28 October 2026 Current Affairs: Headlines, GK & MCQs

He travelled in the late thirteenth century, decades before the Vijayanagara Empire was founded in 1336, so he could not have described it.

The Preamble reads 'Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic', so 'socialist' comes before 'secular', while the order of ideals is justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.

The National Commission for Women was created by an Act of Parliament, and that Act gives it both the review and the advisory roles named in the question.

Antarctica is bigger than Europe and, because of its thick ice sheet, it stands higher on average than any other continent.

In India's land-use records, land that can be farmed but has lain uncultivated for over five years is called culturable wasteland.

A dastak was a free pass that let the English East India Company move goods without paying internal customs duties.

UN peacekeeping troops wear light blue helmets or berets, which is why they are called the Blue Helmets. Peacekeepers are military, police and civilian personnel sent by member countries to serve in missions authorised by the UN Security Council.

The damage an earthquake does depends on how strongly the ground shakes and on what, and who, stands on it, not on the region's climate.

Iodine is a non-metal, yet its solid crystals have a shiny, metallic lustre, which makes it the standard exception taught in school chemistry.

Gravitational force varies inversely with the square of the distance, so doubling the distance cuts the force to one-fourth.

Defending President's Rule in the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar said he hoped such Articles would never be called into operation and would remain a 'dead letter', used only as a last resort.

Khasi, spoken mainly in Meghalaya, belongs to the Mon-Khmer group of the Austric (Austro-Asiatic) languages, along with its close relatives Pnar and War.

Going from east to west, the order is Kosi, Gandak, Ghaghara and Gomti. All four join the Ganga from the north.

The SDGs form the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN member states in September 2015.

Sulphuric acid has two replaceable hydrogen atoms, so its equivalent mass is 98 ÷ 2 = 49 g, and 49 g in one litre makes exactly one gram-equivalent per litre.

Sir William Jones, a judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, founded the Asiatic Society in January 1784 and served as its first president until his death in 1794.

The Durand Line is the roughly 2,640 km boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was fixed in 1893 by an agreement between Sir Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan, to mark the limits of their spheres of influence.

Maithili was added to the Eighth Schedule by the 92nd Amendment Act of 2003, along with Bodo, Dogri and Santali; this was the most recent addition to the list.

Every point on the Earth turns through 360 degrees in the same time, but points nearer the equator travel a longer circle and so move faster.

Under the dadni system, European companies gave cash advances to weavers through middlemen to secure cloth for export. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the English, Dutch and French companies bought huge quantities of cotton and silk cloth in Bengal and other regions.

Allocation of resources through central planning is the mark of a socialist or command economy, not a capitalist one. In a capitalist economy, the means of production such as land, factories and capital are owned mainly by private individuals and firms.

An avalanche is a sudden slide of snow, ice and debris down a mountain slope, a movement of material on the land surface, so it is grouped with terrestrial disasters.

Resistivity is a property of the material and its temperature, not of the wire's shape, so every copper wire has the same resistivity.

Neutrons sit inside the nucleus with protons; it is the electrons that move around the nucleus. The neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932, and he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for it in 1935.

Multidimensional peacekeeping aims to stabilise a country after conflict and to consolidate the peace, while staying impartial between the parties.

The Kolkata Metro is run by Indian Railways as its own zone, the Metro Railway, with its headquarters in Kolkata.

In the Sangam poems of the early Tamil region, the ploughmen who worked the land were called uzhavar. The Sangam texts describe a rural society with clear groups.

The Satyashodhak Samaj came first in 1873, the Bardoli Satyagraha followed in 1928 and the Chipko Movement began in 1973.

Among the four states listed, Tamil Nadu has the most seats in the Council of States (Rajya Sabha), with 18.

Government spending adds to income more than an equal transfer, and its effect is smaller when money supply is not expanded alongside it.

Acting as a check on democratic rule, especially when members are nominated or indirectly elected, is a criticism of second chambers, not one of their benefits.

A disease that stays constantly present at a steady baseline level in a particular area, without being brought in from outside, is called endemic.

The word fission is used in two sciences: in biology for splitting of a single-celled organism, and in physics for splitting of a heavy nucleus.

Ultraviolet light is an electromagnetic wave, and all electromagnetic waves are transverse, not longitudinal. In an electromagnetic wave, the electric and magnetic fields vibrate at right angles to each other and to the direction in which the wave travels, which is the mark of a transverse wave.

The Banas is not a tributary of the Luni; it flows east and joins the Chambal, which belongs to the Ganga basin.

Keoladeo, Sundarbans and Kaziranga national parks are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, while Ranthambore National Park is not one in its own right.

Teejan Bai of Chhattisgarh is the best-known exponent of Pandavani, a folk ballad form that tells stories from the Mahabharata.

The Dogger Bank is a large shallow sandbank in the North Sea about 100 kilometres off the east coast of England, one of the richest fishing grounds of Europe.

Prithivimahadevi, Dharmamahadevi, Dandimahadevi and Vakulamahadevi were queens of the Bhauma-Kara dynasty of Odisha, which is known for several women ruling in their own right.

The Tashkent Agreement was signed on 10 January 1966 by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri of India and President Ayub Khan of Pakistan to end the war of 1965.

The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 defines the Eastern Rivers as the Sutlej, the Beas and the Ravi, and the Western Rivers as the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab.

Rajaraja I allowed and encouraged the Sailendra king of Srivijaya, Sri Mara Vijayottungavarman, to build a Buddhist vihara at Nagapattinam on the Chola coast.

Cumulonimbus clouds form by strong convection, grow into huge cauliflower-like towers with flat anvil-shaped tops, and are the only clouds that bring hail, thunder and lightning.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India was set up on 1 October 2016 under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.

The human body conducts electricity because its fluids contain dissolved salts that break up into ions, and these ions carry current.

In his closing speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar warned that on 26 January 1950 India was going to enter into a life of contradictions.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action were adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September 1995.

The Kailasanatha temple of Kanchi is a structural temple built of stone blocks, not a temple cut out of solid rock, so statement I is wrong.

Pairs I, II and IV are correct; pair III is wrong because Part X deals with the Scheduled and Tribal Areas.

The thyroid gland needs iodine to make thyroxine, so iodized salt keeps this hormone in supply. Thyroxine (T4) contains four iodine atoms in each molecule, and the thyroid cannot make it without iodine from food.