Current Affairs Quiz 18 August 2026

All three statements are correct. The original Act restricted industrial goods funding to entities situated in rural areas, and the Amendment Bill removes this geographical restriction. Earlier the NCDC could invest only in national-level or multi-State co-operatives, but the Bill extends this to within-State societies with central government approval, and it further empowers the NCDC to collect and share credit information with the central government, RBI, banking companies, and other notified financial institutions. Aspirants familiar only with the old Act may wrongly assume the rural-area restriction still applies, so always verify the direction in which an amendment expands or contracts existing eligibility.

Both A and R are true and R correctly explains A. Exports rose about 20% to $44.2 billion in July 2026, yet the trade deficit widened from around $28 billion to about $32 billion because import growth outpaced export growth. The dominant driver of export growth was petroleum products, accounting for 39% of the incremental gain, after global prices surged following the US strike on Iran in late February 2026, a conflict that also depressed the UAE's share in India's export basket. The apparent paradox of exports rising alongside a widening deficit resolves once import growth is factored in, so both sides of the trade ledger must be tracked together.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, while Statement 2 is incorrect. A GoI notification dated 17 February 2026 mandates E20 with a minimum RON of 95 from April 1, 2026, and ethanol's hygroscopic nature does cause phase separation in Underground Steel Tanks once water content crosses roughly 0.5%, leaving a corrosive low-octane layer at the bottom. Statement 2 is wrong because post-April 2023 BS6 Phase 2 RDE-compliant vehicles actually use fluorinated rubber (FKM/Viton), not Nitrile Butadiene Rubber, which is the legacy material found in pre-2023 vehicles that is incompatible with higher ethanol blends. This FKM/Viton versus NBR swap is a classic material-science trap, so in such questions it pays to pin down exactly which vehicle generation uses which rubber.

Statement 1 is correct while Statement 2 is incorrect. In conventional engines a sub-sonic deflagration flame drives combustion at constant pressure, but in an RDE a detonation wave compresses the mixture so combustion happens at constant volume, converting more chemical energy into useful work and yielding a 10–25% thermodynamic efficiency gain. Statement 2 is false because RDEs worldwide, including D-Propulse's demonstration at DRDO Hyderabad, remain confined to research and development, with no model known to be commercially or militarily deployed as of August 2026. A successful demo at a DRDO facility does not equal operational deployment, so it is worth checking a technology's actual readiness level whenever such claims appear.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 is false in its final clause. A September study in Conservation Biology, co-authored by Jose Guerrero-Casado of Spain's University of Cordoba, designated the rapid spread of AI misinformation as a "major threat", and experts from bodies such as Born Free and WWF warn that hyper-realistic AI visuals of wild animals behaving like pets distort public perception and have been linked to unsafe interactions, including a snow leopard attack in Xinjiang in January 2026. Meta and TikTok do require labelling of AI-generated content, but fact-checkers spotted multiple wildlife posts without clear labels, meaning enforcement is inconsistent rather than consistent. Whenever a statement carries two sub-clauses joined by a comma, both parts must hold true for the whole statement to be marked correct.

Option B is correct. The Supreme Court's judgment directed that the investigating officer handling an electoral FIR must make every possible effort to complete the investigation within one year, and if this timeline is exceeded, reasons must be recorded and communicated to the Election Commission. The Bench also directed that any authority seizing cash or assets must report it within 24 hours to the District Magistrate, Additional DM, or Court with written reasons establishing a prima facie link to the electoral offence, and asked the EC and State governments to file compliance affidavits by November 18. Options A, C, and D describe plausible-sounding but fabricated directions that do not appear in the actual judgment, so it is important to stay close to what the court specifically ordered rather than what sounds logical.

All three statements correctly reflect the PM's Independence Day address. The PM announced that India has crossed a milestone by mastering Fast Breeder Reactor technology in 2026, enabling self-reliance in nuclear fuel as a step towards the target of 100 GW nuclear capacity by 2047, alongside a plan to train 1 crore youth in AI skills within the coming year. He also stated that the bioeconomy has grown from ₹60,000 crore before 2014 to ₹20 lakh crore in 2026, a more than 33-fold increase. Since large round figures and fresh technology milestones are the most citable data points from such addresses, it helps to memorise the FBR milestone, the AI training target, and the bioeconomy figure together as a trio.

All three statements are correct as per PIB data released on 13 August 2026. Jal Jeevan Mission coverage rose from 3.23 crore households in August 2019 to 15.91 crore households by August 12, 2026, while DAY-NRLM has mobilised 10.19 crore households into 94.46 lakh Self-Help Groups as of the same date. The 4,172 Van Dhan Vikas Kendras benefitting 12.48 lakh tribals are sanctioned specifically under PM-JVM, which is distinct from PM-JANMAN, a separate scheme targeting Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups with 540 VDVKs of its own. Because these two sub-schemes are often conflated, it helps to always pair each scheme name with its correct VDVK count and beneficiary group.

Option B is correct. The PM specifically cited the SHANTI Act as the legislative vehicle that has paved the way towards a new goal in nuclear energy, namely 100 GW of nuclear power capacity by 2047, with five new reactors to be commissioned within this decade. The E20 mandate in Option C is a separate MoPNG notification unrelated to the SHANTI Act, while Options A and D describe measures not associated with SHANTI at all, with the Innovation Fund actually being a DST/DPIIT initiative announced separately. Whenever a named Act appears in a question stem, it is worth first pinning down its ministry and sector, since SHANTI belongs to nuclear energy and the Department of Atomic Energy, not renewables or ethanol.

All three statements are correct based on MoCI data for April–July 2026. The US accounted for roughly one-fifth of India's merchandise exports in this period, retaining its top-market position despite US tariffs, while the share of electronic goods nearly doubled, rising from about $16.2 billion to $21.2 billion, a 30.7% increase. Tanzania's share in India's exports nearly doubled from about 1.1% to 2%, but this jump was driven primarily by refined petroleum products rather than genuine market diversification. In trade data questions it is worth asking whether growth is value-driven by commodity prices or volume-driven by new products and markets, since UPSC often tests exactly this distinction.