 Good evening aspirants, welcome to the hindi news analysis by Shankarai's academy for the date 30th of May 2021. These are the list of news articles taken for today's discussion. They have been provided along with the page numbers of these articles in different editions of hindi newspaper. Now, let us start our analysis with this first news article which talks about damage to Sundarbans. As we know recently, India witnessed two back-to-back cyclones and among them, Yaa's Cyclone made landfall in Odisha, that is, it crossed over to land in Odisha. And because of this, the eastern states of West Bengal and Jharkhand were also severely affected. And this is what has also affected the Sundarbans. So in this regard, let us see about Sundarbans and the threats to it. See, Sundarbans is located in West Bengal. It lies on the southeast of Kolkata and it borders the Bay of Bengal. It is situated in the swampy delta of the river Ganga, river Brahmaputra and river Magna. Actually, Sundarbans is mainly located at the confluence of Ganga and Brahmaputra basin in between India and Bangladesh. That is, it spreads over India and Bangladesh and it extends over a vast area of about 9,630 square kilometers. And in India alone, it spans a vast area covering about 4,200 square kilometers. So from this, we can say that the major part of Sundarbans lies in Bangladesh only. Now, next note that Sundarbans is bounded by the river Hoogli on the west. Then it is bounded on the east by Ichamati, Kalindi, Raimungal rivers. And on the north, it is bounded by Dampier-Hodges line. And to its south lies the Bay of Bengal. Now, the Sundarbans consist of mangrove forests, swamps, estuaries, river canals and forested islands. And that is why Sundarbans is very important from ecological perspective. And note that there are more than 100 islands of various shapes and sizes where around 50% of them are inhabited. Now, it also has faunal and floral diversity. It houses many rare and endangered animals including aquatic mammals, tigers, birds and reptiles. Mainly note that the tangled mass of the roots of mangrove trees, these roots provide safe homes for a large number of species like from fish to shrimp. And most importantly, Sundarbans is home to nearly 200 royal Bengal tigers. Here you should note that Sundarbans is the only mangrove forest in the world which is home of tigers. Other than this, more than 170 bird species are known to inhabit these mangrove forests. Now, coming to its flora, note that Sundarbans is the largest single block of tidal, helophytic mangrove forests in the world. Here, helophytic means salt tolerant. Apart from this, Sundarbans is also the world's largest deltaic mangrove forest. Now, the mangrove forests in the Sundarbans are characterized by heritera forms. It is also known as heritera minor. This is a evergreen mangrove tree species and this species is valued for its timber. Now, this species is found abundantly in the freshwater zones of Sundarbans. And this is one of the reasons why this swamp forest is known as Sundarbans because locally the species is known as Sundari. Then another reason given for the name Sundarbans is that because it is a beautiful forest where Sundar means beautiful and Bun means forest. Now, apart from its biodiversity, Sundarbans also serves as a crucial protective barrier against the floods for the inhabitants in and around Kolkata. Sundarbans result from the cyclones and we know that cyclones are a regular occurrence in the region. Then the mangroves in the Sundarbans also reduce the fury of cyclonic storms and it prevents the erosion that is caused by tidal action. Now, apart from this, the islands are also of greater economic importance because the islands in the Sundarbans act as a storm barrier. They act as shore stabilizers. They provide nutrient and sediment trap and they are a source of timber and natural resources and they also support a wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial organisms. So, the islands of Sundarbans are an excellent example of the ecological process of monsoon rain flooding, delta formation, tidal influence and plant colonization. Now, finally, Sundarbans is also important because it represents a society that is primarily agricultural. So, millions of people depend on Sundarbans ecosystem for their livelihood. They sustain their livelihood through fishing, through collection of honey and also through collection of fuel, wood or timber. Now, because of all these ecological importance and its economic importance, part of the Sundarbans was declared as a reserve forest in the year 1978 and subsequently it was also declared as a tiger reserve. Now, this total area of reserve forest is around 2500 square kilometers and it includes around 1600 square kilometers of land and then the remaining part is water body. Now, within this land area, around 1300 square kilometers is designated as core area and this core area is declared as the National Park by the Government of India in the year 1984. Now, we saw the ecological importance of this area and based on this, the Sundarbans National Park has been designated by the UNESCO as a natural world heritage site in the year 1987. Now, further protection is also provided to Sundarbans because subsequently in 1989, Government of India constituted the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve. So, Sundarbans is a biosphere reserve of India. This also received the recognition of UNESCO under its Man in Biosphere Program. So, Sundarbans is a biosphere reserve of India and it is also a global biosphere reserve under UNESCO. So now, what are the threats posed to Sundarbans? See, one of the threats is climate change because the effects of climate change can be directly seen in Sundarbans and due to that, Sundarbans also faces several challenges. See, Sundarbans is an area that is cyclone-prone as we saw already. It is monsoonal and it is also low-lying. Now, as a result of these characteristics, when changes in climate happen, it significantly impacts the area, it impacts the flora fauna and also the population living within it. So, one of the main impacts of climate change is the rising sea levels. Now, due to this, the islands are disappearing. A decade ago itself, that is in 2010 itself, it was observed that due to the rising sea levels, the New Moor Island or the South Talpati Island disappeared. And based on this fact, scientists already predicted that the other low-lying islands in the region could also vanish if these sea levels continue to rise. So, based on the subsequent studies were conducted in the following years and in that, it was found that there is a change in size and shape of Goramara Island and Lohachara Islands. These are situated on the Hooghly River. In these islands, few dozen houses and acres of land go under water every year. So, this has forced thousands of inhabitants of these islands to leave the islands and now they have become environmental refugees. Then, apart from this, another threat is the increase in salinity in the water and soil. This severely threatens the health of mangrove forests and it threatens the quality of soil and crops. Additionally, there have been also serious disturbances to the hydrological parameters and there is change in fishing patterns. So, all these have affected the fishermen also. Then, apart from this, the frequent cyclones and erratic monsoon raining pattern, these are also damaging the ecology and humanity of Sundarbans. So, in this way, the recent cyclone, that is the Yas cyclone, has also caused serious damages to Sundarbans. How? Because cyclones cause strong winds and breached embankments. Now, these breached embankments lead to ingress of seawater. That is seawater gets in and this in turn leads to large areas being flooded and due to the Yas cyclone, the Goramara Island is fully inundated and this has led to scarcity of drinking water in many of the islands because now the water resources are inundated by the seawater. Now, this inundation or flooding not only destroys the crops, but it also destroys the land because land cannot be cultivated due to the increased salinity. So, these are some of the threats and challenges faced by the Sundarbans in the recent times and also because of the cyclones that happen in the region frequently. So, in this regard, the news article provides a suggestion by the experts and this suggestion is adopting a long-term planning and such a planning should contain strategies that will minimize the impact of climate change and it will also lead to formulation of disaster management that is suited to the region. So, these are some of the points that I should know about Sundarbans and the threats. Now, let's move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this snippet news article from the science page which talks about dark filaments. See, the news is that a new map has been published of dark matter present in the local sheet. See, this term local sheet is nothing but the extra galactic regions around the Milky Way and other neighborhood galaxies. So, basically, now the scientists have mapped the region around the Milky Way and this has exposed more components about the dark matter. So, these findings are based on the dark matter only and that is why today we will see about dark matter. See, this dark matter is a very interesting concept. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy and 27% is made up of dark matter and the rest or the remaining, it adds up to less than 5% of the universe and this remaining part only includes everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all our instruments and all normal matter. So, that means we come in this 5% of the universe only. Now, in this, our human eye along with technological aid can only see certain areas in the universe. Now, these areas which we can see, they mostly lie in visible light or they lie in infrared radiation or in the ultraviolet spectrum. But the rest are not visible to us even with the aid of technology. Now, this is what dark matter is. So, actually, we don't know what is dark matter. What it contains in it is still a mystery to the scientists. In many ways, scientists know more about what dark matter is not than what it actually is. So, based on this, they speculate that dark matter possibly could be brown dwarfs. See, your brown dwarf means failed stars. That is, they never ignited as they lagged the mass which is needed to start burning. Now, they also speculate that dark matter could be white dwarfs. These white dwarfs are the remnants of course of dead small to medium size stars. Then they speculate that the dark matter could be neutron stars or black holes. That is, as you know, these are the remnants of large stars after they explode. And they even speculate that dark matter may not be made up of the matter we are familiar with at all. So, they say that the matter that makes up dark matter could be different. It may be filled with particles which is predicted by theory. But the scientists are yet to observe these particles. So, that means all these speculations which we just saw are just mere speculations or ideas with no concrete proofs yet. Now, since scientists cannot see dark matter directly, they have found other ways to investigate it. One of the ways which scientists use to indirectly study dark matter is the gravitational lensing. So, what is this gravitational lensing? It is a way to look into the universe. We know gravitational force. It pulls objects towards it. Now, you consider a massive object. Now, the gravitational field around this massive object will also be tremendous because the object is massive. And such massive objects can bend the light that is passing in their vicinity. That is the light that is passing near them. Based on this, scientists say that this amount of bending helps them to have a look at the massiveness of the objects. So, based on this, they think that they can also study dark matter. Now, coming to dark matter, in addition to these indirect ways, scientists at NASA think that they also have a direct way to detect dark matter by using the Fermi gamma ray space telescope. They are saying this because dark matter has a lot of gamma rays releasing processes. So, in short, we can only have one good fact about dark matter which is that it can be classified into three main categories. And these three categories are cold, warm and hot. Now, these categories have no conjunction or concurrence with the actual temperatures. Instead, these categories describe the rate at which the particles randomly move within the universe before slowing down. Now, such a movement of particles only leads to the expansion of the universe as a whole. So, based on the particles movement, scientists have classified dark matter into cold, warm and hot. So, that is all you need to know about dark matter as of now. Now, let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on these news articles. See, recently there is a controversy in West Bengal. According to several media outlets, the West Bengal chief minister skipped the review meeting with the prime minister which was regarding cyclone EAS. But this is not the controversy which we are going to discuss. See, after a few hours of this review meeting, the West Bengal chief secretary, Alapan Bandhopadhyay received an order from the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. He received an order to report to the North Block in Delhi by May 31st. So, this has created a tussle between the centre and the state again. And these articles are regarding this issue only. So, let us discuss these aspects now. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. See, first let us see about the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. See, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet decides upon the appointments to several top posts under the Government of India. The committee is composed of Prime Minister of India who is also the chairman of the committee. And it also includes the Minister of Home Affairs. So, this committee through the Department of Personal and Training which is under the Ministry of Personal it ordered the chief secretary of West Bengal to report to New Delhi. But this is an unprecedented move. That is something like this has never happened before. And this was done by the committee by invoking Rule 6, Clause 1 of the Indian Administrative Service Canada Rules of 1954. So, now what is this Rule 6, Clause 1? See, this rule pertains to deputation of Canada officers. Now, according to Rule 6, Clause 1, a Canada officer may be deputed for service. Now, this is to be done with the concurrence of the state governments concerned and also with the concurrence of central government. Now, the officer can be deputed for service under the central government or even a service under another state government or under a company association or a body of individuals which is wholly or substantially owned or controlled by the central government or by another state government. Now, based on this, the committee has asked the chief secretary to report back to New Delhi. So, now what happens in case of disagreement? That is what if the Canada officer does not want to be deputed? See, such a scenario arises because according to the article, there is a custom that an officer will not be deputed against her or his will and a remedy in this issue is also provided by the 1954 rules and under these rules the Rule 6 Clause 1 also states that in case of any disagreement the matters shall be decided by the central government and the state government has to give effect to that decision of the central government. So, this provision was invoked by the central government to recall the chief secretary of West Bengal. See, so far before any officer of the All India Services is called for deputation to the center, her or his concurrence is required. So, this is the convention so far and here also the central government invites nominations from the state governments. Now, once the nominations are received, their eligibility is scrutinized by a panel and then an offer list is prepared. Now, this is done traditionally with the state governments on board. Now, from this process the central ministries and officers choose. Now, then the order for central deputation is passed for the concerned IAS officer. So, this was the convention so far but this convention has been totally avoided in the case of West Bengal chief secretary and that is why there is a controversy regarding this issue. So, now what will happen if the officer that is the chief secretary refuses to comply with the order. See, when such non-compliance of an order happens the All India Services discipline and appeal rules of 1969 is invoked but in this case that is in case of deputation of cadre officers, these 1969 rules are not clear on the punishment in such cases but the rule 7 in these 1969 rules says that the authority to institute the proceedings and to impose penalty will be the state government. So, we can see that there is a lack of clarity when it comes to non-compliance of the order in this issue. See, as we know, IAS officers are technically recruited by the center and they are lent to the states but if the officers are recalled at the whims and fancies of the central government then the entire state government machinery will crumble and this would lead to complete and total anarchy in the country. In addition to this, it will also deter the officers from following the state government's order because they may fear that they can be recalled by the central government at any moment. Therefore such moves set wrong precedence and they should be avoided at all cost. So, these are the points that we need to know about the ongoing issue with the Chief Secretary of West Bengal. Let us see what are the developments in this issue in the coming days. Now, let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the studies on the genomes of Neanderthals. So, in this context, let us know about Neanderthals and also the important points from these studies. See, Neanderthals are members of a group of archaic humans who emerged at least 2 lakh years ago and they emerged during the Pleistocene epoch. I note that they were replaced or assimilated by early modern human populations that is the Homo sapiens between 35,000 and 24,000 years ago. And these Neanderthals, they inhabited Eurasia from the Atlantic regions of Europe to the Central Asia. In addition to this, they even occupied places as far north as present-day Belgium and even as far south as the Mediterranean and southwest Asia. And it is also said that similar archaic human populations lived at the same time in eastern Asia and in Africa. Now the Neanderthals lived in a land of abundant limestone caves and these caves preserved bones of the Neanderthals. I note that the news article also mentions that the bones of one of these Neanderthals was first discovered in the Neander Valley in Germany and that is why they derived the name of Neanderthal. See, until the late 20th century, Neanderthals were regarded as genetically, morphologically and behaviorally distinct from living humans. But however, more recent discoveries have revealed an overlap between the living humans and the archaic humans. Also note that the Neanderthals lived even before and during the last Ice Age of Pleistocene epoch. So they lived in some of the most unforgiving environments that were ever inhabited by humans. And these are some of the Neanderthal sites. Just take note of it. So in this regard, the news article adds little information related to Neanderthals. See, recent genetic analysis of one of the samples from the region showed that Neanderthals first came to the Bako Kiro Cave in Bulgaria and this happened more than 50,000 years ago. In addition to this, the genetic analysis also confirms that the modern humans also came in two to more waves and they even littered the cave with beads and stones and this happened around 45,000 and 36,000 years ago. So this clearly showed that the modern human population in that region, they had interbred with the locals that is the Neanderthals and they produced a cross-bred group of people and this cross-bred group of people is what is called by the researchers as modern with Neanderthals. And the news article mentions that this has provided certain benefits to the modern humans such as the Neanderthals have already adapted to colder regions for more than four like years. So this gave the modern humans variations in skin and hair color which was better suited to the colder regions and it also gave adaptive variants of metabolism and immunity and it is said that this also helped the modern humans to better adjust to strange new food sources and to adjust to the unfamiliar disease-causing viruses in the new environment. So these are some of the recent findings relating to the Neanderthals and the modern humans. So that is all about this discussion. Let us move on to the next one. Our next discussion is based on this FAQ article which is regarding the developments on the recently introduced IT rules of 2021. We have already discussed this topic on our discussion on 26th May 2021. On that day we saw about the features and important provisions of the rules and in today's discussion we will discuss the issues in the IT rules of 2021 and we will have a special focus on the traceability clause which is focused by this FAQ article. See this issue of traceability clause is gaining ground because the Facebook owned messaging platform that is WhatsApp is challenging the Indian Government in the court regarding the traceability clause in the new IT rules. So today let us see about these now. The next 11 to this discussion is given here for your reference. See there are positive aspects about the IT rules and there are also equally glaring ambiguities and unclear provisions in the rules. Now while challenging the Indian Government in the court of law WhatsApp has invoked the 2017 case law which is Justice Case Putters Swami versus Union of India case law. It has invoked this case law to argue that traceability provision is unconstitutional and it is against people's fundamental right to privacy and we know that Supreme Court underlined right to privacy as a fundamental right in its 2017 judgment only and in this case Supreme Court also discussed in detail about the scope and ambit of right to privacy. So before going into this traceability clause issue let us see what are the positive aspects in these rules. See the rules must be credited for their mandate duties such as removal of non-constitutional intimate pictures within 24 hours then publication of compliance reports to increase transparency etc. In addition to it the rules also provide setting up of a dispute resolution mechanism for content removal and adding a label to the information for the users to know whether the content is advertised, owned, sponsored or exclusively controlled. Now these few measures will protect the user's interest and that is why these measures have been welcomed by various sections of the society but however there are also many issues that are mainly concerned with user privacy and arbitrary authority of the state. So let us see these issues one by one. See the first issues regarding the provisions that apply to the intermediaries such as social media platforms which is provided in the part 2 of the IT rules. Now in these rules the rule 3 sub rule J mentions that intermediaries are mandated to provide information under their control or the information which is under their possession to the government within 72 hours of receipt of an order. So that means if the government wants any information from the intermediaries they have to provide that information within 3 days. This is one of the issues cited by the intermediaries. Now the second issue is regarding the rule 4 of the IT rules which mentions about the significant social media intermediary. See as per the new norms a significant social media intermediary is a social media intermediary which has more than 50 lakh registered users. Now under the rule 4 such an intermediary who is providing services primarily in the nature of messaging they shall enable the identification of the first originator of the information on its computer resource. An intermediary has to do this only when an order is issued in this regard by a court of competent jurisdiction or when an order is passed by the competent authority under section 69 of the information technology rules of 2009 and this is the clause which the WhatsApp is challenging because here the identification of first originator is what is called as the traceability clause and it has asked the courts to declare this clause as unconstitutional and it does not want this clause to come into force. See here the term traceability can be defined as an activity to keep track of who said what and who shared what for billions of messages that are sent every day. This traceability requires messaging services to store information that can be used to ascertain the content of people's messages and therefore it will lead to breaking off the guarantees which is provided by the end to end encryption especially the ones which are provided by WhatsApp. See here the issue is the traceability of content or enabling the identification of originator of information is equivalent of asking the WhatsApp to keep a fingerprint of every single message that is sent on WhatsApp. So this infringes upon the right to privacy of an individual also the immunity that users received from end to end encryption was that intermediaries did not have access to the contents of the users messages but if this mandatory requirement of traceability is imposed then it will break this immunity and thereby it will weaken the security of the privacy of these conversations and it is feared that it will also render all these data in these conversations vulnerable to attack from ill intention third parties. So here the threat is not only to the privacy but also there is fear of extent of invasion and also deprivation of a safe space to converse. This safe space is important to circulate one's own views. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court in one of its case laws. This case law is the life insurance corporation of India versus Professor Manu Bhai Desha which is a 1992 case law in which Supreme Court elevated the freedom to circulate one's views as the lifeline of any democratic institution. Here Supreme Court even went on to say that any attempt to stifle or gag this right would sound a death knell to democracy and it will help to usher in autocracy or dictatorship. So that means if there is no safe space to circulate one's own views then we are no more in a democratic setup and based on this fact only WhatsApp is challenging Indian government in the court of law. So now what the government of India says regarding this see here government of India is saying that it is committed to the right of privacy of citizen but at the same time it is also responsible for ensuring national security. In addition to this to prove that traceability clause is required the Ministry of Justice has given two legal points in a notice released by it which is related to the traceability requirement. The first legal point which they are saying is that no fundamental right including the right to privacy is absolute and it is subject to reasonable restrictions. So here they are using the reasonable restrictions clause where they are saying that the traceability clause is for the purpose of prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution or punishment of an offence and here the offence is related to sovereignty and integrity of India the security of state or offenses affecting the friendly relations with foreign states or offenses that affect public order. So this is one of the arguments put down by the Ministry of Electronics and IT for substantiating its need for demanding of a traceability clause. Along with these reasonable restrictions there are also other instances like the offense could be in relation with rape sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse material etc that is the offenses which are punishable with imprisonment for a term of not less than 5 years. So here the government is arguing that if the traceability clause is present then it will help the government to get evidence for prosecuting the offender. So on one hand whatsapp is taking the precedence of supreme court for substantiating its argument and on the other hand government of India is taking national security as a reason to enforce the traceability clause. Now let us see what the court decides in this matter. Now other than this traceability clause there are also other issues in the IT rules. Let us see them now. The next issue is regarding the power of the Ministry of Electronics and IT to frame regulations for digital media. See as per second schedule of business rules of 1961 the ministry does not have powers to frame regulations for digital media. This power belongs to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting only. But in today's case the rules were framed by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and that is why this is one of the issues discussed with these rules. Now another issue is that an intermediary is now supposed to take down a content within 36 hours after receiving orders from the government. So this 36 hours time limit deprives the intermediary of a fair recourse because even if the intermediary wants to disagree with the government's order it cannot do due to this strict timeline. Now the next issue is that the Information Technology Act 2000 does not regulate digital media. Therefore the new IT rules which claim to be a piece of subordinate legislation of the IT Act they also does not have the power to regulate digital media. But what happened was the IT rules have been framed for digital media also. So that means the rules travel beyond the rule making power which have been conferred upon it by the IT Act. So this is one of the issue. Now lastly the rules also create a futile additional operational costs for the intermediaries because it requires them to have an Indian resident nodal officer, compliance officers and grievance officers. So this makes profit making as a far-fetched goal for the multinational corporations and startup intermediary enterprises. So this is also one of the issues cited by the intermediaries. So today we have seen some of the issues with the IT rules. Now regarding the traceability clause we can say that in the absence of a data protection law enforcing the traceability clause would render more disadvantages than advantages. So that is all about this discussion on FAQ article. Let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the genocide towards Indigenous people of Canada. So first we will see about the Indigenous people of Canada then we will see the news. In Canada the term Indigenous people or aboriginal peoples it refers to First Nations Metis and Inuit peoples. They are the original inhabitants of the land which is now called as Canada and as per Canada's official statistics the Indigenous people constitute up to 4.9% of their national population that is the Canadian population. So that means there are three categories of Indigenous people in Canada they are the Inuit people, Metis people and First Nations people. Now in this the Inuits they primarily inhabit in the northern regions of Canada. Their homeland is known as Inuit New Angad. Now this region includes much of land water and ice that is contained in the Arctic region. Now the Metis peoples are of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry and they live mostly in the priori provinces and Ontario of Canada. And then comes the First Nations people. They were the original inhabitants of the land and now they occupy the territories of south of Arctic in Canada. I note that there are more than 630 First Nations communities in Canada and which represents more than 50 nations and 50 Indigenous languages. Now these Indigenous people formed complex social, political and economic cultural systems in Canada before the arrival of Europeans to the North America. But the Indigenous people and their livelihood had been severely threatened by these colonial forces. So due to the colonization and white settlement the traditional Indigenous ways of life have been altered in Canada. And in their places certain colonial practices and policies control and assimilate the Indigenous people. And these colonial practices and policies include their Indian act then past system and then the residential schools system. These practices and policies have had historic and ongoing impacts on the generations of Indigenous people. But today we will only focus on the residential school system of practices that is focused by the news article. See during the 19th and 20th centuries that is approximately from 1863 to 1998, Canada removed Indigenous children, especially the First Nations children from their families and the government placed these children in the federally funded boarding schools. Now this was done with the intent of assimilating or incorporating the Indigenous children into the broader Canadian society. And these boarding schools were called as Indian residential schools. But these schools, rather than making the children educated, they compulsorily made the children to leave their identity of being aboriginal. See what happened was in these schools the children were forced to convert to Christianity. They were not allowed to speak their languages or they were not even allowed to express their cultural heritage and identities. And because of that they mistreated, beaten and verbally abused and they were even subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Now as a result of this the aboriginal people were expected to have ceased to exist as a distinct people having their own government's cultures and identities. And due to this particular system of residential schools, it is estimated that around 150,000 First Nations children suffered abuse in these schools. So to find out and document the impacts of this Indian residential schools system, the Canadian government launched the commission in 2008 and this commission submitted a report named Truth and Reconciliation Report. Now in this report the commission has found that large number of indigenous children never return to their home communities. Which means that either the children lost to the touch with their parents or even they died or they were even killed. And it is said that up to 6000 children have died in these schools. So based on this the report concluded that the Indian residential schools policy has amounted to cultural genocide. So in the same year that is in 2008 itself the Canadian government formally apologized for this system. Now this policy is again in news because in one of the schools under this policy remains of many children have been found. This school is the Kamloops Indian residential school and here remains of around 215 children has been found. And it is said that the remains of more children will be found as the search proceeds. So this incident has resurfaced the painful and shameful history of Canada. So that is all you need to know about this issue. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article from the Science and Tech page. This news article reports about a study which highlights the decline of forest bird species in western Himalayas. See western Himalayas is also known as Panchab Himalayas. It is also regionally known as Kashmir and Himachal Himalayas. Now these western Himalayas refers to the westernmost section of the vast Himalayan mountain range and it is spread across the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Now the study which we are talking about was undertaken in the temperate forests of the state of Uttarakhand because these forests house a large number of endemic bird species. As you know endemic species means those species exist only in one geographical region and their habitat is also restricted to a particular area due to the factors like climate change, urban developments etc. Now as per the findings of the study the abundance of important birds in western Himalayas is facing a decline due to the invasion caused by non-native species and invasive species and also the decline is caused by land use changes. See land use change refers to the process by which human activities transform the natural landscape. And here you need to understand the difference between non-native and invasive species and note that both are different. Non-native species are the organisms that do not occur naturally in an area but they are introduced as a result of deliberate or accidental human activity. These non-native species simply exist where they have not naturally occur and they may not hinder or prevent the survival of others within the ecosystem. Now among these non-native species itself there are some species which can cause damage and such species are called as invasive species. In simple terms we can say that invasive species are also non-native species but they are capable of causing economic harm or environmental harm or even harm to human health. Now such invasive species have got the potential to reduce the ecosystems biodiversity and they can cause economic harm to people who depend on the ecosystem's biological resources. And these invasive species also prevent the native species from obtaining food, living space and other resources that is needed for their survival. And such invasive species also serve as disease vectors that spread parasites and pathogens which may further disrupt the invaded areas. So due to these species it was found that the bird species in the western Himalayas have been affected. So this was the one of the important findings of this study. Now there was another study conducted in the western Himalayan region and it focused on the role played by the woodpeckers in a biodiversity. In this study it was found that woodpeckers play an important role as an indicator of bird diversity. As per the findings woodpeckers enhance the diversity in the regions or in other words a strong population of woodpeckers at a site denotes a rich population of other bird species. This is because the cavities which are made by woodpeckers on trees are also used by other variety of birds to build their nests. So this is also one of the important finding that we should know. So that is all about this news article. So with this we have come to the end of news articles discussion session. Now let us take up the practice questions that have been framed based on the discussions so far. Now our first question is based on mangroves that is a question that was asked in Prillin's 2011. The question asks the 2004 tsunami made people realize that mangroves can serve as a reliable safety hedge against coastal calamities. How do mangroves function as a safety hedge? Option A, the mangroves firms separate the human settlements from the sea by a wide zone in which people neither live nor venture out. Now this statement is incorrect because today we saw about Sundarbans among the islands in the Sundarbans 50% of them are inhabited by people. Now the second statement is the mangroves provide both food and medicines which people are in need of after any natural disaster. Now this does not substantiate the point that mangroves function as a safety hedge. So this is also an incorrect statement. Now option C is the mangrove trees are tall with dense canopies and serve as an excellent shelter during a cyclone or tsunami. Now this statement is also correct because generally mangroves are not always tall. They vary in sizes sometimes they are short shrub-like trees and sometimes they can even reach more than 60 meters of height and this feature does not enable it to protect the people from a cyclone or a tsunami. So this is an incorrect statement. Now option D if you see it states the mangrove trees do not get uprooted by storms and tides because of their extensive roots. Now this statement is correct and these help the mangroves to reduce the destructive energy of a tsunami. It is said that around 90 percentage of the energy of tsunami is reduced by even 100 meters of dense mangroves and that is why this statement is correct. Now this next question is based on dark matter. It is a two statement question. First statement is scientists merely speculate what it can actually be. Now this statement is correct because we saw that scientists are still arguing to figure out what dark matter actually is. Now the second statement is they constitute only 5 percentage of the universe. Now this statement is incorrect because they make up over 25 percentage of the universe. We saw this during discussion. And here the question asks for the correct statements and the correct answer to this question is option A one only. Now this next question is a two statement question. First statement is endemic species are found in a particular geographical region and nowhere else in the world. Now this statement is correct. This is the definition of endemic species. Second statement is an invasive species is an organism that causes ecological and economic harm in a new environment where it is not native. This statement is also correct because an invasive species is a non-native species which causes ecological harm or economic harm. And here the question asks for the correct statement. So the correct answer is option C both one and two. Now this next question is a direct question it asks. The word Neanderthals is sometimes mentioned in media in reference to option A fossils of a kind of dinosaurs option B an early human species option C a care system found in northeast India option D a geological period in the history of Indian subcontinent. Now the correct answer is option B an early human species because we saw that Neanderthals are the members of a group of archaic humans. And here archaic human means early human species. So the correct answer is option B. Now this next question asks the terms Inuit Metis and First Nations recently seen in news refers to the aboriginal people of option A, Indonesia option B, Mexico option C, Canada option D Spain. And from the discussion we know that they are the aboriginal peoples of Canada. So the correct answer is option C. So now let us take two main questions. These questions are based on GS paper 2 and this question you have to critically examine the IT rules of 2021 and you have to mainly focus on the data privacy issue and the traceability clause. So in the 250 words around 40 percentage you should be focusing on these two aspects. Now this next question is based on independence of civil services. Now this is a general question so you can answer the challenges including the challenges which we discussed today. With this we have come to the end of today's Indian news analysis If you like this video don't forget to like, comment and share and do subscribe to Shankar IS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation. Have a nice day.