♦ The 3rd International AYUSH Conference and Exhibition 2026 opened at the Dubai World Trade Centre on 15 February 2026.
♦ The three-day event, which runs until February 17, seeks to highlight ancient medical traditions and their contemporary applications.
♦ The conference theme is “Evidence-Based AYUSH Interventions in Mind-Body Health”.
♦ Inaugurating the conference, Minister of State for AYUSH Prataprao Jadhav said, India’s traditional knowledge systems are now playing a key role in global health discussions.
♦ He said, AYUSH systems offer holistic and evidence-based solutions focused on harmony between body, mind and the environment.
Posted Date: February 15, 2026Meetings
♦ Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam on 19 February 2026, marking the formal commencement of one of the largest global gatherings focused on artificial intelligence.
♦ Modi presented India’s 'MANAV' vision for artificial intelligence, setting out a human-centric framework for the responsible use of AI.
♦ He said 'MANAV' is an acronym for five guiding pillars: 'moral and ethical systems', 'accountable governance', 'national sovereignty', 'accessible and inclusive technology' and 'valid and legitimate systems'. These principles together define how India envisions the future of AI in a way that prioritises humanity, he added.
Posted Date: February 19, 2026♦ Food Corporation of India (FCI) and World Food Programme (WFP) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the supply of rice in support of global humanitarian operations aimed at combating hunger.
♦ The Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has informed that FCI will supply two lakh metric tonnes of rice to WFP under the MoU.
♦ This agreement showcases the country’s resolve to ensure no one goes hungry.
♦ The partnership reinforces India’s commitment to global food security, strengthening cooperation with WFP in addressing humanitarian needs worldwide and reinforces India’s role as a trusted and responsible contributor to global food systems.
Posted Date: February 18, 2026♦ India has set a new Guinness World Record after receiving more than 2.5 lakh pledges for responsible artificial intelligence use within 24 hours during the India AI Impact Summit 2026, said Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on 18 February 2026.
♦ The Minister said that India achieved the Guinness World Records title for the recording 250,946 valid pledges between February 16 and 17.
♦The announcement was made at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi during the summit, where the achievement was officially verified by a Guinness World Records adjudicator.
Posted Date: February 18, 2026♦ Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy inaugurated the 23rd edition of BioAsia 2026 international summit on 17 February 2026. The two-day global conference will be held at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC). This year’s summit is themed ‘TechBio Unleashed – AI, Automation, and the Revolutionary Changes in Life Sciences.’
♦ BioAsia has grown into one of Asia’s premier life sciences forums, fostering partnerships, technology transfer, and policy dialogue. This year’s summit has drawn 500 companies and over 4,000 delegates from across the world. During the inaugural ceremony, the Chief Minister presented the Genome Valley Excellence Award 2026 to University of Pennsylvania professor Bruce L. Levine , a pioneer in cell and gene therapy.
Posted Date: February 17, 2026♦ Prime Minister Narendra Modi held bilateral talks with French President Emmanuel Macron at Maharashtra Lok Bhavan in Mumbai on 17 February 2026. India and France agreed to upgrade the India-France relationship to a Special Global Strategic Partnership. There were a total of 21 outcomes. Both sides agreed on the establishment of an annual Foreign Ministers Dialogue for regularly reviewing the implementation of the elevated partnership and Horizon 2047 Roadmap. Both nations agreed to the launch of the India-France Year of Innovation and the India-France Innovation Network.
♦ Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron virtually inaugurated the Final Assembly Line (FAL) for H125 helicopters in Vemagal Industrial Area in Kolar (near Bengaluru), Karnataka. This is India’s first private-sector helicopter manufacturing facility, and will initially produce 10 H125 helicopters annually, serving both domestic needs and export markets in neighbouring countries. The plant will initially produce 10 H125 helicopters per year, with the potential to scale up to meet a projected demand of 500 units over the next 20 years. The first “Made in India” H125 is expected to take off from this facility by early 2027.
♦ Thereafter, President Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron paid tribute to the victims of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
♦ As India and France approach three decades of their strategic partnership, the relationship is entering a more ambitious and future-oriented phase under the Horizon 2047 roadmap. India established diplomatic relations with France in 1947, but the defining moment came on 26 January 1998, when the two countries launched a Strategic Partnership – India’s first with a Western nation and France’s first outside the European Union. Since then, ties have steadily expanded across defence, civil nuclear energy, space, technology, climate action and the Indo-Pacific.
♦ Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to France in July 2023 as Guest of Honour at the French National Day marked 25 years of the partnership. During the visit, both sides adopted the Horizon 2047 roadmap – a long-term blueprint aligned with the centenary of India’s independence and 100 years of diplomatic ties.
Posted Date: February 17, 2026♦ Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 16 February 2026. The expo is being held till 20th February, alongside the India AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam. The Expo serves as a national demonstration of AI in action, where policy meets practice, innovation meets scale, and technology meets the everyday citizen.
♦ The Expo also features 13 country pavilions, showcasing international collaboration in the AI ecosystem. These include pavilions from Australia, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Serbia, Estonia, Tajikistan and Africa.
♦ The Expo is hosting over 300 curated exhibition pavilions and live demonstrations, structured across three thematic chakras – People, Planet and Progress. The Expo is featuring over 600 high-potential startups, many of them building globally relevant and population-scale solutions. These startups will demonstrate working solutions that are already deployed in real-world settings.
Posted Date: February 16, 2026♦ For the first time, the Indian Air Force is set to train pilots of the UK's Royal Air Force under a new initiative. The decision was taken at the 19th UK-India Air Staff Talks held in New Delhi on 12 February 2026.
♦ Under the latest agreement, the Indian Air Force will deploy three Qualified Flight Instructors (QFI) to Royal Air Force (RAF) Valley in the UK - the training base for British fast jet pilots.
♦ This marks the first time that Indian QFIs will impart fast jet training to British pilots at RAF Valley. The deployment will be initially for a period of two years.
♦ The signing of this Letter of Agreement is a significant step in strengthening the longstanding relationship between the Royal Air Force and the Indian Air Force.
Posted Date: February 12, 2026♦ India and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland signed an agreement on social security relating to Social Security Contributions in New Delhi on 10 February 2026. The agreement seeks to avoid double social security contributions for employees of both countries on temporary assignments in each other’s territories for periods of up to 36 months.
♦ The Agreement was signed by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri for the Indian side and by the British High Commissioner to India, Lindy Cameron for the UK side.
♦ According to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), India has been entering into bilateral Social Security Agreements (SSAs) with other countries in order to protect the interests of Indian professionals/skilled workers working abroad for short durations and enhance the competitiveness of Indian companies.
♦ It may be recalled that at the time of signing of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between India and the United Kingdom in July 2025, both governments had committed to concluding an agreement on social security.
Posted Date: February 10, 2026♦ Seychelles President Patrick Herminie met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on 9 February 2026. During the talks Modi announced a special economic package of USD 175 million for Seychelles to support projects in key sectors including social housing, e-mobility, vocational training, health, defence and maritime security.
♦ Patrick Herminie who is on a State Visit to India from February 5 to 10 at the invitation of the Prime Minister. The visit coincides with the 50th anniversary of Seychelles’ independence and 50 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
♦ The two leaders agreed to deepen cooperation in digital transformation, with India extending support for the development of Digital Public Infrastructure in Seychelles, including digital payments, to improve governance and citizen services.
♦ In the health sector, Prime Minister Modi announced the donation of 10 ambulances to Seychelles, while both sides agreed to enhance cooperation in public health, affordable medicines and hospital infrastructure. President Herminie thanked India for the donation of 1,000 metric tonnes of food grains, saying it would strengthen food security and help reduce the cost of living.
Posted Date: February 9, 2026♦ Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held bilateral talks with the Minister of National Defence of the Hellenic Republic, Nikolaos-Georgios Dendias, in New Delhi on 9 February 2026, reaffirming the growing strategic partnership between India and Greece anchored in shared values of peace, stability, freedom and mutual respect.
♦ During the meeting, the two Defence Ministers signed a Joint Declaration of Intent aimed at strengthening defence industrial cooperation between the two countries. The declaration marks the beginning of work on a five-year roadmap to expand collaboration between India’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative and Greece’s defence reforms under Agenda 2030, with a focus on boosting indigenous defence manufacturing capabilities.
♦ Both sides also exchanged a Bilateral Military Cooperation Plan for 2026, outlining the roadmap for future military engagements and cooperation between the armed forces of India and Greece.
Posted Date: February 9, 2026♦ Prime Minister Narendra Modi held wide-ranging talks with his Malaysian counterpart Anwar Ibrahim in Kuala Lumpur on 8 February 2026. The talks covered political, defence and security cooperation, trade and investment, the digital economy, energy, education, tourism and regional issues. On this occation India and Malaysia inked 11 MoUs. Key agreements include Exchange of Notes (EoN) on semiconductors, a sector where both countries are aggressively partnering to boost the value chain, including AI and R&D.
♦ Both countries have also committed to advancing cooperation in emerging technologies.
Posted Date: February 8, 2026♦ India and the Netherlands on 6 February 2026 took a step toward strengthening bilateral cooperation in clean energy research with the launch of the India-Netherlands Hydrogen Fellowship Programme and the signing of a key academic partnership between the University of Groningen and 19 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The initiatives, facilitated by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), aim to boost research capacity, talent development, and deployment-oriented innovation in green hydrogen technologies, a critical pillar of India’s clean energy transition.
♦ The Hydrogen Fellowship Programme, for which the scheme guidelines and call for proposals were released on Thursday, is a national capacity-building initiative open to eligible doctoral, postdoctoral, and faculty applicants from Indian institutions. The programme will provide structured exposure to advanced hydrogen ecosystems in the Netherlands, focusing on system integration, safety, techno-economic analysis, life-cycle assessment, and pathways for indigenisation.
Posted Date: February 6, 2026♦ India and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) signed the Terms of Reference (ToR) for negotiations on a proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on 5 February 2026, marking a significant step towards deepening economic ties between the two sides. The ToR will guide the scope, structure, and modalities of the India-GCC FTA negotiations, formally initiating discussions aimed at a comprehensive trade pact.
♦ Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said the proposed FTA would act as a “force multiplier for the global good,” bringing greater predictability and stability to trade relations between India and the GCC.
♦ India’s trade with the GCC stood at USD 178.56 billion in FY 2024-25, accounting for 15.42 percent of India’s total global trade. Over the past five years, bilateral trade has grown at an average annual rate of 15.3 percent.
♦ India’s key exports to the GCC include engineering goods, rice, textiles, machinery, and gems and jewellery, while imports primarily comprise crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), petrochemicals, and precious metals such as gold.
♦ The GCC, comprising six countries, represents a combined market of about 61.5 million people and a GDP of USD 2.3 trillion, ranking ninth globally. The region is also a major source of foreign direct investment for India, with cumulative investments exceeding USD 31.14 billion as of September 2025. Nearly ten million members of the Indian diaspora live in GCC countries, further strengthening people-to-people ties alongside the strong presence of Indian businesses across the region.
Posted Date: February 5, 2026♦ India and Tanzania held the fourth meeting of the Joint Defence Cooperation Committee (JDCC) in Zanzibar on 3 February 2026. During the meeting, both sides discussed a wide range of areas for collaboration, including military training, service-to-service engagement, maritime security and defence industry cooperation. The discussions reflected the shared interest of the two countries in enhancing defence preparedness and regional security.
♦ The two delegations also explored emerging areas of cooperation such as counter-terrorism, peacekeeping training and capacity building in niche domains including Electronic Warfare (EW), Cyber and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Cooperation in military medicine was identified as a potential new area, while both sides agreed to initiate engagement between their Air Forces, complementing the existing cooperation between the Indian and Tanzanian Navies and Armies.
♦ The Indian delegation was led by Joint Secretary (Defence Cooperation) Amitabh Prasad and included senior officials from the Department of Defence and the Indian Armed Forces. The Tanzanian delegation was headed by Ibrahim Mhona, Chief of Operations and Training of the Tanzania People’s Defence Force (TPDF). India’s High Commissioner to Tanzania, Bishwadip Dey, also attended the meeting.
Posted Date: February 3, 2026