A look at the headlines right now:

  1. Mob lynchings ‘unfortunate’ but Opposition must not ‘politicise’ them, says PM Narendra Modi: The prime minister also said that the Opposition’s grand alliance is meant to ‘serve personal ambitions, not people’s aspirations’.
  2. Nobel Prize-winning author VS Naipaul dies at 85: Some of his famous works include ‘A Bend in the River’ and ‘A House for Mr Biswas’.
  3. Toll in rain-related incidents in Kerala rises to 37, red alert issued in eight districts: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan conducted an aerial survey of flood-affected areas in the state.
  4. Policeman killed, three injured in gunfight with suspected militants in Srinagar’s Batmaloo area: The operation is still on.
  5. ‘I will fight for Article 35A till I go down in my grave,’ says former Jammu and Kashmir CM Farooq Abdullah: He warned that if the Article 35A is tinkered with, the fallout will be difficult to control.
  6. NASA postpones launch of spacecraft that will go near the sun, will attempt again on Sunday: The unmanned Parker Solar Probe was put off to allow engineers more time to investigate a red flag that was raised shortly before the launch.
  7. Tejashwi Yadav accuses Nitish Kumar of shielding those guilty in Muzaffarpur rapes, gives him one-week ultimatum: The RJD leader threatened to launch protest if Kumar fails to reveal the whereabouts of a girl who went missing after being shifted from the shelter home.
  8. Elon Musk faces lawsuits for ‘misleading’ tweets that surged Tesla’s stock price: On August 7, Musk had announced that he was considering taking Tesla off the stock exchanges and that funding was ‘secured’.
  9. ‘We will replace Gabbar Singh Tax with single GST slab,’ says Rahul Gandhi in Jaipur: The Congress president criticised the Centre for the Rafale defence deal, crimes against women, demonetisation and the farmer crisis.
  10. China is holding Uyghur Muslims in ‘political indoctrination camps’, says UN panel: Beijing has converted the Xinjiang region into a ‘massive internship camp’ in the name of fighting extremism, said the committee on racism.