Who has been invited to deliver the opening keynote at the International Space Summit on India's future human spaceflight?

The correct answer is Paris. The release states that the virtual bilateral meeting between Dr Jitendra Singh and Prof Philippe Baptiste took place ahead of the International Space Summit, which is scheduled in Paris on 9 and 10 September 2026. The same meeting also covered the Bengaluru Space Expo, scheduled from 7 to 9 September 2026, so the two events sit only days apart and are easy to confuse. Option A, Vienna, hosts the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, which makes it a natural but wrong guess for a space meeting. Option C, Toulouse, is closely associated with the French aerospace industry and is therefore the most tempting distractor of the four, but the Summit named in this release is not held there. Option D, Geneva, is the seat of the International Telecommunication Union, whose regulatory framework for frequency management India supported at this meeting, so the city appears indirectly but is not the venue. Remember the pairing: Summit in Paris, Expo in Bengaluru.

The correct answer is CNES, the space agency of France. The release recalls that India and France have shared a close space partnership spanning nearly six decades, and that cooperation between ISRO and CNES has included the joint satellite missions Megha-Tropiques and SARAL. It adds that the two sides are pursuing further cooperation in Earth observation and in climate-related applications, which is the natural line of work for both of those missions. Option A, NASA, is the agency of the United States and partners ISRO on other projects, but it is not the partner named here. Option B, JAXA, is the Japanese agency and again is not mentioned in this release. Option D, Roscosmos, is the Russian agency and has no role in these two missions. The safest way to hold this is to link the country, the agency and the missions together: France, CNES, Megha-Tropiques and SARAL. The same meeting also settled that Prof Philippe Baptiste would visit India from 28 to 30 September 2026.

The correct answer is Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agarwal, who signed for the Government of India. Option A is wrong, and it is the trap in this question: Piyush Goyal, the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, features in the same day's news, but his role was to announce jointly with Uruguay the launch of negotiations for expanding the Preferential Trade Agreement, not to sign the Protocol. Option C is wrong because Mario Lubetkin, the Foreign Minister of Uruguay, was present in the exercise of the Pro Tempore Presidency of MERCOSUR and witnessed the signing rather than signing himself. Option D is wrong in a different way: Alberto Guani, the Ambassador of Uruguay to India, did sign, but for the MERCOSUR side and not for India, along with Fleming Raul Duarte Ramos, the Ambassador of Paraguay. Representatives from the embassies of Argentina and Brazil were also present at the ceremony.

The correct answer is the acceptance of electronic Certificates of Origin. The Protocol provides that a Certificate of Origin issued in electronic form will carry the same legal validity and value as one issued on paper, provided it is issued and signed electronically by duly authorised entities and officials under each side's own domestic law. It does this by amending Article 16 of Annex III of the Preferential Trade Agreement, the annex that holds the Rules of Origin, and it is expected to cut transaction costs and the time spent on issuing and verifying such certificates. Option B is wrong because the Protocol does not touch tariff rates at all; the concessions under the agreement remain at 450 tariff lines on the Indian side and 452 on the MERCOSUR side. Option C is wrong because no currency arrangement was announced. Option D is wrong because education was not part of this trade instrument, which is concerned with paperless trade and modern customs procedures.

The correct answer is 1 June 2009. Candidates must keep two dates apart here, because both appear in the same sentence of the release. Option A, 25 January 2004, is the date on which the Preferential Trade Agreement was signed, and a gap of more than five years separated signature from entry into force. Option C is wrong because 27 November 2025 was the date of the fourth meeting of the Joint Administrative Committee of the agreement, where both sides first supported the idea of allowing digital Certificates of Origin. Option D is wrong because 9 April 2026 was the date of the fifth meeting of the same Committee, at which the proposal for the Additional Protocol was adopted by mutual consent. Reading the four dates as a single sequence helps: signed in 2004, in force in 2009, idea supported in 2025, proposal adopted in 2026 and the Protocol signed in September 2026.