West Indies with another dominant show in the second World Test championship encounter starting.


• Having won the first Test by 318 runs, India is runaway favorites going into the second and final match at the Sabina Park against a team that neither showed the resolve nor the aptitude required to put up a sustained fight in five-day cricket.

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• While Paralympian Deepa Malik was conferred the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, sprinter Mohammed Anas, Kabaddi star Ajay Thakur and footballer Gurpreet Singh Sandhu among others received Arjuna Awards.


• President Ram Nath Kovind presented the National Sports Day Awards on the 114th birth anniversary of Major Dhyan Chand to sportspersons from the country at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

• Deepa Malik (Para-Athletics)


• Bajrang Punia (Wrestling)

• Ravindra Jadeja (Cricket)


• Mohammed Anas (Athletics)


• Gurpreet Singh Sandhu (Football)


• Sonia Lather (Boxing)


• Chinglensana Singh Kangujam (Hockey)


• S Bhaskaran (Bodybuilding)


• Ajay Thakur (Kabaddi)


• Anjum Moudgil (Shooting)


• Bhamidipati Sai Praneeth (Badminton)


• Tajinder Pal Singh Toor (Athletics)


• Pramod Bhagat (Para sports-badminton)


• Harmeet Rajul Desai (Table tennis)


• Pooja Dhanda (Wrestling)


• Fouad Mirza (Equestrian)


• Simran Singh Shergill (Polo)


• Poonam Yadav (Cricket)


• Swapna Burman (Athletics)


• Sundar Singh Gurjar (Para sports-athletics)


• Gaurav Singh Gill (Motorsports)

• Mohinder Singh Dhillon (athletics)


• Sandeep Gupta (table tennis)


• Vimal Kumar (badminton)

• Sanjay Bhardwaj (cricket)


• Rambir Singh Khokar (kabaddi)


• Mezban Patel (hockey)

• Manoj Kumar (wrestling)


• C Lalremsanga (archery)


• Arup Basak (table tennis)


• Nitten Kirrtane (tennis)


• Manuel Fredricks (hockey)

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• A book on Barack Obama, former United States (US) President, titled “Obama: The Call of History” has been written by Peter Baker, the Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times.
• It gives an in-depth account of Obama’s years in office. It has been published by Penguin India.

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• Veteran Bengali actor Nimu Bhowmik, aged 84, passed away at his home in Kolkata due to cardiac arrest. He was born on November 14, 1935, in Dinajpur district of undivided Bengal.


• He played major roles in Bengali classics such as ‘Ganadebata’ (1979), ‘Baghini’ (1968), ‘Dadar Kirti’ (1980), ‘Guru Dakshina’ (1987) and ‘Dash Mash Das Diner Galpo’ (2019) which was his last film.