- The Union Minister of Commerce and Industry launched the report on Assessment of Logistics Cost in India.
- Prepared by: The Industry and Commerce Departments.
- Comprehensive Framework: It provides a comprehensive framework by capturing logistics costs across different transport modes, product categories, and firm sizes.
- Aim: It follows the mandate of the National Logistics Policy (2022) to establish a uniform framework for measuring logistics costs and benchmarking them against global practices.
- Logistics Cost: As per the current assessment logistics costs in India are estimated at about 7.97% of total GDP. Read More
Home / Daily Current Affairs / 22-09-2025
Daily Current Affairs – 22 September, 2025
PDF 
- The Ministry of Finance has finally given infrastructure status to large ships, meeting one of the shipping industry’s longest-standing demands.
- Large ships are defined as Indian-owned and flagged commercial vessels with a gross tonnage of 10,000 or more, or Indian-built, owned, and flagged commercial ships of 1,500 gross tonnage or more.
- The Ministry of Finance included "large ships" in the harmonized master list of infrastructure sectors under the "Transport and Logistics" category, making them eligible for all benefits accorded to infrastructure projects. Read More
Large Ships Granted Infrastructure Status
In News
About
- Recently, the BBNJ Treaty of the United Nations (UN) crossed the threshold of 60 ratifications, with Morocco and Sierra Leone becoming the 60th and 61st signatories respectively, paving the way to enter into force in January 2026.
- It is the UN's High Seas Treaty, formally known as the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ).
- It builds on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), often referred to as the ‘Constitution For The Oceans’, adopted in 1982 and effective since 1994.
- It is designed to safeguard biodiversity in the high seas — areas that lie beyond national jurisdictions, and aligning with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land and sea areas by 2030. Read More
High Seas Treaty of UN Reaches Entry into Force Threshold
Context
About the BBNJ Treaty
- Recently, researchers at Stanford and the Arc Institute created the world’s first entirely AI-generated genome.
- The new virus created by AI can infect and kill bacteria.
- Scientists have already used AI to design individual proteins and even small multi-gene systems. However, creating an entire genome is way more complex.
- In simpler words the AI model learned the “language rules” of phage DNA and then generated a new, never-before-seen genome that still worked in real life. Read More
World’s 1st Functioning AI-designed Viral Genome
Context
About
- The Clean Plant Programme (CPP) is moving from vision to action, with field-level initiatives like nursery certification, training for authorities, crop-specific diagnostic protocols, and funding guidelines.
- It was conceptualized by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank.
- The National Horticulture Board (NHB) serves as an implementing and executing agency in association with Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which oversees technical progress and facilitates capacity building.
- It is a novel initiative aimed at ensuring healthy, disease-free planting material of key fruit crops. Read More
Clean Plant Programme
In News
The Clean Plant Programme (CPP)
- The US President wants the United States to reclaim Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because of its immense strategic, military, and geopolitical value.
- Bagram Air Base is the largest and most strategically significant military airfield in Afghanistan, located in Parwan province around 40–60 km north of Kabul, near the ancient town of Bagram.
- Built by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, it played a pivotal role during the Cold War and the Soviet-Afghan War, and later, it became the nerve center for US and NATO operations after 2001.
- Bagram is positioned at the crossroads of Iran, Pakistan, Central Asia, and close to China’s Xinjiang province, making it a unique vantage point for projecting military force or conducting surveillance in Eurasia.
- The base was vacated by US forces in July 2021 as part of the broader withdrawal from Afghanistan, and it subsequently fell under Taliban control. Read More
