Current Affairs — 26 May 2026

📖 Explanation

India and the United States signed a framework to secure the supply of critical minerals and rare earths, covering mining, processing and recycling. The move followed China’s 2025 restrictions on rare earth magnet exports, which disrupted global supply chains. Such minerals are essential for electric vehicles, electronics, defence and clean energy.

📖 Explanation

The Quad foreign ministers met in New Delhi, with the meeting chaired by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. The four members are India, the United States, Australia and Japan. They launched an Indo-Pacific energy security initiative and announced a port project in Fiji, partly to counter China’s growing influence in the region.

📖 Explanation

The RBI’s surplus (dividend) transfer to the government is a non-tax revenue receipt — income the government earns other than through taxes. For 2025-26 it was nearly ₹2.9 trillion, up 6.7%. The RBI raised the payout partly by lowering its contingency risk buffer to 6.5% of its balance sheet from 7.5%.

📖 Explanation

The RBI’s final amendment directions introduce a cooling-off period for directors who complete ten continuous years on the board of an urban or rural co-operative bank. The rule implements the relevant provisions of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, which limit continuous tenure on bank boards. The aim is to bring fresh leadership and strengthen governance.

📖 Explanation

PM-AJAY (Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyuday Yojana) is a 100% centrally funded scheme for the socio-economic development of Scheduled Castes, implemented by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. It was created in 2021-22 by merging three earlier schemes and runs through three components: Adarsh Gram, Grants-in-Aid, and hostel construction.

📖 Explanation

India’s TFR has dropped to 1.9, which is below the replacement level of 2.1. Replacement-level fertility (2.1) is the average number of children per woman needed to keep the population stable across generations. The SRS report also showed the infant mortality rate falling to 24 per 1,000 live births and life expectancy at about 72 years.

📖 Explanation

ISEER stands for the Indian Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio, used along with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) star-labelling system to rate air conditioner efficiency. A recent study found that doubling AC efficiency could save consumers up to ₹2.5 lakh crore and cut peak power demand, as ACs already make up about a quarter of India’s peak electricity demand.

📖 Explanation

The Supreme Court held that relatives of a husband cannot be held criminally liable merely for not intervening or for advising the wife to "adjust", unless there is clear evidence they actively took part in the cruelty or dowry harassment. Allegations against each accused must be specific and backed by prima facie material. Courts must ensure criminal law is not stretched to cover every family member without a factual basis.

📖 Explanation

Dr. Ronaldo Laishram named the newly discovered galaxy structure after Loktak Lake in Manipur, the largest freshwater lake in northeast India, famous for its floating islands. The structure was studied using the Subaru Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, and the findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

📖 Explanation

The team made the world’s first confirmed discovery of a blue straggler star with a brown dwarf companion in a compact binary system. A brown dwarf is an object too heavy to be a planet but too light to ignite as a true star. The discovery, involving the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and ARIES, could change how scientists understand stellar evolution.

📖 Explanation

India and Canada aim to conclude a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) by the end of 2026. A CEPA is a broad pact that covers goods, services, investment and wider economic cooperation. The push came as Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal led India’s largest-ever business delegation to Canada, marking a revival of ties after a diplomatic chill.

📖 Explanation

A committee headed by K. Radhakrishnan was set up by the central government after the 2024 NEET controversy and made more than 95 recommendations. These spanned strengthening the NTA’s capacity, improving exam security, and reducing the stakes of the exam, including a possible shift to computer-based testing. NEET-UG is the single national exam for medical admissions, with over 2.2 million candidates.