4 November 2026
The World Health Organization has published an implementation facilitation guide for Digital Adaptation Kits. A Digital Adaptation Kit, or DAK, is a foundational layer of the agency's SMART Guidelines approach. It takes clinical guidance written as narrative text and turns it into structured documentation that computer systems can act on, covering the data elements, decision logic and workflows a health programme needs. The kit is deliberately software-neutral, so a country can use it to design or procure any digital system without being tied to one product. The new guide is addressed to health ministries, system developers, digital health implementers and technology partners, and sets out how to run the adaptation process in a country. The point of the SMART Guidelines approach is to shorten the long gap between the issue of a WHO recommendation and its appearance inside the digital tools that health workers actually use.
Publication:
Digital adaptation kits: implementation facilitation guide
Framework it belongs to:
WHO SMART Guidelines
Why it matters for exams: SMART Guidelines is the WHO framework for turning clinical recommendations into machine-readable form, and the Digital Adaptation Kit is its foundational layer - a named concept in digital health questions.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
DAK Digital Adaptation Kit — A software-neutral WHO document that converts narrative clinical guidance into structured, machine-usable form.
4 November 2026
Israel's Central Elections Committee has certified the result of the Knesset election and handed it formally to President Isaac Herzog, while rejecting claims that the ballot had been compromised. The committee said there was no empirical basis for allegations of systematic interference with the integrity of the vote. Its chairman, Justice Noam Sohlberg, had earlier asked the internal security service to look into suspicions that foreign entities tried to influence voting. The certified count gives Likud 27 seats and Yashar 21 in a Knesset of 120, with three small lists falling below the 3.25 per cent threshold. Turnout was 77.9 per cent, with 5,716,665 votes cast. No bloc reached the 61 seats needed for a majority, so the President will now consult party representatives before naming a member of the Knesset to try to form a government. The 26th Knesset is to be sworn in on 10 November.
Seats in the Knesset:
120
Entry threshold:
3.25 per cent
Turnout:
77.9 per cent
Swearing-in of the 26th Knesset:
10 November
Why it matters for exams: The Knesset has 120 seats with a 61-seat majority mark and a 3.25 per cent entry threshold, and the President of Israel is the office that nominates a candidate to form the government.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
Knesset Knesset — Israel's single-chamber parliament of 120 members, elected by nationwide proportional representation.
3 November 2026
The World Health Organization has published the second edition of Module 3 of its consolidated guidelines on tuberculosis, the module that deals with diagnosis. The edition brings together in one document the agency's policy guidance on detecting tuberculosis infection, tuberculosis disease and drug resistance, which had been issued separately until now. Three recommendations are new. The first allows a class of near point-of-care diagnostic tests that can confirm tuberculosis at peripheral levels of a health system, rather than only at referral laboratories. The second accepts tongue swabs as a sample type, which matters for patients who cannot produce sputum, including many children and people living with HIV. The third permits sputum pooling, in which samples from several people are tested together, as a way to diagnose tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance more cheaply where resources are very tight. The consolidated guidelines series is the reference that national tuberculosis programmes follow.
Publication:
WHO consolidated guidelines on tuberculosis: Module 3: Diagnosis, 2nd edition
New sample type accepted:
Tongue swabs
Resistance marker covered:
Rifampicin resistance
Why it matters for exams: The WHO consolidated guidelines on tuberculosis are the global reference that national TB programmes follow, and rifampicin resistance is the marker used to flag drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
WHO World Health Organization — The United Nations specialised agency for health, with headquarters at Geneva.
3 November 2026
Denise Brown, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, has said drone strikes on civilian infrastructure are cutting electricity, water and fuel supplies and blocking relief work. A hospital just outside Khartoum lost power after strikes, and twenty-five patients needing dialysis had their treatment stopped; World Health Organization staff were in the hospital at the time. Fuel queues now stretch for kilometres and hundreds of aid trucks are stranded. Brown said World Food Programme convoys have been hit seven times this year and twenty times over the past two years, and that the agency is cutting both the number of people served and the size of rations because of funding shortfalls. She described the strikes as an apparent violation of international humanitarian law and said she does not know where the drones come from. Severe acute malnutrition is above the emergency threshold in many areas, going by UNICEF studies, and poor rainfall has worsened food insecurity in parts of Darfur and Kordofan. Brown also pointed to hard-to-reach areas such as Dilling in South Kordofan and parts of Blue Nile.
UN official:
Denise Brown, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan
Dialysis patients affected:
25
Attacks on WFP convoys this year:
7
Why it matters for exams: The post of UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, the World Food Programme and UNICEF are the named UN bodies here, and Khartoum, South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur are the places a Sudan question turns on.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
WFP World Food Programme — The United Nations agency that delivers food aid in emergencies, based at Rome.
3 November 2026
The United Nations Children's Fund has reported that three children were killed and five injured when an airstrike hit an educational centre in Loikaw Township in Myanmar's Kayah state. The centre had been sheltering displaced families. Other airstrikes over the same weekend struck Rakhine state, and one of them hit a temporary healthcare facility where a newborn and health workers were reported killed. UNICEF called the reports a stark reminder that children are bearing the brunt of the conflict and urged all parties to follow international humanitarian law and protect children. Myanmar has been in civil war since the military seized power in a coup in 2021. Attacks on schools and health facilities are specifically prohibited under international humanitarian law.
Children killed:
Three
Children injured:
Five
Place:
Loikaw Township, Kayah state
Why it matters for exams: Kayah state borders Thailand and Rakhine state faces the Bay of Bengal, and UNICEF is the United Nations Children's Fund - the geography and agency facts a Myanmar question uses.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund — The UN agency for children's rights, survival and education, with headquarters in New York.
3 November 2026
The United Nations has elected five judges to the International Court of Justice, each for a nine-year term beginning on 6 February 2027. The five are Dapo Akande (United Kingdom), Francois Alabrune (France), Mahmoud Daifallah Hmoud (Jordan), Rena Lee (Singapore) and Phoebe Okowa (Kenya). The General Assembly and the Security Council vote separately and at the same time by secret ballot, and a candidate must win an absolute majority in both. The two bodies agreed on four names at once but split on the fifth: the Security Council backed Marcelo Vazquez-Bermudez of Ecuador while the Assembly backed Okowa, forcing further rounds. Vazquez-Bermudez then withdrew and Okowa won support in both chambers. Akande, a professor of public international law at Oxford, is the first British judge on the Court in almost a decade; the United Kingdom government welcomed the result. The Court settles legal disputes between States and gives advisory opinions on questions put to it.
Judges elected:
Five
Term:
Nine years from 6 February 2027
Seat of the Court:
The Hague
Total judges on the Court:
15
Why it matters for exams: The International Court of Justice has fifteen judges elected for nine years by the General Assembly and the Security Council voting separately, and it sits at The Hague - the exact structure asked in international organisation questions.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
ICJ International Court of Justice — The principal judicial organ of the United Nations, which settles disputes between States.
3 November 2026
The agency says its main annual study, Progress of the World's Women 2026, subtitled Gender Equality in the Age of Climate Crisis, will be released at COP31, the United Nations climate conference in Antalya, Turkiye. A press conference on 10 November will carry it, under the title Burning Inequalities. Its subtitle asks, of the gender cost of climate change, who pays and who profits, and what has to change. The report asks who drives the climate crisis, who bears its costs and what a green and fair transition would require. The advisory says most national climate plans fall short of dealing with the risks women face. Progress of the World's Women is the agency's principal periodic report, each edition built around one theme, and it is issued by UN Women headquarters.
Report:
Progress of the World's Women 2026: Gender Equality in the Age of Climate Crisis
Publisher:
UN Women
Launch venue:
COP31, Antalya, Turkiye
Why it matters for exams: Progress of the World's Women is UN Women's flagship report, UN Women was created by the General Assembly in 2010 by merging four bodies, and COP31 is being held at Antalya in Turkiye.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
COP31 Thirty-first session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — The annual climate conference of the parties to the framework convention, held in 2026 at Antalya.
Background
The World Health Organization has brought out a new facilitation guide, so the agency behind it is worth placing. The WHO was founded in 1948 and is the United Nations agency given the job of advancing health for all. It works with 194 Member States, grouped into six regions, and is present on the ground in more than 150 locations. The six regions are Africa, the Americas, South-East Asia, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Pacific, and each has its own regional arm. Its decision-making body is the World Health Assembly, which delegations from every Member State attend. India sits in the South-East Asia region. For an aspirant, the number of members, the six regions and the name of the Assembly are the facts that recur.
Member States:
194
Regions:
6
Decision-making body:
World Health Assembly
Why it matters for exams: WHO's 194 Member States, its six regions and the World Health Assembly as its decision-making body are standing Health and International Organisations questions.
Kerala PSCUPSCSSC
In plain words
WHO World Health Organization — The United Nations agency responsible for international public health.