Sedition law need not be revisited, government tells Supreme Court

• The 1962 KedarNath verdict allowed Section 124A (sedition) to continue to be part of the Indian Penal Code though it limited its applicability to “activities involving incitement to violence or intention or tendency to create public disorder or cause disturbance of public peace”.
• Instances of abuse of Section 124A did not justify reconsideration of a binding judgment upholding the sedition law. The remedy would lie in preventing such abuse on a case-to-case basis, the Centre said.
• A clutch of petitions by senior journalists and prominent bodies and personalities has challenged the legality of the colonial law.
• They have argued that the law of sedition is being rampantly misused by the government to curb fundamental rights of life, dignity, personal liberty, and the freedoms to protest and dissent.
• They said the Kedar Nath judgment had only covered how sedition affected free speech and expression enshrined in Article 19(1)(a) and did not touch upon how the provision would snuff out the right to life (Article 21) and right to equal treatment (Article 14).

Tough anteater (Pangolin) leaves forest officials antsy

• The endangered mammal has refused to accept any food given by the park staff and is mostly spending time in a burrow which it has dug out for itself.
• Pangolins or scaly anteaters are mammals of the order Pholidota.
• The eight species: There are a total of eight pangolin species across Africa and Asia.
• Asian species: Sunda Pangolin, Philippine Pangolin, Chinese Pangolin and ‘Indian Pangolin’.
• African species: Long-tailed Pangolin, Tree Pangolin, Giant Pangolin and the Ground Pangolin.
• They have large, protective keratin scales covering their skin, and they are the only known mammals with this feature.
• They roll into a ball when threatened which can make them easy pickings for poachers.

MHA launches ‘CAPF Punarvaas’ to facilitate retired CAPF, Assam Rifle personnel to secure employment

• This has been launched with an aim to facilitate retired Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) and Assam Rifle personnel to secure employment with private security agencies.
• The portal will help retired personnel seeking re-employment to find an appropriate match by uploading their personal details on the WARB website along with their area of expertise and preferred employment location.
• The Ministry of Home Affairs also runs a portal under Private Security Agencies Regulation Act (PSARA) for the registration of Private Security Agencies (PSAs).
• Both websites have now been interlinked whereby the database of retired CAPFs personnel who have applied on ‘CAPF Punarvaas’ can be accessed by PSAs through PSARA website resulting in a single platform for both job seekers and job providers.
• This new initiative of Ministry of Home Affairs provides access to the data base under ‘CAPFs Punarvaas’ to PSAs digitally.

VPN providers believe new rules will undermine users’ privacy

• The new directive mandates they must maintain all customer data for five years.
• VPN service providers have said the new directive would mean a total loss of privacy for the users–one of the most important unique selling points of such services.
• Any and all devices connected to the internet are a part of a large network of computers, servers and other devices spread across the world.
• To identify each device connected to the internet, service providers globally assign a unique address to each such device called the internet protocol address or IP address.
• It is this IP address that helps websites, law enforcement agencies and even companies track down individual users and their accurate location.
• A virtual private network, when switched on, essentially creates a safe network within the larger global network of the internet and masks the IP address of the user by rerouting the data.
• Acting as a tunnel, a VPN takes data originating from one server and masks it in a different identity before delivering it to the destination server. In essence, a VPN creates several proxy identities for your data and delivers it safely without disturbing the content of the data.

A ''galaxy'' is unmasked as a pulsar

• This pulsar could be the most luminous one ever found- 10 times brighter than any other detected.
• The newly found pulsar – called PSR J0523−7125 – is located well beyond the limits of the Milky Way within the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• A pulsar (from pulsating radio source) is a neutron star that rotates quickly and releases two polarised radio lights.
• The beams create a unique timing and polarisation signature as they burst across space.
• Pulsars are among the few celestial objects that emit circular polarised light.

Three distinct classes of pulsars are currently known to astronomers, according to the source of the power of the electromagnetic radiation:

1. rotation-powered pulsars, where the loss of rotational energy of the star provides the power,
2. accretion-powered pulsars, where the gravitational potential energy of accreted matter is the power source (producing X-rays that are observable from the Earth),
3. magnetars, where the decay of an extremely strong magnetic field provides the electromagnetic power.

Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia, Jamshed Burjor Pardiwala take oath as Supreme Court judges

• Articles 124(2) and 217 of the Constitution governs the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and High Courts respectively.
• Under both provisions, the President has the power to make the appointments “after consultation with such of the Judges of the Supreme Court and of the High Courts in the States as the President may deem necessary”.
• In three cases — which came to be known as the Judges Cases — in 1981, 1993 and 1998, the Supreme Court evolved the collegium system for appointing judges.