 Good evening aspirants welcome to the hindu news analysis by Shankara's academy for the date 13th of january 2023 displayed here are the list of news articles we will be discussing today now let's get into the discussion look at this news article this article gained my attention when i saw the newspaper today the article says that two people in delhi stole money from a bank in Chennai you may wonder how is this possible can you take a guess yes you are right it is a classic example of cybercrime this is about the news article given here so in this discussion we will understand how these two people stole money from a bank that too in Chennai let us start it was november 18 and the time was between 6 a.m to 9 a.m the culprits attacked the system of thaminado state apex cooperative bank and diverted funds of four customers to 32 different accounts a total amount of 2.61 crores went missing and all this happened before the working hours of the bank after the working hours started the banking officials immediately noted the missing money from the customer's bank account and they made a timely complaint to the cybercrime police because of their timely action the cybercrime police was able to retrieve about 1 crore and the remaining 1 crore was already transferred to two Nigeria-based banks during the investigation they found out that the two Nigerians held 32 fake bank accounts in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Jaipur, Manipur, Assam and even Nagaland to transfer funds they also bought cryptocurrencies using the stolen fund through a portal called as Binance now coming to the golden question how did they manage to steal so much money from a bank usually banks will never have an internet connection to computers having the core banking system this is done in order to avoid viruses affecting the computers but the culprits however managed to track and find one cbs unit that had a internet connection the culprits sent fishing mail to the state cooperative bank in Manadi when the staff clicked the fishing mail the embedded software called keylogger got installed into the computer in august 2022 after that the Nigerians managed to collect data entered through the system and waited till november to steal the money now we will understand what is this cbs what is fishing and what is this keylogger because these three keywords are only important for our examination the rest that we just saw are just news for your information okay first of all let us start with core banking system see a core banking system is a backend platform which is typically a software that is used to support a bank's most common transaction I have given here some of the elements of the core banking system you can go through it this system is called as core because it manages the core business functions of the bank here you have to note that rba's core banking solution is called as ecuber now let us see what is fishing fishing is a cybercrime in which a target is contacted by mail telephone or even text message this communication will be sent by someone who is posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data know that the goal here is to steal sensitive data like credit card or login information or to install malware on the victims machine now with this let us understand what is keylogger see a keylogger is a tool that can record and report users activity as they interact with the computer it is also called as keystroke logger the basic functionality of a keylogger is that it records what you type and reports that information back to the person who installed it on your computer now I think you know how the culprits stole the money they sent the fishing mail and when the staff clicked the email the keylogger got installed into the core banking system which contains information about all the banks transaction and this is how they got the information about the accounts and they transferred the money from the account to their account in the two Nigerian banks so that's all regarding this discussion see this news article was a little interesting and it shows the reality of the cybercrime world also in our discussion we saw three keywords that can be asked in the prelims examination the keywords are core banking system fishing and keylogger so that's all regarding this discussion now let us conclude this and take up the next news article now for our next discussion we are going to take up this editorial article it was written by an important person he is a former director of intelligence bureau a former national security advisor and a former governor of West Bengal whenever you see an article written by him read it without fail because his article always contains many points which will be very useful for us he gives a holistic idea about the topic he writes so it will be easy for us to understand about the topic as well as the different perspectives of it now today he has written about the year 2022 and how it was uncertain in different aspects and he also covered what we can expect from 2023 and what challenges lies ahead for India like I said he has covered the points he discussed holistically he has covered the geopolitics in the year 2022 in the single article and he has also enumerated how the year 2023 will be now without wasting time let's start our discussion but before that look here I have highlighted the syllabus regarding this discussion go through it now let's start today let us do one thing we will see this article like a question and answer so that you will understand how to write these points in your main sensor first let us take this question 2022 has been a year of uncertainty in the global geopolitical substantiate here what we have to do we have to mention the events that created uncertainty in the year 2022 and also we have to mention the uncertainties created by that event can you understand this yes means good if you don't understand no problem after we see the answer to this question I will explain it again okay now for the introduction you have to mention the events that created uncertainties in the year 2022 your introduction should be like this the year 2022 witnessed a spike in geopolitical challenges and risks one of the major event that shook the world is the russia-ukrain conflict the conflict was anticipated in mid 2021 itself because by then Russia had begun a major build-up around Ukraine and the foreign affairs ministry of Russia demanded U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization that is NATO to stop eastward expansion of their alliance so the main cause of the conflict is the expansion of NATO finally the conflict erupted in February 2022 and has become a major disruptor of the existing world order now this will do for introduction know that this is only the event that caused the uncertainties now moving on to the next part which is the consequences of the war first uncertainty in the year 2022 was the horizontal and vertical escalation of the war the risk of horizontal and vertical escalation of the war was there throughout the year here vertical escalation means the use of nuclear weapons and horizontal escalation means opening new fronts this means that the possibility of war becoming a all-out war which involves other countries on the two sides like the world war and this is the first uncertainty faced in 2022 second uncertainty was the possibility of proxy war in the economic realm as we all know in the year 2022 the us and the europe were on one side and russia was on the other side of the economic realm this is mainly because of the sanction imposed on russia by the west and its allies other reasons include the bearing of russian banks from swift and the freezing of russian foreign assets see all this led to energy crisis which is caused by the increasing price of oil so there was this uncertainty in 2022 regarding a war in the economic world also and the third uncertainty is with regards to taiwan in the year 2022 china russia relations became significant china had chosen this time to deepen its strategic ties with russia so there was this fear that china may also attack taiwan like how russia attacked ukraine and these are the uncertainties that are caused by the event now i hope you understand what i said in the beginning of the question russia-ukrain conflict is the event that caused uncertainty rise of horizontal and vertical escalation of the war possibility of proxy war in the economic realm taiwan factor all these were uncertainties caused by the event which is the russia-ukrain war now enough about the past let's see about the future the author has also told us what to expect in 2023 in this editorial here firstly there will be massive increase in defense spending by almost every country see estimated spending on defense across the globe crossed two trillion dollars in the year 2022 so it is expected to increase in 2023 also countries like germany france and japan have announced increase in defense spending and india is also expected to do the same secondly there will be alteration in the principles and ideologies that guided the geopolitics the author saying that in the year 2023 strategic autonomy will take a hit non-inherence to a particular block and ideas such as non-alignment will not work in 2023 the main reason for this is again the increase in defense budgets think about it to get weapons you have to maintain a good relationship with the country and you have to be in good terms with that country here let us revisit our experience itself due to the presence of aggressive china we started building cordial relationship with usa this is because we do not know whether russia will support us or china if a conflict arises so we started maintaining good terms with the united states we even increased the amount of weapons we bought from us but what did us do it started saying like india should not buy weapons from russia india should not purchase oil from iran it is not fair right just because us does not have good relationship with russia and iran it expects india also to be like that see here in this condition we are not even entirely dependent on us in this case itself the united states asked us to do many things and it asked us to cut ties with many countries imagine if a country is going to be entirely dependent on another country for its defense purchases then the buying country should listen to the selling countries demands right so there is no other go and because of this reason only the author is saying that strategic autonomy non-alignment and non-adherence will become irrelevant if the defense spending is going to increase so the author is saying that economic technological and financial autonomy will be added or will be given up altogether in the year 2023 moving on thirdly there will be change in the diplomatic policies of the countries see it is evident from the russia ukrain conflict that europe and other countries cannot withstand the russian offenses without the help of the us and the nato regionally also all countries will take the same decision only for example in asia while confronting with china countries will seek the help of us india and nato and finally there will be shift in the purchase of defense equipments the world already watched the poor performance of russian equipments in the russia ukrain conflict the world also watched the latest western weaponry so there will be a shift in the purchase of defense equipments from russia to the west see these are all the changes that are expected to happen in the year 2023 as per the author now finally let us see the pointers for india before ending the discussion here also let us start with the defense itself india should consider looking elsewhere for future defense supplies here groups such as quad i2v2 all these will help in restructuring india's defense architecture secondly india's current shift from a policy of non-alignment to multi-alignment came at the right time earlier we saw that strategic autonomy and strategic non-inherence will become irrelevant right so the author is saying that multi-alignment policy of india will be continued in 2023 also thirdly according to the author china will not provoke a conflict with its neighbors this is because china has to deal with its covid-19 problem and the consequences of the economic impacts so in this situation china's priority will be on taiwan and the first island chain fourthly there will be a dent in the relationship between russia and india earlier we saw that china and russia are getting closer and this is a problem for india so this close proximity between russia and china will act as a dent in the russia-india relationship fifthly india has the issues of unsettled border with china and pakistan it will continue in 2023 also we already saw china will not provoke a conflict coming to pakistan it also won't create major conflict because of its internal problems and economic difficulties but india can expect sporadic attacks from pakistan terror groups in jammu and kashmir sixthly in south asia india will be facing many problems napal's new government is tilted towards china and this could be a problem for india afghanistan is under thali ban control which is also an issue for india india's relations with both shilankan bangladesh will also require skillful diplomacy this is the sixth point and finally while concluding the article the author said that india's relationship with most countries in west asia will not see any major changes in the year 2023 the year of 2023 is the year of test whether india's long-term non-interventionist strategy culture is paying dividends in its neighborhood or not so that's all regarding this discussion in this discussion first we saw the event that caused the uncertainty in the year 2022 and then we saw the uncertainties caused by the event in the year 2022 after that we saw what we expect in the geopolitical realm in the year 2023 and finally we saw the pointers that india can employ in its geopolitical policy in 2023 so that's all regarding this discussion i hope this was useful now let us conclude this and take up the next news article look at this article from the banglory edition of the hindu it tells that a sinkhole appeared in the brigade road in banglore a two wheeler rider suffered minor injuries and the movement of the vehicles in the brigade road is now affected this is the crux of the news article given here in this context let us try to understand about sinkholes and what causes their occurrence in detail the sinkholes occur when underground water washes away soft rock like limestone and salt bits as they wear away over time a cavern forms when the cavern gets too big the ground above it collapses this creates a hole in the ground they can happen in an instant and quickly swallow roads cars and even houses even though they are fairly rare the sinkholes are still a danger to people all around the world they can vary from few feets to hundreds of acres wide and less than one to five hundred feet deep you can see this image to understand how they happen all of a sudden now we will see what are all the factor that causes these sinkholes as i already said they occur naturally when the groundwater washes away soft rocks sometimes it happens when rainwater washes away soft terrain underneath the roots however the harsh reality is that many sinkholes in the urban areas are actually man-made poor compaction work during road laying is one of the key reasons for such incidents broken water mains sewage pipes and drain pipes underneath the roads and parking lots are also the main cause of sinkholes in urban areas in addition to this the underground construction of tunnels and unstable mining sites also causes sinkholes see even in the case in the news that we just saw numb metro tunneling work is the main reason behind this sinkhole sinkholes are becoming more common in Bengaluru this is because the Bengaluru soil is high in silt content this increases the tendency for the soil to flow along with the water so when there is a silt loss due to water flow application of even a small load will result in formation of sinkholes this is why Bengaluru is prone to sinkholes so what happens when a sinkhole develops it can cause physical injury and in addition to this the cost involved in repairing the sinkholes are very high but these are not the only concerns sinkholes can have a ripple effect on watershed and strong water system for example in 2016 a sinkhole in central Florida caused contaminated wastewater to leak into the main source of drinking water for the state this affected the drinking water supply in central Florida so sometimes sinkholes can cause effects like this so to prevent this from happening and to prevent the occurrence of urban sinkholes improving the quality of the engineering work is the only solution so that's all regarding this discussion in this discussion we saw what are sinkholes we saw about the natural and the man-made causes of sinkholes and we saw about the solutions that can be implied to address this problem with this let us conclude our discussion and take up the next news article look at this news article the news article talks about the sedu samatham project suddenly it is in news because the Tamil Nadu assembly yesterday unanimously passed a resolution urging the center to immediately implement the sedu samatham project so in this background let us quickly go through what is this sedu samatham project ram setu which is also known as adams bridge is a 48 kilometer chain of limestone shoals it is located between rameshwaram on india's southeast coast and mannar island on shillanka's northwest coast and it separates gulf of mannar from the park straight the depth of the sea along the bridge varies from 3 feet to 30 feet due to shallow waters ship or sea navigation through the park straight is difficult and it is limited to small boats at present large ocean going vessels from west have to navigate around the entire shillanka to reach tutukarin chennai vizag and other ports in india's east coast so a project titled sedu samatham shipping channel project was mooted by the government of india interestingly the project was originally proposed by ad taylor a british in the indian marine in 1860 itself later in order to reduce navigation time and enhance business and economic activities the government of india appointed the sedu samatham project committee in 1955 this committee was headed by dr a ramaswamy the objective of the committee is to study and chalk out a plan to build a canal across the adams bridge by dredging here dredging means removal of sediments and debris and why it is done dredging here is done to increase the depth of the navigation channels so it is done to ensure the safe passage of large boats and ships even though the government decided to go ahead with the project the project got finalized only in 2005 the project was known as the sedu samatham canal project when it was announced by the up government in 2005 it envisages dredging of a shipping channel across the park straight between india and shillanka to allow ships sailing from east and west coast of india if this happens even large ships can have a straight passage through india's territorial waters instead of having to circumvent shillanka two channels would be created under the project one across adams bridge and other through the shallow park bay the total length of the two channels would be 89 kilometers once the project is completed it will help bring down sailing time by 30 hours this is about the sedu samatham project in this discussion we saw the basics about the project with this let us conclude this and take up the next news article look at this text and context article this article is based on a event that happened in tamil nada assembly this incident has once again highlighted the relationship between the governor and the state government so in this news article discussion let us understand what happened in the tamil nada assembly look here here i have highlighted the syllabus regarding this discussion you can go through it now let's start let's begin with what happened in the tamil nada assembly on 9th january it all started with the customary address of the governor according to article 176 class one of the constitution the governor can address both the houses assembled together at the commencement of the first session after each general election to the assembly and at the commencement of the first session of each year he can also inform the legislature for the reasons for such summons the address of the governor contains a review of the activities and the achievements of the government during the previous year the address also contains the policy with regard to the important internal problems and the final summary of the agenda for the session here you might have a doubt is the address prepared by the governor himself actually no under article 163 binds the governor to act on the aid and advice of the council of ministers of the state government on a majority of issues so the speech that the governor reads before the legislature is the viewpoint of the government and it is prepared by the government not the governor on the first day a copy of the address of the governor is laid on the table of the house and the discussion on the address of the governor begins the speaker in consultation with the business advisory committee a lot's time for discussion of the matters referred to it in the governor's address it is followed by a motion of thanks moved in each house thanking the governor for the address members may move amendment to the motion of thanks in such a form as may be considered appropriate by the speaker the chief minister or any other minister has the right to explain the position of the government at the end of the discussion a copy of the address as adopted by the house is communicated to the governor's reply for the address if any is reported to the assembly by the speaker as soon as he receives it this is how the customary address of the governor is adopted but nothing like this happened in the Tamil Nadu assembly governor of Tamil Nadu Arun Ravi skipped certain portions of the text in his customary address to the state legislature including reference to the Dravidian model of governance in addition to skipping them he even added some other remarks as a result the chief minister of the state MK Stalin moved a resolution demanding only the original printed speech in Tamil be put in record that is he moved a resolution to exclude from the house records whatever the governor spoke outside the state drafted speech even before the national anthem was played governor Arun Ravi reacted to this in an unprecedented manner by staging a walkout from the house in protest so this is what happened in Tamil Nadu state assembly here you might have a doubt if the governor disagrees with the text of the speech are they still bound to read it yes a governor cannot refuse to perform the constitutional duty of delivering an address to the legislature but there can be situation where they deviate from the text of the speech prepared by the government so far there have been multiple occasions when a governor skipped a portion of the address to the assembly so this is what transpired in Tamil Nadu assembly on 9th January 2023 now before concluding let us see and revise about the discretionary powers of the governor see the discretionary powers of the governor is wider than that of president because the governor enjoys both constitutional as well as situational discretion but in case of president he enjoys only situational discretionary powers so first let us see the constitutional discretionary powers of the governor here the first and the major thing is article 167 according to article 167 the governor can seek information from the chief minister about state administrative and legislative matters the second one is regarding article 200 according to article 200 the governor can reserve a bill for president's consideration the next one is article 356 according to article 356 the governor can recommend the president to impose president's rule and failure of constitutional missionary then the governor is not bound to act on the aid and advice of the chief minister and the council of ministers while performing his duties as the administrator of the neighboring union territories and finally there is schedule six according to schedule six the governor may determine the amount payable to the autonomous tribal district council as royalties from mineral exploration licenses by the government of the sixth schedule areas see these are some of the constitutional discretionary powers of the governor now let us see the situational discretionary powers of the governor the first one is during hung assembly during hung assembly the governor can appoint chief minister when no party has a clear cut majority the next one is in regards to no confidence motion when a no confidence motion is passed the governor can dismiss the council of ministers when it cannot prove the confidence of the state legislative assembly in addition to this the governor can also dissolve the state legislative assembly when the council of ministers lose their majority the next one is in regards to appointment of the caretaker government the governor can appoint a caretaker government for a temporary period until a regular government is elected or formed these are the situational discretionary powers of the government so that's all regarding this discussion in this discussion first we saw the event that transpired in Tamil Nadu state assembly on the date ninth of january and after that we saw about the constitutional and situational discretionary powers of the governor with this let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article have a look at this news article it talks about a plant species famous in the hills of western gods it is about nila kurunji if you visit the hill sometimes in the year 2030 you will be able to witness a monumental event of the blooming of nila kurunji yes the flowers of this plant blooms only in once in 12 years because the pollination process takes a longer time such a plants with unusual blooming cycle with long intervals are called as palli tcls you can see the picture here to see how breathtaking the views of the hills are during the blooming season it is said that the neil gris got its name only because of this flower now the ministry of environment forest and climate change has added this nila kurunji to the protected plant list that is to the scheduled three of the wildlife protection act 1972 this means if someone approves or destroys the plant he or she will invite a fine of rupees 25,000 under three year imprisonment also the cultivation of nila kurunji and its possession is not allowed according to the order so with this background we will see some important points about nila fine so straw bilanthus kuntinia locally known as nila kurunji is a shrub endemic to the shola forest of western gods and belongs to the akanta c family the plant is a rich source of pharmacological constituents and can act as herbal alternative for various disorders at maturity its light blue color flower changes to purple bluish kurunji usually grows at an elevation of 1300 to 2400 meter and height varies from 30 to 60 centimeter now talking about its habitat it is mostly found in the western gods apart from this the nila kurunji is also seen in shavarai in the western gods anayamalai hills in idizki district agali hills of palakkad and finally sandhur hills of bellari district in karnataka these are the areas where nila kurunji is most often found finally let us see the threats faced by the nila kurunji see the plant's habitat has shrunken so much now it is mostly confined to the erawai kulam protected resource the three common threats that is causing destruction of this plant are plantation of invasive species like eucalyptus and akesia expansion of agriculture by humans and finally tourism these three are the main threats faced by the nila kurunji and its habitat so to protect nila kurunji the grasslands and the shoal of forest in the western gods should be conserved so that the habitat of nila kurunji increase so that's all regarding this discussion in this discussion we saw some points about nila kurunji and we also saw that government recently added nila kurunji to schedule three of wildlife protection act 1972 that's all regarding this discussion now let us conclude this and take up the next news article look at this news article the finance minister recently addressed the voice of the global south summit she cautioned that racing global depth vulnerabilities could trigger a worldwide economic recession and push millions into poverty so in this context let us use this opportunity to learn about the business cycle see the business cycle is the natural rise and fall of economic growth that occurs over time all economies go through this cycle however the length and the intensity of each phase varies this cycle goes through four major phases their expansion peak contraction and true now we will try to understand each of this phase in detail suppose there are favorable conditions and the business increases its production then they need more employees right so they hire more people this means business activity is increased and there is more money to spend so business makes more profit and they can focus on their growth the rate at which the production and the consumption change positively here is called as economic expansion now this growth continues and all indicators level off before heading into a contraction so this particular point is called peak as you can see in this image after attaining the peak situation might reverse because people know how lot of money so inflation would become high and other condition might become unfavorable now companies slow down the production not many employees are needed due to the slowdown of production as a result customers have less money because at the end of the day we know the employees are the customers now the consumption also comes down because people are not willing to buy so obviously business have to reduce their spending on growth now the rate at which the production and the consumption as a whole changes negatively is called as economic contraction the part of this graph that consistently decreases denotes contraction now the true is the fourth part of the business cycle the economy begins a transition from contraction phase to the expansion phase in the true phase the business cycle begins again when the GDP begins to increase and the curve starts moving upwards consistently this is about the business cycle with this let us conclude the news article discussion session and take up the practice prelims questions we have four practice prelims questions today let us see the moon by one let us take up the first question which of the following activities can cause a sinkhole to appear statement one water seepage through underground pipes statement two tunnel boring activities statement three unstable mining sites statement four soft rocks underneath being washed away and statement five compaction of soil see from our discussion we know that all these causes sinkhole to develop except statement five sinkholes develop only when soil is loosened not when soil is compacted so except for statement five all other statements are correct so the correct answer here is option be one two three and four only moving on to the next question let me read out the question it is endemic to shola forest in the hills of western gods it grows at an elevation of 1300 meters to 2000 meters above the sea level it takes a longer period for pollination and hence blooms only once in 12 years which of the following is this protected plant species choose the correct option see from our discussion we know that the correct answer here is option be nila kurunji moving on to the next question which of the following activities are likely to be taken up by the government when the economy is in depression the statements are low interest rate inflation targeting lower taxes increasing spending and increasing taxes see during depression the central bank lowers the interest rate it also tries to keep the inflation under control by the process of inflation targeting the question asks for the measures that is to be taken by the government and not by the central bank so statement one and statement two cannot be the part of the answer and by elimination we can arrive at option c also note that government attempts to lower taxes and increases spending during the recession to revive the economy so the correct answer once again here is option c 3 and 4 only see this is a quiz question here for you interested aspirants can write the answer for this question in the comment section the main questions based on today's discussion are displayed here interested aspirants can write the answers and post it in the comment section if you like today's video like comment and share it with your friends for more updates regarding upc preparation subscribe to shankara is academies youtube channel thank you for listening