The Supreme Court held that judicial officers with combined experience of 7 years as an advocate and in service will be eligible for direct recruitment as District Judges. 

• It held that article 233 permitted both advocates and in-service candidates to be appointed as District Judges and extended the criteria of 7 years’ practice to judicial officers as well. 

Appointment of District Judge

• Article 233 deals with appointment of District Judge.
• Appointment Authority: District judges in a State are appointed by the Governor in consultation with the High Court.

Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai won 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature.

• Laszlo Krasznahorkai was born in 1954 in Gyula, Hungary, near the Romanian border.
• Major works: Satantango (1985), The Melancholy of Resistance (1989), War & War (1999), etc.

About Nobel Prize

• Established by Alfred Nobel in 1895. 
• First Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901.
• An international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden.
• 6 Categories: Peace, Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Economic Science.

Meta Platforms has selected Mumbai and Visakhapatnam as the landing sites for the undersea cable project, Waterworth.

About Undersea Cables

• Undersea cables are fiber-optic cable laid across the ocean floor that transmits information and enables worldwide communications.
• Significance: Undersea cables are backbone of international internet. It moves 90% of data, 80% of world trade, and about $10 trillion of financial transactions.

Ministry of Textiles Notifies Major Amendments in PLI Scheme for Textiles.

• Key revisions include expanding eligible products, lowering investment and turnover criteria etc.

About Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Textiles

• Ministry: Ministry of Textiles
• Objective: To promote production of Man Made Fibre (MMF) Apparel & Fabrics and Technical Textiles etc.
• Duration: From 2021 to 2030 (incentives payable for 5 years).
• Monitoring and Implementation: By Empowered Group of Secretaries (constituted by the DPIIT).

Scientists have studied a resilient flower species Cistanthe longiscapa in in Chile’s extremely arid Atacama Desert to identify the flower's traits that allow it to survive severe water scarcity and temperature extremes.

• Atacama Desert is considered one of the driest coastal deserts in the world, forming a continuous strip for nearly 1,000 km along the narrow coast of the northern third of Chile.

About Cistanthe longiscapa

• Habitat: Native to the Atacama Desert in Chile, known locally as "pata de guanaco".
• Growth Cycle: An annual herb that completes its life cycle, including flowering, after sporadic rainfall. 
• Adaptation: Utilizes Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) metabolism, a highly efficient photosynthetic pathway that opens its stomata at night to capture carbon dioxide and store it as malic acid, a trait crucial for surviving in deserts. 

Astronomers have discovered a young rogue planet that is actively accreting material from its surroundings.

About Rogue Planet

• Definition: A rogue planet is a planetary body ejected from its original system, drifting freely in interstellar space.
  • Most rogue planets are expelled during early, chaotic stages of planetary system formation, but ejection can happen anytime due to orbital instabilities.
• Orbit: Unlike normal planets, it does not orbit any star and moves independently.
• Significance: Studying rogue planets help understand planetary formation, system dynamics, and interstellar matter interactions.

Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2026 was released.

About Times University Rankings

• Publisher: Times Higher Education magazine.
• Methodology: Assess universities on teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook based on 18 performance indicators.
• Key highlights of the Ranking 2026
  • Top rank (Global): University of Oxford (10^th consecutive year).
  • Among Indian institutions, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, leads the country, retaining its position in the 201–250 band.

Indian Army initiated procurement of indigenously developed SAKSHAM (Situational Awareness for Kinetic Soft and Hard Kill Assets Management) Counter-Unmanned Aerial System (CUAS) Grid System.

About SAKSHAM System

• It is a modular, high-end Command and Control (C2) system operating on the secure Army Data Network (ADN).
• It can detect, track, identify, and neutralise hostile drones and unmanned aerial systems in real time, ensuring comprehensive airspace security across the newly defined Tactical Battlefield Space (TBS).
  • TBS is a domain extending up to 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) above ground level.
• Developed in collaboration with the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL),