22 October 2026 Current Affairs: Headlines, GK & MCQs

The primary spermatocyte is the diploid cell that enters meiosis I and splits into two haploid secondary spermatocytes. Spermatogenesis takes place in the seminiferous tubules of the testes.

After the Third Five Year Plan (1961-66) ran into trouble, India ran three one-year Annual Plans from 1966 to 1969 before the Fourth Plan began.

Both statements are correct: the Coriolis force works at right angles to the pressure gradient force, and it vanishes at the equator, where winds cross the isobars at right angles.

In free fall all the potential energy turns into kinetic energy, so 625 J = ½ × 0.32 kg × v², which gives v = 62.5 m/s. First change the mass into kilograms: 320 g = 0.32 kg.

The Rowlatt Act (March 1919) came first, then the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (April 1919), the All-India Khilafat Conference in Delhi (November 1919) and finally the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920).

Pollen grains are formed by meiosis, the division that halves the chromosome number and DNA content of the parent cell.

. Mica is an excellent electrical insulator that withstands high voltage and heat, so it is used mainly in the electrical and electronic industries.

The Mohorovicic discontinuity, or Moho, is the boundary between the crust and the mantle, where seismic waves suddenly speed up.

Papaya bears unisexual flowers: a flower has either stamens or a pistil, and male and female flowers usually grow on separate plants.

. When quicklime reacts with water a large amount of heat is released, so the reaction is exothermic.

The refrigerator uses 5 kW × 10 h × 30 days = 1,500 kWh, and at ₹ 4 per kWh that costs ₹ 6,000.

. Thyroxine sets the body's basal metabolic rate, that is, how fast cells use oxygen and food to release energy.

In the hills of Uttarakhand the river is called the Kali (or Mahakali); it takes the name Sarda (Sharda) only after it reaches the plains.

Carbon monoxide binds to the haemoglobin of red blood cells to form carboxyhaemoglobin, so the blood can no longer carry oxygen to the tissues.

When light of a suitable frequency falls on a metal and knocks electrons out of it, the process is called photoelectric emission.

Only statement 1 is correct; statement 2 has the two layers the wrong way round. Sleet is precipitation in the form of frozen raindrops and refrozen melted snow-water.

The vehicle goes 100 m east and 200√2 m south, and the straight-line distance between start and finish is √(100² + (200√2)²) = 300 m. Each leg starts from rest, so the distance covered is s = ½at².

All three statements are correct: Krishnadevaraya fought the Gajapati ruler of Orissa early in his reign, took Raichur from Ismail Adil Khan in 1520 and restored the Bahmani Sultan Mahmud Shah.

The egg is fertilised to form the zygote, the zygote grows into the embryo, and the ovule carrying the embryo becomes the seed.

Koppen placed the Ganga plain of northern India under Cwg, a monsoon type with dry winters.

Kampala lies almost on the equator, where a point on the Earth's surface moves the longest distance in each rotation and so has the greatest linear speed.

Lipids, including steroids and the phospholipids of membranes, are made by the smooth endoplasmic reticulum, so a defect there would stop lipid synthesis.

India is not a member of the G7; it attends some summits only as an invited guest country. The Group of Seven is an informal grouping of seven major advanced economies: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada.

Magnetic field lines are always closed curves, so the statement that they are open curves is the incorrect one. Outside a magnet, field lines run from the north pole to the south pole; inside the magnet they continue from the south pole back to the north pole, closing the loop.

Salmonella typhi is a rod-shaped bacterium that causes typhoid fever in human beings. Typhoid spreads through food and water contaminated with the faeces of an infected person.

Mission Indradhanush is the Union Health Ministry's drive to fully immunise children and pregnant women against vaccine-preventable diseases. The mission was launched on 25 December 2014 to reach children who had missed their routine vaccines or had received them only partly, especially in districts with low coverage.

Nerve impulses are carried by the movement of sodium and potassium ions across the membrane of the nerve cell, so sodium is essential.

Statements 1 and 2 describe the scheme correctly, while statement 3 does not, because the scheme is targeted at poor and vulnerable families rather than every citizen.

Vivekananda began his famous address at Chicago on 11 September 1893 with the words "Sisters and Brothers of America", and the audience rose in a long ovation.

. In the Rig Veda, Sinivali is a goddess invoked for fertility and the gift of children.

Andal was a woman Alvar, a Vaishnava saint devoted to Vishnu, not a Nayanar. The Bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu grew between about the sixth and ninth centuries through two groups of poet-saints: the 63 Nayanars, devotees of Shiva, and the 12 Alvars, devotees of Vishnu.

A soda-acid extinguisher uses sodium hydrogen carbonate (baking soda) solution and sulphuric acid, which react to release carbon dioxide. In this extinguisher the sulphuric acid is kept in a separate container inside a cylinder filled with sodium hydrogen carbonate solution.

Goa became the first State in India where every rural household had a functional tap water connection.

The Indian federation was not formed by an agreement among the States, so "the federating units consented to form a union" is not a feature of Indian federalism.

The Prati Sarkar, a parallel government of the Quit India period, was set up in Satara district of Maharashtra. During the Quit India Movement that began in August 1942, people in some areas threw off British authority and ran their own governments.

The Satapatra series (Shatapatre, "a hundred letters") was written by Gopal Hari Deshmukh, known as Lokahitawadi. Gopal Hari Deshmukh (1823-1892) was an early social reformer of Maharashtra.

Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, launched on 25 December 2000, is the oldest of the four schemes. PMGSY was started to give all-weather road connectivity to unconnected rural habitations, and it is fully centrally sponsored.

Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, was a devoted follower of the Naqshbandi saint Khwaja Ubaydullah Ahrar. The Naqshbandi order was the leading Sufi silsila of Central Asia, and Khwaja Ubaydullah Ahrar (died 1490) of Samarkand was its most powerful leader in the fifteenth century.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct; statement 3 is wrong because two indifference curves can never cut each other. An indifference curve shows the combinations of two goods that give a consumer the same satisfaction.

Punjab has the highest share of Scheduled Castes in its population among the States, about 31.9 per cent in Census 2011.

Adiabatic temperature changes in the atmosphere are caused by the expansion and compression of air, with no heat added or removed.

Biogas is mainly methane and carbon dioxide. Biogas is produced when bacteria break down animal dung, crop waste and kitchen waste in the absence of oxygen, a process called anaerobic digestion.

. Statement D is the incorrect one: the streams on a dissected volcanic cone do form a radial drainage pattern.

Planck's constant has the same dimensions as angular momentum, [M L² T⁻¹].

A wider deficit financed by borrowing tends to push up inflation and interest rates, and higher interest rates can slow private investment.

Gandhiji regarded Gopal Krishna Gokhale as his political guru, his Rajya Guru. Gandhi first met Gokhale in 1896 and they grew close when Gokhale visited South Africa in 1912.

. Hariti was a child-eating yakshi whom the Buddha converted into a protector of children and a benevolent mother figure.

. The National Recruitment Agency was created to hold a Common Eligibility Test to shortlist candidates for Group B and Group C (non-technical) posts of the Central Government.

These are cirrocumulus clouds: high clouds of ice crystals arranged in small white puffs and ripples. Clouds are grouped by height and shape.

Nattar does not mean a male serpent deity; the nattar were the members of the nadu, the assembly of a group of villages in early medieval Tamil Nadu.