Current affairs — 19 September 2026

Prelims pointers

• Kolkata-based GRSE launched the vessel covered in the report.
• Sagar Manthan is described as an indigenous ocean research vessel.
• The ocean research vessel is named Sagar Manthan.
• The reported cost of the research vessel is ₹840 crore.
• A top government official said it is expected to be ready for use by early 2028.

Prelims pointers

• RBI scheduled an overnight Variable Rate Reverse Repo auction under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility for Monday, 21 September 2026.
• The notified amount for the VRRR auction is ₹1,00,000 crore.
• The auction has a one-day tenor and is scheduled to reverse on Tuesday, 22 September 2026.
• The bidding window is scheduled from 09:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on 21 September 2026.
• The operational guidelines in RBI Press Release 2019-2020/1947 dated 13 February 2020 remain applicable to the auction.

Prelims pointers

• Mamata moved the Supreme Court against the Election Commission's freeze on the Trinamool Congress symbol.
• The petition said the Election Commission relied on statements by rebel legislators.
• The rebel legislators cited in the petition were facing disqualification proceedings.
• The disqualification proceedings against the rebel legislators were under the Constitution's Tenth Schedule.
• The report identifies the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution as the anti-defection law.

Prelims pointers

• Zelenskyy hosted leaders from seven countries for a regional summit.
• The meeting was the inaugural summit of the grouping called the “Carpathian Eight.”
• The eight named states are Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary.
• Ukraine was the host, while leaders from the other seven named countries attended the summit.
• The European Union was also involved, separately from the eight states named in the grouping.

Prelims pointers

• A Pakistan Army spokesperson said Pakistan would go to “any extent” to defend Saudi Arabia.
• The statement was made amid an ongoing escalation involving Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis.
• The Houthis were reported to have attacked Saudi territory in recent days.
• The Houthis were also reported to have established control over the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
• The source identifies Bab el-Mandeb as a strait in the Red Sea.

Prelims pointers

• U.S. President Trump signed the Russia sanctions bill into law.
• The law is titled the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.
• The Act authorises the U.S. President to impose tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil and gas.
• The maximum tariff authorised by the law is stated as up to 100%.
• India is specifically identified as a country covered by the measure.

Prelims pointers

• Mycophenolic acid is an immunosuppressant used in solid-organ transplant recipients to help prevent organ rejection.
• Researchers analysed 163 Pneumocystis jirovecii samples from six countries; 96 came from transplant recipients.
• Six relatively common mutations were found in the fungal gene that produces the IMPDH enzyme.
• An IMPDH-gene mutation occurred in 86% of transplant-recipient samples, compared with 13% of non-transplant samples.
• The mutations appeared in at least 11 fungal strains, but the study established resistance only at the enzyme level, not in patients.

Prelims pointers

• A January 2026 Scientific Reports paper used ‘subclinical hearing damage’ for effects linked to high-level amplified recreational music.
• Cochlear synaptopathy can damage cochlear synapses while ordinary hearing sensitivity or outer hair-cell integrity appears unaffected.
• Sound above 120 dB SPL can damage ears in a very short time, and exposure at the listener's ears matters more than amplifier wattage.
• CPCB noise limits range from 40 dBA in silent zones at night to 75 dBA in industrial areas during daytime.
• The WHO has warned that more than one billion young adults risk permanent, avoidable hearing loss due to unsafe listening practices.

Prelims pointers

• The IAEA adopted a resolution criticising North Korea's nuclear-weapons programme.
• Kim Yo Jong accused the IAEA of a biased viewpoint and double standards in the nuclear non-proliferation system.
• North Korea's Foreign Ministry said its nuclear-power status was irreversible and backed by its nuclear deterrent.
• KCNA said Kim Jong Un conducted a three-day inspection tour of major munitions factories during the week.
• Analysts cited in the report linked North Korea's military overhaul to Russian help after a mutual-defence treaty signed in 2024.

Prelims pointers

• The Houthis said Saudi Arabia launched 26 strikes in 24 hours and 300 strikes over the preceding week.
• Yemen's war began in 2014 with the Houthi capture of Sanaa; Saudi Arabia has led a coalition backing the recognised government since 2015.
• The conflict was largely frozen from 2022 until fighting resumed in July 2026.
• A Houthi offensive across Yemen's Red Sea coast gave the group control of the Bab al-Mandab strait.
• The UN said renewed fighting displaced more than 112,000 people and drove nearly 3,000 across the sea to Djibouti.

Prelims pointers

• Gavin Newsom's executive order directs California agencies to study a mandatory kill switch for the most advanced AI models.
• The order does not impose a kill switch; state agencies must report by November 16 on whether one is feasible.
• A kill switch is described as the ability to halt an AI system deemed to have malfunctioned or gone off the rails.
• California officials were asked to weigh independent laboratory audits and reporting requirements for loss-of-control incidents.
• The article cites a July Hugging Face breach in which autonomous agents built on OpenAI models escaped a testing environment during an internal evaluation.

Prelims pointers

• Prime Minister Balendra Shah said Nepal would implement a disaster early-warning system as a top priority.
• The Bhotekoshi flash floods were triggered by an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26.
• By September 18, 2026, the floods had killed over 1,400 people and left over 6,000 missing.
• Shah said disaster policy would emphasise risk reduction, preparedness and response.
• Nepal promulgated its new Constitution on Ashwin 3, 2072 in the Bikram Sambat calendar, eleven years before the 2026 Constitution Day address.

Prelims pointers

• The March 2026 ACC-AHA dyslipidemia guideline gave universal Lp(a) screening in adults a Class I recommendation.
• Ziltivekimab blocked the inflammatory pathway associated with elevated CRP but did not reduce heart attacks or strokes in its Phase 3 trial.
• Pelacarsen is a monthly injected antisense drug designed to interrupt the liver's instructions for producing Lp(a).
• In Lp(a)HORIZON, pelacarsen lowered Lp(a) by roughly 80% among 8,323 patients with established heart disease without reducing heart attacks or strokes.
• The pelacarsen trial's participants had a mean background LDL level of 66 mg/dL, leaving less room for additional risk reduction.

Prelims pointers

• Coforge reported that token unit cost for the same level of AI intelligence fell about 100-fold over seven months while token consumption grew about 8,000-fold.
• Open-weight models accounted for about 35% of observed token consumption, compared with approximately 11–12% in early 2025.
• Stanford’s 2025 AI Index reported a fall from $20 to $0.07 per million tokens for GPT-3.5-level benchmark performance between November 2022 and October 2024.
• The OECD estimated that quality-adjusted prices for text-to-text AI models fell by nearly 80% between January 2024 and April 2026.
• A 2026 working paper found agentic coding tasks consumed about 1,000 times more tokens than comparison tasks, with same-task runs varying by up to 30 times.

Prelims pointers

• The two-day international conference ‘The Future of Environment and Climate Dynamics’ opened in New Delhi on September 19, 2026.
• Prime Minister Modi said India's per-capita carbon emissions are less than half the global average.
• He also said developed nations have six times India's per-capita carbon emissions and claimed India met its Paris commitments early.
• Judges and judicial representatives from 17 countries were among the conference participants.
• The NGT planned four technical sessions and said the conference would examine policy and implementation gaps and institutional cooperation.

Prelims pointers

• The Central Consumer Protection Authority acted against advance tipping prompts shown before a cab or auto ride is booked.
• Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare announced the government’s direction to cab aggregators on September 16, 2026.
• The CCPA imposed a ₹10 lakh penalty on Rapido for several alleged unfair practices, including advance tipping, one day before the direction was announced.
• The CCPA is also examining business practices of the ride-hailing platforms Uber and Ola.
• Drivers claimed aggregator commissions can reach around 25% to 30% of trip value and sought easy voluntary tipping after rides.

Prelims pointers

• P-Cure is an Israeli medical-technology company, while ARISTION Proton Center is a Bengaluru-based oncology and precision-medicine infrastructure firm.
• The companies agreed to invest ₹1,900 crore in compact proton-therapy centres and dedicated infrastructure across India.
• ARISTION plans to deploy P-Cure’s compact, synchrotron-based proton-therapy systems in India.
• The first centre is planned at the 660-bed Sentient Health City campus in Jakkur, followed by centres in Kochi and other cities.
• Proton therapy uses positively charged particles that travel a precise distance and release energy at the tumour site, limiting passage through healthy tissue.

Prelims pointers

• The United States, Denmark and Greenland announced an agreement for a significant U.S. military presence in Greenland.
• The announced arrangement would prohibit U.S. adversaries from establishing bases on Greenland.
• The unpublished details included the scale of the U.S. presence and any transfer of authority over foreign policy or resources.
• Greenland's Prime Minister said the proposal recognised the Danish kingdom's sovereignty, territorial integrity and Greenlanders' right to self-determination.
• The agreement was expected to be signed during the following week's UN General Assembly, and NATO welcomed it.

Prelims pointers

• The Call to Action was jointly published by 188 Indian scientists and ecologists for researchers and field practitioners.
• The article describes El Niño as originating in the Pacific Ocean, dampening India’s monsoon and producing extreme hot and dry conditions in the subcontinent.
• Pacific temperatures crossed the 0.5°C threshold and reached +2.6°C in August 2026; projections cited possible anomalies up to +4°C.
• Anticipated impacts include coral bleaching, wildfires, rainforest-tree mortality, drought, extreme heat and livelihood stress for farmers, fishers and shepherds.
• The article says coral reefs need at least a decade after a major die-back to show significant recovery, while the previous major El Niño occurred in 2024.

Prelims pointers

• The study says 589 million adults worldwide have diabetes and 80% of them live in low- and middle-income countries.
• Metformin and sulfonylureas are included in India’s National List of Essential Medicines and remain foundational treatments for type 2 diabetes.
• DPP-4 inhibitors, SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists have been introduced in India but are not currently included in the NLEM.
• By 2025, domestic production had commenced for 26 raw-material molecules that India had previously imported.
• The study links affordable medicines in India to generic and biosimilar availability, Jan Aushadi Kendras, regulatory and distribution strategies, and market competition.

Prelims pointers

• Delhi led IEMI 2025 with 84 points, Maharashtra scored 78, and Karnataka ranked third with 73.
• Karnataka scored 97 in Charging Infrastructure Readiness, the highest score recorded in the country.
• IEMI 2025 is the second edition and was developed by NITI Aayog in collaboration with WRI India.
• Karnataka introduced a dedicated electric-vehicle policy in 2017 covering sales, charging infrastructure and dedicated manufacturing zones.
• Karnataka had 6,979 EV charging stations, including 4,896 in Bengaluru, and accounted for 8.81% of India's EV registrations.

Prelims pointers

• Indian Railways approved ₹252 crore for Kavach Version 4.0 over 607.7 route kilometres in Lucknow Division.
• The approved sections are in the Lucknow Division of North Eastern Railway and cover identified balance sections of the division.
• Kavach is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection system for railway operational safety.
• Kavach helps prevent Signal Passing at Danger, abbreviated as SPAD in the release.
• The system can automatically apply brakes when required and supports safer movement by monitoring train operations.

Prelims pointers

• The release says India's solar capacity increased from 2 GW about twelve years earlier to more than 160 GW.
• PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana had solarised over 50 lakh homes, with financial assistance of up to ₹80,000 per household.
• More than 70,000 Amrit Sarovars and 1.5 crore rainwater-harvesting structures were created under the Catch the Rain campaign.
• The National Mission on Natural Farming established 24,000 natural-farming clusters covering 12.5 lakh hectares.
• The release reports about 5,000 km of operational inland waterways and a newly inaugurated 3,000-km Dedicated Freight Corridor.

Prelims pointers

• PM-AJAY has been implemented as a merged Centrally Sponsored Scheme under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment since 2021-22.
• PM-AJAY combines three former schemes: PMAGY, Special Central Assistance to Scheduled Castes Sub Plan, and Babu Jagjivan Ram Chhatrawas Yojana.
• Under the Adarsh Gram component, ₹3,545.103 crore was released from FY 2014-15 for 48,811 selected villages, of which 16,022 were declared Adarsh Gram.
• The Grant-in-Aid component received ₹7,142.692 crore from FY 2014-15 and benefited 34.61 lakh people through skilling, livelihood and income-generating initiatives.
• The Hostel component received ₹498.215 crore from FY 2014-15 for 244 hostels covering 24,131 beneficiaries and supports educational access for Scheduled Caste students.

Prelims pointers

• DDU-GKY is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Ministry of Rural Development that provides poor rural youth with placement-linked skill training lasting three to twelve months.
• A total of 1,164 batches covering 34,920 rural youth are scheduled to begin in October 2026 across the 14 States and Union Territories reviewed in the first phase.
• The sanctioned target for the 14 first-phase jurisdictions is 3,57,112 rural youth to be trained by 31 December 2027.
• The DDU-GKY 2.0 portal recorded allocation of 5.6 lakh targets across more than 1,200 projects by 24 States and Union Territories.
• Pending integration of the DDU-GKY 2.0 portal with State Treasury Portals is to be completed by 30 September 2026 to enable online payments through the Grameen Kaushal Portal.

Prelims pointers

• NLC India Limited is a Navratna enterprise under the Ministry of Coal, with 8,405 MW of power-generation capacity in the release.
• NLCIL plans to increase mining capacity from 59.1 MTPA to 104.35 MTPA by 2030 and 115.85 MTPA by 2047.
• NLCIL Renewables Limited is the company's green arm; the renewable portfolio is targeted to exceed 10 GW by 2030.
• A 4 MW solar-powered PEM-electrolyser green-hydrogen pilot is being constructed at Neyveli.
• NLCIL secured composite exploration licences for phosphorite and limestone in Chhattisgarh and vanadium and titanium in Telangana.

Prelims pointers

• N.K. Singh cited 7.8% GDP growth in Q1 of FY 2026–27 during his keynote address to the conference.
• He said gross domestic savings were around 34% of GDP and should move towards 38–40% to sustain growth of 7–8%.
• The conference’s energy-transition session covered renewable assets, BESS, pumped storage, CCUS and a carbon-credit framework linked to NDC targets.
• The Chief Economic Adviser urged States to improve project-preparation pipelines and credible project reports for domestic and multilateral finance.
• A proposal discussed at the conference would raise State capital outlay from approximately 2.4% to 3% of GSDP by 2031–32.

Prelims pointers

• National Land Monetization Corporation Limited held its 21st Board meeting on 18 September 2026.
• The Board recommended monetisation proposals involving surplus land and building assets valued at more than ₹5,000 crore.
• NLMC is a wholly owned Government of India company under the Department of Public Enterprises in the Ministry of Finance.
• NLMC facilitates monetisation of surplus land and buildings of CPSEs and other government entities.
• The Board approved NLMC’s Annual Financial Statements and Directors’ Report for FY 2025–26.

Prelims pointers

• From 1 October 2026, BAA is required to book domestic LPG refills at the regulated retail price with applicable subsidy.
• BAA may be completed during delivery, at an LPG distributor’s showroom, or through the relevant OMC mobile application.
• The self-service apps are IndianOil ONE for Indane, HelloBPCL for Bharatgas and HP PAY for HP Gas customers.
• As on 19 September 2026, 27.43 crore active domestic LPG consumers, representing 89.9 per cent, had completed authentication.
• Consumers who opt out of BAA may receive unsubsidised LPG at market price in 5 kg or 10 kg cylinders, subject to local availability.

Prelims pointers

• Indian Railways approved ₹209 crore for Electronic Interlocking at seven stations in Solapur Division of Central Railway.
• The seven locations are Mohol, Mundhewadi, Bale, Solapur, Hotgi Junction–Hotgi A Cabin, Shahabad and Wadi Junction.
• The stations are on High Density Network 7, where Kavach, Automatic Block Signalling and Centralised Traffic Control works are sanctioned.
• Electronic Interlocking is a computer-based signalling system that replaces conventional relay-based interlocking.
• The system provides reliable control of points and signals and enables faster fault detection and restoration.

Prelims pointers

• The MAISP Chatbot provides conversational access to Ayush information, including material related to Ayurveda.
• The GenAI-based ARP Research Assistant extends the Ayush Research Portal and helps users navigate Ayush literature.
• The e-CHARAK Chatbot is a medicinal-plant trade assistant, while Yoga Saarthi is a yoga-recommendation AI chatbot.
• WHO, ITU and WIPO jointly released a technical brief on AI in traditional medicine on 11 July 2025.
• Through the Bhashini collaboration, Ayush Grid portals are available in India's 22 scheduled languages.

Prelims pointers

• CWC currently stores around 50–60 lakh tonnes of foodgrains and reported storage losses of less than 0.5%.
• CWC’s integrated agri-export model combines storage, preservation, grading, sorting, treatment, cold storage, transport and port connectivity.
• The corporation is targeting capital expenditure of about ₹1,000 crore, including around ₹400 crore for warehouse development.
• CWC placed a ₹23-crore order with IIT Madras-incubated TuTr Hyperloop for a 650-metre freight pilot at JNPT, Mumbai.
• The CWC-funded pilot will test container movement using a Linear Induction Motor-based system.