The International Court of Justice differs from the International Criminal Court in that the ICJ:

Settles disputes between states

Tries individuals for war crimes

Settles disputes between states

Is an organ of the World Trade Organization

Which pair of organisations is correctly matched with its headquarters?

WTO — Geneva; IAEA — Vienna

WHO — New York; IMF — Geneva

WTO — Geneva; IAEA — Vienna

UNESCO — Vienna; OPEC — Paris

ICJ — Geneva; UNICEF — The Hague

India's relationship with ASEAN is best described as that of:

A dialogue partner, not a member

An observer barred from summits

Given that current affairs is about 6 of 50 GAT questions while reasoning and numeracy are about 25, the better use of a final month is to:

Cap current affairs at about twenty minutes a day and practise reasoning and numeracy

Read three newspapers daily to cover every possible item

Cap current affairs at about twenty minutes a day and practise reasoning and numeracy

Abandon current affairs entirely

Memorise a year's worth of headlines in the last week

General Knowledge — World Bodies, Sports, Awards and Handling Current Affairs

The world half of GK looks like the most open-ended thing in the paper, and it is where students waste the most time. The reason is a false model: candidates try to keep up with the news, which is endless, instead of learning the stable scaffolding — which organisation does what, which trophy belongs to which sport, which prize is not a Nobel — onto which any year's news hangs. Get the scaffolding right and a single monthly compilation is enough for current affairs. Get it wrong and no amount of daily reading will save you, because you will have facts without the structure that makes them answerable.

International Organisations — Who Does What, and From Where

The bodies that recur, with headquarters and mandate
Body	Headquarters	What it does
UN (1945)	New York	24 October is UN Day; 5 permanent Security Council members with veto
ICJ	The Hague	Disputes between states — distinct from the ICC, which tries individuals
WHO	Geneva	Global public health; declares pandemics
UNESCO	Paris	Education, science, culture — maintains the World Heritage list
UNICEF	New York	Children's welfare
IMF and World Bank	Washington DC	IMF lends for balance-of-payments crises; the Bank lends for development projects
WTO (1995)	Geneva	Trade rules; replaced GATT
OPEC	Vienna	Oil-producing exporters' cartel
SAARC (1985)	Kathmandu	South Asia — 8 members
ASEAN	Jakarta	Southeast Asia — India is a dialogue partner, not a member
BRICS	No permanent HQ	Runs the New Development Bank, based in Shanghai
IAEA	Vienna	Nuclear safeguards and peaceful use

🧠 Group them by city, not alphabetically

Headquarters questions become easy once you notice the cities collect organisations by theme. Geneva holds the health-and-trade cluster: WHO, WTO, ILO, WIPO, WMO, the Red Cross. Vienna holds the energy-and-crime cluster: IAEA, OPEC, UNODC. Washington DC holds the money: IMF and World Bank. The Hague holds the courts: ICJ and ICC. Paris: UNESCO and the OECD. Four cities and you have covered most of what is ever asked — and the theme grouping also stops you confusing the ICJ with the ICC, because you remember they share a city precisely because they are both courts.

Sports — Trophies, Terms and Counts

Trophy to sport — the standard matching question
Trophy / cup	Sport
Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, Irani Cup	Cricket (domestic, India)
Santosh Trophy, Durand Cup	Football
Agha Khan Cup, Beighton Cup	Hockey
Thomas Cup (men), Uber Cup (women)	Badminton
Davis Cup, Wimbledon	Tennis
Ryder Cup	Golf
Swaythling Cup	Table tennis
America's Cup	Yachting / sailing

Players per side, and where the term belongs
Sport	Players	Terms from that sport
Cricket / Football / Hockey	11	googly, hat-trick · offside, dribble · bully, short corner
Volleyball / Basketball	6 / 5	smash, deuce · dunk, dribble
Kabaddi / Kho-Kho	7 / 9 (12 in squad)	raid, cant · chaser, pole dive
Water polo / Polo	7 / 4	chukker belongs to polo

ℹ️ Olympic and hosting facts worth holding

The modern Olympics began in Athens, 1896, and the IOC sits in Lausanne. The motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius — "faster, higher, stronger" — with Communiter ("together") added in 2021, and the five rings stand for the five inhabited continents. India's first individual Olympic gold came from Abhinav Bindra (shooting, Beijing 2008) and the first individual medal from K. D. Jadhav (wrestling, 1952); the hockey team's eight golds remain India's largest haul. The Cricket World Cup wins to remember are 1983, 2011 (ODI) and 2007, 2024 (T20).

Awards — and the Prizes That Are Not Nobels

What each award is for
Award	Field, and the catch
Nobel Prizes	Six today: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, Economics. Economics was added in 1968 by the Swedish central bank and is not in Alfred Nobel's will — the classic trap. Peace is awarded in Oslo, the rest in Stockholm.
Fields Medal	Mathematics — there is no Nobel for mathematics, which is why this exists
Jnanpith Award	India's highest literary honour, for writing in Indian languages
Dadasaheb Phalke Award	Lifetime achievement in Indian cinema
Ramon Magsaysay Award	Asia's "Nobel" for public service, given in the Philippines
Bharat Ratna / Param Vir Chakra	Highest civilian / highest wartime gallantry (Ashoka Chakra is its peacetime twin)
Arjuna / Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna / Dronacharya	Sporting excellence / highest sporting honour / coaching
Booker Prize	Fiction in English; the International Booker is for translated fiction — two different prizes

⚠️ The two award traps set almost every year

First: there is no Nobel Prize for mathematics, and the Economics prize is not one of the original five — it was instituted in 1968 and is formally the Sveriges Riksbank Prize. Questions exploit both facts, often in the same option list. Second: an "Indian" winner is not always an Indian citizen. Mother Teresa (Peace, 1979) had taken Indian citizenship, but Hargobind Khorana, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, V. S. Naipaul and Abhijit Banerjee were Indian-born holders of other citizenships when they won. If a stem says "Indian citizen" rather than "of Indian origin", the answer set changes.

Current Affairs Without Drowning

The GAT asks perhaps five to eight current-affairs questions, and they are drawn from headlines a general reader could not miss — a summit India hosted, a major appointment, a sporting result, a space mission, a big report. They are not drawn from the fourth paragraph of an editorial. That single observation should set your budget: twenty minutes a day, no more.

Cover roughly the twelve months before the exam. Anything older has moved into static GK, and anything from the last fortnight is usually too recent to have reached the paper.
Use one monthly compilation, not three. Three sources give you the same news thrice and steal the hours you needed for reasoning and numeracy. Breadth of source is not breadth of knowledge.
Note only what fits a slot — appointments, awards, summits and their host cities, sports results, space and defence, indices and reports, obituaries. A headline that fits no slot is almost never asked.
Attach each item to its static anchor. A new WHO report is worth little by itself; "WHO, Geneva, health" plus the report's name is worth a mark, because that is the form the question takes.
Revise monthly, not daily. Reading today's news feels like study but builds nothing; re-reading last month's notes is what puts facts within reach on exam day.

🎯 Why current affairs is the worst place to spend your last month

Compare the return. Current affairs is perhaps 6 of 50 questions and is unbounded — you can read for a hundred hours and still meet an item you missed. Numerical ability and reasoning are together perhaps 25 of 50 and are closed and practisable — the same dozen question shapes, every year, and every hour of practice measurably raises your accuracy. So a student who spends her final month on news is optimising the one part of the paper that cannot be finished, while leaving alone the half that can. Cap current affairs at twenty minutes a day from the start, and put the freed hours into the next two chapters.

Key takeaways

Learn the stable scaffolding of world bodies first; current-affairs items then hang on it.
Group headquarters by city: Geneva (WHO, WTO, ILO), Vienna (IAEA, OPEC), Washington (IMF, World Bank), The Hague (ICJ, ICC).
The ICJ hears disputes between states; the ICC tries individuals.
There is no Nobel Prize for mathematics — hence the Fields Medal; Economics was added only in 1968.
Nobel Peace is awarded in Oslo, the other prizes in Stockholm.
Thomas Cup is men's badminton, Uber Cup women's; Santosh Trophy is football; chukker belongs to polo.
Modern Olympics began at Athens 1896; Abhinav Bindra won India's first individual gold in 2008.
Cap current affairs at twenty minutes a day and one monthly compilation — reasoning and numeracy pay far more.

Practice questions (8)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Which of the following is NOT one of the prizes established by Alfred Nobel's will?
1. Literature
2. Peace
3. Economics
4. Medicine
Show answer
Answer: C — Economics
Nobel's will created five prizes — Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace. The Economics prize was instituted in 1968 by Sweden's central bank and is formally the Sveriges Riksbank Prize. Note also that there is no Nobel for mathematics, which is why the Fields Medal exists.
The International Court of Justice differs from the International Criminal Court in that the ICJ:
1. Tries individuals for war crimes
2. Settles disputes between states
3. Is located in Geneva
4. Is an organ of the World Trade Organization
Show answer
Answer: B — Settles disputes between states
The ICJ is the UN's principal judicial organ and hears disputes between states; the ICC prosecutes individuals. Both sit at The Hague, which is exactly why they get confused — remembering that they share a city because both are courts helps rather than hinders.
The Uber Cup is associated with:
1. Men's badminton
2. Women's badminton
3. Table tennis
4. Lawn tennis
Show answer
Answer: B — Women's badminton
Uber Cup is the women's world team badminton championship and the Thomas Cup its men's counterpart. The Swaythling Cup belongs to table tennis and the Davis Cup to men's tennis — trophies are best learnt as sport-wise clusters rather than one at a time.
Which pair of organisations is correctly matched with its headquarters?
1. WHO — New York; IMF — Geneva
2. WTO — Geneva; IAEA — Vienna
3. UNESCO — Vienna; OPEC — Paris
4. ICJ — Geneva; UNICEF — The Hague
Show answer
Answer: B — WTO — Geneva; IAEA — Vienna
Geneva holds the health-and-trade cluster (WHO, WTO, ILO) and Vienna the energy-and-nuclear one (IAEA, OPEC). UNESCO is in Paris, the IMF in Washington DC, the ICJ at The Hague and UNICEF in New York — grouping by city is what makes these instantly checkable.
India's first individual Olympic gold medal was won by:
1. K. D. Jadhav in 1952
2. Abhinav Bindra in 2008
3. Neeraj Chopra in 2021
4. Leander Paes in 1996
Show answer
Answer: B — Abhinav Bindra in 2008
Abhinav Bindra won gold in 10 m air rifle at Beijing 2008. K. D. Jadhav (wrestling, 1952) took India's first individual medal — a bronze, not gold — and Leander Paes won a bronze in 1996, so both are the intended distractors.
The Fields Medal is awarded in which field?
1. Agriculture
2. Mathematics
3. Environmental science
4. Journalism
Show answer
Answer: B — Mathematics
The Fields Medal is mathematics' highest honour, and it exists precisely because Alfred Nobel established no prize for mathematics. Journalism's equivalent recognition is the Pulitzer Prize.
India's relationship with ASEAN is best described as that of:
1. A founding member
2. A dialogue partner, not a member
3. An observer barred from summits
4. The permanent chair
Show answer
Answer: B — A dialogue partner, not a member
ASEAN, headquartered in Jakarta, is a Southeast Asian grouping and India participates as a dialogue partner. India is however a founding member of SAARC, whose secretariat is in Kathmandu — the two are frequently swapped in options.
Given that current affairs is about 6 of 50 GAT questions while reasoning and numeracy are about 25, the better use of a final month is to:
1. Read three newspapers daily to cover every possible item
2. Cap current affairs at about twenty minutes a day and practise reasoning and numeracy
3. Abandon current affairs entirely
4. Memorise a year's worth of headlines in the last week
Show answer
Answer: B — Cap current affairs at about twenty minutes a day and practise reasoning and numeracy
Current affairs is unbounded — more hours never finish it — while reasoning and numeracy are closed, practisable and four times as many marks. Capping it is not abandoning it: one monthly compilation and twenty minutes a day still covers the headline-level items the GAT actually asks.