International Affairs Questions and Answers

Answer: D

India was ranked 99th.

The Sustainable Development Report 2025, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranked India 99th of 167 countries on its SDG Index. It was the first time India entered the top 100, up from 109th in the 2024 report.

49th, 89th and 68th do not match the 2025 ranking. Finland again topped the index, as it has in recent years.

Answer: A

Al-Udeid Air Base is in Qatar.

On 23 June 2025 Iran fired missiles at Al Udeid Air Base, south-west of Doha, the largest US military base in the Middle East, in what it called Operation Bashayer al-Fath. It was retaliation for US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites the day before. Most of the missiles were intercepted and no casualties were reported.

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are cities in Israel, and Ramon Air Base is an Israeli Air Force base in the Negev; none of them is where Al Udeid is.

Answer: A

The country is Singapore.

In 2021 Singapore introduced Vaccinated Travel Lanes (VTLs), which let fully vaccinated travellers from selected countries enter without serving quarantine, on condition of COVID-19 tests before and after arrival. The first lanes, with Germany and Brunei, opened in September 2021 and others followed, India among them from late November 2021.

Britain, China and the USA had their own pandemic entry rules, but the scheme named Vaccinated Travel Lane was Singapore's.

Answer: A

The city was Peshawar (printed Peshwar).

On 16 December 2014, gunmen of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar, a school run by the Pakistan Army. More than 140 people were killed, most of them pupils, in one of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan's history.

Karachi, Islamabad and Kohat are other Pakistani cities, but the school attack of that date took place in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Answer: C

The talks of 27 February 2019 were held in Hanoi.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un met for their second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, on 27-28 February 2019. It ended early without an agreement on North Korea's nuclear programme or sanctions relief.

Their first summit had been held in Singapore in June 2018, which is the trap in option D. Tokyo and Busan did not host either summit.

Answer: A

The country that received a financial grant from India for an educational campus was Nepal.

In March 2019 India gave about NPR 35.5 million under the Development Partnership Programme for a building at the Siddheshwar Education Public Campus in Ramechhap, Nepal, opened on 21 March 2019. Further Indian-funded campus buildings followed in Nepal later that year.

No comparable campus grant in 2019 is recorded for Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Myanmar.

Answer: B

The African Union was made a permanent member of the G20.

At the New Delhi summit held under India's presidency in September 2023, the G20 admitted the African Union, a bloc of 55 nations, as a permanent member, on the same footing as the European Union. India had championed the move.

The UN Security Council's permanent members are five states, and no regional bloc has joined them. The AU has no such seat in the WTO, and BRICS expanded by admitting individual countries, not the AU.

Answer: C

The Red Sea crisis arose from attacks by the Houthis.

From November 2023, the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) in Yemen launched missiles and drones at merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, saying it was acting over the war in Gaza. Many shipping lines diverted round the Cape of Good Hope, raising freight costs and delays.

Hezbollah operates from Lebanon, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the Taliban rule Afghanistan, which has no coastline. None of them was behind the Red Sea attacks.

Answer: D

The Phewa Dialogue series was launched jointly by Nepal and China.

The Phewa Dialogue, named after Phewa Lake in Pokhara, was held for the first time in Pokhara in December 2024, organised by Nepal's Tribhuvan University and China's Sichuan University. It brought together former leaders, officials and scholars from South and Southeast Asia to discuss regional prosperity and cooperation.

India and Bhutan were not its organisers, so every option naming them is wrong.

Answer: A

The Chashma Nuclear Power Plant is in Pakistan.

The plant stands at Chashma on the Indus River in Pakistan's Punjab province. Its reactors were built with Chinese assistance, and it has been in the news over the expansion of nuclear cooperation between China and Pakistan.

Syria and Myanmar have no operating nuclear power station of this name. Iran's nuclear power plant is at Bushehr, so Iran is wrong as well.