Supreme Court (SC) is to hear petitions challenging Marital Rape Exception (MRE) under Section 375 and Section 63 of the Indian Penal Code and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 respectively. 

• SC in Joseph Shine Vs Union of India (2018) held that MRE stems from the doctrine of coverture. 

Doctrine of Coverture

• Legal doctrine under English common law, that places a married woman under the cover of her husband treating them as a single entity. 
• It suspends the very being or legal existence of a woman after marriage. 
• In theory, it seeks to pass on her property to the husband, restricting her ability to hold property, enter into contract, etc.

Greenwashing, free riding, and outdated certification systems raise questions about sustainable certifications systems.

• Greenwashing: Involves making false claims on eco-friendly credentials of a company without meeting required standards.
• Free Riding:   Allows businesses to benefit from the positive image of certifications without genuinely implementing sustainable practices.
• Solution: These practices could be avoided through the use of disruptive green technologies like Biophilic Designs. 
  • Biophilic design creates spaces that connect people with nature, thereby producing a positive environmental impact. 
  • They inherently support green building practices by utilizing natural materials and mimicking natural processes reducing the ecological footprint of a building. E.g., Green Roofs.

The Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying launched 21st Livestock Census to have updated data on livestock population, allowing government to address key issues like disease control, breed improvement, and rural livelihoods

About 21st Livestock Census

• Schedule: To be conducted during October, 2024- February, 2025.
• Key Features: 
  • Fully digitized (similar to 20th census); 
  • Data on 16 species of livestocks and their 219 indigenous breeds are going to be captured 
  • Covers data on pastoralists for the first time.
  • focus on Gender Roles in Livestock Rearing
• Livestock census has been conducted every five years since 1919 (last being in 2019). 

Recently, the Nature Conservation Index (2024) was released.

About NCI

• India’s Rank: 176 out of 180 countries.
• Developed by: Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change at Ben-Gurion University of Negev and BioDB.com
• It evaluates conservation efforts using four markers:
  • Land management, 
  • Threats to biodiversity, 
  • Capacity and governance, and 
  • Future trends. 
• It is a data-driven analysis of each country’s progress in balancing conservation and development.

NITI Aayog recently raised questions about the necessity of flue gas desulfurization installations in India’s thermal power plants.

About Flue Gas Desulfurization(FGD)

• It is  a scrubbing technique which uses an alkaline reagent (sodium or calcium based) to remove SO2 from flue gas of fossil-fueled power stations or coal-fired power plants.
  • Flue gas also called as exhaust gas/stack gas emanates from combustion plants and contains particulate matter (dust), sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide etc.
• It is of various types (e.g. dry sorbent injection, wet limestone based, sea water based) 
• The Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change has mandated FGD installation in thermal power plants and set sulfur dioxide emission standards.

Recently Asiatic Golden Cat(Catopuma temminckii) was spotted at Assam's Manas National Park.

About the Asiatic Golden cat

• Habitat: Found in forests ranging from tropical/subtropical evergreen forests, mixed and dry deciduous forests and tropical rainforests.
• Range Countries: It is native to the northeastern Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and China.
• Characteristics 
  • The common coat colour is golden or red-brown, but it may also be dark brown or even grey.
  • Its size is medium with relatively long legs.
  • Mainly Nocturnal but recent data indicates that it may be diurnal.
• Protection status
  • IUCN status: Near Threatened.
  • India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Schedule I and Schedule IV.

Israel launched a SPICE 2000 bomb to destroy a building in Lebanon.

About SPICE 2000 Bomb

• It is a guidance kit that can be attached to 2,0000-pound bombs to carry out precision strikes.
• It is made by Israel’s government-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. 
• Key features:
  • Autonomous operation.
  • Tactical flexibility in trajectory.
  • Low collateral damage.
  • Simple mission planning.
  • Pinpoint accuracy and effective target destruction.

NASA unveiled a Prototype (called the Engineering Development Unit Telescope).

• The telescope was built as part of LISA.

About LISA

• The mission is led by ESA (European Space Agency) in partnership with NASA .
• It will be the first space-based observatory dedicated to studying gravitational waves.
  • Gravitational Waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time emitted during the most powerful events in the Universe, such as pairs of black holes coming together and merging.
• Launch: Mid 2030s.
• It will consist of three identical spacecraft that will trail Earth in its orbit around the Sun.