UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | June 23 to June 29, 2025

Reports

(FYI: The data provided in these reports can be used to substantiate your Mains answer and create a broad understanding of the topic.)

• State of Climate in Asia 2024 report

— According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)’s State of Climate in Asia report 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on record in 2024, with its average temperature 1.04 degree Celsius above the last 30-year average.

— The impact of this high rate of warming in 2024 manifested through a range of extreme weather events such as 29 tropical cyclones, prolonged and intense heat waves and extreme rainfall events, including India.

— Glaciers continued to lose mass, as per the report, with 23 out of 24 glaciers in the High Mountain Asia region of central-south Asia spanning the Himalayas, Pamir mountains, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush.

• 2025 Sustainable Development Report (SDR)

— The 10th edition of the Sustainable Development Report (SDR) was published by the Sustainable Development Solution Network’s SDG Transformation Center. This year also marks the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

— This year’s SDG index covers 167 of the 193 UN member states with the focus on “Financing the SDGs by 2030 and Mid-Century”.

— India, for the first time, breaks into the top 100 of the Sustainable Development Index with the rank of 99 and score of 67.

— According to the report, none of the 17 Global Goals are on track to be fully achieved by 2030, and only 17 per cent of the SDG targets are progressing as planned.

— This year, for the first time streamlined SDG Index (SDGi), which uses 17 headline indicators, one per SDG, to track overall SDG progress, was introduced.

Methodology: The SDG Index score is presented on a scale of 0 to 100 and can be interpreted as a percentage towards optimal performance on the SDGs. The difference between 100 and the country’s SDG index indicates the distance that must be overcome to reach the optimum SDG performance.

Rank 2025	Country	Score 2025
1	Finland	87.0
2	Sweden	85.7
3	Denmark	85.3
4	Germany	83.7
5	France	83.1

98	Belize	67
99	India	67
100	Mongolia	66.7

159	Niger	50.3
158	Madagascar	51.0

Do you know what Agenda 2030 is and what the 17 SDGs are? FYI: SDGs are important for any writing, any Mains or Essay answer. Many of the Government of India schemes are targeted to achieve those SDGs.

• WHO Global Tobacco Epidemic Report 2025

— WHO develops the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2025 report with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. It focuses on six proven WHO MPOWER tobacco control measures to reduce tobacco use.

— The report revealed that the most striking gains have been in graphic health warnings, one of the key measures under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

— As per the report, there has been a growing trend to regulate the use of e-cigarettes of ENDS (Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems). The number of countries regulating or banning ENDS has grown from 122 in 2022 to 133 in 2024, a clear signal of increased attention to these products. However, over 60 countries till lack any regulations on ENDS.

— Of all MPOWER measures, large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages have seen the most progress since 2007 – both in terms of the number of countries and population covered by a best-practice policy.

— India was presented the ‘O’ category award for promoting tobacco cessation. Among the other countries that received the award were Mauritius, Mexico, Montenegro, the Philippines and Ukraine.

Try to look for these MPOWER measures?

Defence

• Stealth frigate Tamal

— The Navy is set to commission its latest stealth multi-role frigate Tamal on July 1 at Russia’s Kaliningrad, making it the eighth in the series of Krivak class frigates inducted from Russia over the past two decades.

— It will join the ‘Sword Arm’ of the Navy, the Western Fleet, under the Western Naval Command. Also, it is the second ship of the Tushil Class — the upgraded versions of their predecessors, Talwar and Teg classes.

The B-2 has a range of over 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km) without refuelling. (AI image created using Grok)

• B-2 Spirit bomber

— The B-2 Spirit bomber was used by the USA to carry out a precision airstrike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

— The B-2 Spirit is one of the most sophisticated and secretive aircraft ever built. Developed by Northrop Grumman during the Cold War, the bomber was designed for deep-penetration missions in contested airspace.

— Only 21 were produced after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with each unit costing an estimated $2.1 billion.

— The B-2’s combination of stealth, range, and payload makes it uniquely suited to hit heavily fortified, high-value targets — especially those buried deep underground.

— The B-2 has a range of over 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km) without refuelling, enabling it to conduct long-range missions from the continental United States.

— Its total payload exceeds 40,000 pounds (18,144 kg) and includes both conventional and nuclear weapons.

•  GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP

— In a major military escalation, the United States deployed its B-2 Spirit stealth bombers on Saturday (21st June) to carry out precision airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

— The bombers were reportedly armed with the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 30,000-pound (13,600-kilogram) bunker-buster bomb designed specifically to destroy hardened underground facilities like Fordow.

— The MOP measures about 20.5 feet in length and 31.5 inches in diameter and weighs about 13,000 kgs, according to the US Air Force.

— The bomb is a “bunker buster”—a type of munition capable of penetrating and hitting targets secured in underground facilities. The MOP is widely believed to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon.

International Cooperation

• International Potato Center (CIP)

— The Union Cabinet approved a proposal on Wednesday (June 25) to set up a regional wing of the Peru-based International Potato Center (CIP). The proposed CIP-South Asia Regional Center (CSARC) will come up at Singna in Agra district.

— The CSARC will focus on the development of new varieties that will be climate resilient, disease-free, and suitable for processing. It will bring global science expertise, an extensive global innovation network, and global genetic resources.

— The entire project costs Rs 171 crore, with India contributing Rs 111.5 crore and the remaining Rs 60 crore funded by the CIP. The UP government has provided 10 hectares of land for it.

—CIP is a premier research-for-development organisation with a focus on the potato, sweet potato, Andean roots and tubers. It was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Lima, Peru. In 2017, it set up its first Asia centre in China.

— The proposed CSARC will be the second major international agricultural research institution to set up operations in India. In 2017, the Agriculture Ministry supported the establishment of a regional centre of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The IRRI-SARC is established in Varanasi.

— As of now, at least two different centres of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) work on tuber crops. While the Shimla-based ICAR-CPRI (Central Potato Research Institute) is working on potato, the Thiruvananthapuram-based ICAR-CTCRI (Central Tuber Crops Research Institute) is working on sweetpotato.

India is the world’s second top producer and consumer of potato; in 2020, it saw a production of 51.30 million tonnes. (File photo)

About Potato

— The potato crop is native to the Peruvian-Bolivian Andes in Latin America, and was spread across the globe by the Spaniards and the Portuguese who colonised the continent. Potatoes reached India in the 17th century.

— The potato is the third most available food crop in the world, after rice and wheat, while sweet potato is in the 6th position after maize and cassava.

China is the top potato producer and consumer in the world, followed by India. In 2020, China’s production was recorded at 78.24 million tonnes, while India produced 51.30 million tonnes.

— In India, Uttar Pradesh (15 million tonnes), West Bengal (15 million tonnes) and Bihar (9 million tonnes) were the top three potato producers in 2020-21.

— Potato is a tuber that is are stem modified into an underground structure. The presence of an eye (node) in a potato indicates that the underground plant parts are modified stems.

• SCO Defence Ministers meet

— Defence Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, meeting in Qingdao in China, failed to issue a joint statement on Thursday (26th June) after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh declined to sign the draft statement which omitted a reference to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in J&K.

— The SCO is a grouping of 10 countries, including India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Belarus. The roots of the SCO lie in the “Shanghai Five” formed in 1996, consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

— The organisation has two permanent bodies: the Secretariat in Beijing, China and the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) in Tashkent. RATS assists members in the preparation and staging of counter-terrorism exercises, analyses key intelligence information coming in from the member states, and shares information on terrorist movements and drug trafficking.

Polity

Documents for proof of citizenship.

• Special Intensive Revision in Bihar

— Paving the way for a nationwide exercise, the Election Commission announced Tuesday (24th June) a “special intensive revision” of the electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar, where all existing electors who were not on the rolls in 2003 will have to again provide documentation proving their eligibility.

— Article 324(1) of the Constitution gives the ECI the power of “superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls for, and the conduct of” elections to Parliament and state legislatures.

— Under Section 21(3) of The Representation of the People Act, 1950, the ECI “may at any time… direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of a constituency in such manner as it may think fit”.

— Summary revisions take place every year, and a special summary revision is carried out before each Lok Sabha and state Assembly election. Intensive revisions have been carried out in 1952-56, 1957, 1961, 1965, 1966, 1983-84, 1987-89, 1992, 1993, 1995, 2002, 2003, and 2004.

— In Bihar, those added to the roll after January 1, 2003 — the year of the last intensive revision — will additionally have to provide proof of citizenship. (Those already on the electoral roll before the cut-off date would be presumed to be citizens, unless Electoral Registration Officers receive any input to the contrary).

— Electors will also have the option of downloading their forms from the ECI’s website or ECINET app, and submitting them online. Electors whose enumeration forms are not received by July 25 will be deleted from the roll. Deletions can be contested from August 1 to September 1.

• Article 370

— Chief Justice of India B R Gavai on Saturday (28th June) said the Supreme Court upheld the abrogation of Article 370, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, “so that the country is governed by only one Constitution”, as envisioned by Dr B R Ambedkar.

— The CJI was in Nagpur for the inauguration of a ‘Constitution Preamble Park’ and unveiling of Ambedkar’s statue at a law college.

— The CJI was part of the five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, led by then CJI D Y Chandrachud, that, in December 2023, upheld the Centre’s decision to abrogate Article 370.

• National Turmeric Board

— Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah inaugurated the headquarters of the National Turmeric Board in Nizamabad, Telangana, on 29th June.

— The Centre has established the National Turmeric Board (NTB) in January this year. The government has set a target of achieving one billion dollars in turmeric exports by 2030.

— India is the largest producer, consumer, and exporter of turmeric in the world, with most of the product coming from Telangana, Maharashtra and Meghalaya. India has more than 62% share of world trade.

(Source: PIB)

 

Science and Technology

• Weight loss drug Wegovy

— Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk launched its weight loss drug Wegovy as a once-a-week injection in India. This adds to the option of weight loss drugs, with Eli Lilly’s injectable Mounjaro now also available in the country.

— Wegovy is made of semaglutide, a GLP-1A receptor agonist, which mimics the naturally occurring hormone GLP-1, responsible for regulating blood sugar, reducing appetite, and slowing down gastric emptying.

— Semaglutide belongs to a new class of medicines called GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) receptor agonists. It is prescribed for the management of type 2 diabetes and obesity.

— The weight loss drugs mimic certain naturally-occurring gut hormones called incretins (GLP-1 is one such incretin) produced in the small intestine, and are hence also known as incretin mimickers.

Shubhanshu Shukla (second from left) with (from left) Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, US’s Peggy Whitson and Poland’s Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on Wednesday. (@SpaceX via PTI)

• Axiom-4 Mission

— The Axiom-4 Mission, with India’s Shubhanshu Shukla and three other astronauts on board, roared into space at noon on Wednesday (25th June, 2025). He is the designated pilot for the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

— With this, Shukla became the second Indian to travel to space, more than 40 years after Rakesh Sharma travelled on a Soviet mission in 1984.

— There are three other astronauts on the mission: Peggy Whitson from America as commander of the mission, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland, and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.

— The Axiom-4 mission is being operated and managed by Axiom Space, a private US space company. The Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft used in the mission have come from SpaceX, the world’s largest private space corporation.

— On Thursday (26th June), the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station (ISS). Docking is a process by which two spacecraft are joined in space.

— The ISS orbits Earth at an altitude of more than 400 km, and the procedure of docking takes place while both the space station and the approaching vehicle are travelling at speeds of around 27,000 km/h.

— To date, only four countries — the US, Russia (and the erstwhile Soviet Union), China, and most recently, India — have demonstrated the capability to carry out space docking.

 

Awards

• World’s Best School Prize 2025

— A Zilla Parishad (ZP) school in Pune district’s Jalindarnagar village has been shortlisted among global finalists for the World’s Best School Prize 2025 in the category of Community Collaboration in education.

— Three other Indian schools – one each from Karnataka, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh – have also been shortlisted under various categories for the award organised by UK-based international education platform T4 Education.

— Among the school’s innovative approaches is the ‘Vishay Mitra’ (subject friend) initiative. This is a peer-learning model, where senior students mentor juniors, helping clarify doubts in a comfortable, student-led setting.

•  2025 Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards for Global Tobacco Control

— India is among the six countries that received 2025 Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards for Global Tobacco Control for prioritizing tobacco cessation approaches to reach a significant number of tobacco users in the country.

— The National Tobacco Control Cell of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, was presented with the award at the World Conference on Tobacco Control held in Dublin, Ireland.

— India was presented the ‘O’ category award for promoting tobacco cessation. The ‘O’ is the MPOWER policy package of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that stands for ‘Offer help to quit tobacco use.’

— The WHO Global Tobacco Epidemic 2025 report, developed with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, was also launched on the occasion.

— Report reveals that the most striking gains have been in graphic health warnings, one of the key measures under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), that make the harms of tobacco impossible to ignore.

 

Person in News

Parag Jain as the new chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). (X/@airnewsalerts)

• Parag Jain

— The government appointed Parag Jain as the new chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency. Jain, a 1989-batch IPS officer of the Punjab cadre, succeeds Ravi Sinha, who retires on June 30.

— Jain was serving as the head of the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), the technical wing of R&AW, before his elevation.

 

Places in the News

(Just FYI: The location of the place is important, considering that UPSC has asked several questions about places that were in the news, such as Aleppo and Kirkuk, in the 2018 UPSC Prelims. The best way to remember them is to plot them on a world map.)

• Strait of Harmoz

— Iran’s Parliament has approved the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, though the final decision will be taken by the Supreme National Security Council.

— The Strait of Hormuz lies between Oman and Iran, connecting the Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf, and the Arabian Sea beyond. (A strait is a narrow water body connecting two larger bodies of water.)

— The strait is about 33 kilometres wide at the narrowest point, though shipping traffic passes through a narrower traffic separation scheme (TSS), which consists of a 3-kilometre-wide channel each for inbound and outbound traffic.

— Because of its geographic location, there is no sea route alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. So if the passage of ships through the strait were to be disrupted, it would have ramifications for oil and LNG trade worldwide, and prices would shoot up.

Do you know the difference between bay, gulf, and strait? Read about the story of the Strait of Hormuz here.

• Coastline of India

— The length of India’s coastline used to be 7,516 km, something that was ascertained in the 1970s. But this coastline has now been measured to be 11,098 km, an increase of 3,582 km, or nearly 48%. The main reason for such a big difference is in the scale of data used for measurement.

— The earlier measurement was based on data that were of the scale of 1:4,500,000 (one to forty-five lakh), or smaller. However, the recent exercise calculated the length of the coastline using data that had a scale of 1:250,000 (one to 2.5 lakh).

— Higher resolution data can capture the coastline, its bends and curves, in more intricate details. In low-resolution data, these details get smoothened out, and appear as straight lines. The loss of bends and curves would shorten the length.

Have you heard about the coastline paradox? How is it related to the measurement of coastlines, river networks, and mountain ranges?

 

Sports

(Just FYI: With the unpredictability of the UPSC examinations and questions like the ICC World Test Championship question 2021, you can’t be sure of anything. It is wise to know what it is and not go into too much detail.)

Atharvaa Tayade and his teammates celebrate their win at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championship. (Rafal Oleksiewicz via FIDE)

• FIDE World Rapid Team Championship

— Team MGD1, with Indian Grandmasters Arjun Erigaisi as their star player and N Srinath as the non-playing captain, won the FIDE World Rapid Team Championship 2025 in London on 21st June, 2025.

— A Pune-based chess management firm, Team MGD1 became the first Indian team to achieve this feat in the tournament’s brief three-year history.

— The FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships 2025 is an event open to any team around the globe that meets the official requirements. According to FIDE, the teams can be made of club members, members of different federations or any other chess players.

— Each team must have at least six and no more than nine players. The teams also have to include at least one female player and one recreational player who is defined as “one who never achieved FIDE Standard, Rapid or Blitz Rating of 2000 Elo points (or unrated) up to and including the March 2025 rating lists.

— The total prize fund is €500,000, with €310,000 allocated to the rapid event and €190,000 to the blitz event.

 

Test Your Knowledge

(Note: The best way to remember facts for UPSC and other competitive exams is to recall them through MCQs. Try to solve the following questions on your own.)

(1) Consider the following statements: (UPSC CSE 2016)

1. The Sustainable Development Goals were first proposed in 1972 by a global think tank called the ‘Club of Rome’.

2. The Sustainable Development Goals have to be achieved by 2030.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

(2) Consider the following statements:

1. ICAR-CTCRI (Central Tuber Crops Research Institute) located in Shimla is working on potato.

2. The potato is native to Indonesia, and it reached India in the 18th century through the British for plantation agriculture.

3. The proposed regional wing of the Peru-based International Potato Center (CIP) will be the first major international agricultural research institution to set up operations in India.

How many of the above statements are correct?

(a) Only one

(b) Only two

(c) All three

(d) None

(3) The Strait of Hormuz is located between

(a) Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman

(b) Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea

(c) Adriatic Sea and Ionian Sea

(d) Red Sea and Gulf of Aden

For your suggestions, write to khushboo.kumari@indianexpress.com

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