 Good morning friends, welcome to Indian Express Weekly Analysis brought to you by Shankar A.S. Academy. Displayed here are the topics we are going to discuss today. I have selected six important topics from the last week's Indian Express newspaper. Before discussion, I have two important announcements. Chakra Initiative brought to you by Shankar A.S. Academy. We are providing 50 plus current affairs sessions, five rapid revision sessions, and nine current affairs tests. The next announcement is regarding Shankar A.S. Academy's pre-storming test series. The batch three of pre-storming test series will begin on 16th November 2023. The first test will happen on 22nd November. So, the link for both these two announcements are mentioned in the description. So, make use of it. Now, let us get into the discussion. Look at this article. It talks about ongoing Israel-Palestine war. In our discussion, we shall understand the brief history of Israel-Palestine conflict. See, this conflict is a complex and long-standing dispute that has its roots in 19th and early 20th century, but it escalated significantly after 1947. To explain it in detail, we need to understand its historical background, key events, and major issues involved in this conflict. First, let us see the historical background. In late 19th century, this region called Palestine was part of the Potomac Empire. During this time, Jewish immigrants who are driven by various factors including religious and political motivations began to settle in the Palestine region. So, this is the beginning of Zionist movement which aimed to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. For more than 2000 years, the Palestine is occupied and resided by Palestinian Arabs. During World War I, the Palestine region was under Ottoman-Turkish Empire. This Ottoman Empire fought alongside Germany in First World War. Since they lost in the war, Britain and France took over the Turkish Empire and divided the empire's land among themselves. The area of Palestine came under the control of Britain. Now, the British government issued a declaration called Balfour Declaration which expressed support for establishment of Jewish State in Palestine. See, the British occupied this Palestine region from 1920 to 1948. During this time, tensions between Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine escalated. The Jewish population grew significantly due to immigration of Jews from various parts of the world into Palestine. So, this was the source of conflict with the Arab majority who are already residing in Palestine. In 1947, the United Nations proposed a partition plan to address the ongoing conflict. The UN General Assembly recommended the division of Palestine into two separate states, one for Jewish and one for Arabs. That is, Palestine was divided into Israel and Palestine. The city of Jerusalem was kept under international administration. This plan was accepted by Jewish leaders but was rejected by Arab leaders. So, this marked a crucial turning point in the conflict. Following this UN partition plan, violence erupted in Palestine. In May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. On the very next day, the neighboring Arab countries, that is Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, launched a full-scale war against Israel to support the Palestinian Arabs. This conflict resulted in displacement of thousands of Palestinians and marked the beginning of a series of wars between Israel and its neighbors. So, in this 1948 war, Israel won and occupied more territories from surrounding regions. After this, Israel-Palestine conflict was marked by numerous wars, uprisings and negotiations over years. Another important war happened in 1967. It is also known as the Six-Day War. It was a brief conflict between Israel on one side, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and other side. Israel launched a pre-emptive strike and in just six days it captured territories like Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, Golan Heights from Syria and it also occupied Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem. So, Israel won the war and it resulted in significant territorial changes in the Palestinian region. After this, there were multiple peace negotiations like Oslo Accords in 1993, Camp David Accords in 2000 and Annapolis Conference in 2007. These peace negotiations have yielded temporary ceasefires and limited agreements, but a final resolution is not yet arrived. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital. The status of this city has been a significant point of conflict. So, this is the summary of Israel-Palestine conflict from 1948. I hope you got an overall view about the ongoing conflict. Now, let us move to the next article discussion. Have a look at this news article. China is building an enormous telescope to detect ghost particles. See, neutrinos are called as ghost particles. So, this telescope will be the largest ever telescope to detect neutrinos. Now, why are neutrinos called as ghost particles? We shall see in our discussion. See, neutrinos are tiny subatomic particles similar to electrons, but they have no electric charge. They are incredibly abundant in the universe with trillions of neutrinos passing through our bodies every second. At first, neutrinos were thought to have no moss, but later scientists discovered that they have very small amount of moss. So, neutrinos have moss. Neutrinos are incredibly hard to detect because they rarely interact with other particles. So, they can be only seen when they interact with other particles. Due to this rare interaction, most neutrinos pass through everything without being noticed. So, this is why they are called ghost particles because they are extremely challenging to track neutrinos. See, neutrinos were first discovered in 1959 and they are second most abundant particle in the universe after photon. Now, what are the sources of neutrinos? Radioactive decays can produce neutrinos. Natural nuclear reactions in sun and stars produce neutrinos. Even artificial nuclear reactions in nuclear reactors can release neutrinos. Neutrinos are also produced in supernovas. So, these are some of the important sources of neutrinos. See, every elementary particle has an antiparticle. That means, electrons have an antiparticle called positron. Neutrinos have antiparticles called anti-neutrinos. But if you take electron, it has negative charge and its antiparticles have opposite charge. But in case of neutrinos, it doesn't have any charge. And the antiparticle for neutrinos that is anti-neutrinos also doesn't have any charge. So, it is impossible to differentiate neutrinos from their antiparticles. So, these are some of the important facts about neutrinos. Now, coming back to the news. As we saw earlier, neutrinos are called ghost particles because they rarely interact with other particles. But sometimes, neutrinos interact with water molecules. So, that is why China is building the largest neutrino detector underwater in South China Sea. Another largest neutrino detector is also present in Antarctic region which is called ice cube. In India also, there is a neutrino observatory which is currently being built in Thaini district in Tamil Nadu. So, this is all about the news. Now, let us move to the next topic. Now, this article talks about CAR T-cell therapy. Let us look into the important information given in this article. This is very important for our Prelims exam because UPSC has been asking a lot of questions related to emerging technologies in medical field. So, CAR T-cell therapy is a short form for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy. It is a form of immunotherapy that is used to treat cancer. In this therapy, a person's own T-cells are genetically modified to enhance their ability to target and destroy cancer cells. Here, T-cell is a type of white blood cell which can fight cancer cells. Now, let us see how this CAR T-cell therapy works. In this therapy, a regular immune cells called T-cells are transformed into powerful cancer fighters known as CAR T-cells. So, T-cells are transformed into CAR T-cells. See, here T-cells are special white blood cells that help our body to fight infections and illness. So, they are naturally skilled at killing cancer cells. By using CAR T-cell therapy, we modify the T-cells by changing their genes to make them even better at attacking cancer. After genetic modification, we put these supercharged CAR T-cells back into the patient's body. These supercharged T-cells then get to work and attack cancer cells. So, this is how CAR T-cell therapy works. This is essentially effective for blood cancers like leukemia and lymphomas. Overall, CAR T-cell therapy is like turning your body's own immune cells into cancer-killing superheroes. Note that this therapy is mainly used to fight blood cancers. Recently, Central Drugs Standard Control Organization granted market authorization for India's first indigenously developed CAR T-cell therapy which is called NEXT CAR 19. So, this waives a way for commercial launch of T-cell therapy in India. It will be available to cancer patients in India at very low cost compared to other countries. So, in UPAC, there may be a question like, what do you mean by NEXT CAR 19? Which is recently seen in the news. The answer is, it is a technology related to treatment of cancer. Like this, we need to understand some basic information about the recent news. See, this NEXT CAR 19 is a type of CAR T-cell therapy which is developed by Immuno ACT which is a company incubated at IIT Bombay. So, this particular T-cell therapy is designed to target cancer cells that carry CD19 protein. This protein acts like a flag on cancer cells and this allows CAR T-cells to recognize and attack themselves and start the process of destroying cancer cells. So, this is how NEXT CAR 19 therapy works. Here, we have to note the important key names like NEXT CAR 19, CD19 protein, CAR T-cell therapy, what is T-cell? So, these are important facts for prelims examination. So, this is all about this news article discussion. Now, let us move to the next topic. Take a look at this article. Indian government has taken measures to address rising onion prices by imposing a minimum export price on onion exports. This move aims to control the export of onions from India and ensure an adequate supply of onion within the country. So, this will reduce the rising onion prices. In this discussion, we shall see about MEP. Minimum export price is a price below which an exporter is not allowed to export a commodity from India. The government fixes MEP for selected commodities to arrest domestic price and also to augment the domestic supply. Basically, it is the minimum price at which commodities can be exported from the country. Government imposes MEP under Foreign Trade Development and Regulation Act 1992. Note that minimum export price is different from minimum support price. This MEP is different from MSP. MSP is the minimum price at which government purchase crops from the farmers. So, do not confuse MEP with MSP. Now, if we look at the onion protection, Maharashtra is a leading producer of onion in India. It is followed by Karnataka, Gujarat, Bihar and Mathya Pradesh, Bilgam, Bijapur, Bhagalkot in Karnataka are major onion producing regions. There are various varieties of onions cultivated throughout the world like red onions, white onions, yellow onions. In India, red and white onions are mostly grown and if you look at this map, these are the major onion producing states in India and most of them lies on the western part of India. One important fact about onion, onions contain phytochemicals called quercetin and this phytochemical is being studied for their potential health promoting properties. Here phytochemicals are chemical compounds that are produced by plants which have bioactive properties. Phytochemicals are generally produced by plants to help them to resist fungi, bacteria and plant virus infections. So, the phytochemicals are used by the plants as poisons against insects or virus that affect them. A few examples of phytochemicals are flavonoids, phenolic acids, curcumin, carotenoids etc. So, onion also contains a phytochemical called quercetin. So, this is all about this discussion. Here we have seen basics about minimum export price, important onion producing states. Now we shall move to the next topic. Look at this article. It talks about criticisms regarding electoral bonds. Recently, a case is going on in Supreme Court regarding the issues with electoral bond scheme. So, in this discussion today, we are going to see about basics about electoral bond scheme and important issues associated with it. Now first, what is electoral bond? See, electoral bonds are instruments or securities that are used to donate funds to political parties. Imagine you want to support a political party by giving them money. Instead of giving direct cash, you go to a bank and buy an electoral bond. You then take this electoral bond and give it to political party you support. They can deposit in the bank and get the money. In this way, anyone can give funds to political parties. One unique thing about the bond is, donor's name is not written on them. So, the party receiving the money doesn't know who gave it. It's like giving a gift anonymously. Even though your name is hidden, government keeps track of all electoral bonds that are issued and check how much money each political party gets. So, in this way, it is aimed to be transparent and eliminates illegal funding to political parties. See, electoral bonds were first introduced in 2018. The scheme was introduced as a part of the finance bill 2017. These bonds are only available in state banks of India and not in any other banks. So, these are the basics about electoral bond scheme. With these basics, let us now understand the issues associated with electoral bond scheme. The first issue is anonymity and lack of transparency. One of the major criticism is that the scheme allows for anonymous donations to political parties. See, donors can purchase these bonds without their identities being disclosed to public. This lack of transparency can raise concerns about source of political funding and this potentially allows for black money to enter into politics. Then there is lack of accountability. The scheme does not require political parties to disclose the identity of donors when they redeem the bonds. So, this lack of accountability can make it difficult to track where the money is coming from that potentially leads to corruption and unethical practices. Then the third important issue is possible influence of corporations. Critics argue that electoral bond scheme may enable corporations and wealthy individuals to have influence over political parties and government decisions. So, they can make significant donations without any public scrutiny. Then the fourth important issue is inequality in political funding. Small and regional parties often have limited access to electoral bonds. This leads to unequal distribution of funds and create disparities between big national parties and the smaller parties. Then the fifth important issue is impact on electoral integrity. The lack of transparency regarding the electoral bonds can undermine the integrity of electoral process. It can be challenging for citizens to know who is funding the parties which may erode public trust in the political system. Then there are legal challenges. See, electoral bond scheme has faced many legal challenges in India which raises concern about compatibility with laws like right to information and transparency. There have been concerns that the scheme could have used for money laundering or illegal activities as it provides a way to funnel large amount of money to political parties with a limited oversight. So, various civil society organizations, activists and opposition parties have called for reforms to make electoral bond scheme more transparent and accountable. They argue that these reforms are necessary to maintain the democratic and electoral integrity of political system. Overall, the electoral bond scheme has sparked a debate about balance between protecting donor privacy and ensuring transparency and accountability in political funding. So, it remains as a contentious issue in Indian politics.