1.The Union Cabinet Thursday approved payment of productivity linked bonus of 78 days for Rs 2028.57 crore to over 172 lakh railway employees, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

2.In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court Thursday declared caste-based discrimination in prisons as unconstitutional, stating that ‘everyone is born equal’ and cannot suffer lifelong due to stigma attached to their caste.

3.The Union Cabinet approved conferring the status of classical language to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages.

4.The Supreme Court on Friday rejected 10 petitions to review its August decision on permitting sub-classification within Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories to provide reservation in jobs and education for the more marginalised sections.

5.The first state-sponsored leopard census conducted in Odisha has revealed the presence of 696 leopards in different forest areas of the coastal state, officials said.

6.A little over a week after the Orissa High Court expressed its dissatisfaction over lack of repair of roads and resolution of civic issues, the court Thursday rapped the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) on civic issues in the Silver City.

7.Climate shocks such as floods and landslides are likely to lead to an increased domestic violence over the next two years, researchers, who analysed survey data from 156 countries between 1993 and 2019, have found.

8.Prof Kulbhushan Balooni, a noted academician with over 25 years of experience with premier education institutions, was recently appointed as the new vice-chancellor of Birla Global University (BGU), Bhubaneswar.

9.Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma Wednesday handed over land deeds to nearly 21,000 beneficiary families of Vimukta, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities.

10.Cutting down smoking to five per cent of current rates by 2050 would increase life expectancy by a year among men and 0.2 years in women, according to recent global modelling studies published in The Lancet Public Health journal.

11.The Supreme Court Thursday effectively halted the police probe into the alleged illegal confinement of two women at spiritual leader Jaggi Vasudev’s Isha Foundation ashram at Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.

12.If sexual acts by a man with his own wife is made punishable as “rape”, it may severely impact the conjugal relationship and lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage, the Centre has told the Supreme Court.

13.Israel’s military urged residents of over 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately Thursday as it pressed on with an incursion after suffering its worst losses in a year of fighting the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

14.NATO chief Mark Rutte told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “your security matters for ours” Thursday during his first visit to Kyiv since becoming the alliance’s secretary-general.

15. Odisha FC (OFC) played out a 2-2 draw with Kerala Blasters FC (KBFC) in their ISL encounter at the Kalinga Stadium here Thursday evening.