Daily Current Affairs 16 September 2026

The 16 September 2026 edition, on World Ozone Day and the 10th anniversary of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, opens with India and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) signing the First Additional Protocol to their 2004 Preferential Trade Agreement in New Delhi on 14 September 2026, amending Article 16 of Annex III (Rules of Origin) to give electronic Certificates of Origin the same legal validity as paper certificates; the signing was in the presence of Uruguay’s Foreign Minister representing the MERCOSUR pro tempore Presidency. On the same day, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin launched talks to expand the India-MERCOSUR PTA. On 15 September 2026, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited signed a memorandum of understanding with National Shipbuilding and Heavy Industries Park Maharashtra Limited (NSHIPML) for a Rs 27,000 crore greenfield shipbuilding cluster at Dighi, Raigad district, envisaging capacity of about 2 million gross tonnes a year and about 90,000 jobs. SiCSem Private Limited’s silicon-carbide semiconductor unit at IDCO Infovalley-II, Khordha, Odisha, approved by the Union Cabinet under the India Semiconductor Mission on 12 August 2025 (about Rs 2,066 crore), came back into the news on 15 September 2026, when an approval by the 217th Unit Approval Committee of the Falta Special Economic Zone for the SEZ unit was announced, with investment revised to Rs 3,406.25 crore. Two new frog species, Ingerana aizawl and Duttaphrynus phawngpui, were formally described from Mizoram, on the campus of Mizoram University in Aizawl and from Phawngpui National Park respectively. Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on 13 September 2026 chaired a review at Bhuj in Kachchh and released the Gujarat Action Plan for the Conservation of the Great Indian Bustard, and reviewed Project Cheetah, whose cheetah population across Kuno National Park and Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary now stands at 52. Kumik village in Zanskar district (headquarters Padum), UT Ladakh, was designated Ladakh’s first Heritage Village on 15 September 2026. The roundup carries an appointment, a defence collaboration, a diaspora heritage note, Karnataka’s official adoption of Engineers Day, and the SEMICON India 2026 build-up ahead of its inauguration on 17 September, alongside a practice quiz.