GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

The Supreme Court recently underlined that “there is a pressing need” for reform in the law related to bail and called on the government to consider framing a special legislation on the lines of the law in the United Kingdom.

Key-takeaways from the ruling:

• A two-judge Bench issued certain clarifications to an older judgment delivered in July 2021 on bail reform (Satender Kumar Antil vs CBI).
• The ruling is essentially a reiteration of several crucial principles of criminal procedure.
• Referring to the state of jails in the country, where over two-thirds lodged are undertrials, the Supreme Court underlined that arrest is a draconian measure that needs to be used sparingly.
• Theoretically, the court also linked the idea of indiscriminate arrests to magistrates ignoring the rule of “bail, not jail” to a colonial mindset.
• The Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was first drafted in 1882 and continues to be in use with amendments from time to time.

The law on bail

• The CrPC does not define the word bail but only categories offences under the Indian Penal Code as ‘bailable’ and ‘non-bailable’.
• The CrPC empowers magistrates to grant bail for bailable offences as a matter of right.
• This would involve release on furnishing a bail bond, with or without security.
• Non-bailable offences are cognisable, which enables the police officer to arrest without a warrant.
• In such cases, a magistrate would determine if the accused is fit to be released on bail.

The UK law:

• The Bail Act of the United Kingdom, 1976, prescribes the procedure for granting bail.
• A key feature is that one of the aims of the legislation is “reducing the size of the inmate population”.
• The law also has provisions for ensuring legal aid for defendants.
• The Act recognises a “general right” to be granted bail.

What has the Supreme Court held on reforms?

The court’s ruling is in the form of guidelines, and it also draws the line on certain procedural issues for the police and judiciary.

• Separate law for bail: 
  • The court underlined that the CrPC, despite amendments since Independence, largely retains its original structure as drafted by a colonial power over its subjects.
  • The court made this point to signal that despite its rulings, structurally, the Code does not account for arrest as a fundamental liberty issue in itself.
  • It also highlighted that magistrates do not necessarily exercise their discretionary powers uniformly.
  • The court’s solution on this is the framing of a separate law that deals with the grant of bail.
• Indiscriminate arrests:
  • The court noted that the culture of too many arrests, especially for non-cognisable offences, is unwarranted.
  • It emphasised that even for cognisable offences, arrest is not mandatory and must be “necessitated”.
  • It held that lower courts must satisfy that these conditions are met and “Any non-compliance would entitle the accused for grant of bail”.
• Bail application:
  • “There need not be any insistence of a bail application while considering the application under Section 88, 170, 204 and 209 of the Code,” the court held.
  • These sections relate to various stages of a trial where a magistrate can decide on release of an accused.
  • These range from power of the magistrate to take bond for appearance (Section 88) to power to issue summons (Section 204).
  • The Supreme Court held that in these circumstances, magistrates must routinely consider granting bail, without insisting on a separate bail application.
• Direction to states:
  • The SC also directed all state governments and Union Territories to facilitate standing orders to comply with the orders and avoid indiscriminate arrests.
  • The CBI has already communicated earlier orders of the Court to special judges under its jurisdiction.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, has come under intense criticism from the LGBTQ community for its name.

What was the Lavender Scare?

• The Lavender Scare was the marginalisation of LGBTQ employees working in the US government’s offices during the 1950s and 1960s.
• It is often described as a “witch-hunt”, where those suspected of being from the LGBTQ community were fired from their jobs.
• Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, the investigation, interrogation and systematic removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government became policy.
• The policy was based on the unfounded fear that gay men and lesbians “posed a threat to national security because they were vulnerable to blackmail and were considered to have weak moral characters.
  

Who was James Webb?

• James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as Undersecretary of State from 1949 to 1952.
• He was also the second appointed administrator of NASA.
• Webb led NASA from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the end of the Johnson administration, thus overseeing each of the critical first crewed missions throughout the Mercury and Gemini programs until days before the launch of the first Apollo mission.
• He also dealt with the Apollo 1 fire.
• In 2002, the Next Generation Space Telescope was renamed the James Webb Space Telescope as a tribute to Webb.
  

What was his role in Lavender Scare?

• James Webb, as the head of NASA during that period, is alleged to have played a role in the dismissal of LGBTQ employees for their identity.
• In 2021, four astronomers in the US wrote about the demand for renaming the telescope in ‘Scientific American’.
• There is also an argument that Webb did not personally seek to remove the employees, but was merely following a government directive at the time.
• However, others say that whatever his role may have been, the sackings undoubtedly happened under his watch.

The Union Health Ministry recently released a draft of a proposed The Drugs, Medical Devices and Cosmetics Bill, 2022 to replace the existing The Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, and several sets of Rules by which the industry is currently run.

What is the new “Drugs, Medical Devices and Cosmetics Bill, 2022”?

• The new Drugs, Medical Devices and Cosmetics Bill, 2022, was drafted to keep pace with changing needs, times and technology
• The bill proposes new definitions for clinical trials, over-the-counter drugs, manufacturers, medical devices, new drugs, bioavailability studies, investigational new drugs and imported spurious drugs, among others.
• The draft focuses on
  • regulating medical devices as a separate entity,
  • makes provision for fines and imprisonment for injury and death related to clinical trials or investigations, and
  • seeks to regulate e-pharmacies

Key features of draft Bill:

Online pharmacies

• Online pharmacies are currently working completely outside the law. Most of these websites have perhaps a licence for a physical shop or storage unit.
  • In case of a violation, drug inspectors do not know under which provision of the law or Rule they can proceed against the websites.
• The draft Bill states: “No person shall himself or by any other person on his behalf sell, or stock or exhibit or offer for sale, or distribute, any drug by online mode except under and in accordance with a licence or permission issued in such manner as may be prescribed.”
• It also states that the central government can formulate Rules to regulate aspects of the industry for which the old law has no provisions.

Clinical trials and investigations

• The draft Bill makes provisions for compensation to participants or their legal heirs for injury or death suffered in clinical trials and investigations for drugs and medical devices.
• The draft also lays the onus of providing medical management for any injury arising due to the trial on the investigators.
• The draft Bill prohibits clinical trials or clinical investigations of drugs and medical devices without permission from the central licensing authority.
  • While companies have to seek permission from the regulator to conduct trials even now, this is not specifically mentioned in the existing law.
• The draft provides for debarring the investigators and sponsors of a trial or investigation if the laid-down provisions are not followed.

Medical devices

• A Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) and a Medical Devices Technical Advisory Board (MDTAB) are planned to submit recommendations to the government from time to time on policy matters.
• Under the ambit of medical devices defined by the draft Bill are diagnostic equipment, their software, implants, devices for assistance with disabilities, life support, instruments used for disinfection, and reagents or kits.
  • The 1940 Act has medical devices as one of four categories of “drugs”.
• The draft proposes to allow the Union government to waive the requirement of conducting clinical investigations for the manufacture or import of a new medical device in public interest.

Lockheed Martin has delivered a LANCE system to the Air Force Research Laboratory of the US Air Force for operational testing.

LANCE system:

• The LANCE system is one-sixth the size of the other laser energy systems being developed by the company.
• LANCE is part of the US Air Force’s efforts to equip fighter jets with compact laser weapons capable of taking down anti-aircraft missiles.
• The US Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $26.3 million contract for the design, development and production of a high power fiber laser in 2017.
• That contract was part of AFRL’s Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) program, which is divided into three efforts.
  • The first includes the development of a beam control system to direct the laser onto the target dubbed SHiELD Turret Research in Aero Effects (STRAFE).
  • The second encompasses the development of a pod mounted on the tactical fighter jet, which will power and cool the laser,
  • the third is the actual LANCE weapon
    
    

Significance

• The development is significant as it is an acknowledgement that efforts to reduce the size of the laser energy weapon have been successful, and it is now ready to be tested after being mounted on an aircraft.
• The fact that the size of the energy weapon has been reduced to that of a pod which can be mounted on a fighter aircraft, or any aircraft for that matter, is an important development.

Implications of LANCE in future battlefields:

• While LANCE has been reduced in size for operational use on aircraft, the system can definitely be put to use on a variety of platforms on land and at sea.
• At present, LANCE has been manufactured for a defensive role.
• However, this research could be furthered to develop an offensive weapon, one that could not only shoot down aircraft and drones, but also be mounted atop ground- and sea-based mobile platforms for offensive roles.

Which countries are actively pursuing development of laser energy weapons?

• Apart from the US, several other countries have robust laser energy weapon development programmes. This includes China, Russia, Israel, Germany, France and India.
• Israel recently tested its laser weapon to shoot down a drone from the ground.
• Russia recently claimed to have tested a laser weapon — Zadira — in Ukraine.
• India is developing a directed energy weapon named DURGA II, which stands for Directed Unrestricted Ray-Gun Array. It is said to be a light energy weapon of 100 kilowatt capacity.
  
  

Serum Institute of India plans to launch its indigenously-developed vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in women.

• The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) recently granted market authorisation to Serum Institute of India (SII) to manufacture the indigenously-developed India's first Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus vaccine (qHPV) against cervical cancer.

Cervical Cancer:

• Cervical cancer develops in a woman's cervix (the entrance to the uterus from the vagina).
• Almost all cervical cancer cases (99%) are linked to infection with high-risk human papillomaviruses (HPV), an extremely common virus transmitted through sexual contact.
• Although most infections with HPV resolve spontaneously and cause no symptoms, persistent infection can cause cervical cancer in women.
• When diagnosed, cervical cancer is one of the most successfully treatable forms of cancer, as long as it is detected early and managed effectively.
• Cervical cancer in India ranks as the second most frequent cancer among women between 15 and 44 years of age.

Symptoms

Early-stage cervical cancer generally produces no signs or symptoms. Signs and symptoms of more-advanced cervical cancer include:

• Vaginal bleeding after intercourse, between periods or after menopause
• Watery, bloody vaginal discharge that may be heavy and have a foul odor
• Pelvic pain or pain during intercourse

Causes

• Cervical cancer begins when healthy cells in the cervix develop changes (mutations) in their DNA.
• A cell's DNA contains the instructions that tell a cell what to do.
• Healthy cells grow and multiply at a set rate, eventually dying at a set time.
• The mutations tell the cells to grow and multiply out of control, and they don't die. The accumulating abnormal cells form a mass (tumor).
• Cancer cells invade nearby tissues and can break off from a tumor to spread (metastasize) elsewhere in the body.
• It isn't clear what causes cervical cancer, but it's certain that HPV plays a role. 
  
  

The first warning signal has been issued at Dowleswaram Barrage near Rajamahendravaram in Andhra Pradesh as flood level in river Godavari raised to 12.10 lakh cusecs.

Dowleswaram Barrage:

• A barrage was built on the river at Dowleswaram by Sir Arthur Cotton in 1852.
• As it was damaged in 1987 floods, it was rebuilt as a barrage and roadway during 1987 and named after him.
• The roadway connects Dowleswaram in East Godavari and Vijjeswaram in West Godavari.
  
  

Godavari:

• The river Godavari, the largest of the peninsular rivers, and third largest in India, drains about 10% of India’s total geographical area.
• The catchment area of the river is 3,12,812 sq.km and is spread in the states of Maharashtra (48.6%), Andhra Pradesh (23.4%), Madhya Pradesh (10.0%), Chhattisgarh (10.9%), Orissa (5.7%) and Karnataka (1.4%).
• The river Godavari rises at an elevation of 1,067 m in the Western Ghats near Thriambak Hills in the Nasik district of Maharashtra.
• The largest tributary of the Godavari is the Pranhita with about 34.87% coverage of drainage area.
• The Pravara, Manjira and Maner are right bank tributaries covering about 16.14%, the Purna, Pranhita, Indravathi and Sabari are important left bank tributaries, covering nearly 59.7% of the total catchment area of the basin.
  

Ola Electric recently unveiled India’s first indigenously developed lithium-ion cell, NMC 2170.

• Lithium-ion refers to rechargeable (or secondary) lithium batteries.
• Ola is building the world's most advanced cell research centre that will enable India to scale and innovate faster, and build the most advanced and affordable EV products in the world with speed.
  
  

Lithium-ion battery:

• Lithium-ion is the most popular rechargeable battery chemistry used today.
• Lithium-ion batteries power the devices we use every day, like our mobile phones and electric vehicles.
• Lithium-ion batteries consist of single or multiple lithium-ion cells, along with a protective circuit board. 
• They are referred to as batteries once the cell, or cells, are installed inside a device with the protective circuit board.

Components of a lithium-ion cell:

• Electrodes:The positively and negatively charged ends of a cell. Attached to the current collectors
• Anode:The negative electrode
• Cathode:The positive electrode
• Electrolyte:A liquid or gel that conducts electricity
• Current collectors:Conductive foils at each electrode of the battery that are connected to the terminals of the cell. The cell terminals transmit the electric current between the battery, the device and the energy source that powers the battery
• Separator:A porous polymeric film that separates the electrodes while enabling the exchange of lithium ions from one side to the other.
  
  

How does a lithium-ion cell work?

• In a lithium-ion battery, lithium ions (Li+) move between the cathode and anode internally.
• Electrons move in the opposite direction in the external circuit. This migration is the reason the battery powers the device—because it creates the electrical current.
• While the battery is discharging, the anode releases lithium ions to the cathode, generating a flow of electrons that helps to power the relevant device. 
• When the battery is charging, the opposite occurs: lithium ions are released by the cathode and received by the anode.