The Food Corporation of India (FCI) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the 18th of February, 2026 for the supply of rice in support of global humanitarian operations aimed at combating hunger.
The MoU was signed by Rabindra Kumar Agarwal, CMD, FCI for Government of India and Carl Skau - Deputy Executive Director, WFP in presence of Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution. Under the MoU, FCI will supply200,000 metric tonnes of rice (up to 25% broken) to WFP.
The MoU will be valid for a period of five years from the date of signing and may be extended by mutual consent. The price will be mutually agreed on an annual basis, with the current price fixed at INR 2,800 per quintal up to 31 March 2026.
Rabindra Kumar Agarwal(IAS) is the Chairman & Managing Director of Food Corporation of India(FCI).
At India AI Impact Summit, Google has announced that it will connect India with the US through new subsea cables as part of a 15 billion dollar investment spread over five years. In a statement, the company informed that through their collaborative infrastructure initiative named America-India Connect, a new international subsea gateway will be established in Vizag.
It added that three new subsea paths connecting India to Singapore, South Africa, and Australia, and four strategic fibre-optic routes will also be established.
Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, said that the initiative delivers new subsea cable routes to increase AI connectivity between India, the United States of America and multiple locations across the southern hemisphere. He also expressed hope that we believe India is going to have an extraordinary trajectory with AI.
Bharti Airtel announced that its subsidiary, Airtel Money, has received a Certificate of Registration from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a Type II Non-Deposit Accepting Non-Banking Financial Company [Type II-NBFC-ND (ICC)].
The certificate, bearing Registration No. N-14.03676 dated 13 February 2026, has been issued under Section 45-IA of the RBI Act, 1934.
With this approval, Airtel Money is authorised to commence the business of a non-banking financial institution without accepting public deposits, subject to the conditions prescribed by the RBI.
IDFC FIRST Bank launches Hello Cashback Credit Card, a fixed-deposit-backed offering designed to make credit more accessible for digitally savvy customers, especially young adults aged 18+ with online-first and UPI-led spending habits.
The card enables customers to begin building their credit history while benefiting from a strong and clearly differentiated cashback proposition on everyday digital payments.
India’s first private-sector helicopter Final Assembly Line (FAL) for the Airbus H125 chopper has come up at Vemagal in Karnataka.
The facility, owned by Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL), was inaugurated virtually by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and France President Emmanuel Macron.
The facility will assemble the civil H125 helicopter and potentially its military variant, the H125M, with localised maintenance and lifecycle support. The H125M is designed for missions including tactical reconnaissance and surveillance, high-altitude logistics, search and rescue, and medical evacuation.
The “Made in India” H125 is intended to serve civil and para-public segments such as emergency medical services, disaster management, law enforcement and regional connectivity under the UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) scheme. The H125 is also the only helicopter to have landed on the summit of Mount Everest and has accumulated more than 40 million flight hours.
The 6th National Rafting Championship titled “The Ultimate River Battle” will begin today at Shibnote in Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir. The championship aims to showcase top rafting talent from across the country while promoting adventure tourism in the region.
Set against the scenic backdrop of the mighty Chenab River, the event is expected to attract professional rafting teams, adventure enthusiasts, and tourists.
The Chenab River, known for its challenging rapids and breathtaking landscape, offers ideal conditions for competitive rafting.
The hosting of a national-level championship in Shibnote is seen as a significant step toward positioning Jammu & Kashmir as a premier adventure tourism hub.
Elaborate safety and logistical arrangements are in place for the four-day national sporting event being organised by the J&K Tourism Department in collaboration with the Doda District Administration.
Kerala has taken a significant step by approving India's first comprehensive graphene policy, hailed as the wonder material of the future, aiming to position itself as a global hub for research, development, and production of this advanced material.
The Union Cabinet has approved the Grefine Park. Kerala Industries Minister P Rajeev outlined a series of strategic incentives to attract both domestic and global investors, including a 50% subsidy on lease payments for manufacturing units established in government-managed parks.
This initiative is part of a broader vision to transform the state into a global hub for advanced materials, supported by the planned establishment of a graphene industrial park in Palakkad and a dedicated Digital Innovation Centre backed by a 200 crore investment.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has partnered with United States (US)-based deeptech major Nvidia to scale its sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
The NPCI said it will utilise Nvidia’s Nemotron open models to develop a ‘payments-focused AI foundational model’ in alignment with India’s regulatory and data sovereignty requirements.
This development comes after the introduction of the NPCI’s UPI Help Assistant, supported by FiMI (Financial Model for India) — a small language model (SLM) developed specifically for the payment ecosystem. The assistant streamlines grievance redressal for users of the real-time payments system.
Nvidia’s Nemotron is a family of open models, datasets, and technologies used to build agentic AI systems that are designed for advanced reasoning, coding, visual understanding, agentic tasks, and information retrieval, among other things.
Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, announced that India has successfully achieved the Guinness World Records title for the “Most pledges received for an AI responsibility campaign in 24 hours,” with a staggering 250,946 valid pledges received during the 24-hour period from February 16–17.
The announcement was made during the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, in the presence of Shri S. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY); Shri Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary, MeitY, CEO, IndiaAI Mission and DG, NIC; Ms. Kavita Bhatia, COO, IndiaAI;
Mr. Srinivasan Iyengar, SVP and GM, Central Engineering Group, Intel; and Mr. Pravin Patel, Guinness World Records Adjudicator, who officially verified the achievement.
The nationwide AI Responsibility Pledge campaign, launched under the IndiaAI Mission in collaboration with Intel India on February 16, sought to mobilise citizens across the country to commit to the ethical, inclusive, and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence through the dedicated portal, aipledge.indiaai.gov.in.
The fintech platform announced that it is introducing biometric authentication for UPI payments, allowing users to approve transactions using their smartphone’s fingerprint scanner or facial recognition. The feature enables a faster “one-touch” payment experience for transactions up to Rs 5,000.
JioHotstar has partnered with OpenAI to introduce a ChatGPT-powered voice and text interface, marking a major shift in how Indian audiences discover and experience streaming content.
Billed as a first-of-its-kind innovation in India, the integration replaces traditional keyword search and menu navigation with multilingual, natural-language conversations.
The companies say the feature aims to solve the long-standing “what to watch” dilemma through Multilingual Cognitive Search, enabling viewers to explore India’s largest streaming library simply by speaking their intent, mood or context.
For more than a decade, digital entertainment has largely been a one-way experience: browse, click, watch.
With this rollout, JioHotstar is positioning streaming as a two-way interaction that interprets nuance, layered prompts and cultural context in real time.
The Uttar Pradesh government has issued directives to all districts to identify and document manuscripts at the district level and present them digitally on a global platform. The initiative was taken under the ambitious national campaign, the ‘Gyan Bharatam Mission’, aimed at reviving India’s rich knowledge, tradition and intellectual heritage.
For supervision of this initiative, the Chief Development Officer (CDO) of each district has been designated as the nodal officer.
Under the Gyan Bharatam Mission, which focuses on heritage conservation, scientific preservation, digitisation and archiving of manuscripts and rare texts related to India’s knowledge tradition are being carried out in every district.
The objective is to make this invaluable heritage accessible to researchers, students, and the general public.
Under the Gyan Bharatam Mission, manuscripts and rare documents will be identified, surveyed, catalogued, preserved and digitised
The manuscripts and rare documents include handwritten texts, palm-leaf and birch-bark manuscripts and other materials available in government and non-government institutions, monasteries, temples, educational institutions, private and public libraries, as well as with individual collectors.
