 Shankar IIS Academy. Admissions open for UPSC Coaching 2021-22. Classes starts on June 28th. For Admissions, contact 766776626. Good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar IIS Academy for the date 27th of June 2021. These are the list of news articles that has been taken for today's analysis. They have been provided along with these articles page numbers in different editions So today let us start our first analysis with this news article. This news article is about a letter to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu regarding the India-based Neutrino Observatory project. The letter was written by Nobel laureates, scientists and academicians for seeking approval for this Neutrino project. This is because it is said that some activist groups are against this project saying that it poses danger to the environment. But in this letter written to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, the Nobel laureates, scientists and academicians have guaranteed that this India-based Neutrino Observatory project does not pose any danger to the environment and it will also not have any effect on the water tables or dams. So this issue has again put the IONO project into the spotlight. See here IONO is the short form of India-based Neutrino Observatory. So let us see some facts about this project and also about the Neutrinos. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. See note that this IONO project is a multi-institutional effort. It is aimed at building a world-class underground laboratory to study the fundamental issues in science. So note that it is an underground laboratory and it is for pure science research, especially research in Neutrino physics. The underground laboratory will have a rock cover of approximately 1200 meters and this project is jointly funded by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology under the Government of India and this ambitious IONO project has already drawn the worldwide attention of both national and international scientists and once it is completed it is said that this will be the largest basic sciences project in India. Another important fact that to be noted is that this project has no strategic or defense applications. Its operations involve no radioactivity release or toxic emissions and based on this only the scientists and Nobel laureates are claiming that it does not pose any danger to the environment. Now other than for this purpose it is also envisaged that such an underground facility will be developed into a center for other studies as well in the future such as studies in physics, biology, geology etc. And here we are talking about all of those studies that will make use of these special conditions that exist in deep underground. So now where is this lab to be constructed? The laboratory is to be constructed in Tamil Nadu. It will be constructed in the Pottipuram area of Bodhi West Hills. It is situated in the Taini district of Tamil Nadu. This place is chosen because of these steep slopes of the western guards as they provide ideal and stable rock conditions for building a safe large underground cavern or tunnel for a long term use. See this stable rock condition is because the Bodhi West Hills is mainly Charnokite and Charnokite is one of the oldest strongest and hardest rocks. So it will be safe to build underground tunnels. See what is the primary goal of this laboratory? As you already saw it is the study of neutrinos from various natural and laboratory sources and that too by using an iron calorimeter detector. This iron calorimeter detector is in short called as ICAL detector. It will be installed in the iron laboratory and it will be the world's most massive detector. It is being developed completely indigenously. So it is expected that apart from pursuing neutrino physics goals, the laboratory itself will greatly aid the development of detector technology and its varied applications. See a note that so far the detector technology is used in the areas of medical imaging only. So through this this field will be developed. So while we were discussing you would have had a question that why rock cover is needed for this project. See here all round rock cover is needed as it offers a low cosmic ray background environment. So how this happens? See here note that the cosmic particles and the secondary particles are produced by the cosmic rays due to their interaction with the upper atmosphere and these will be filtered by the rock cover which is above the laboratory tunnel. This is necessary for specialized experiments making measurements with neutrinos which interact very rarely with the detector material. Later we will see why it interacts very rarely. So that is how in particular ICAL will detect and measure atmospheric neutrinos to study the neutrino properties. Now there is also one another component of this project which is setting up of an inter-institutional center for high energy physics. This will be set up in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu and this center is for the operation and maintenance of the underground laboratory. It will also be used for human resource development and also for carrying out detector related research and development along with its applications. So these are some of the facts that we need to know about the IONO project. Now let us discuss about neutrinos. See we know that all things in this world are made of atoms and an atom has a nucleus in its center around which electrons go around. Now inside this nucleus there are protons and neutrons and the neutrinos which we are discussing are tiny elementary particles like the electron but the neutrinos are not part of the atom. See here elementary particle is the one which cannot be broken into further smaller pieces. So neutrinos are tiny elementary particles. Here also remember that though the words neutron and neutrino almost sound similar they are entirely different particles. These neutrinos are represented by the Greek letter nu. See certain scientific discoveries have thrown more light on the neutrinos. For example in the past it has been found that there are two more particles similar to the electrons. They are called as the muon and the tau. The muon is 200 times heavier than an electron and the tau is 3500 times heavier than the electron. Now each of these three particles that is electron muon and tau they have a neutrino partner called the electron neutrino muon neutrino and the tau neutrino. Here you should note that the electron muon and the tau all are negatively charged particles but note that all the neutrinos are charge less. That is neutrinos are neutral and they are almost massless. Now these group of six particles are called as leptons. So we can say that neutrinos are fundamental particles belonging to the lepton family. Now let us see how these neutrinos are produced. See these neutrinos are abundantly found in the nature. The sun, stars and the atmosphere produce millions of neutrinos every second and most of these neutrinos pass through a body and we do not realize it. They can even pass through the earth and can come out on the other side of the earth and the reason behind this is that they interact very less with anything that come in their path. In simple words when there is an interaction between particles or objects it changes the property of that particle like it changes its speed direction etc. Here if you take the example of light rays from a torch we know that they cannot penetrate a wall. It is because the particles of light interact with the wall and they get scattered before they can get to the other side of the wall but just know we saw that neutrinos interact very less and because of this only they can easily pass through objects. Now since neutrinos interact very weakly they are harmless. Also note that other than its natural sources neutrinos can also be made artificially. They are produced in radioactive decays and also in nuclear reactors but that is an issue with these neutrinos. It is because even though these neutrinos are found in abundance but due to their weakly interacting nature studying these particles in the laboratory is extremely difficult but in spite of this difficulty scientists have devised methods to detect these particles and to study them. So based on these studies only many scientific discoveries regarding neutrinos have been made and one of them is that initially neutrinos were thought to be massless particles but recent experiments suggest that they indeed have a very small mass and that is why when we are discussing about neutrinos we saw that it is almost massless and not totally massless. This means neutrinos have very very small mass. In addition to this the recent discoveries have also found an important feature of neutrinos. They have discovered that neutrinos change from one type to another as they travel. For example an electron neutrino that is produced from the sun converts itself into a muon neutrino or a tau neutrino on its flight to the earth and this conversion is called as neutrino oscillation and after discovering this property of neutrino it was found that neutrinos have mass and here remember that neutrino oscillation not only happens in neutrinos produced in the sun they happen in all the neutrinos irrespective of where they are produced and here the fact that neutrinos have mass has implications on the current understanding which we have about the universe and it also has many implications in sciences like nuclear physics, particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology and that is why this makes the study of neutrinos a very interesting domain in scientific research and due to this even the 2002 Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to research related to neutrinos only. So in this context the determination of neutrino masses and their mixing parameters is one of the most important open problems in physics today hence in this way the iCal detector is designed to address some of the key open problems of neutrinos in a unique way. See in short let us see why do we need a iCal detector for this purpose. See the iCal detector will detect the atmospheric neutrinos and the anti-neutronos over a wide range of energies and path lengths. Now since there are particles other than neutrinos that are produced in the atmosphere it would be difficult to identify and separate from the signals produced by other particles and one way to avoid the other particles from reaching the detector is to keep the detector inside a mountain and that is why the lab is to be constructed inside a mountain in Tamil Nadu. Now since neutrinos can easily pass through anything they will reach the detector while the other particles will be filtered out by the rocks in the mountains. Another important fact about iCal detector is that there will be current carrying coils in the iCal detector so the current carrying coils will produce a magnetic field which will magnetize the entire detector. So the detector will be the world's largest electromagnet along with being the world's most massive detector. So as a whole the scientists say that just how telescope observes the sky through visible light the iCal will observe the sky through neutrinos. So these are some of the important facts that you need to know about neutrinos. In this discussion we saw about the inter-based neutrinos observatory project some of its important components and why it needs to be under a hill. We saw about iCal detector and also about some important properties of neutrinos. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this article from the Sunday magazine of Hindi newspaper. This article talks about an important ancient manuscript tradition from Manipur. See as we know Manipur has become culturally important for many aspects. For example already the Sankirtna ritual singing drumming and dancing of Manipur has been inscribed on the UNESCO representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This was inscribed as Manipuri Sankirtna in 2013 and we already have a previous year question on this topic and you also know that Manipuri dance is one of the classical dances in India. So Manipur is known for its rich cultural history and cultural aspects in the northeast and today's magazine focuses on one of its manuscript traditions which is called as Puyya. So before discussing about Puyya let us first see what do we mean by manuscript. According to Indian National Mission for Manuscripts, a manuscript is a handwritten composition. It is written on paper, bar, cloth, metal, palm leaf or even on any other material and it should be dating back to at least 75 years. It should also have a significant scientific value, historical or aesthetic value. You remember that lithographs and printed volumes are not manuscripts. See lithograph is a print made by lithography. Lithography is a printing process that uses flat stone or metal plate on which the image areas are worked using a greasy substance. So we know that the manuscripts are found in hundreds of different languages and scripts and these manuscripts are distinct from historical records such as epigraphs on rocks for man's revenue records. See these epigraphs on rocks for man's revenue records they provide direct information on events or processes in the history but the manuscripts have the knowledge content. So this is the basic you need to know about manuscripts. Now let us come to the Puyya manuscript tradition of Manipur. See it dates back to 100 CE and it deals with many subjects. It covers subjects as varied as astrology and magic to administration and topography and there are around roughly 40,000 Puyya manuscripts. Now out of these manuscripts many are not illustrated that means most Puyya manuscripts do not contain drawings pictures or diagrams but the few which have illustrations were found to have extremely beautiful drawings and according to the article this Puyya manuscript is a highly evolved manuscript tradition. Now these manuscripts were used mainly by Maitis who established feudal kingdom in Manipur and as per the article the feudal kingdom of Maitis date back to 1st century CE. See one can find the Puyya tradition in the court chronicle of Kings of Manipur and the court chronicle of Kings of Manipur is called as Chaitarul Kumbaba. You know that even now the Manipuri manuscript tradition is very much alive. However it is not as vibrant as the past. This is because they are used now in reduced circumstances like they are only used in rituals and prayers. But note that even now the royal place in Manipur maintains a council of scholars called as Pandit Loisang. These scholars are charged with writing the court chronicle in Puyya tradition. Now some of the Puyya manuscripts are used in fortune telling astrology and magic also as we saw and in Myanmar also this tradition is famous. Note that the manuscript tradition was continued by Manipuri scholars in Myanmar called as Kathipanna and they become a part of the Burmese courts from the mid 16th century and they were held in high regard for the powers of prognostication that is the power to foresee and reading of stars. Now in the current scenario note that the manuscripts are written mostly on handmade paper some are even written on leaf bamboo and wooden surfaces and they are written in Maiti Mayak scripts and this Maiti Mayak is one of the Tibetan Burmese scripts and the language used is the Manipuri and the article calls the Manipuri language as a Tibetan Burmese language. Here also note that some of the Puyya manuscripts are called as Subika. Now here you would have a question whether this tradition was used entirely on court chronicles. No it is not. Even other manuscripts of record besides the court chronicles exist and here we have given you other prominent Puyya manuscripts in Manipur. So now why these manuscripts are important? See these manuscripts have the history of Manipur since 1st century CE. So to unlock the past events, past culture and other practices it is important to preserve and to know from these manuscripts. So that is all about Puyya manuscripts. In this discussion we saw about the ancient Manipuri manuscript tradition called Puyya. We saw about Maitis etc. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this FAQ article. It discusses about the antitrust legislations of USA. So recently US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has voted in favor of bills that are concerned with the prevention of monopolization in business practices. So in this context let us discuss about antitrust legislations, India's position in that and other related information from example perspective. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. See as the title of this FAQ article mentions this news article focuses on four big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. The issue is that last year in the month of October the US House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust has released a report and this report exposed the monopoly power of these technology giants. This US Judiciary Subcommittee led a 16 month investigation and this investigation found that these companies have become anti-competition monoliths and therefore the US needs new laws to break up these companies. Now to substantiate its findings the committee released few important informations in which the report accuses that Amazon holds nearly 50 percentage control of the US e-commerce market by obtaining data from third party sellers in unfairly manner. In addition to this Amazon also uses this information to develop its own brands so it gives these brands exclusive merchandising space on Amazon's digital shelves. So this strategy of Amazon kills competition and it leads to monopolization of business practices and in a similar fashion the report also finds faults in the business practices of other three tech companies that is Google, Facebook and Apple. Hence as a response to this only US Congress has decided to proceed with anti-monopoly action. This anti-monopoly action is carried forward using certain legislative measures which is otherwise called as antitrust laws. So what are these antitrust laws or legislations? See these are regulations that encourage competition by limiting the market power of a particular firm and this is often done in two ways. One way is by ensuring that mergers and acquisitions of companies don't overly concentrate market powers or don't overly form monopolies and the second way is breaking up of the firms that have become monopolies. So in short antitrust laws are designed to protect and promote healthy competition within all sectors of the economy. So in this regard US Congress has introduced six bills that outlaws monopoly in business practices. Let us see about these bills in brief but note that these bills are not important for our exams but their objectives are important for us because they are also relevant to business practices in India. So let us see these bills one by one. The first bill is the platform competition and opportunity act. See as you know the big techs are sometimes involved in buying up smaller rivals at their initial stage of growth. If you remember even Facebook did the same when it bought up Instagram for 1 billion dollars. So as a policy response to such practices this platform competition and opportunity act of USA aims to prevent big tech companies from restricting competition by buying up smaller rivals and the second bill is the ending platform monopolies act. It prevents companies from becoming players on their own platforms such as how Amazon sells its own brands. So this act aims to prevent such kinds of practices and the third bill is augmenting compatibility and competition by enabling service switching act. This act promotes interoperability that is it allows users to take data with them while migrating to other platforms. The next bill is the merge filing fee modernization act. This act aims to increase the government fee on large corporate mergers. This will help to fund the antitrust law enforcement and the next bill is the American choice and innovation online act. This one prevents companies from giving preferences to their own products in the marketplaces which they run and the next bill is the state antitrust enforcement when you act. This prevents companies from shifting antitrust cases to the courts that could be favorable to them. So these are the six bills that are in progress to remove the anti-competitive practices in the USA. See here you have to be clear with one thing that is monopolization and anti-competitive practices are not restricted to US alone. With the increase in globalization and digital presence in India such unfair practices also affects the Indian economy. For example if you take the telecom sector a decade ago we had a dozen players but now we just have three players Reliance Geo, AirTel and Vodafone Ninja and we don't know what happened to the other players. Also we are aware that Geo's entry into the market saw a tariff ward which led to reduction of prices of telecom services which is an advantage to the consumers but this also led to exit of many rivals from the telecom sectors. Apart from this there is also another recent issue which is regarding the malpractices of e-commerce giants. So regarding this the confederation of all India traders has already criticized e-commerce entities operating in India. See this confederation represents eight core small retailers in the country and it reports that nearly 50,000 mobile retail shops have been shut due to e-commerce platforms preferential treatment of sellers and this confederation also accused the e-commerce majors of violating the competition act as well as the foreign direct investment rules. So from this we can see that done fair business practices are also common in India and as a policy response to this only in February 2019 several changes in FDA policy for e-commerce rules which was introduced by the government of India came into effect. Actually one of the important changes to this FDA policy for e-commerce rules is that entities in which there is equity participation by the marketplace entities or where these marketplace entities have controls on the entity's inventory then they cannot sell their products on the platform run by the marketplace entities that is it bars online retailers from selling products via vendors in which they have an equity interest. Other than this there is also another change which is the marketplace entities cannot mandate any seller to sell any product exclusively on its platform. So vendors are barred from making deals with sellers to sell exclusively on their platforms so these practices aims to prevent anti-competition in India and these are the ones which prevents Amazon from selling brands that it owns on its own platform and in addition to this India is also equipped with legislation such as competition act of 2002 which prohibits price manipulation price exploitation or exclusion etc. So as a conclusion we can say that the legislative measures introduced by the USA is welcomed by many countries including India because any behavioral change that these four tech giant companies may be forced to adopt in the US will lead to be adopted by them in all their global markets as well. So this could lead to an environment where a level playing field is established for brand visibility on Google and Amazon which will ultimately benefit the retailers in our country. Or we can also say that based on these US legislations India can also bring in new legislations to reduce the anti-competitive practices in the business environment. So these are some of the points that you can take note from this FAQ discussion where we saw about anti-trust legislations. Now let us move to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this snippet article from the science page which talks about fossils. See according to the article researchers have unearthed fossils that is dated 140,000 years to 120,000 years ago. These fossils were discovered from the Nashair Ramallah site and according to the researchers these newly discovered fossils belong to an unknown species of humans but they share resemblance with the Neanderthals and Archaic Homo. These fossils were found to be similar to Neanderthals when it comes to teeth and jaw and they were similar to Archaic Homo from the perspective of skull. In addition to this these fossils had no chin and large teeth and these features sets them apart from the modern humans. So these are some of the important points from the article. Now coming to Nashair Ramallah. See this Nashair Ramallah Homo group are an extinct species of Archaic humans. See here when we say Homo it represents the genus of primates of which the modern humans are the present day representatives. Now these Nashair Ramallah Homo group live during the Middle Pleistocene in modern-day Israel. The first Nashair Ramallah Homo individual was identified in 2021 from the remains at the location Nashair Ramallah archaeological site. This site is situated in Israel and that is why this species has been named as Nashair Ramallah Homo. Now over 6000 stone tools were also excavated in the fossil bearing sediment. So it is found that the Nashair Ramallah Homo have also mastered stone tool production technologies which were previously known among the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. This shows that there are cultural interactions between Nashair Ramallah and Homo sapiens populations. So since Nashair Ramallah Homo's are related to Neanderthals and Archaic Homo it is important to know about them and if you remember on our May 30th Hinsley News discussion we saw about Neanderthals. So today let us focus on Archaic Homo. See Archaic Homo refers to the human populations or the species that were chronologically and anatomically intermediate between the Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens and these Archaic Homo can be further subdivided into two chronological groupings. They are early Archaics and then late Archaics. And if you see anatomically these Archaic Homo exhibits large brain cases than the Homo erectus and they also have greater body mass among other features and it is to be noted that Archaic Homo had controlled and regularly used fire and they even colonized temperate regions of Eurasia for the first time. And in some regions Archaic Homo populations appear to have directly contributed to the ancestry of modern humans. But the evidence for this in other regions is limited. See based on the available fossil and paleogenomic evidence the overall pattern of evolutionary relationships among Archaic Homo indicates that not all Archaics and modern humans were reproductively isolated from each other. So these are some of the points that you need to know about Nasher Ramallah Homo and Archaic Homo. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this FAQ article and this article from business page. These articles talk about the revival plan that has been proposed for jet airways. If you remember jet airways were shut down due to losses in the year 2019. So in this regard we will first discuss about the jet airways issue and then we will discuss the latest revival plan along with certain issues with this plan. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. See as you know jet airways was one of the most successful airway companies but in 2015 it acquired Air Sahara. Air Sahara was going bankrupt at that time and jet airways acquired it with huge price but the acquisition backfired because the Sahara arm that catered to budget flyers it started yielding huge losses. In addition to this jet airways also did not see the rise of other low budget airlines like Indigo, Go Air and all and then there was also rising fuel prices. So all these together gathered up and at one point jet airways owed 8000 crore rupees to leasers, suppliers, pilots and oil companies. In this scenario the lenders were reportedly searching for prospective buyers for this company which is in a difficult situation and even the carrier asked for 400 crore rupees as emergency fund but this was denied so it was decided to ground the remaining planes of the airlines. Now when the airways was grounded the airline had only 5 jets left because the other dozens of jets were seized by creditors. So this was what happened with jet airways. Now the recent development is that interestingly there is a turn of events because it looks like jet airways might see the skies very soon. This is because a resolution plan for the revival of jet airways has been proposed. See first let us understand what is a resolution plan. See a resolution plan is like a revival plan for an insolvent company. When we say an insolvent company we mean a debt-ridden company. Now this revival plan or resolution plan is presented by anyone who is eligible under the insolvency and bankruptcy code of 2016. Now this resolution plan will spell out all the details of restructuring of business operations. It will talk about the details regarding financial re-engineering and thereby it will make the company to prosper from the conditions of insolvency. In legal terms we can say that a resolution plan is a rehabilitation plan for a corporate debtor who is going into insolvency and if you take section 5 subsection 26 of insolvency and bankruptcy code of 2016 it says that resolution plan means a plan proposed by resolution applicant for insolvency resolution of the corporate debtor as a going concern in accordance with part 2. And we should note that there are certain mandatory contents of this resolution plan and these are listed out under the code through a regulation 38 clause 1. As per this resolution plan should contain the details of financial creditors and operational creditors. So there is a difference between financial creditors and operational creditors. They have been differentiated by the 2016 IBC code financial creditors are those whose relationship with the entity is a pure financial contract such as a loan or a debt security. On the other hand operational creditors are those whose liability from the entity comes from a transaction on operations they might have provided machines or raw materials etc. So when a bankruptcy case comes before them the national company law tribunal sets up a committee of creditors comprising of financial creditors and they appoint a resolution personal. See a resolution personal is a person who is appointed by the committee of creditors and she is also known as a resolution professional and she presents a resolution plan to the committee of creditors and the IBC mandates that the committee of creditors must approve a resolution plan. Now here the resolution process so initiated must be completed within 180 days and this may be extended by a period of up to 90 days if the extension is approved by national company law tribunal. So this is the basic you need to know about resolution plan. Now with respect to jet airways a resolution plan has been proposed. See the Mumbai bench of NCLT has approved a resolution plan from a consortium this week. The consortium comprises of a UAE based businessman Murari Lal Jalan and a UK based color of capital. So this is paving way for the airlines to take over and it is also citing a potential revival of the airlines. So let us see certain details about this resolution plan. See the total claims is around 15,000 crores. The resolution professionals who are looking into this case have said that the Jalan color consortium has offered to pay creditors and banks. They have offered about 1180 crores over a five year period. Now out of this the first tranche would be paid in cash after 180 days of the new promoters taking ownership of the jet airlines. And the second installment would be paid in the next 730 days. The balance would be paid through a mix of cash proceeds generated from sale of assets and from the cash flows generated by the airline annually. And if we come to the stock distribution the banks would get 9.5 percentage stake in the airline and the consortium who are paying would hold 89.79 percentage and the employees would get to own 0.5 percentage of the airline's equity capital and they also have a public shareholding it would be at 0.21 percentage. So based on this particular offer the committee of creditors which was led by State Bank of India had voted the consortium as the winning bidder last October. But there are some glitches in the reviving of the airline. See in airports slots are allotted to every airline and in those slots their respective aircrafts land and they take off. But in case of jet airways when it was grounded these slots were given away to other airlines. So now there is an issue of getting back these slots for the jet and it is going to be a difficult and expensive process according to the experts. So let us hope that all these issues are overcome by jet airways and finally we will be able to see it flying. That is all about the revival plan of jet airways. Let us move on to the next discussion which is based on this news article and it is important from international relations perspective. See the news is about dimensions found in the joint press release issued by India during the recent visit of India's external affairs minister to Greece. So this news article talks about India-Gree relations. See recently Indian external affairs minister paid an official visit to Greece on 25th to 27th June 2021 and the joint press release had two important statements among others. First statement was that both sides discussed the recent developments pertaining to the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus and Libya and second point was that both sides agreed that the rule of law and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity are fundamental principles of international relations that must be observed by all. Now here in this the first statement which is with reference to eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus and Libya and principles of international relations in the joint statement both these points indirectly refer to the role of Turkey concerning several issues that are relevant to both India and Greece. See Turkey supports Pakistan's stand on Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan so Turkey acts against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India. Now with respect to Greece know that there is maritime border dispute between Turkey and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean waters and in the recent times Turkey has been acting like how China is acting in the South China Sea. So both India and Greece have found moral grounds to criticize Turkey. So this is the news. So keeping this in mind let us discuss the geography of Greece and Cyprus and we will see the issues related to these countries. See as you can see here Greece is not a landlocked country it shares land borders with Turkey with Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania and as you can see here many of Greece territories lie very close to Turkey and these are the eastern territories of Greece. All that Greece has the longest coastline in Europe and it is the southernmost country in Europe and on the left of Greece we can find the Ionian Sea and on the right is the Aegean Sea. So obviously due to the geography there must be and there is dispute between Greece and Turkey on the rights of Aegean Sea. So now let us come to Cyprus. See Cyprus is located to the south of Turkey and it is located to the west of Syria and as you can see it is an island country and it is a former British colony. It became independent in 1960 after years of resistance to British rule and note that within Cyprus there have been tensions between the Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority communities. See here Cypriot is the term which is used to denote the natives or inhabitants of Cyprus. Now the tensions between these communities were at a peak in December 1963 and then in the 1974 Greek government reportedly sponsored an attempt to overthrow the elected president of Cyprus and this was met by military intervention from Turkey and as a result of this Turkey soon controlled more than one third of the Cyprus. See even though some call it as military intervention by Turkey many call it as an invasion by Turkey. See here actually Greece came to the support of Greek Cypriots and Turkey came for the support of Turkish Cypriots and here Turkey alleges that Greek Cypriots are planning to carry out ethnic cleansing to drive out the Turkish Cypriots. Even in 1983 the Turkish Cypriot administrative area was declared by itself as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus but note that this is only recognized as a nation by Turkey. See even though the Republic of Cyprus claims the entire land under its administration its operation is not effective in the north because Turkey is having strong influence there. There are movements in the southern Cyprus to unify the entire island as one region and to bring the northern Cyprus under the Republic of Cyprus. Some of them also calls for unifying Republic of Cyprus with Greece. So obviously from this we can infer that Turkey's interest is to prevent any progress in these efforts. So currently the condition in the south Cyprus is that the Republic of Cyprus has become tense. This is because of the Turkish plan to mark the anniversary of July 1974 invasion of the island by Turkish forces. Even the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit northern Cyprus on July 20th to celebrate the birth of northern Turkish Cypriot entity. So Greece is raising its voice against Turkey regarding this move and now it has also found India on its side as we saw in the joint statement released by India and Greece. So let us wait and see what happens in July. Now regarding Greece-Turkey relations you should also know about Libya's presence and how it complicates the Greece-Turkey relations. Now to know about this we suggest the viewers to watch our Indian news analysis on 19th August 2020. So that is all about Greece-Turkey issue. Now let us move to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this article from science page. This news article discusses a meteorite that fell near the town of Kammargao in Assam and this fell in the year 2015. So recent studies and researches of this meteorite has shown that by studying this meteorite and its minerals you may find new clues about the earth's lower mantle. And additionally it was also found that this meteorite had originated from the asteroid belt which is present between the planets Mars and Jupiter. So in this slide we shall now discuss meteorites, asteroids and asteroid belts in brief. See first let us focus on meteorite. Now to know about meteorites we should first understand about meteorites. Meteorites are nothing but space rocks that range in size. They could be dust grains to small asteroids. Now most are pieces of larger bodies that have been broken or blasted off. Some even come from comets, others from asteroids and some even come from the moons and other planets. Now some meteorites are rocky while others are metallic or sometimes they are even a combination of rock and metal. Now when such meteorites enter earth's surface or when they enter the surface of another planet at high speed and when they burn up they are called meteors. But if that meteorite survives it's trip through the atmosphere and it hits the ground then it is called as meteorite. So that means a meteorite becomes a meteor or even a meteorite based on its survival in reaching the planet's surface. If it survives and reaches earth's surface we will call it as meteorite. If it doesn't survive and it burns up we will call it as a meteor. So now let us come to asteroid because we saw that the meteorite that fell in Assam was part of the asteroid belt. So for that we need to understand about asteroids. See asteroids are sometimes called as minor planets. They are rocky, airless remains that are left over from the early formation of our solar system that is they were left over 4.6 billion years ago. In short asteroids are small rocky objects that orbit the Sun. You note that although asteroids orbit the Sun like planets they are much smaller than planets and there are lots of asteroids in our solar system but most of them live in the main asteroid belt. And alongside there are also some asteroids which exist behind Jupiter too and these are called as Trojans and other than this those asteroids that come close to earth are called as near-earth objects or in short NEOs and NASA keeps a close watch on these near-earth objects and the asteroid which is shown in this image was an NEO captured by NASA. So now what about the main asteroid belt? See it is the asteroid belt in a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The belt is estimated to contain between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids that are larger than one kilometer in diameter and it also contains millions of smaller asteroids. Now there is a reason for existence of such large number of rocky bodies in this belt. See early in the history of solar system the gravity of newly formed Jupiter brought an end to the formation of planetary bodies in this region and this caused the small bodies to collide with one another which led to the fragmentation of these bodies into asteroids as we observe today. So these are some of the facts that we need to know about meteorites, asteroids and asteroid belt. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on these two news articles. This news article mentions that the National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir Vice President Omar Abdullah is demanding delimitation of Jammu and Kashmir and he wants it to be followed by statehood to the Jammu and Kashmir union territory before election and this is contradictory to the central government's plan of delimitation first then elections again and statehood third and this next article talks about why there is a need for delimitation. So in today's discussion let us see about delimitation and why it is needed and also about delimitation commission. See as you are aware the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act of 2019 has reorganized the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories and among them the Jammu and Kashmir union territory is made to have a legislative assembly and the union territory of Ladakh was made without a legislative assembly. So this means elections have to be conducted in Jammu and Kashmir for the legislative assembly. Now earlier that is before the reorganization the total number of seats in the legislative assembly of erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir was 111 and this 111 includes 24 seats belonging to the region of Pakistan occupied Kashmir and four seats from the Ladakh region. So if you subtract the four seats of Ladakh the number of seats of present Jammu and Kashmir union territory in the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir assembly is 107. So note that this 107 also includes the seats from Pakistan occupied Kashmir. So if you remove these 24 Pakistan occupied Kashmir seats then only the Jammu and Kashmir part would have had 83 seats in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir assembly. But the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act of 2019 mentions two important things with respect to the number of members in the legislative assembly of union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. One point is that under section 14 subsection 3 it states that the total number of seats in the legislative assembly of UT of Jammu and Kashmir is to be filled by persons chosen by direct election and this number shall be 107 and second in section 60 it states that the number of seats in the legislative assembly of union territory of Jammu and Kashmir shall be increased from 107 to 114 and the delimitation of constituencies may be determined by the election commission. So that means the Reorganization Act mandates increasing of number of constituencies from 107 to 114. So from this 114 if you remove the Pakistan occupied Kashmir seats that is if you exclude 24 seats then you will arrive at 90. So that means this 90 is the original seat of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. So from 83 it has now become 90 and this effectively means that there is an increase of seven members in the legislative assembly compared to the number of persons elected from the present territory of erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and that is why the news article mentions that the process is likely to add seven more constituencies to the current 83 member assembly and this is the reason why delimitation is mandated. See delimitation means to mark the boundary or limit soft. In other words delimitation is the process of fixing boundaries of territorial constituencies in a country or state and in our context it means to mark the boundaries of legislative assembly soft union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. See here you should note that delimitation is mentioned in constitution and article 82 provides for readjustment and the division of states into territorial constituencies for parliamentary elections after each census and the same is provided under article 170 for assembly constituencies and the job of delimitation is assigned to a high power body known as delimitation commission. I note that under article 82 the parliament enacts delimitation act after every census and following this the center constitutes a delimitation commission that means delimitation commission is not a permanent body and this delimitation commission consists of three members one is a person who is the incumbent or the former judge of supreme court she shall be the chairperson and the other members are chief election commissioner or an election commissioner nominated by the chief election commissioner and then the state election commissioner of concerned state. So this is the background about delimitation and delimitation commission now according to the Jammu and Kashmir reorganization act we saw that section 60 wants to increase the number of seats from 107 to 114 and this may be determined by the election commission of India. In addition to this the section 62 clause 2 of the act states that the readjustment of the constituencies as provided under section 60 shall be carried by the delimitation commission that is to be constituted under delimitation act of 2002. So as a part of this only in March 2020 itself the delimitation commission was constituted it was constituted to delineate seven more constituencies based on the 2001 census and this commission was headed by the retired supreme court judge justice Ranjana Prakash Desai and this commission was granted one year term to complete the exercise in Jammu and Kashmir but this time period has been extended due to the fact that one of the parties involved in this delimitation commission boycotted the commission's meeting this year. So this has delayed the process of delimitation in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir so these are some of the points that you need to know about delimitation in Jammu and Kashmir now let us move on to the next discussion. So with this we have come to the end of news articles discussion session now let us move on to the practice questions discussion these questions have been framed based on the news articles which we just now discussed. Let us take up this first question it is a pair based question on one side neutrino observatories are given and on the other side we have the locations of these observatories now the first pair is super kamyokande neutrino observatory it has been paired with japan this is a correct pair second pair given is setberry neutrino observatory it has been paired with italy but it is an incorrect pair because setberry neutrino observatory is in canada in italy we have the grand saso neutrino observatory and we have another neutrino observatory which is the ice cube neutrino observatory and it is situated in south pole and not in the canada so either here the option should have been south pole or antatica but none of them are given so third pair is also incorrect and here the question asks for the incorrectly matched pair so be careful before marking your correct answer the correct answer to this question is option c 2 and 3 only now this next question is a previous question about a neutrino observatory which was asked in problems 2015 the question asks in the context of modern scientific research consider the following statements about ice cube a particle detector located at south pole which was recently in the news statement one is it is the world's largest neutrino detector encompassing a cubic kilometer of ice see ice cube as you saw in the previous question is situated at the south pole see this neutrino observatory is the first detector of its kind it is designed to observe the cosmos from deep within the south pole ice and it encompasses a cubic kilometer of ice and it searches for nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos now the top of the detector array is buried in the ice at a depth of about 1500 meters and additionally you should note that it has also been proven to be a champion detector for indirect searches of dark matter using neutrinos so statement one is correct statement two it is a powerful telescope to search for dark matter is also correct the third statement it is buried deep in the ice is also correct and here the question asks for the correct statement so the correct answer is option d 1 2 and 3 now this next question is based on puya tradition of manipur first statement is it is an ancient manuscript tradition this statement is correct we saw this it dates back to first century c second statement it is extant or no longer practiced this statement is incorrect because we saw that the tradition is very much alive even now but it is used in reduced circumstances such as it is rarely used in rituals and prayers third statement illustrations were never a part of the tradition this statement is incorrect see we saw that most of these manuscripts do not have illustrations but few have them and these few have beautiful drawings and here the question asks for the correct statements so the correct answer to this question is option b 1 only now this next question is a map based question it asks arrange the following water bodies from west to east bellaric sea terrain in sea ion in sea agency black sea see during discussion we did not discuss about bellaric sea terrain in sea and black sea even though you don't know these you can easily arrive at the correct answer because we saw about ion in sea and agency and we saw that agency is between Greece and Turkey and we saw that ion in sea is to the west coast of Greece so from this when we say west to east it means left to right that means ion in sea is to the left of agency or in other words agency is to the right of ion in sea so in the order ion in sea should come exactly before agency that means three should be exactly before four and that exists in only one option which is option b 1 2 3 4 and 5 and this is the correct answer see know that bellaric sea is also known as iberian sea and it is a part of the Mediterranean sea it is located between the eastern part of Spain the southern part of France and the western part of Corsica island and Sadini islands the second one is terrain in sea it is also an arm of Mediterranean sea it is between the western coast of Italy and the islands of Corsica, Sadini and Sicily then as you know black sea which we discussed few days ago it is a large inland sea situated at the southeastern extremity of Europe it is bordered by Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania so this map gives you an illustration of where these seas are as you can see from west to east if you see bellaric sea comes first then terrain in sea then ion in sea then agency and then comes black sea now our next question is a direct question it asks Neanderthals in the news recently is associated with which of the following archaic humans who inhabited Eurasia option B archaic dinosaur species which was found in Argentina option C ancient giant rhino species which inhabited North America option D old bird species found in Africa and from the discussion we can easily say that the correct answer is option A archaic humans who inhabited Eurasia now this next question is based on asteroids first statement is they are spherical rocky objects that orbit the sun this statement is incorrect see we saw in the discussion that asteroids are small rocky objects that orbit the sun that means second half of the statement is correct but the first half is incorrect because most asteroids are irregularly shaped even though some are nearly spherical and they are often cratered so they are only nearly spherical and not fully spherical that is why the statement is incorrect now the second statement is asteroids that are located at the Lagrangian points alpha and alpha and lie in the same orbit as Jupiter are called Trojan asteroids see Trojan asteroids are those which share an orbit with a larger planet of Jupiter but they do not collide with it because they gather around two special places in the orbit these special places are called as the l4 and l5 Lagrangian points and in these places the gravitational pull from the sun and the planet Jupiter are balanced otherwise it will fly out of orbit so that means statement 2 is correct and here the question asks for the correct statements so the correct answer is option B 2 only now let us take one main question based on GS paper 2 it is based on antitrust movement against big tech companies you can answer this question in 150 words and post it in the comment section for peer review with this we come to the end of today's hindrance analysis and practice questions discussion session 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