 Good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankara Ace Academy. These are the list of news articles chosen for today's analysis. It has been provided along with the page numbers of different editions of Hindu newspaper. The link for the handwritten notes in the PDF format and the time stamping for the displayed articles is given in the description box and also in the comment section. Let's move on to the first news article discussion. This discussion is based on this editorial which talks about the impacts of the recent withdrawal of USA from World Health Organization. This editorial discusses about the impact on USA on World Health Organization and also on the global public health. The syllabus that is relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. Now as you know ever since USA has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic the current US administration had been critical about the functioning of World Health Organization. Even the US president accused WHO of being China centric. He noted that WHO lacked independence from China and even accused China that it was slow to respond to the threat and had repeatedly made inaccurate or misleading claims about the COVID-19 virus. So due to these accusations on 29th May USA itself announced its decision that it will halt the funding to World Health Organization and it will come out of World Health Organization. See here you should note that USA is a party to World Health Organization constitution since 1948 and USA's participation in WHO was accepted by the World Health Assembly with certain conditions for the withdrawal of USA from WHO and these conditions include giving a one-year notice and also fully meeting the payment of assistive financial obligations. So based on these conditions on 6th July 2020 that is three days before USA notified the Secretary General of United Nations regarding its intent to withdraw from World Health Organization. So now USA has officially notified the United Nations and this withdrawal will be effective on 6th July of 2021 only because as per the conditions a one-year notice has to be given. So this is the background. Now let us see how this decision will have impacts on USA then on WHO and also on the global public health. First let's see how USA's decision will affect its own country. See USA was majorly involved in the revision of 2005 international health regulations which strengthened the role of World Health Organization but if USA successfully withdraws then hereafter US will not have any role to play in the strengthening of World Health Organization. Then secondly the US scientists will not be able to hold any key roles in World Health Organization. This also includes being a part of outbreak response teams because as you know after the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic US scientists were part of the outbreak response teams which visited Wuhan. Then apart from this USA will also be deprived of the health intelligence. If USA is deprived of this health intelligence then it will compromise the USA's response to the international disease outbreaks like the current pandemic and then know that only the WHO members have access to microbial samples for research purposes. But by withdrawing USA will not have any access to new influenza virus samples for research. That means USA will not have any say to determine the virus strain to be used for developing the influenza vaccines. So this simply means that USA will be deprived of access to the research samples. So in all these ways USA will be affected due to its decision of withdrawing from World Health Organization. Now let us see how this decision will have serious effects on World Health Organization and also on the global public health. See according to this editorial this current pandemic has clearly revealed several shortcomings and weaknesses of World Health Organization. For example if you see the 2005 revision of international health regulations it made mandatory that all its members shall notify World Health Organization of all the events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern and it also made mandatory that all its members shall respond to the request for verification of information regarding such public health emergency of international concern. See here just know that public health emergency of international concern means an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other states that is to other nations through the international spread of disease and also it is the extraordinary event which potentially requires a coordinated international response but this editorial notes that even though it has been made mandatory for its members to notify the public health emergency of international concern still WHO has limited powers to ensure the compliance by its member states. See there are also limitations in independently verifying member states official reports it is because as per the international health regulations of 2005 if a member state does not wish to collaborate with WHO to determine the magnitude of public health risk then WHO cannot take any strict actions. In this scenario WHO can only encourage the member states to collaborate with it so this shows that WHO has limited power to ensure the compliance by its member states and in addition to this the current pandemic has exposed the poor handling of world health organization and this could worsen if USA withdraws because USA contributes to WHO in terms of technical expertise and also in terms of funding. As you can see in this representation US is the highest contributor to world health organization so if US funding is cut after its withdrawal it will be a challenge for tackling the immediate health crisis like the current pandemic and if the technical expertise is also reduced then medium-term projects like developing vaccines would also be affected. So on a whole world health organization will face immediate shortcomings in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic hence the WHO will be weakened further and all this would affect the global public health at the end because world health organization may not be able to provide appropriate response to disease outbreaks because of lack of funding and also because of lack of expertise. So at the end no one gains from a further weakened world health organization and that is why this editorial is titled as none gains. So these are some of the effects on current USA's decision to withdraw its membership from world health organization but this decision which is announced by US president is facing challenges within USA itself. It is said that US president announced this decision in order to deviate the mismanagement of his administration's response to the tackling of current pandemic in USA because every day we are seeing that in USA the number of COVID-19 cases are increasing and as of 6th July the number of COVID-19 cases has reached over 2.8 million and over nearly 0.13 million people have died because of the pandemic. Now people are accusing the US president because the current US decision was an executive decision taken without the approval of US Congress that is its legislature. Now since the decision has apparently been taken without the approval of Congress and as the withdrawal will be effective only on July 6th of next year there is a possibility that Congress or the US Supreme Court might reverse the withdrawal because there is a lot of pressure from academia and medical associations to reject the withdrawal and also if you see the presidential elections will happen in USA later this year and if Joe Bidden who is from the opposition democrat party is elected as president of USA in the coming elections then he has promised to revoke this decision of current US president so we just need to wait and watch how the events unfold in the future that is whether USA will withdraw or whether it will not so that is all about this editorial discussion the displayed practice question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next discussion which is based on this news article and it again talks about the world health organization and this news article talks about the recent alert of world health organization regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. So in this discussion we will see what is meant by WHO alert and what is the recent alert and we'll also see about airborne transmission and droplet transmission the syllabus that is relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First let us see what is a WHO alert. See WHO's alert and response operations are a part of its emergencies preparedness and response operations. Here WHO tracks the evolving infectious disease situation and alerts the nations when needed. In this alert WHO also advises the nations on the kind of responses which is needed to protect the populations from the consequences of epidemics and know that these operations include epidemic intelligence gathering then event verification information dissemination real-time alert coordinated rapid outbreak response etc. So in this this intelligence gathering or systemic event deduction WHO gathers official reports and rumors of suspected outbreaks. The information is gathered from a wide range of formal and informal sources and for this WHO uses global public health intelligence network or in short GP HIN. Now know that this network is developed by Health Canada in collaboration with WHO. Health Canada is a federal institution of Canadian government. Now this GP HIN is an internet-based multilingual early warning tool. It continuously searches global media sources to identify information about the disease outbreaks and other events which are related to public health. Now the second part of the operations is verification. Here WHO verifies the authenticity of the information which is gathered and it determines whether a reported disease event constitutes a cause for international concern or not and the third part is information dissemination. In this WHO provides public information about officially confirmed outbreaks of international importance through its disease outbreak news. Now the next one is real-time alert. Now in this WHO regularly updates member countries and also disease experts, institutions, agencies and laboratories etc on the status of the disease or the epidemic. And also know that WHO offers assistance to the affected states in the form of technical advice. Apart from this WHO assures coordination and cooperation of nations through the international health regulations of 2005 that is IHR. We also saw about this in the last discussion. We did not see what is IHR. Just know that IHR represents an agreement between the 196 countries including all the WHO member states to work together for the global health security. Now through IHR only countries have agreed to build their capacities to detect to assess and to report the public health events. So this is the basis of WHO alert. Now what is the recent alert? Recently WHO has mentioned that the COVID-19 infection may be transmitted or spread through air. Now here you should note that previously WHO said that COVID-19 virus spreads only through droplet transmission and now WHO is saying that there is evidence on chances of airborne spread of the coronavirus also. So that is why there is a need for us to know about the droplet transmission and also about airborne transmission. First what is meant by droplet transmission? Here transmission occurs through potentially infective respiratory droplets and it occurs to a person who is within 1 meter distance of the infected and in a droplet transmission the droplets which are of size more than 5 to 10 micrometer and which contains the microorganisms are generated during coughing, sneezing and talking and these droplets are propelled through the air for short distances and due to this these microorganisms land on another person and it may also enter that new person's body through their conjunctiva or through their nasal mucosa or also through their mouth. Here know that conjunctiva is the mucous membrane that covers the front of the eye and lines the inside of the eyelids. So these are the ways in which in a droplet transmission the microorganisms enters another person's body. Now additionally know that these droplets and microorganisms are relatively large and they travel only short distances. It is said that they travel up to 6 feet or 2 meters and from examination point of view know that we have many common examples of microorganisms that are spread by droplet transmission and these include influenza virus, common cold disease which spreads through droplet transmission, then meningitis, then respiratory syncytial virus and also some organisms that cause pneumonia also spread through droplet transmission. Now let us see what is airborne transmission. Airborne transmission means transmission of microorganisms via aerosols. Now here know that aerosols are very small sized droplets or dusts which have a size less than 5 micrometer. In a droplet transmission we saw that the droplets are of the size more than 5 to 10 micrometer. So in an airborne transmission the transmission occurs either by airborne droplet nuclei or by dust particles which contain the infectious agents and the microorganisms carried in this manner remain suspended in the air for a long period of time and they can also be disposed widely by wind and because of this there is a risk that all the air in a particular room may be contaminated and that means whoever inhales that air will be infected and know that some of the examples of microorganisms that are transmitted by the airborne route are the mycopacterium tuberculosis which is responsible for tuberculosis disease then the rubella virus the chickenpox is also caused through airborne transmission and then the hantavirus also spreads through airborne transmission and now if airborne transmission of COVID-19 virus is also confirmed then we can add that to this list. With this we come to the end of this discussion. Moving on to the next discussion which is based on this editorial. This editorial talks about the February 2020 Supreme Court judgment on criminalization in politics and this editorial has been written in the wake of the upcoming Bihar elections in October 2020 but before we move on to the editorial discussion I request the viewers to view the 14th February in the news analysis to know about the judgment and the direction given by Supreme Court which aims to eradicate criminalization of politics viewing that discussion will help you to understand this editorial discussion. See first simply just know that criminalization of politics is when the politics are done by those who had criminal cases against them or who are having criminal cases against them and one of the distressing results of this criminalization of politics is that we get bad governance. This is also noted by different surveys which found that people around the country are unhappy with the quality of governance. So because of this there were several Supreme Court judgments earlier also but here author worries that the previous Supreme Court judgments have not helped much and this is clearly visible in the data provided in the Supreme Court judgment which shows that in 2019 also after so many Supreme Court judgments and alarming 43 percentage of members of parliament had criminal cases pending against them. So what is the reason for this according to the author the major reason for this continuing menace is the lack of enforcement of existing laws and previous judgments. Now to ensure such enforcement this recent judgment of 2020 in February has a special aspect that is the concerned political party has to submit a report of complaints on the directions of Supreme Court with the election commission and this has to be submitted within 72 hours of the selection of the said candidate but if a political party fails to submit such compliance report with the election commission then the election commission shall bring such non-compliance to the notice of Supreme Court and such non-compliance will be deemed to be contempt of Supreme Court's orders or directions. So in the judgment Supreme Court only noted that it will be deemed to be a contempt of Supreme Court but it is not clear what penalty would be imposed if the direction is not followed. So according to the author in such a scenario Supreme Court can do any of these to make the political parties to comply with the directions either the Supreme Court might ask the law enforcement agencies to act vigorously to ensure that the guilty political party and its members to be prosecuted. See they will be guilty because they did not follow the Supreme Court orders or other than this at least any top political leader of that party which is responsible for not complying should be found guilty and they should be prosecuted. See either of these two things can be done or as a final resort Supreme Court can also cancel the election. Now whether these penalties will be enough or not can be tested in the coming Bihar elections by the Supreme Court and the Election Commission. That means this will happen if the political party does not comply but what will be the role played by public and civil societies. Here author suggests some measures to the public and civil societies to be more vigilant. For that first they should monitor the affidavits submitted by the candidates. It will have all the information about the candidates so that affidavit should be monitored and secondly the public and civil societies can work with the election commission to ensure that the information such as affidavit and the compliance report is immediately available on their websites along with this wide circulation of this information to the voters has to be ensured by the election commission of India and also by the civil societies and this can be done using all the social media tools which is available and the information which is circulated should also include proper reasons for giving the particular candidate the ticket for contesting election from that political party. This is important because Supreme Court has particularly noted that winnability cannot be cited as a reason that is if this person contests he or she will surely win cannot be cited as a reason for the selection of the candidate. So other than this reason the political party has to mention and in addition to these voters also need to be vigilant about the misuse of money, gifts and other inducements during the elections because if we do not realize that people who bribe us for votes cannot be trusted then the expected changes in politics and governance cannot be achieved in the near future according to the author. Now because of these measures if it is found that the political parties did not comply with the judgment of Supreme Court then the public can pressurize the government to prosecute them. It is because the root cause of such criminalization of politics is that the political party leaders are not afraid to select candidates with criminal background. So here author hopes that if even one political leader is held accountable for giving ticket to large number of candidates having criminal background then this might act as an example for other political parties and it will deter them in the future to admit such candidates. But here you should keep in mind that author is very clear that even if all these is adhered and followed then also there may not be dramatic or striking changes in the quality of candidates immediately because to bring drastic changes political will is also required. Parliament should enact laws to support the Supreme Court judgment on electoral reforms as these judgments are responses to the citizen initiatives. So if a law is enacted then it will ensure compliance with the Supreme Court judgments and it will also fulfill the desire of people which is politics without criminals. With this we come to the end of this discussion. Moving on to the next discussion. This news article talks about the implementation of Internet of Things in the proposed New Telangana Secretariat Complex. See the news is that the interiors as well as the exteriors of the New Telangana Secretariat Complex will have thermal sensors and they will feature voice controlled lighting. See these thermal sensors will ensure that lights will be switched on automatically when someone walks into a room and they will ensure that lights are switched off when they walk out. So in this context let us see about Internet of Things for in short IoT. We know that the digital space of the world has seen major transformations in the last couple of years and the newcomer to the digital space is the Internet of Things and IoT can be defined as an interplay of software, telecom and electronic hardware. IoT is the internet working of objects like physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items and most importantly all of these objects are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity. Here just know that actuators are a device that cause a machine or other device to operate. Now all this will enable these objects to collect and exchange data. I know that objects which are involved in IoT may be anything from coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps to the wearable devices also and here you should note that IoT involves extending internet connectivity beyond the standard devices such as desktops, laptops and smartphones. So generally phones, tablets and personal computers are not included as part of IoT. Now we will see the stages which are involved in IoT. It involves three distinct stages. This includes collection and transmission of data by the sensors then the second one is receiving of these data by software applications for analyzing them for the further consolidation and the third one is finally decision making and the transmission of data to the decision making server. I know that here analytical engines and then big data may be used for the decision making processes. So what are the uses of IoT? See based on the above explanation you can see that IoT can help to automate the solutions to the problems which are faced by various industries and this includes agriculture, health services, energy, then security, disaster management etc and this is done with the help of remotely connected devices. Now to understand this IoT better let us take one example. For example moisture sensors and smart sprinklers which are used in agriculture. See in this the sensors provide automated moisture, temperature and electrical conductivity monitoring and the data which is provided by these sensors are used to activate smart sprinklers for the automated irrigation. We can say that whenever the ground is dry or whenever irrigation is needed these sensors sense it and they immediately activate the smart sprinklers and this will help in the efficient usage of irrigation and it will also promote waste less irrigation. So that is all about this discussion. In this discussion we saw about the news based on IoT and we also saw about the uses and applications of Internet of Things. Moving on to the next discussion this news article mentions about the recently published draft rules that were framed for the implementation of the Code on Wages Act of 2019. We know that in order to simplify and rationalize the central labor laws the Ministry of Labor and Employment introduced four labor codes and one among them is this Code on Wages 2019. So in this discussion let us see some of the important provisions in this draft rules. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First know that the draft rules is called as the Code on Wages Central Rules 2020. There are many important provisions under these rules. Today we will see some of them and one of the important provision is that these draft rules lay down the criteria for fixing the minimum rate of wages per day and these criteria include three adult consumption units per household then a net intake of 2700 calories per day per consumption unit then 66 meter cloth per day per standard working class family etc. Then it also includes 10 percentage expenditure on housing rents and 20 percentage expenditure on fuel and electricity and then 25 percentage expenditure on education medical requirements. So this means while fixing the minimum rate of wages per day these criteria have to be taken into consideration. That means the minimum rate of wages which is fixed should enable the person to carry out all these. Then in addition to this while fixing the minimum rate of wages the central government shall also divide the concerned geographical area into three categories and they are metropolitan area, non-metropolitan area and the rural area. So we can say that based on the geographical area different minimum rate of wages might be fixed. Then apart from this the central government will also categorize the occupations of employees into four categories. These categories are unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and highly skilled. Then according to the draft rules the normal working day shall be comprised of eight hours of work and it should also include one or more intervals of rest but the rest intervals in total shall not exceed one hour. Here note that this is not the maximum number of work hours it is just the number of work hours on a normal working day and based on the draft rules we can say that the maximum limit of working on any day should not exceed 12 hours because the draft rules mention that the working day of an employee shall be arranged in a manner that it shall not spread over more than 12 hours on any day and this 12 hours also includes the intervals of rest. Apart from this more importantly the draft rules also provide for a day of rest every week then the draft rules also allow the central government to decide the floor wage on the basis of minimum living standards such as including food, clothing and housing. Apart from these three the minimum living standards could also include any other factors that is considered appropriate by the central government from time to time. Just here note that the floor wage is the wage below which minimum wage cannot be fixed and according to the draft rules the floor wage may be revised at an interval and this interval shall not exceed five years that is before the expiry of five years of fixing a floor wage the floor wage has to be revised. Then apart from this the draft rules also has provision which provides for payment of bonus. Now know that for all these the central government shall constitute a central advisory board and this board shall consist of the persons representing employers and employees then it shall consist of the independent persons and the representatives of the state governments and know that all of them will be nominated by the central government. Now here the persons representing employers and employees shall be 12 each and the independent persons nominated by the center shall consist of the chairperson two members of the parliament then four members who shall be a professional in the field of wages and labor related issues etc and note that then this board shall consist of five representatives of the state government and they shall be the principal secretary or secretary or the commissioner of the state labor department of that particular state. In addition to this the representatives could also be the officials as made eligible by the center from time to time but here you should note that the center must make sure that the total number of independent members shall not exceed one-third of the total members and additionally one-third of the members of the board shall be women. In addition to these for the transaction of business of this board the draft rules provides for a quorum. See literally quorum is the minimum number of members that must be present at any of its meetings to make the proceedings of that meeting to be valid and the quorum for this central advisory board is at least one-third of the members and at least one representative member of the employers and then at least one representative members of the employee. So only at least these members are present then only the transaction of businesses of this board will be valid. So these are some of the provisions that you should know from the draft rules which has been framed for the implementation of quorum wages act of 2019. With this we come to the end of this discussion. Moving on to the next discussion which is based on this news article it mentions about a reminder given by the union ministry of consumer affairs to the e-commerce portals. The ministry has asked the e-commerce portals to mention the country of origin of the products which is being sold by them. See in this note that the country of origin is also known as rules of origin and it is a criteria which is needed to determine the national source of a product. Now see it is important to mention the country of origin because based on the source of imports only the duties and restrictions are imposed by the government and know that the ministry in its reminder has invoked the legal metrology packaged commodity rules of 2011. See simply know that metrology is the scientific study of measurement and legal metrology is the application of legal requirements to measurements and measuring instruments. So in this discussion we will focus on the important provisions related to this news article in the legal metrology packaged commodities rules of 2011. I know that these rules were framed under the legal metrology act of 2009 and this act enforce the standards of weights and measures it regulates trade and commerce in weights measures etc and it also regulates the trade in other goods which are sold or distributed by weight measure or number. I know that the rules mention about the declarations that is to be made on every package and this is as per section 6 of the 2011 rules. According to this section every package shall be a definite plain and conspicuous that is a very clear visible declaration and it shall include the name and address of the manufacturer and packer and for any imported package the name and address of the importer shall be mentioned. So we can see that the 2011 rules does not openly say that the name and address of the exporter should be mentioned and apart from this the package shall also have the common or generic names of the commodity which is contained in it then it should also have the net quantity of that commodity then the month and year in which the commodity is manufactured or it is imported it should be mentioned and the package should also contain the retail sale price of the package. Now since the 2011 rules did not openly mention about the name and address of the exporter in case the commodity is imported and for this purpose these 2011 rules were amended in 2017 and it came into effect in 2018 and according to these amended rules the name of the country of origin or the manufacturer or the assembler in case of the imported products shall be mentioned on the package and these amendments also made it compulsory for the e-commerce entities like Amazon Flipkart and so on for displaying these information along with the declaration of the country of origin and the expiry date so that means these informations have to be mentioned in the products which we get from Amazon or Flipkart or other e-commerce platforms and it has to be displayed also on their digital and electronic network which is used for the e-commerce transactions. Now following these rules is important because if anyone violates it they are liable for penalty according to the section 36 of the 2009 act the first time offenders will be punished with a fine of 25,000 rupees and for the second offense the fine will extend up to 50,000 rupees and for subsequent offenses the fine may extend to 1 lakh rupees or even for imprisonment for a term of one year or even both that is one lakh rupees fine and one year imprisonment so that is all about this discussion in this discussion we saw the recent reminder by union ministry of consumer affairs to the e-commerce portals and we saw on what basis the ministry has given its reminder that is it has given its reminder based on the legal metrology packaged commodities rules of 2011 with this we come to the end of this discussion now we have come to the last session for the day which is the practice questions discussion session now this prelims question asks according to the legal metrology packaged commodity rules 2011 every package shall bear a definite plain and conspicuous declaration the declaration should contain first one is common or generic names of the commodity the net quantity of the commodity then month and year of manufacturing then country of origin then expiry date of the product all these should be mentioned in the declaration so the correct answer is option d one two three four and five see in this the country of origin will be applicable or when the product is imported now this next question is a two statement question first statement is droplet transmission of diseases occurs through potentially infective respiratory droplets of size more than five to ten micrometer which contain microorganisms generated during coughing sneezing and talking now this statement is correct this is the proper explanation of droplet transmission so first statement is correct the second statement is m tuberculosis that is a mycobacterium tuberculosis and rubella are examples of diseases transmitted only through droplets and they are not airborne diseases now this statement is incorrect because during discussion we saw that these two are examples of diseases which are transmitted through or spread through airborne transmission so statement two is incorrect and here the question asks for the correct statement so the correct answer is option a one only now let us take two main questions see these two questions based on world health organization only but the aspects are totally different the first question asks recently USA has officially announced its withdrawal from world health organization discuss its possible impacts on USA and WHO this is a very straightforward question we discussed these aspects during the editorial analysis now this next question asks discuss the relevance of WHO's alert and response operations in tracking the evolving infectious disease situations around the world this is a 10 mark question only so you have to just talk about the world health organizations alert and response operations the different operations such as intelligence collection then information dissemination which we discussed during the article discussion so both are very direct questions so try to answer it within the world limit with this we have come to the end of today's hindi news analysis if you like the video don't forget to like comment and also share with your friends please subscribe to shankaray's academy youtube channel for receiving more updates related to civil service examination preparation