UPSC Current Affairs 22 September 2026

• Nature of the Exercise: It is a bilateral, annual platoon-level military exercise conducted alternately between India and Mongolia.
• Troop Participation: A total of 90 personnel are participating, represented by 45 soldiers each from the Indian Army and the Mongolian Armed Forces.
• Core Objective: The joint training aims to enhance capabilities to undertake Counter-Insurgency Operations in semi-urban and mountainous terrain under a United Nations Mandate.
• Key Training Curriculum: The two-week curriculum focuses on tactical-level drills, including:
  • Cordon and Search Operations
  • Room Intervention Drills
  • Special Heliborne Operations
  • Cyber Security Training and the deployment of drones/counter-drone systems
• Interoperability: The platform allows both armies to exchange operational experiences, refine drills, and strengthen their shared ability to operate jointly in realistic sub-conventional conflict scenarios.
• Historical Context: The 17th edition was hosted by Mongolia at Ulaanbaatar in May–June 2025. The exercise dates back to its first iteration in 2004, acting as a pillar to reinforce mutual trust and defence cooperation between the two nations.
• Apart from this bilateral exercise, India also regularly participates in Exercise Khaan Quest, a multinational peacekeeping exercise hosted annually by Mongolia.

• Microsoft has officially launched its fourth cloud region in India—named India South Central—located in Hyderabad— and designated it as a strategic hub for Asia and the Global South. The announcement came at the Microsoft AI Infrastructure Summit on 21 September 2026.

• Four Active Regions: With Hyderabad operational, Microsoft now has four cloud regions in India, including Pune (Central India), Chennai (South India), and Mumbai (West India).
• Largest Footprint: This expansion solidifies Microsoft’s position as the provider with the largest hyperscale cloud footprint in India.
• High Resilience: The Hyderabad region features three distinct Availability Zones, physically separated locations with independent power, cooling, and networking to ensure business continuity.

• Next-Gen AI Hardware: The facility is designed from the ground up to host and execute heavy frontier AI workloads and data architecture.
• Sovereign-Ready Capacity: It focuses on delivering local compute capacity to transition Indian organizations from AI experimentation to full-scale production.

• Zero-Water Cooling: A key highlight is the use of air-cooled chillers, allowing the facility to achieve virtually zero-water usage for cooling operational systems.
• Eco-Friendly Initiatives: The infrastructure incorporates renewable energy procurement and groundwater recharge measures.

• Regulatory Alignment: The infrastructure complies with MeitY guidelines and is tailored to meet local seismic and statutory frameworks.
• Data Sovereignty: It addresses strict local data protection, security, and financial regulations, aligning with India’s DPDP framework, RBI guidelines, and CERT-In advisories.
• Privacy Assurance: Microsoft explicitly stated that customer data remains fully under customer control and is not used to train commercial foundation models.

• Major Indian conglomerates and financial institutions have already migrated workloads or signed up to use the new Hyderabad hub. Notable names include:
  • Adani Group
  • HDFC Bank (utilizing it as a high-performance disaster recovery environment)
  • Bajaj Finserv / Bajaj Finance
  • PB Pay

• Location: Found at an elevation of around 1,000 metres in a remote gorge near the Keyi River in Keyi Panyor district, Arunachal Pradesh.
• Etymology: The species name keyiensis directly honours the Keyi River where it was located.
• Local Identity: In the local Nyishi dialect, it is called "Oram Opuh", which translates to "Ghost Flower".
• Environment: It thrives in dark, humid ecosystems, growing in deep shade on decaying leaf litter within bamboo groves.

• No Leaves or Chlorophyll: Unlike typical plants, it completely lacks green leaves and chlorophyll, meaning it cannot perform photosynthesis.
• Holomycotrophic Nature: It survives entirely through holomycotrophy—a symbiotic relationship where it relies on soil fungi and decaying organic matter for its nutrients.
• Physical Appearance: The plant grows up to 35 cm in height and produces 1 to 3 flowers. The flowers are white to pale bluish with a distinctively thick, strongly curved yellow lip (labellum).
• "Ghostly" Behaviour: The plant spends the vast majority of its life cycle entirely concealed beneath the forest floor, emerging only briefly during its short flowering period.

• Data Deficient (DD): Because it has only been documented in one location covering an estimated occupancy area of about four square kilometres, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) criteria temporary places it under the Data Deficient category.
• Orchid Paradise: The addition of this species further strengthens Arunachal Pradesh's reputation as the "Orchid Paradise of India", which boasts around 600 documented orchid species.

• Scientific Name: Ophiopogon japonicus
• Common Names: Dwarf Lilyturf, Mondo Grass, Fountain Plant.
• Family: Asparagaceae (subfamily Nolinoideae), historically classified under the lily family (Liliaceae).
• Genus: Ophiopogon, which consists of approximately 85 species worldwide.

• Growth Habit: It is a low-growing, evergreen perennial herb that forms dense mats or clumps and spreads via underground runners (stolons and rhizomes).
• Leaves: Long, narrow, arching, grass-like leaves (15–30 cm long) featuring distinct retro-serrulate (backwardly serrated) margins.
• Flowers & Fruit: It produces small, white-to-pale-purple flowers and distinctive, bright blue berry-like fruits.

• Native Range: East Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, and Nepal.
• Altitude: Typically thrives in subtropical to temperate biomes at elevations ranging between 200 and 2,800 metres.

• Traditional Medicine: Its tuberous roots are widely known as Ophiopogonis Radix or Maidong (Mai Men Dong) in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
• Therapeutic Application: Used to nourish "Yin", moisten the lungs, generate fluids, and relieve cardiovascular or respiratory irritability.
• Pharmacological Properties: Scientific reviews highlight that its polysaccharides and active compounds exhibit anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immunomodulatory, anti-diabetic, and potential anti-cancer properties.

• Chemical Structure: NdFeB magnets are rare-earth permanent magnets made from a specific alloy crystal structure formulated as Nd₂Fe₁₄B. 
• Elemental Ratio: A standard industrial composition typically contains 29–32.5% Neodymium, 64–69% Iron, and 1.1–1.2% Boron by mass. 
• Functional Roles:
  • Neodymium atoms serve as the source of powerful magnetic dipoles.
  • Iron atoms provide the overall volume and magnetic field strength.
  • Boron atoms form strong covalent bonds to stabilize the alignment of the crystal lattice. 

• Extreme Field Strength: They are the strongest commercially available permanent magnets in the world, capable of lifting hundreds of times their own weight. 
• High-Performance Metrics: Standard grades exhibit an exceptional Maximum Energy Product (BH_max) exceeding 440 kJ/m³ (~55 MGOe), alongside a high remanence (up to 1.5 Tesla). 
• High Coercivity: They show extraordinary resistance to demagnetisation when exposed to external opposing magnetic fields. 

• Thermal Sensitivity: They possess a lower Curie temperature compared to other industrial magnets. Standard grades begin to degrade above 80°C to 150°C.
• Thermal Upgrades: Advanced variations integrate heavy rare earths like Dysprosium (Dy) or Terbium (Tb) to safely withstand operational heat exceeding 150°C to 230°C.
• Corrosion Susceptibility: Due to their high iron content, they rust quickly in humid conditions. They require protective surface coatings, most commonly a triple-layer plating of Nickel-Copper-Nickel (Ni-Cu-Ni). 

• Electric Mobility: They provide the vital high-torque density required inside the traction motors of Electric Vehicles (EVs), where an average car utilizes 2 to 2.5 kg of these magnets.
• Renewable Energy: They serve as foundational components inside high-efficiency generators for wind turbines.
• Consumer Electronics: They allow for the miniaturisation of tech components found in smartphones, hard drives, microphones, and headphones.
• Healthcare & Aerospace: They power the scanning fields inside Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines and operate high-precision actuators in aerospace defence systems. 

• Geographical Location: It is a massive composite stratovolcanic complex situated in the Southern Volcanic Zone of the Chilean Andes, specifically within the Ñuble Region of south-central Chile.
• Three Overlapping Peaks: The complex consists of three main overlapping peaks that stretch along a north-northwest to south-southeast axis:
  • Cerro Blanco (Volcán Nevado): The highest peak in the northwest, standing at 3,212 metres (10,538 feet).
  • Volcán Viejo (Volcán Chillán): Located in the southeast, standing at 3,089 metres (10,135 feet). It was the primary active vent between the 17th and 19th centuries.
  • Volcán Nuevo: Positioned directly between the two, it formed as a lava dome complex between 1906 and 1945 and eventually grew taller than Volcán Viejo.
• Tectonic Mechanism: The volcano sits on the volatile Pacific "Ring of Fire". Its eruptive activity is driven by subduction tectonics, where the westward movement of the South American plate overrides the Nazca plate.
• Historical Eruptions: Documented eruptions date back to the 17th century, though geological mapping shows active volcanism spanning back hundreds of thousands of years. A major eruptive cycle began in January 2016 from the Nicanor crater and has experienced intermittent phases of dome growth and explosion.
• Eruption Characteristics: Nevados de Chillán is primarily known for lava-dome growth, explosive ash plumes, block-and-ash pyroclastic flows, and lapilli emissions.
• Socio-Economic Risks: It is ranked as one of the highest-risk volcanoes in Chile. This high-risk status is compounded by rapid commercial development on its southwestern flanks, which host extensive skiing resorts, hotels, and vacation properties that are highly vulnerable to lahars (volcanic mudflows) caused by melting snow.

• Introduction: Launched in March 2019 by the Ministry of Textiles, India.
• Core Purpose: It aims to reimburse all embedded State and Central taxes/levies on the export of manufactured apparel, garments, and textile made-ups.
• The Principle of Zero-Rating: It operates on the internationally accepted trade principle that "taxes and duties should not be exported." This ensures Indian products remain globally competitive by eliminating hidden tax burdens.
• Predecessor: It replaced the older Rebate of State Levies (RoSL) Scheme. Unlike RoSL, which only covered state taxes, RoSCTL covers both State and Central taxes.

• State Levies: VAT on fuel used in transportation, mandi tax, electricity duty, stamp duties, and embedded SGST paid on inputs like fertilizers/pesticides.
• Central Levies: Central excise duty on fuel, embedded CGST paid on inputs, and Compensation Cess on coal used to produce electricity.

• Duty Credit Scrips: Instead of cash, the rebate is provided as electronic, transferable duty credit scrips (e-scrips) via the Customs system.
• Value Base: The value of these scrips is calculated based on the Free on Board (FOB) value of the exported goods.
• Utilisation: Exporters can use these e-scrips to pay Basic Customs Duty on imports or freely sell/transfer them to other importers in the market for cash liquidity.
• Validity: Once generated, an e-scrip is valid for one year, and its validity does not reset if it is transferred.
• Rebate Rates: The maximum rebate rate goes up to 6.05% for apparel and up to 8.2% for textile made-ups (like bed linen, cushions, and carpets).

• Target Sectors: Exporters of apparel, garments, and made-up articles falling under Chapters 61, 62, and 63 of the ITC-HS code.
• Primary Beneficiaries: It acts as a massive lifeline for MSME exporters, who make up a substantial share of India's textile export ecosystem.
• Exclusions: Any entity listed on the Denied Entity List of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) is barred from benefits.
• Implementing Agency: It is collectively overseen by the Ministry of Textiles and deployed by the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance.

1. It was launched by the Ministry of Textiles.
2. It covers both State and Central taxes and levies.
3. Its benefits are provided through transferable electronic duty credit scrips.

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