 A very good evening aspirants, welcome to the hindi news analysis by Shankarase academy for the date 27th September 2020. The list of news articles along with its page number is given here for your reference. The link for the handwritten notes in the pdf format and the time stamping for the displayed articles is given in the description box and also in the comment section. Let's move on to the first discussion. Our first discussion is based on this news article which talks about human challenge trials. So far we have heard and read about human trials. In a human trial a drug is tested in humans as part of trials but what is this human challenge trial which this news article is talking about. So let us see that today and let us also understand the issues surrounding this human challenge trial. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First let us know what is this human challenge trial. See these are the trials in which participants are intentionally challenged with an infectious disease organism. Here the word challenged will have the meaning of exposed that means the participants will be intentionally exposed to a infectious disease organism and here the participants might be or might not be vaccinated before exposing them to the disease organism and in the current context this human challenge trial is going to be conducted by Queen Mary University of London to check the efficacy and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Here the participants will be vaccinated with a candidate vaccine and then they will be willfully exposed to the novel coronavirus after a month or so. See these human challenge trials are not new they have been performed safely in the last 50 years and they have helped to accelerate the development of vaccines against typhoid and cholera. So now the same method is going to be used for developing a COVID-19 vaccine or simply for checking the effectiveness of the developed COVID-19 vaccines. So what are the benefits of these human challenge trials? The first benefit is that the effectiveness of the vaccine and its side effects can be directly studied and secondly as we saw the participants will be intentionally exposed to the virus. So more details can be studied regarding the disease and the infection and thirdly we will be able to get clearer understanding of the pathogenesis of the organism which means the manner of the development of the disease could be understood and it will also help in understanding the immunity to the organism. See if the human challenge trial is successful then it can serve as a proof to go for mass production of the vaccine and since these trials include humans it also serves as a very good representative model of vaccine trials compared to the trials on animals and as you already saw these trials help to develop vaccines faster for a pandemic type diseases otherwise in a normal case it takes 10 to 15 years for a vaccine development and this time can be reduced using this human challenge trials but apart from these benefits there are also some issues associated with the human challenge trials. First issue is that as we said already human challenge trials are generally performed on young healthy adults so the effectiveness or efficacy of the vaccine is not known in old people or in infants and it is also not known especially in people with morbidities like in the case of COVID-19 because there is a popular opinion that mortality in the people with comorbidities is high in case of COVID-19. The second issue is that according to some experts the human challenge trials do not replace the phase 3 of clinical trials. See there are normally four phases in a clinical trial and in a phase 3 the studies are conducted on larger populations and in different regions and countries and these phase 3 trials are often the step right before a new treatment is approved because according to some sources in phase 3 clinical trials they compare the safety and effectiveness of the new treatment against the current standard treatment and this helps the doctors to know which treatment is better so experts are of the opinion that even though human challenge trials will be conducted they still have to go through the phase 3 of clinical trials. Then the third issue is that in human challenge trials a milder or attenuated virus strain is administered to participants so that means the outcomes of the human challenge trials may not be efficacious on wild form of the infection and further the human challenge trials may have long-term side effects on participants and even in some cases it may also lead to death of the participants and particularly in case of COVID-19 we have no highly effective therapies to cure the individuals who are infected in a challenge study so that means this might increase the mortality rate and then another limitation of human challenge trials is that the study is often designed to assess the short-term protection of vaccine candidate so the long-term immunity provided by that vaccine cannot be found with these trials and apart from all these challenges there are also ethical concerns because these human challenge trials appears to be in conflict with the guiding principle in medicine which is to do no harm this is the first principle which is followed in medicine but in these trials the participants are willfully exposed to the virus so this is against the guiding principle of medicine then the second ethical concern is that the participants must be aware of all impacts of participating in these trials because as we saw it could also lead to the death of the participants so that means before conducting human challenge trials the informed consent of the participants must be taken and it should also be ensured so these are some of the issues and ethical concerns with respect to human challenge trials so after seeing both benefits and challenges we can say that human challenge trials have potential to understand the new diseases and they will help us to develop vaccines and treatments faster but here we can only hope that these challenge trials will do less harm than the intended benefits these are some of the information that is you know with respect to human challenge trials let's move on to the next discussion this discussion is based on a beautiful phenomenon that is observed in celestial bodies this phenomenon is aurora see the news is that a comet has its own far ultraviolet aurora now this comet is the comet 67p churyumov gerasimenko and this is the first time where electromagnetic emissions in the far ultraviolet have been documented on a celestial object other than a planet or moon so let us see about this comet first it was discovered in the year 1969 at the elmata observatory in russia and here in the name 67p indicates that it was the 67th periodic comet discovered and the terms churyumov and gerasimenko are the names of the discoverers i know that it is the first comet to be orbited and landed upon by robots from earth and the famous rosetta mission of european space agency is actually associated with this comet only i know that the rosetta mission ended in a controlled landing on the comet's surface in september 2016 and now the news is that this comet has its own far ultraviolet aurora so what is aurora and far ultraviolet aurora see aurora is a phenomenon seen in the celestial bodies like planets where the celestial body has an atmosphere and magnetic field this phenomenon is also observed on earth so let's first understand about this see auroras refer to a beautiful light show in the sky which are caused by the sun in earth this phenomenon is called as aurora borealis or northern lights near the north pole and near the south pole it is called as aurora australis or the southern lights we saw that it is caused by sun now let us see how it is caused by sun so we know that sun releases constant streaming solar wind and solar storms and one kind of solar storm is called as coronal mass ejection in this coronal mass ejection sun sends out a huge bubble of electrified gas that can travel through space at high speeds now when such a solar storm comes toward the earth some of the energy and some small particles can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into the earth's atmosphere and at this time the particles from space which are electrons they interact with gases in our atmosphere and this results into beautiful displays of light in the sky in other words we can say that auroras are caused by collisions between fast moving particles which are electrons from the space and the oxygen and nitrogen gas that are present in our atmosphere and this process is depicted in this picture now the excited gas molecules they emit or give off light which is known as aurora and these auroras are of different colors and this color depends on which gas is being excited by electrons and on how much energy is being exchanged so if the excited gas is oxygen then the light emitted is green and red light and if the excited gas is nitrogen gas then blue and purple light is observed as you can see in these pictures now apart from earth this aurora phenomenon is also observed in saturn and jupiter and these two images depicts this phenomenon observed in saturn and jupiter this is what normally happens but sometimes the interacting or the colliding gases in the atmosphere they emit ultraviolet light also and such light can only be detected by special cameras and satellites and they cannot be detected by human eyes this is because human eye can detect wavelengths only from 400 nanometer to 700 nanometers see in the electromagnetic spectrum the ultraviolet region covers the wavelength range of 100 nanometers to 400 nanometer and it is divided into three bands as you can see here and sometimes the aurora is observed in shorter ultraviolet wavelengths like 120 nanometers to 180 nanometers and these are called as the far ultraviolet aurora here just know that when we say near ultraviolet spectral region it ranges from 400 nanometer down to 300 nanometers then comes the middle UV region and then comes the shorter UV wavelengths from 200 nanometers and lesser this is what is called as the far ultraviolet region and if the colliding gases in the atmosphere emit ultraviolet light in such shorter wavelength then it is called as the far ultraviolet aurora and so far this phenomenon has been observed in planets and moons only and currently it has been observed in a comet known as the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko so this is the news today with this we come to the end of this discussion let's move on to the next discussion this discussion is based on this FAQ article which talks about the industrial relations code bill of 2020 now this code bill is one of the three labor codes that was recently passed by the parliament and these codes along with the code of ages which was passed last year they simplify amalgamate and rationalize the existing central laws on labor but today we'll be only focusing on this new industrial relations code bill of 2020 the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference first know that this code bill is passed by the parliament and if it receives the assent of the president then it will come into force on the day appointed by the central government through a gazette notification so what is the basic purpose of this code or in other words what is its preamble see the purpose is to consolidate and amend the laws relating to trade unions and the laws relating to conditions of employment in industrial establishments or undertaking then also the laws relating to the investigation settlement of industrial disputes and here remember that the bill is proposed to amalgamate which means combine or merge then simplify and rationalize the provisions of three acts these three acts are trade union act of 1926 the industrial employment standing orders act of 1946 and then the industrial disputes act of 1947 now let us see the main features of this industrial relations code in this the first thing you should know is the definition of the term worker and fixed term employment the bill defines worker as a person who is employed in any industry to do any skilled or unskilled manual technical operational and clerical or supervisory work and thus according to the definition the worker includes journalists and sales promotion employees also but however it does not include the set of persons such as a person who is employed in a police service then the bill also defines fixed term employment it means the engagement of a worker on the basis of a written contract of employment for a fixed period but however the hours of work wages allowances and other benefits shall not be less than that of a permanent worker doing the same work or a work of a similar nature and further the person who is in a fixed term employment is also eligible for all statutory benefits that is available to a permanent worker and the person is also eligible for gratuity if the person renders service under the contract for a period of one year so in short we can say that the code aims to keep the fixed term employment workers or the contract workers on par with the permanent workers then the next important feature of the bill that you should notice the standing orders this bill has around 14 chapters and one of them is standing orders see a standing order means those instructions that will contain conditions of employment so it will include the conditions on classification of workforce hours of work holidays paydays and wage rates it will include shift working attendance and late coming suspension or dismissal for misconduct and like this all the conditions that is required for an employment and according to the bill the matters to be provided in the standing orders is given in the first schedule to this code so from this we can simply say that the standing orders ensure a labor friendly environment but here note that the provisions relating to standing orders are applicable to industrial establishments where 300 or more than 300 workers are employed or more than 300 workers were employed on any day of the preceding 12 months this means that establishments which have workforce below this number are not required to enforce provisions related to the standing orders under this code so if such standing order is not present then we can consider such scenario as less labor friendly environment and there is also one contentious issue with respect to the standing orders it is regarding the section 39 of the code bill this section states that the appropriate government may by notification can exempt conditionally or unconditionally any industrial establishment or even class of industrial establishments from any or even all of the provisions of the chapter on standing orders so that means this section provides wide powers to the government to give exemptions to some establishment which may result into exploitation of labor's in the name of economic activity and there is also an opinion that over a period of time many establishments could be exempted under this section 39 now the next important feature of the bill is the trade unions which is dealt by chapter 3 of the code bill according to the bill if there is only one registered trade union functioning in an industrial establishment then the employer shall recognize that trade union as a sole negotiating union of the workers but if there is more than one registered trade union of workers then the trade union which is having 51% or more workers shall be recognized by the employer as the sole negotiating union of the workers but what if no trade union has 51% workers or more workers than other trade unions then in this case the employer shall constitute a negotiating council now this council shall consist of the representatives of the registered trade unions who are having the support of at least 20% of the total workers on the muster role here muster role just means the official list of workers now let us see how this new code affects the right to strike say actually chapter 8 of the bill deals with strikes and lockouts and under section 62 the code prohibits seven conditions for workers or employees under which a strike is not allowed and the same section also prescribes seven conditions under which the employer is prohibited from locking out see here lockout refers to a temporary closing of a place of employment or the suspension of work or the refusal by an employer to continue to employ any number of persons already employed by him so under seven conditions the employer cannot opt for lockouts now we are seeing this code affects the right to strike because the current existing law which is the industrial disputes act of 1947 it plays the search restrictions on announcing strikes only in respect of public utility services but now the new code extends it to all the establishments now here just note that according to the existing 1947 act some of the public utility services are the services such as any railway service or any transport service for the carriage of passengers or goods by air then postal service or any industry which supplies power light or water to the public but now the restriction is placed on all types of establishments so this is another issue with this bill so these are some of the provisions of industrial relations code and the issues related to it let's move on to the next discussion now this news article talks about the concerns raised by the comptroller and auditor general of india while carrying out the financial audit of the union government's account in the recent days we are seeing news articles regarding the concerns raised by CAG after the audits and today's news article talks about the concerns on the transferring of funds from the central road fund i know that currently this central road fund is known as the central road and infrastructure fund so in this context let us discuss in detail about this central road fund or central road infrastructure fund and also about CAG's concerns the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference the first note that the central road fund or CRF was established under the central road fund act of 2000 now this act actually gave the statutory status to the already existing central road fund which was governed by a resolution of parliament that was passed in the year 1988 so after 12 years only this act was enacted which gave it a statutory status now according to the act the fund is under the control of central government so what are the sources of this fund see the act empowers the central government to levy and collect an additional CIS see here CIS means a duty which is in the nature of duty of excise and customs and this is a duty which is imposed and collected on motor spirit and as you know motor spirit is commonly known as a petrol and high speed diesel oil now the proceeds of the CIS is first credited to the consolidated fund of India then a parliamentary law on this behalf credits these proceeds to the fund from time to time and this is done after deducing the expenses of collection of this CIS so this is one of the source of this fund then the fund also includes the sums of money that are credited by way of grants or loans by the central government here you should note that any unspent part of the CIS which is already levied for the purposes of development and maintenance of national highways will also be credited to CRF that is the unspent part of CIS which is levied for this purpose will be credited to the central road fund apart from this any fund which is provided by the central government for the development and maintenance of state roads will also be a part of this fund only and more importantly the balance to the credit of this fund shall not lapse or expire at the end of the financial year so these are some of the sources of this fund now let us see the utilization of this fund that is the purposes for which the fund can be utilized first and foremost it will be used for the development and maintenance of national highways and for the development of rural roads it is also used for development and maintenance of other state roads including the roads of interstate and economic importance then the fund can also be used for construction of roads either under or over the railways by means of bridges then it can be used for building of safety works at unmanned railroad crossings then it can be used for building new lines etc so these are some of the infrastructure projects for which the fund can be utilized now each infrastructure project will get certain share of the fund depending on the priorities of the project now this share shall be finalized by a committee constituted by the center and it is headed by the finance minister now coming to the accounting and auditing of this fund according to the act the center shall maintain proper accounts and other relevant records of the fund now these accounts of the fund shall be audited by the comptroller and auditor general of india that is CAG at certain intervals and these intervals will be specified by the CAG and based on this only now CAG has audited these accounts now before going to the concerns raised by the CAG here know that the central road fund of 2000 was amended through finance act of 2018 and this amendment replace the name of this act from the central road fund act to central road and infrastructure fund act of 2000 and additionally it also inserted schedule to the original act and this schedule to contains several categories of projects where this fund can be used so according to this schedule now the CRIF is earmarked or it is set aside for various infrastructure sectors such as transport, energy, water and sanitation, communication, social and commercial infrastructure etc now in this just note that the projects under transport category includes roads, bridges, ports, shipyards, inland waterways, airports, railways and urban public transport so these are some of the basic information that you should know with respect to central road and infrastructure fund now what are the concerns raised by CAG after auditing this fund CAG has reported that central government's accounting officials have incorrectly recorded around 10,250 crores of CES receipts from the additional excise duties on petrol and diesel as non-tax receipts for the year 2018-19 and the purpose for which this was done according to CAG is for artificially inflating or boosting the revenue receipts of the year which means that they understated the deficits and because of this the fund was made available for expenditure for other purposes which was contrary to the will of the parliament according to CAG so here we need not go into the accounting details just know that they have artificially inflated the revenue receipts for understating the deficit and they have used funds for purposes other than the designated purposes so from this what we have to conclude is that this move of CAG is a positive sign and it indicates the independent and healthy functioning of the office of comptroller and auditor general of India now for this allegation the finance ministry has responded but CAG has objected that reply instead CAG has called for investigation on the accounting authorities so these are some of the information that you should know with respect to this news article with this we come to the end of this discussion now this next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the political developments in bolivia so in this context let us discuss in detail about the geography of bolivia see bolivia is a landlocked country of the west central south america bolivia borders brazil in the north and east and it borders paraguay in the southeast and it borders argentina to the south and then it borders chili to its southwest and west and in the northwest it shares border with peru and one of the important point to note here is that bolivia shares the lake titikaca with peru see actually bolivia previously was not a landlocked country it became a landlocked country when it lost its pacific coast territory to chili in a war this war is the war of the pacific that happened in the period 1879 to 1884 but even then now chili offers unrestricted maritime access through its territory to bolivia but it does not provide sovereign maritime access to bolivia now here note that bolivia has two capitals its constitutional capital is sucre and its administrative capital is lapas and in this administrative capital the executive and legislative branches of the government functions and here also remember that one third of this country's territory lies in the andes mountains and the amazon forest also extends to bolivia so these are some of the geography related information that you should know with respect to bolivia now let us come to the political developments see the country separated from spanish rule in the year 1825 and according to some sources bolivia is named after the independence fighter simon bolivar but the issue is that much of the history of bolivia is full of series of coups and counter coups see when we say coup it means a sudden violent and illegal seizure of power from the government so like this many times illegally the power has been seized and the last coup occurred in the year 1978 and after that in the year 1982 a democratic civilian rule was established but still the country faced many problems like deep-seated poverty social unrest and illegal drug production actually illegal drug production is a major problem in the region according to the central intelligence agency of usa that is cia bolivia is world's third largest cultivator of coca that is cocaine the first two are columbia and peru so in this way since bolivia shares border with peru bolivia also acts as a transit country through which the cocaine is transited the cocaine is transported to various parts of the world like europe and also other parts of south america like brazil argentina chili peru so what about the present political situation of bolivia see in the year 2005 bolivian citizens elected the leader of movement toward socialism as their president its leader was eva moralis in his campaign he promised to change the country's traditional political class and he promised to empower the nation's poor and the indigenous majority so based on these promises he was again reelected in the year 2009 and 2014 also but the present political issue began during the 2019 election because in this election widespread electoral fraud was reported but still eva moralis attempted to claim victory in the 2019 election also so because of this once again the country was pushed into violence and moral is fled the country due to military pressure so at present he is in exile in argentina and thus currently an interim government is present in bolivia which is preparing new elections for the current year that is 2020 here you should note that bolivia is divided mainly along ethnic regional and social economic lines and apart from this one of the groups supports the policies of moralis and the others are against his authoritarian and corrupted rule this is the reason why the issue started last year and even after he fled the country the things were worse due to the interim government also because the interim government is also undermining bolivia's democratic institutions including the judiciary so let's wait and see what happens after the 2020 elections in bolivia so these are some of the information that you should know with respect to bolivia from political and geographical perspective now let's move on to the next discussion now this next news article mentions that around 30 people have died due to the attack on the convoy of the regional governor of borno see borno is a state in the northeast in nigeria and this attack has been carried out near a town on the shores of lake chad and this attack was carried out by islamic state west african province this is an is affiliated group and according to the news article the terror group maintains most of its camps on the islands of lake chad so in this context let us know about nigeria and lake chad see nigeria is a country located on the western coast of africa and it borders four countries it borders niger to the north and it shares border with chad and cameroon in the east and in the west it shares border with benin and in the south it shares border with the gulf of guine of the atlantic ocean and the major lifeline of this country is the niger river after which this country is named the niger river enters the country in the northwest and flows southward through the tropical rainforest of the region and it enters the gulf of guine and in this know that the river benue is the largest contributory of niger river and these two rivers that is niger river and benue river are the principal rivers of nigeria and the natural capital of nigeria is abuja and know that nigeria is large in area and it is the africa's most populous country and this country has abundant natural resources also and it has notably large deposits of petroleum and natural gas so these are some of the information that you should know with respect to nigeria from geographical perspective now let us come to lake chad it is located in the far west of the country chad and to the northeast of nigeria and parts of the lake also extend to niger and cameroon so that means the basin of this lake chad covers four countries which are nigeria niger chad and cameroon and it has been a water source for 20 million to 30 million people according to UNESCO lake chad is the fourth largest water body on the african continent and it is the third largest enclosed lake on the planet and this lake chad has a particularity that is it is covered by hundreds of islands and many of these islands are permanently or seasonally inhabited and as we saw already some of these islands are cams to the terror groups now this lake chad is surrounded by arid deserts so that is why this wetland represents a center of life and thus it has made the lake one of the most important economic and cultural hubs between the sub saharan africa and north africa for thousands of years and one of the issues surrounding this lake chad is that it has shrunk by 90 percentage since 1960s and this has happened due to climate change increase in population and unplanned so currently united nations and UNESCO are carrying out many initiatives for the revival of this lake so these are the information that you should know with respect to lake chad and nigeria now we have come to the last session the practice questions discussion session the first question asks consider the following statements with respect to aurora observed as beautiful light shows in the sky first statement is it is usually observed over the equator in earth now this statement is incorrect because we see the aurora phenomenon near the north and south pole this is because of the existing protective magnetic field around the earth which shields us from most of the sun's energy and particles but however some of the energy and small particles from the sun can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into earth's atmosphere and this is where the interaction with gases in the earth's atmosphere happens and therefore we observe this phenomenon near the north pole and south pole and this is the reason why aurora over the north pole is called as northern lights or aurora borealis and aurora over the south pole region is called as southern lights or the aurora australis now the second statement mentions the phenomenon is observed only in planet earth now this statement is also incorrect because the phenomenon could be observed in celestial bodies like planets that have atmosphere and a magnetic field now this phenomenon was already observed in saturn and jupiter and today's news article is that this phenomenon was observed in a jupiter family comet called as the 67p churyumov gerasimenko so thus this statement becomes incorrect and here the question asks for the correct statements and both the statements are incorrect so the correct answer to this question is option d neither one nor two now this is a map based question the question asks consider the following countries in south america chili, peraguay, peru, bulivia, colombia which of the above countries shares border with pacific ocean now based on today's discussion you can easily say that bulivia is a landlock country if you know this you can eliminate options a and d and now you have 50 chance to answer this question correctly because we have only two options left now among the remaining two options we can say that chili shares border with pacific ocean and then peru also shares border with pacific ocean and now we have to decide whether colombia or peraguay shares border with pacific ocean or not and the correct answer is option b because peraguay is also a landlock country as you can see here whereas colombia shares border with pacific ocean now let us take two mains question this question is what do you understand by human challenge trials discuss the benefits and challenges this is a very straightforward question you have to answer this in 150 words now this next question is based on gs paper 2 examine critically the recent changes proposed under the industrial relations code bill 2020 and for this question you have to answer in 250 words now you can write the answers and post it in the comment section we'll review it and the appropriate suggestion will be provided within a reasonable time frame with this we come to the end of today's in the news analysis if you like the video don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to shankar eyes academy youtube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation