Prashant Mavani, is an expert in current affairs analysis and holds a MSc in Management from University of Surrey (U.K.).

Above all he is a passionate teacher.

• Supreme Court: Marriage cannot be a licence to have sex with a minor girl

• Indian Penal Code: It is an offence to have sex with a girl below 18 years of age
• Regardless of consent. The age of consent under the IPC was raised in 2013 from 16 to 18
• Exception: if the girl was the man’s wife, provided she was not below 15.
• In other words, what was statutory rape is treated as permissible within a marriage.
• POCSO criminalises even consensual teenage sexual activity
• Any person under 18 is a minor

• Child marriage is a social evil.

• Given the prevalence of child marriage in this country, it is doubtful whether it is

possible — or even desirable — to implement the statutory rape law uniformly in
the context of marriages.
• Significantly, if boys under 18 but over 16 are charged with penetrative sexual
assault under POCSO or rape under the IPC, which can be termed ‘heinous
offences’, they could face the prospect of being tried as adults, according to the
juvenile law as it stands now.

• Treating all below 18 as children may be good for their care and protection, but
whether 18 is the right age for consent in this day and age remains a moot
question.
• Catalan President Carles Puigdemont’s call for a dialogue with the federal
government

• Prime Minister M Rajoy, who has remained steadfast in his defence of Spanish
sovereignty and integrity, should seize the opening.

• Article 155 to exercise direct control over Catalonia.

• 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who voted in favour of independence, according
to preliminary results released by the region’s government. The region has 5.3
million voters.
• Officials said 770,000 votes were lost due to disruption which resulted in polling
stations being raided by Spanish police.
• The vote held on October 1 brought the Spanish government widespread
condemnation for the violent incidents of the day.

• A plain refusal to talk to the separatists is politically untenable when the other
side seems inclined to push back on the declaration of independence.

• Whether the European Union could influence the course of events is at best a
matter for speculation.
• Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded for the discovery of gravitational waves.

• Laser-Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, an engineering marvel,

that picked up a chirp from the gravitational waves of a billion-year-old cosmic
cataclysm.

• Debate question: whether the three individual winners of the prize deserved it
more than a thousand others who’ve been associated with building the LIGO.

• 2008 Nobel Chemistry Prize for the discovery of the green fluorescent protein, a
standard tool that is used as a biological marker, went to three persons and
omitted Douglas Prasher, who first cloned it and suggested its use as a marker.
• In his will, explaining the details of the prize, Alfred Nobel said that the money
was to be split in five and in each case a “person” who made the most important
contributions to physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.

• In the course of its evolution, however, the Nobel Prize has turned out to be
much more than feting prize racehorses

• The specialist committees that decide the prizes and the governing board have
amended the prize-dispensing rules in ways that have made it far more
encompassing.

• The one barrier that hasn’t been broken is accepting that science — that’s of the
“greatest benefit to mankind” — is now a collective enterprise.
• Category 5 hurricanes in the Caribbean and in the American mainland; record
floods across Bangladesh, India and Nepal; and drought emergencies in 20
countries in Africa.

• Countries that are least developed, the impact of disasters is heavy.

• 4.2 million people dying prematurely each year : pollution

• During the last two years, over 40 million people, mainly in countries which
contribute least to global warming, have been forced from their homes by
disasters.

• There is clear consensus: rising temperatures are increasing the amount of water
vapour in the atmosphere, leading to more intense rainfall and flooding in some
places, and drought in others.
• TOPEX/Poseidon, the first satellite to precisely measure rising sea levels, was
launched 25 years ago.
• Those measurements have observed a global increase of 3.4 millimetres per year since
then; that’s a total of 85 millimetres over 25 years.
• Rising and warming seas are contributing to the intensity of tropical storms worldwide.

• Paris Agreement has set the world on a long-term path towards a low-carbon
future

• It is critical to remember that the long-term reduction of emissions is the most

important risk reduction tactic

• The November UN Climate Conference in Bonn provides an opportunity to not

only accelerate emission reductions but to also boost the work of ensuring that
the management of climate risk is integrated into disaster risk management as a
whole.
• On October 14, 1956, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism during a massive
public ceremony held in Nagpur, at a place thereafter named Deeksha Bhoomi.
• 400,000 people, most of them born Dalit, underwent the conversion, along with him

• According to his biographer Dhananjay Keer, Ambedkar lived a frugal, penurious

life in those years, braving hunger, poverty and loneliness to gain extraordinary
educational qualifications.

• The house memorialises not just another passage in Ambedkar’s early life, but
rather, his profound desire for freedom.
• He wanted freedom from caste, from humiliation, from racism, from colonialism
— from every kind of discrimination whether in India, America or England, that
he had experienced throughout his life.
• The search for freedom can take many forms that need not be overtly ‘political’.

• Arab writer Mansoor Adayfi, a former detainee at Guantánamo, describes how

prisoners longed to catch a glimpse of the sea all around them, that they were
debarred from seeing.
• Adayfi’s essay is moving in how it conveys the human longing for freedom, which seems to run even
deeper than our cultural identities and political circumstances, to be hardwired into our very souls.

• Tamil novelist Perumal Murugan, hounded by right-wing critics for writing about his
own Gounder community, has penned a number of poems.
• Krishna’s gesture of solidarity beautifully breaks the silence, amplifying Murugan’s call for free
speech and his assertion of the right to dissent in a democracy.
• The poem is about the unbridled force of the wind, that can never be tamed or controlled, that
goes where it pleases, touches whom it likes, wipes away boundaries and divisions, tears down
walls and obstructions, and sweeps across the earth unimpeded.

• The longing for freedom is synonymous with our very existence as feeling, thinking
human beings. We must seek that freedom, and to survive, we must find it, whatever
the impediments in our path. To deny us freedom is to deny us life.
Talwars acquitted in Aarushi case
Himachal election on November 9
• Assembly poll will be held in a single phase on November 9, the Election Commission
announced.

• The electoral body did not declare the schedule for election in Gujarat, where the
Assembly term is to expire on January 22 next year.

• Chief Election Commissioner A.K. Joti said results for the Himachal Pradesh poll
would be declared on December 18. Even though he did not announce the dates for the
Assembly election in Gujarat, he said it would be held before December 18 to ensure
that “the voting pattern of one State does not affect the other State.”

• With the announcement of the election schedule, the model code of conduct for
Himachal Pradesh comes into force immediately. It will be applicable for all the political
parties and the State and the Central governments on decisions related to the State.
U.S. and Israel quit UNESCO
• The U.S. on Thursday announced its withdrawal from the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), accusing it of
“continuing anti-Israel bias.”

• UNESCO is the first UN agency to have admitted Palestine as a full member in

2011. As required by law, the U.S. has stopped funding UNESCO since then. The
U.S. withdrawal will take effect on December 31, 2018. Until then, it will remain a
full member.

• Israel has also decided to pull out of UNESCO, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said. “The Prime Minister has instructed the Foreign Ministry to
prepare Israel’s withdrawal from the organisation alongside the U.S.,” his office
said in a statement.
SC clears the air on ‘senior lawyer’ designation
• After the Supreme Court drew back the curtains to let the sunshine in on the secretive
Collegium system of judicial appointments, the court repeated the act of transparency
on Thursday by making the procedure for conferment of ‘senior advocate’ designation to
lawyers uniform and objective to ensure that only the deserving will get the coveted status.
• So far, the judges of the Supreme Court and the high courts had sole discretion over
whom to grant the senior gown. The reasons for conferring this honour have often
remained opaque.
• The status of senior advocate commands enormous respect from courts and, as far
as the litigant is concerned, it is synonymous with considerable fee charged.
• For the first time, the court recorded that the pro bono work done by lawyers would be
a major consideration for grant of the senior status. The Bench directed the setting up
of a permanent committee headed by the Chief Justice of India and consisting of two
senior-most Judges of the SC or the high courts. The panel will have the Attorney
General of India or the Advocate General of the State in case of a high court. The fifth
member of the panel would be nominated from the Bar.
‘EU, India are natural partners based on values’
• We are really natural partners, based on principles of democracy, human rights,
tolerance and internal diversity.
• We have common responsibilities to secure peace and stability because of the current
uncertainties in the global arena.
• The current world is interconnected, and the geographical distance between
India and Europe is no longer key.
• We are working on establishing direct links between Europol and Indian
agencies.
• On BRI: We are in favour of connecting Asia to Europe, but at the same time we
want to be clear about the principles it should be based on. It is also important to
have accessibility of the high seas on the basis of international law.
• We are in favour of the UNSC becoming more efficient and effective.
August factory output at 9-month high
• The country's industrial production grew at a nine-month high of 4.3 per cent in
August this year.

• This was mainly due to a robust performance of the mining and power sectors.

• Factory output measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production had

grown 4 per cent in August last year.

• Central Statistics Office data, overall food inflation moderated to 1.25 per cent in
September.

• Retail inflation in vegetables softened to 3.92 percent. Pulses and products saw a
fall in prices of 22.51 per cent during the month under review.
‘Talks soon to bring realty under GST’
• The issue of bringing real estate under the Goods and Services Tax’s
ambit will be discussed next month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
said, as he acknowledged that it was the one sector where
maximum amount of tax evasion and cash generation takes place.

• The matter will be discussed in the next meeting of the GST Council
on November 9 in Guwahati.

• Some of the states have been pressing for it.

• I personally believe that there is a strong case to bring real estate

into the GST said the Finance Minister said.
 Questions
1. Select the right option. Sendai is a city of
a. Indonesia
b. Japan
c. Australia
d. Rwanda

2. If there is disagreement within GST Council, then it can opt for vote. What is
the weightage of Centre’s and States’ votes?

3. Name 8 core industries.

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