 a very good evening aspirants welcome again to the hindered news analysis for the day 14th of september 2021 so given below are the news articles which we are going to discuss in today's discussion and they are also provided along with the page numbers of different editions and also the link for the handed notes in PDF format and also the time stamping is given here for the benefit of mobile phone viewers so without wasting much time let's get into our discussion now have a look at this news article this article reports about the pseudo-malanistic tigers which are found in the simli pal biosphere reserve and as per this news article after several years of research a team of scientists who were led by the national center for biological sciences they have found the reason behind this pseudo-malanistic condition of the tigers that are found in the simli pal biosphere reserve so this is the crux of today's article now with this background we are going to learn some important facts about pseudo-malanistic tigers and we are also going to see the reasons behind this set condition so come let us move into the discussion first of all know that melanism refers to the increased development of the dark colored pigment in the skin or hair and this set dark color pigment is known as melanin so basically melanin is a natural pigment that gives color to your skin hair and more and this same melanin is also found among animals as well so melanism is said to occur when the entire pigmentation of the person or animal changes just like how you can see it in the picture below so in simple words when the dark colored pigment melanin in the skin or hair increases melanism occurs now coming to the next term that is pseudo-malanism as we know pseudo is a term which refers to something which is not actual or maybe something which has the appearance of original or something which looks like but it is not the ultimate reality so the same applies here pseudo-malanism is another variant of pigmentation and usually this condition of pseudo-malanism is identifiable through dark spots or through enlarged stripes which cover a large part of the body of any animal for that matters so these dark spots or these enlarged stripes when they happen in a body then they make the body to be appear as if it is affected by melanism so to understand better you can just have a look at this picture so you can see the difference between the two right so in this condition the animals they usually do not fully appear black as we saw earlier that is as we saw in melanism but instead what happens in this pseudo-malanistic tigers is that the stripes they become really thick and they appear together so it appears so close that the tawny background is barely visible between stripes and this is the nature of pseudo-malanism and also know that the stripes of an animal it increases in width sufficiently and at a point of time it overlaps finally so when it overlaps it appears like melanism but again actually it is not and for your information this pseudo-malanism is also got another term or it is also referred by another term called as a bandism so by now you have an understanding of melanism and you also know what is pseudo-malanism right so now let's come back to the news and let's see the important points that is mentioned in the news related to this pseudo-malanistic tigers now see as per estimations around 37 percent of the tigers which are found in the simply pal tiger reserve they are found to be pseudo-malanistic that is they are found to be characterized by wide and merged stripes and when the scientists they took research they found that this particular condition that is prevailing among the tigers is a result of a rare mutation in one gene called the transmembrane aminopeptidase q which is also shortly known as tacpep and one thing that you should always have in mind or you should remember here is that this mutation or this condition is predominantly found among the tigers in simply pal and it rarely occurs among the tigers outside the simply pal biosphere reserve so as I said earlier after several years of research the scientists have now found the reason behind this pseudo-malanistic condition that is prevailing among the tigers and they have penned down two important reasons that result in this particular character the first reason is a founder bottleneck effect and the second reason is inbreeding now coming to the first reason that is the founder bottleneck effect see this effect is referred to cases in which a small population is formed from a larger population so this effect it usually occurs when a new colony is started by only a very few members of the original population so this small population size it means that the colony may have reduced genetic variation from that of the original population now coming to the second reason which is inbreeding so this shrink in the habitats and the shrink in the tiger population is actually causing inbreeding and this inbreeding results in a lack of genetic variation thereby making such tigers prone to extinction and with this let's wind up this news discussion and we'll move on to the next news article now for our next news discussion we have taken this column article from the editorial page so basically this article talks about the thaw in the china u s ties so come let us get into understanding the issue because this will help you to understand better the dynamics of the international relations the syllabus covered by this article is given below see we can say that the relationship between china and the united states is more of a complex relationship or rather you can say that it is a kind of mixed relationship see china was established back in the year 1949 and in the beginning and all the relationship between china and the united states was very neutral but then what happened is in the year 1950 the korean war broke out and during that the soviet they aligned with north korea and china which also has a communist ideology it also aligned itself with north korea so u s on the other end it aligned with the south korea and this is where the people's republic of china and the united states saw their first drift and then again in the year 1954 the thai one straight crisis happened and then a year later that is in the year 1955 the united states they threatened china that it will nuke china or it will attack or destroy china with nuclear weapons and this drove china further away from the united states and following that in the year 1959 when tibet was witnessing instability the united states they took the side of tibet and then later in the year 1964 china tested its first nuclear bomb so all these developments they kept china and u s at logariths or you can say that they were in a state of quarrel some disagreement and then later following these disagreements in the year 1969 china which shares its border with the soviet union it had certain border issues with the soviet and due to this small borders commissions happened so as a result of this mosco or the soviet was replaced with washington or the united states as a major threat for beijing and then happened the ping pong diplomacy see in the first public sign of warming relations between washington and beijing china's ping pong team they invited the members of the united states team to china back in the year 1971 and then with the team journalists were also accompanying and these journalists who were accompanying the u s players were among the first americans who were allowed to enter china since the year 1949 and then in july of 1971 the secretary of state that is henry kissinger he made a secret trip to china and it is only after that trip the united nations recognized the china and it also endowed china with the permanent security council seat because previously it was held by thai one since 1945 and this ties flourished under nixon and carter and like we saw in 1972 china got its permanent membership in the united nations security council thereby replacing thai but all these gains it came to a grinding halt when the thean and men square massacre happened and then in the year 1999 natto they accidentally bombed a chinese embassy in belgrade and this also saw some serious deterioration in the relations but then since 2000s the relations between china and the united states in the trade real always was flourishing and in september 2008 china it surpassed japan to become the largest holder of u s depth and also china had a very favorable trade with us now here you should understand one thing see this is basically because china practiced dumping so to understand this see china expanded its manufacturing capability tremendously so this means that it obviously had x is good so what it did is it exported the excess goods at very cheap prices below the market prices so eventually chinese goods they flooded the u s market and this led the trade balance to shift in favor of china and of course u s had issues with this and trade tensions rose between the two countries so by now we have a kind of brief understanding of the events that happened so far and now coming to the present times see there are various issues that are thorny between the united states and china of course so let's see a few examples of them see the first comes trades yes since the beginning of the century this issue of trade continues to be brewing and next is the zin ziang issue see this plays zin ziang has got religious minorities called huigurs so china is accused of committing human rights violations in this region against this huigur people and the united states is condemning this consistently and then comes thai one which is also another tricky issue here see the people's republic of china they seek to enforce a one china principle which holds that thai one is a part of china but in the u s government considers thai ones political status to be undissolved and see thai one as a democratic and also a liberal color compared to that of china so on similar lines hong kong issue is also a kind of sticky issue between both the countries and then there is also the issue of south china see which we all obviously know and the latest among the long list is the covid pandemic because america believes that china has made the virus or america is holding china responsible for the pandemic so this issue is also flaring up now so this is basically the essence of this particular editorial you need not memorize all these things but just keep in mind all these different dimensions of the issues whenever you read about india u s or india china relations and with this let's wind up this discussion and move on to the next now look at this news article this article is basically about a world record see a team of eight persons with disabilities they have created a new world record for the largest number of people with disabilities to scale the world's highest battlefield and as we all know the world's highest battlefield is searshan glacia and this said team of eight persons with disabilities they have scaled it so in this context let us discuss about this said searshan glacia see searshan glacia is a part of india and it is situated in the karakoram range of the northwestern himalayas and this glacier is nearly 50 meters long ranging from 22,000 to 11,000 feet in elevation and it also has temperatures as low as minus 60 degree Celsius plus the region is also prone to strong winds and lack of oxygen so due to all these factors this particular region is referred as the world's third pole and it is also an inhospitable terrain as we all know additionally note that the glacier is the source for the nubra river which is a tributary of the shark river and these rivers are a part of the hinders river system now let us move on to see some major facts or important points about this searshan glacier which we need to have in mind whenever we come across this geographical terrain note that the searshan region includes the glacier the saltoro rich and also the area around so as you can see in this map the searshan region is shown in gray and the saltoro is a crucial mountainous stretch which acts as a watershed see the searshan region is potentially a dangerous flashpoint on the disputed northern borders of our country and as we know a flashpoint means a place wherein the violence flares up easily so because of this it is the highest militarized zone in the world and both pakistani and indian militaries have been occupying the searshan glacier and also the surrounding regions for decades so it is the highest and coldest battlefield in the world and thus soldiers have to endure the inhospitable terrain and they have to fly in poor weather conditions that to in close proximity to hills and in addition to that they should also endure the inhospitable terrain by facing the extremes of temperature and also the altitude so because of all these more casualties are prone to occur here and more casualties have resulted from the extremely adverse conditions such as hypothermia avalanches etc than from combat see the searshan region is close to the karakorum pass and through this pass only the karakorum highway passes which connects the gilgith baltistan to the zinzian province of china and that is why this region is strategically important now let's very briefly see about the operation mehgdhut see the operation mehgdhut was an indian military operation that was launched to take the searshan glacier and this particular operation was led by lefnend general preinath hon and this operation was executed on the morning of 13th of april 1984 on the highest battlefield in the world and of course this operation was a success and it dashed the pakistan's hope of seizing the glacier in its entirety so these are some important takeaway points from this article now let's move on to the next part of our hinder news analysis now let us take up this news article for our next discussion and this particular article reports about an armed robot that was recently unveiled by an israeli firm for the purpose of patrolling the borders and know that the israeli military is currently using a smaller but similar vehicle called the jaguar to patrol the border with the gaza strip and a picture of them is given below for the aspirants to go through it now in this light let's see in brief about this armed robot as well as its associated concerns see with the development of technology unmanned ground vehicles are being increasingly used by the armies of many countries including those of the u.s britain and russia and in all these countries these unmanned ground vehicles are being employed for various purposes say like that of logistical support removal of mines firing weapons etc so on that line an israeli defense contractor unveiled a remote controlled armed robot and as per sources this particular robot is said to have the potential of patrolling battle zones tracking infiltrators and it can also perform open firing adding to this the robot can also gather intelligence for ground troops and then it can also carry injured soldiers and supplies in and out of battle in addition to striking nearby targets and know that this particular unmanned vehicle is the latest addition to the world of drone technology and as per the words of its operational expert with its every mission this particular device will collect more data and from that data it will learn and it will use its learning for future missions and as per sources this particular armed robot is said to be operated by an electronic tablet and it is designed in such a way that it can be equipped with two machine guns cameras and also sensors see this particular electronic tablet can control the vehicle manually but then in addition to that many of its functions say like that of its movement and surveillance system can also run automatically without the use of this said electronic tablet now coming to the main part though it has got a lot of positives still it has got a series of concerns associated that is though these semi-autonomous machines allow the armies to protect these soldiers but still the critics fear whether this would mark another dangerous step towards robots making life or death decisions see the main concern here is such armed robots are quite dangerous because as we know weapons are very simple because the problem with them is that they cannot be trusted to distinguish between combatants and civilians nor do they have the kind of reasoning to make proper calls about the harm which the attacks may do to the nearby civilians because the problem here is ultimately missions cannot understand the value of human life and we can't blame them because they are designed in such a way and this in a sense can actually undermine the human dignity and there are high chances for them to violate human rights law as well and that has become a matter of concern with unwitting of this armed robot so with these important points in mind let's move on to the next news article now our next news discussion is going to be based on this editorial article see this particular editorial it mainly focuses on the kidney injury that is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus so without wasting much time let us get to know what the article is got to tell us the syllabus relevant to this article is displayed on the screen interested aspirants can go through it now coming to the editorial see as of september 2021 the covid 19 pandemic has affected over 200 million people and it has led to around 4.4 million deaths worldwide and when you take India alone around 330 lakhs covid 19 cases and 442,000 covid 19 related deaths have been reported till date see whenever we are talking about covid 19 most of the infections are said to be mild with respiratory symptoms but however in some older adults with preconditions a severe form of the disease has been noted see preconditions say like that of chronic heart kidney and lung diseases and also diabetes and other conditions they cause the immune system to be weak generally in such cases the covid 19 infections they cause severe damages to organs like lungs heart and kidneys and this particular editorial it mainly deals with the damages that are done to the kidneys by the SARS-CoV-2 virus so before moving on further let us briefly see about kidneys see kidneys are being shaped structures which is located on either side of the back so you can just have a look at this picture for a clear understanding of the concept see generally kidneys are protected by the ribs and muscles of the back and when you take a human kidney each human adult kidney they have a length of 10 to 12 centimeter and they consist of a width of 5 to 7 meter and they weigh around 120 to 170 grams see kidneys play a very important role when it comes to filtering your blood what they do is they process your blood in order to sort out excess fluids unwanted chemicals and also either unwanted waste and they in turn will turn all these unwanted fluids and waste into urine they also help in regulating your blood pressure and adding to that kidneys also balance the amount of water in your body and they manage your body's production of vitamin D so this is a basic understanding of the kidney structure and also its functioning now coming back to the editorial see kidney injury as a complication of COVID-19 is more commonly seen in hospitalized patients because kidney damages due to COVID-19 infection is very worrying and the major reason for this is those patients with COVID-19 kidney injury they happen to have increased duration of hospitalization so this in turn will increase the health care cost manifolds and also there are many more deaths in those who have COVID-19 kidney injury so due to these reasons medical experts they started doing extensive research on this COVID-19 kidney injury since they wanted to understand on how it happens and they also wanted to know the exact process by which the SARS COVID-2 virus is actually damaging the kidney so these experts were also puzzled with questions on whether the virus directly damages the kidney and so on and so forth so on that line extensive studies were done and finally they found out that the SARS COVID-2 virus did not directly injure the kidneys now having said that it brings to question then on how these kidney injury occur in COVID-19 patients if the virus is not directly injuring it see this particular question was finally answered by a study which was conducted by the Mayo Clinic see according to this study COVID-19 kidney injury was due to a strong immune response to the kidneys see immune response is a way in which the body fights against substances which it sees as foreign or harmful so this strong immune response was damaging the kidneys and also according to experts this condition was similar to the kidney injury which is caused by sepsis see sepsis occurs when chemicals which are released in the bloodstream to fight an infection triggers inflammation throughout the body so generally this sepsis can cause a cascade of changes that has got the potential to damage multiple organ systems and also has got the potential to lead these organ systems to fail and sometimes even resulting in death so during sepsis we can find kidney injury due to strong immune response and this same pattern is also evident in some COVID-19 patients now coming to the importance of this findings see with this finding we can actually manage the COVID-19 kidney injury in the same way we manage the kidney injury which is caused by sepsis and also the data which is collected and analyzed during this research can be beneficial in managing the current pandemic as well and not just that it can also potentially provide valuable information in the event of another pandemic so these are some of the important takeaway points from this particular editorial so with these points in mind let us move on to the next part of our news discussion now let us take up this article for our discussion see this news article mentions about a mosquito-borne viral disease dengo so in this context let us briefly see about its causes its symptoms and also about the prevention of dengo in prelims perspective see the dengo virus spreads through a bite of an infected AD species mosquito and these mosquitoes are also responsible for the spread of zika chicken gunia and other viruses generally dengo is caused by one of any of the four related viruses that is through the dengo virus one two three and four so it is for this reason it is said that a person can be infected with a dengo virus is many as four times in his or her lifetime now talking about its transmission see as we already saw dengo virus is transmitted by female mosquitoes mainly of the species adis egypti and it is to be noted that dengo cannot be spread directly from person to person and the only possible way which dengo can spread is through mosquito to human transmission or through human to mosquito transmission and there is also evidence of the possibility of maternal transmission in this regard that is a pregnant women who is already infected with dengo can pass on the virus to a fetus during pregnancy or around the time of and on such instances the babies may suffer from preterm birth low birth weight and also from fetal distress now talking about the symptoms see many dengo infections produce only mild illness and symptoms like that of nausea vomiting rashes eye pain and muscle joint or bone pain are quite common symptoms of dengo and know that it can also cause an acute flu like illness as well and occasionally dengo can also develop into a potentially lethal complication called severe dengo and this severe dengo can bring in complications which are associated with severe bleeding organ impairment and also plasma leakage and apart from this this severe dengo has also got a higher risk of death when it is not managed properly or appropriately now talking about its treatment know that there is no specific treatment for dengo as such and early detection of disease progression associated with severe dengo and also access to proper medical care lowers the fatality rates of severe dengo to below one percent and of course dengo prevention and control depends on the effective vector control measures and on that line the sustained community involvement can improve the vector control efforts in a substantial manner so with this we have come to the end of this discussion so in this discussion we saw about dengo we saw about its symptoms its causes and also its preventive measures and we also saw about the severe dengo in brief and now let's move on to the next news article now look at this news article the article here talks about North Korea which has successfully tested its newly developed long-range cruise missiles and also note that this is the first known testing activity in months and this testing also brings to light the initiatives that are taken by the country to expand its military capabilities especially amid a stalement in nuclear negotiations with the united states and based on the testings it is said that these missiles which are a strategic weapon of great significance are found to flew to about 1500 kilometers before hitting their targets and falling into the country's territorial water during the tests so this is basically the crux of the news article here now with this information in the background it's very briefly have a basic understanding about missiles and also about cruise missiles so first of all a missile is a rocket propelled weapon and this missile is basically designed to deliver an explosive warhead with great accuracy and that too at high speed and note that missiles can range from small weapons to large weapons when you take small weapons they can be effective only up to a very few hundred feet whereas when you take large strategic weapons they've got high potential ranges of several thousand miles so based on their types missiles are generally classified into two broad types namely the cruise missiles and the ballistic missiles see a ballistic missile is one that has a ballistic trajectory over most parts of its flight path irrespective of whether or not it is a weapon delivery vehicle and for those of you who are not aware of this term ballistic trajectory see it means that the missile will move on a path under the influence of gravity so usually such missiles they carry huge payloads and they can be launched from both ships as well land-based facilities so missiles like Prithvi 1 Prithvi 2 and Dhanush are some examples of ballistic missiles now coming to the next type that is the cruise missiles which is also mentioned in today's news see cruise missile is an unmanned self-propelled guided vehicle that sustains its flight through aerodynamic lift and usually such missiles they fly within the earth's atmosphere and they make use of jet engine technology and since they have their own engine their path can be altered even after their launch or even after they are fired so Brahmos Brahmos 2 and Nirbe are examples of cruise missiles in India so when you take Brahmos see it is a two-stage missile which has got strong propellant booster engine at its first stage which brings it to supersonic speed and stealth technology and guidance system with advanced embedded software are its special features see this Brahmos works on the fire and forget principle which means it doesn't require any further guidance after the launch and also it has got identical configuration for all the land sea and subsea platforms coming to Nirbe see it is a long range subsonic cruise missile which is capable of deep penetration into adversary territory to strike high value targets with precision and this missile is adopted for launch from both air and sea platforms and also note that India is in the list of the select few countries which are having the capability to design and develop this class of cruise missiles so these are some important points that we need to learn whenever we come across articles related to missiles there is a small comments and clarification session which is exclusively designed for the benefits of the aspirants 0 9th of September 2021 presentation we spotted a small error in the notes if you recollect while we were discussing about hydrogen we also came across the concept of green hydrogen so during a discussion we saw that almost all the other types of hydrogen has some emission of carbon but the green hydrogen did not give out carbon in the production process and that it only gives water vapor but then in the notes we had mentioned that the green hydrogen making process gave out no green out gases but in the problem here is if you see water vapor is a greenhouse gas so technically a greenhouse gas is emitted but we have mistakenly given that no emission of greenhouse gases occur so kindly make the required changes here that is it should be no emission of carbon and not no emission of greenhouse gases so having done with the articles and also having done with a short comment clarification let us now move on to the next part of our hinder news analysis that is the practice question discussion now look at this problem's practice question which among the following diseases is or are caused by the aides egypti mosquito and statement 1 malaria statement 2 chicken gunia statement 3 dengue see malaria is caused by plasmodium parasites and these parasites are spread to people through the bites of infected female anophilus mosquitoes called malaria vectors and not the aides egypti so therefore the first statement is wrong now coming to the second statement which is chicken gunia see chicken gunia is a viral disease which is transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes including aides egypti and aides albopictus so that makes the second statement correct and then the third statement see dengue is also a mosquito bone viral infection and the aides egypti mosquito is the main vector that transmits the viruses that cause dengue so that makes the third statements to be correct as well so therefore the correct answer here is option b that is 2 and 3 only because malaria is caused by the infected female anophilus mosquitoes and all the aides egypti now look at this question consider the following statements simulipal biosphere reserve is a part of the unesco world network of biosphere reserve and statement 2 sura melanostic tigers can be spotted in the simulipal biosphere reserve and we need to find the correct statement see the first statement is correct and this simulipal biosphere reserve is a part of the unesco world network of biosphere reserve since the year 2009 i know that it is located in odisha's mayur bunch district so geographically it lies in the eastern end of the eastern god and also this simulipal national park is a national park and also a tiger reserve and animals like chausinga or forhont antelope hyena jungle cat wild pig spotted here are some of the species that are found in this particular place in addition to tigers and coming to the second statement based on our discussion itself we can infer that this statement is correct and since both statements are right here the correct option is option c that is both 1 and 2 look at this question operation megduth is often mentioned in the news what is this operation about and as we saw in the discussion this operation is about the seatchan glacier and therefore the right answer here is option c that is seatchan glacier the practice main's question for today is given below so those who are interested can write your answers and post them in the comment section so with this we have come to the end of today's under news analysis and if you have liked the video then don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to shankar ias academy youtube channel for more updates regarding upsc civil services preparation