1.India’s golden generation scripts 1983 moment is Chess: wins Team gold and 4 individual golds at Chess Olympiad

It was one of the most dominant performances in the history of chess. And it came from India’s golden generation, which delivered two gold medals at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest. Beside the team medals, there were also four individual gold with D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal claiming individual honours.

The Indian men’s team in the open section was so breathtakingly formidable that in 44 games, they lost just once, winning 27 and drawing the remaining. They capped the event by brushing aside Slovenia with three wins and a draw.

2.Forget the bear hug: India’s gradual turn from Russia, towards the West; James Crabtree in ECFR

“Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Russia was greeted with predictable disappointment in European capitals. The trip marked the Indian prime minister’s first international foray following his re-election in June, and his first to Moscow in nearly a decade. The sight of Modi in a bear hug with Vladimir Putin rekindled old worries about India’s enduring Russian ties and the sincerity of more recent pledges to build new partnerships in the West. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was especially blunt, describing Modi’s choice of destination as “a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts.”  

European and north American leaders should not draw the wrong conclusions about India’s long-term trajectory, however. Modi’s move is a reminder of his unwillingness to abandon Russia. But he is also trying to strike a delicate balance of managing India’s historic links with Moscow while not obviously deepening them. In fact, embracing the world’s advanced industrial democracies is now a greater Indian strategic priority – and one that presents geopolitical opportunities for Europe.”

3.India may have warmed up to electric vehicles (EV), but one has to jump through hoops to charge them.

Mercedes-Benz India chief Santosh Iyer pointed to this problem and called for a common platform for real-time information on charging stations. “Today, if you buy an electric car, you need three-four different apps on your phone. What we are requesting the government is to come up with something like a UPI-based system," Iyer told PTI.

4.Mutual fund industry to cross 50 million investor mark in September

The mutual fund (MF) investor base is set to surpass the 50-million unique investor milestone in September, with net additions expected to exceed 10 million in just 12 months, driven by sustained buoyancy in the equity market and a surge in new fund offerings (NFOs).

Previously, it took the industry 21 months to add 10 million investors, while growing from 20 million to 40 million took over 26 months.

5.FPIs pump in Rs 87,000 crore in Sept quarter, most since June 2023

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have pumped over Rs 87,000 crore (over $10 billion) into domestic equities this quarter—the most since the three months ending June 2023. A combination of better growth prospects, increased weightage in global indices, and large initial public offerings (IPOs) have ensured a healthy influx of foreign money to the Indian markets, which remain pricey vis-à-vis global counterparts.

FPI flows slumped in the first two quarters (March and June) of calendar 2024 after pumping in Rs 53,036 crore in the quarter that ended December 2023. In the March 2024 quarter, foreign investors were net buyers of Rs 8,786 crore, and in June 2024, they were net sellers to the tune of Rs 3,040 crore.

6.Sri Lanka elected a leftist president Sunday, as the country seeks to push past years of economic crisis. 

Anura Kumara Dissanayake ran an anti-corruption campaign that blamed the incumbents for the country’s civil unrest and first-ever debt default in 2022 — enough to persuade voters who may have been concerned by his neo-Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna’s “violent past” of leading armed insurrections against the state, the BBC noted.

“His ascension signals the depth of frustration among Sri Lankans with the ruling establishment,” Bloomberg wrote, adding that Dissanayake has pledged to renegotiate a 2023 International Monetary Fund $3 billion bailout that stipulated unpopular austerity measures and tax hikes, although doing so could put the country under further strain in the short-term.

7.World’s biggest banks pledge support for nuclear power; Financial Times

Fourteen of the world’s biggest banks and financial institutions are pledging to increase their support for nuclear energy, a move that governments and the industry hope will unlock finance for a new wave of nuclear power plants.

At an event on Monday in New York with White House climate policy adviser John Podesta, institutions including Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will say they support a goal first set out at the COP28 climate negotiations last year to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

Meanwhile, Three Mile Island nuclear plant is to restart in USA.

A Pennsylvania power plant home to the worst nuclear accident in US history will be restarted by early 2028, according to reports. The lone undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island plant will fuel the rapidly growing AI efforts by Microsoft, which signed a 20-year power-purchasing agreement with Constellation Energy.

In 1979, the plant’s second reactor suffered a partial nuclear meltdown after a coolant loop failed, causing the reactor core to overheat. No injuries or deaths were caused by the incident, though a small amount of radioactive gas and iodine was released into the atmosphere. No public health effects were identified, and the first reactor—the one to be restarted—continued to operate until 2019 before being shut down due to cost. 

Energy-intensive generative AI applications are expected to consume 1.5% of global electricity generation by 2029.

8.Move over copilots: meet the next generation of AI-powered assistants; Financial Times

Move over, copilots: it’s time to make room for the AI agents.

That has been the message from the software industry in recent days, as some of the biggest companies have lined up behind the latest idea for how to turn generative artificial intelligence into a staple of working life.

Microsoft, Salesforce and Workday this week put agents at the centre of their AI plans, while Oracle and ServiceNow have also used the industry’s annual round of user conferences this month to promote the idea.

AI assistants known as copilots — a term first popularised by Microsoft — have become the software industry’s main response to the generative AI unleashed by the launch of ChatGPT nearly two years ago.

The latest wave of AI agents are designed to go further and take actions on behalf of users. While agents have become the newest front in the battle between tech giants like OpenAI and Google, they have also turned into the software industry’s latest attempt to sell generative AI to business customers.

The evolution reflects both an advance in the underlying technology, as well as a new marketing pitch from an industry looking to capitalise on a heavily hyped technology that has yet to have much impact on its revenues.

If the industry’s claims prove true, the move from AI assistants to agents could also open the door to a far more disruptive phase in the evolution of generative AI, both for workers affected by the technology as well as software companies themselves.