Good afternoon everybody and you're very welcome to this lunchtime event with Tony Connelly of RTE. We all listen very carefully to what he says on RTE because he follows matters in Europe exceedingly well, he's well informed and he's got very good judgement. And he's only talked to us, I presume about his book and about Brexit and I look forward to it very much. The initial speech as usual will be on the record but the discussion in question and answer afterwards will be off the record. Can I ask you just to check that your mobile phones are either turned off or unsilent? So without any further to do, let's welcome Tony. Thank you Dahi, your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to thank you first of all for giving me this opportunity to talk to the IIEA. What I'd like to do is to, I suppose, talk more about the behind the scenes diplomatic strategy of the Irish government from before the referendum right up to the events of December rather than talk about the sectoral impact of Brexit. I think that's been talked about a lot. But I'm just conscious that there may be people here who may not be Irish and who may not fully grasp all of the sectoral vulnerability of Ireland and Brexit so I'm happy to take questions after the talk. So I'd like to start just by bringing everybody back to June the 19th last year when the negotiations started in Brussels. David Davis and his team arrived. Article 50 had been triggered and the negotiations were finally beginning. One of the British negotiators brought in a copy of the Good Friday Agreement into the negotiations on that first day. It was his way of trying to impress upon Michel Barnier and the task force, the importance of Northern Ireland and the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. A few days after the first day of the negotiations, I actually met this British negotiator and he said, we're conscious that these talks will be going on and there won't be any Irish voices in the room. These negotiators on the European side are fast learners but they haven't grown up with the Northern Ireland peace process like we have. So the more they understand it, the better. Now I think by this stage there are many people in Europe and the institutions and in the European capitals who do actually know about the Good Friday Agreement and they know the impact that Brexit may have on Ireland and the structure of the Good Friday Agreement. I think what I've concluded from covering this story for the last couple of years, the problem is that there is now a widening gap between Ireland's understanding of the Good Friday Agreement and Britain's understanding and that gap is getting wider. Now today we stand on the threshold of phase two of the negotiations. The lens has widened. The discussion now resonates with big picture ideas like trade, like security and defence, the World Trade Organization, Russia, America, the future relationship between Britain and the European Union. But to me, the 500 kilometre frontier that threads its way from Carlingford to Lockfoyle is still at the heart of the Brexit crisis and the issue hasn't been resolved and there will I think be a day of reckoning at some point. This issue has also changed the Anglo-Irish dynamic. Brexit has required Ireland to take sides and Dublin has detected that Britain has become somewhat irked by this dynamic. A sense on the British side that you and I, Britain and Ireland, we know what this is about and we know how we should solve this. But Brexit has forced Ireland to decamp completely to the European side and that has been difficult I think for the British government to accept. Now the core relationship at a diplomatic level remains strong. But if you move out towards the margins, the chemistry has definitely changed and we've seen that I think in some of the coverage of the Irish question last year, both at a tabloid level and at a social media level, the mutual hostility has increased and there was a clear effort at a higher political level to try and tone things down a little bit. But we've had a narrative I think take root in Westminster to say that the EU was actually imposing a hard border on Ireland and even in some senses that Britain was trying to protect Ireland from an EU-imposed hard border. Nevertheless, one senior British official has told me that in his view, Anglo-Irish relations are at their worst level since the early 1990s and that the border is now back in Irish politics. So how do we get to this point? In the months after the referendum, British officials and politicians knew that a chasm had opened up between Ireland and the UK. Now the impulse initially was to lean on those very strong historic bonds, bilateral bonds between London and Dublin. The first meeting in fact was between Home Office officials and Department of Justice officials on the common travel area. That took place about two days after the referendum. But it soon became clear that a rift was opening up between both sides. Irish officials grew exasperated at contradictory signalling from the British side and jockeying for position within the Conservative Party as to who was the real torch bearer of the Brexit dream. Ireland was looking for specific and explicit answers, but all they could get were reassurances from the British side and those reassurances were turning into blandishments. Britain and Ireland were saying the same things. We don't want to return to the borders of the past. We want to keep the common travel area going. But when Irish officials said, well, how are you going to do that? The answers weren't forthcoming. Now throughout the autumn, behind the scenes, there was a lot of traffic between Dublin and Brussels, civil servants and officials both from the Irish civil service and from the permanent representation in Brussels were beating a path to Michel Barnier's door. Room 201 on the fifth floor of the European Commission was where all these meetings took place. Now I think it's fair to say that Ireland had absolute privileged access in that process. The Irish government and Irish civil society, I think people like the IFA, ICOS, a lot of those organisations like Fisheries, were able to impress upon the European Commission task force that the Irish question was extremely serious and they needed to see what answers they could get. Across the board, in other countries, you could only get access to the task force if you were part of a pan-European lobby group, but in Ireland's case, they were taking everybody, the IFA, Finafoil, various other organisations, as I mentioned. Now the Irish would come along and pose the problems that were, they had identified that Brexit might give rise to with customs checks, with tariffs, with access, with regulations, with standards, and they were basically coming to the European Commission saying, how do we fix this? How do we avoid this? And the European Commission would say, well, we can do X, Y and Z, but it has to comply with the European rulebook. And at every turn, the request from the Irish side would go into the depths of the European Commission bureaucracy and somebody somewhere would have a potential answer or a suggestion. By early 2017, there was a definite shift in the whole process. Ireland would have to move unambiguously over to the European side. The bilateral contacts with Britain were not really going to be where the answer lay. And I think this was crystallised in an op-ed written by Phil Hogan, the Irish EU Commissioner in the Irish Times in January of last year. Now, there were three key reasons why this aircraft carrier was being turned around. First of all, the other 26 and the EU institutions were worried that Ireland was becoming a Trojan horse. In other words, Britain would use Ireland and the Irish dilemma and problems to somehow construct virtuous templates that they could then use elsewhere. So if they found a fix for the Irish border, they could say, ah, yes, we can apply this to Dover and Calais. And there was real suspicion in Brussels that Ireland was vulnerable. I even heard the word being verbalised, the Trojanisation of Brexit. That was the first. Secondly, Ireland was simply not getting the answers from Britain that it needed on how to avoid a hard border. Again, we heard either contradictory remarks from David Davis or Boris Johnson or Liam Fox. We got a sense of triumphalism at the European, at the Conservative Party conference in October. And at the same time, Irish officials were in touch with British officials in the civil service who were almost apologising for the tone and content of Theresa May's speech and saying, look, don't worry about it. It's a political party speech, party political speech. But through all of that process, they weren't getting answers. Of course, Ireland was hoping that Britain would stay in the customs union and single market. And there were signals that that might be possible, but not convincing enough to be banked and relied upon. The third and most, I think, significant reason why Ireland had to change its posture was that all of this technical activity that was going on, all the meetings in the task force between Irish officials and European officials, the scoping by the revenue commissioners, which famously found its way into a number of internal reports that RT reported on last year, the worry was that all of this was actually doing Britain's work for it. And that if Ireland and the European Commission presented a series of solutions to the Brexit crisis, as far as Ireland was concerned, this would be gift wrapping the solution for the British government. And it would get Britain off the hook. They wouldn't have to work out how they're going to avoid a hard border, which is what they were saying in public. In July, the new T-Shark League of Radker famously told reporters, what we are not going to do is to design a hard border for Brexiteers. Now, that was taken as a very hard line shift in the Irish government. But actually, it was perhaps a more blunt way of repeating what Andy Kenny had said in his speech, I think in this building, to the IIEA back in February, that this was Britain's policy and Britain was going to have to solve it. Now, while this aircraft carrier was being turned around, Ireland was going to have to formally embed its concerns into the European Union's formal response to Article 50. So the whole choreography was that Theresa May would trigger Article 50 with a letter at the end of March. And then the EU would respond by putting forward its negotiating guidelines. Now, the negotiating guidelines are a sacred blueprint for Michel Barnier. They are his instructions from the heads of government as to how to conduct these negotiations. Ireland's I think priority was to ensure that the Irish situation was kept prominent and in lights. The Irish officials went to the European Council in December of 2016. They had a draft of about 12 points. The European Council secretary had sent it back saying it was too long. Like every self-respecting student, the Irish government simply rearranged some of the paragraphs and sent it back. It came back from the European Council saying again, it's too long. But eventually, the Irish concerns were whittled down and distilled into a single paragraph. That's paragraph 11 in the negotiating guidelines. Now, when you start to report on these things, you read a European document. It's full of the normal kind of diplomatic text. And you can see that it's been drafted carefully. But the actual wording, every word is fought over. And there was one particular phrase that was fought over for a couple of weeks between Irish officials and the European Council. And it got down to this question of avoiding a hard border. So basically, Ireland wanted the European Union to say to Britain, you cannot have a hard border in Ireland. And that's got to be embedded in this paragraph, paragraph 11. When you read paragraph 11 today, you see the words, we need flexible and imaginative solutions, et cetera, et cetera, with the aim of avoiding a hard border. So you can see how the European Council were putting a bit of distance there between the Irish aspiration and what they could promise. So essentially, the European Council was saying to the Irish government was, we will protect you as far as we can. But we cannot tell you the world will not change because of Brexit. Because the world will change. And you have to be prepared. And there was some concern, I think, within the European Council, that the messaging in Ireland was a little bit more rose-tinted about avoiding a hard border than they could actually promise as diplomats in Brussels. Now, the reason why Ireland could get that paragraph in there is because Ireland was a lot more prepared. It had been to the European Council early. There were several key relationships, I think, in Brussels between the Irish perm rep and the European Council, personalities who had known each other in different embassies around the world. And the Irish were well prepared. Certainly next to the British side, they seemed very well prepared. And everybody began to know that the Irish were the most exposed country in Brexit. But there also was a lot of outreach between Charlie Flanagan and Andy Kenny going around the capitals. Andy Kenny would produce an A4 sheet of paper with the Irish map drawn on it and the border. So there was a pedagogical exercise going on. But I think ultimately with the negotiating guidelines and then the negotiating directives which flowed from the guidelines, Ireland's concerns were there and they were hardwired into the DNA of this process. And I think that really was the first victory by the Irish government in this process to get the Irish concerns written in in a way that those concerns would would be safeguarded throughout. There's another phrase actually that now that I come to think of it, the achievements, benefits and commitments of the Good Friday Agreement, what they call the ABCs.  But when you break it down, you realize it's actually code for a way of interpreting the Good Friday Agreement, that the Good Friday Agreement is not simply a bunch of ideas and rules about reconciliation. It's about societal progress. It's about the future. It's about cross border trade. It's about the interaction of people, the reconciliation of people. These are kind of dynamic things that need to be able to adapt to future policies and future events. So this brings us back then to the start of Brexit negotiations in June this year. Under the choreography, as you know, Britain would have to show sufficient progress on three things, the financial settlement, the rights of EU citizens, and the Irish border. Now, the talks lurched through the summer of 2017. These were not happy occasions. The news conferences were characterized by rather prickly exchanges between David Davis and Michel Barnier. David Davis had this cheeky, let's get on with it, demeanor. Michel Barnier was more head masterly saying, not until you've done your homework, Sonny, first. But throughout, I think it's fair to say that the fixation by the media both in Brussels and in London was that the big problem, the big crunch point was the money. And that was why Theresa May had to make that speech in Florence, where she finally promised that the EU would not be out of pocket as a result of Britain leaving. So in a sense, the Irish question did not seem to be the more problematic issue. There were a couple of key, I think, achievements at that stage by the Irish government. First of all, they did not want the Irish question to be a technocratic discussion in the negotiations, like financial, the financial settlement and citizens rights. They had two teams looking at the technical aspects. The Irish government insisted and said this be moved up the food chain to be handled by what they called the high level coordinating group, which was, excuse me, Ollie Robbins on the British side, and Sabine Way on Michel Barnier's deputy on the EU side. That meant the Irish question was being handled at a much more political level. They were not getting into technical details. This annoyed the British, I think, no end. But in any event, again, this was getting back to the Irish mantra, we do not work on technical solutions until we have a political contour of where this is going to land. The technical solutions will cascade from the politics, and they managed to get that, I suppose, that mechanism in at the start of the negotiations. The next, I think, very important issue that the Irish government managed to achieve in these negotiations was what was called a mapping process. Now, everybody knew that the Good Friday Agreement had to be protected. The British government negotiator that I spoke to, as I said, brought in a copy of the Good Friday Agreement into the first day of the negotiations. But the Irish government insisted on the EU Task Force supported them on this, that there be a mapping of North-South cooperation. And I think what happened was that the British government agreed to this, perhaps not realising how deep this mapping would become and what it would mean. Now, the Good Friday Agreement, when it talks about North-South cooperation, there are areas of cooperation that are delineated through the North, six North-South bodies. Now, the areas that they kind of largely look at are environment, health, agriculture, transport, education, higher education, tourism, energy, telecommunications, broadcasting, inland fisheries, justice, security and sport. Now, you could look at that remit of North-South cooperation and say, well, okay, here you have EU funding, there you have some other EU thing. And therefore, these are the basic circumscribed things that are going to be affected if Northern Ireland is outside the EU. But what the mapping process did was it went much deeper than the, I suppose, the explicit North-South relationship vis-a-vis mutual EU membership. Take, for example, health. EU funding supports a considerable degree of North-South health cooperation. But when you break it down, you see that you have patients' rights on both sides of the border or underpinned by EU regulations. You have medical devices that are used on both sides of the border that are underpinned by EU regulations. You have EU regulations that govern the way ambulance drivers work. And suddenly, when you look much more subtly and deeply at all these layers of North-South cooperation, they discovered that there were not six, but 142 areas of North-South cooperation. Now, the British government first produced their paper on the Irish question in August. It was 27 pages long. And they suggested that, of course, they would not accept a hard border in Ireland, but they would recommend a range of technical solutions. These were things like exemptions for SMEs who do regular cross-border trips, trusted trader schemes that would allow big companies to minimise their customs declarations because you had the famous technological solutions of cameras reading licence plates and so on. Now, that was given fairly short-srift by the European Commission. They said famously it was magical thinking. The Irish government was also cool on it, saying some good ideas, but these are not really going to work. In fact, Michel Barnier said that this paper from the British government threatened to undermine the EU's legal order. Now, the other element of the mapping exercise was that it drew the Northern Ireland civil service into the process because they could provide deeper expertise on North-South cooperation. That's a point I just wanted to mention there. About a month or three weeks after the British paper on Ireland, the EU presented its own paper on Ireland. It was three and a half pages long compared to 27 pages by the British government. Again, this was a subtle manoeuvre by the European side to keep the Irish question at the level of principle, not at the level of technical solutions. There were six guiding principles that Britain would have to sign up to if it was going to avoid a hard border. The British government looked at these six principles and said, yeah, we can't argue with that. Where do we sign? But in fact, what they wanted was not a signature. They wanted, again, Britain to come forward with explicit and detailed answers as to how exactly they were going to avoid a hard border without undermining the legal order of the European Union. Now, as we know, the October Council was meant to be the rendezvous for Britain getting over the line with sufficient progress on money, citizens' rights, and Ireland. And that rendezvous came and went. There simply was not enough progress by the British side on those three areas. Again, it's really useful and fascinating for a geek like me to look at the conclusions of the European Council. It's basically noted the progress on the financial settlement with the Florence speech. And noted for any diplomats here, it's a pretty dirty word. It means, yeah, you've done it, but we're not happy with it. They welcomed progress on citizens' rights and they acknowledged the progress on Ireland. Now, in the Council conclusions, there was a key word which was that Michelle Barnier would do a further refining of the mapping exercise on Ireland and of the principles that Britain had said they would sign up to the guiding principles that three and a half page paper that come out in September. Now, I don't know if any journalists picked up on the word refined or refining or would be refining. I certainly didn't at the time. But what that meant would be was that the British, that the European task force would, if you like, nudge the process forward. Okay, let's look at these principles. Let's look at the mapping. How are we going to crystallize this into a concrete demand that Britain meets? And that is why on the 8th of November last year, there was a working paper from the European Commission Task Force on Ireland. There had been no working paper like this on financial settlement or citizens' rights. But suddenly out of the blue, there was a working paper on Ireland. It was a one page paper and it was leaked and it was designed to be leaked and it was designed also in very close cooperation between the Irish government and the European Commission. Now in this working paper, there was a key bullet point. And this bullet point was explosive. The paper referred back to the EU's guiding principles paper. It said that an important part of political, economic, security, societal, agricultural activity on the island of Ireland currently operates on a cross-border basis underpinned by joint membership of the European Union by Britain and Ireland. Now this was again in effect crystallizing the Irish government's long held view and elaborating the effect of the mapping exercise. The final bullet point was where it got explosive. It seems essential, it said, that in order to guarantee no hard border, there would have to be no regulatory divergence on either side of the border on the rules of the single market and customs union. And it went further. These rules are necessary not just at present but may also be needed in the future. They would be needed for meaningful north-south cooperation and at this point the paper breaks new ground for the all-island economy. Now the all-island economy or the idea of an all-island economy had not crept into this discourse so far. Now London cried file, they were being ambushed but the Dublin government argued that this was the logical extension of Ireland's diplomatic strategy from day one. But the bullet point had the effect of suddenly waking up the British system, both political and media. And now it seemed that the big obstacle to moving into phase two was not the financial settlement or citizens rights, it was Ireland. Ireland which had seemed like an exotic honorary issue that was something between Britain and Ireland and would be sorted out. Suddenly Ireland was the key stumbling block for the UK moving into phase two. Now the reason Ireland, I suppose, raised the stakes at this point was that nothing they had got so far convinced them that the British government was really serious about avoiding a hard border beyond the rhetorical things that we'd heard from Theresa May and so on. Also months had gone past and the EU 26 did not have a paper to work on and December was approaching. There was a very difficult meeting between Theresa May and Leo Veradger in Gothenburg at the summit on the 17th of November. And the British were very angry at this point. They felt that it was about outcomes. We all want the same outcome. You cannot force us into something that is politically impossible because of unionism. Leo Veradger's response to that was, well, you guys took the single market and the customs union off the table. So now we want you to take a hard border off the table as well. And you can't expect us to take a leap in the dark. Because the messaging from London had been, well, look, you guys have a procedural veto in phase two. Can't you live with that? And the Irish response was, no, we can't. We need to use our reassurances and our leverage in phase one. So between the Gothenburg meeting and the 4th of December, there was a flurry of activity. The British side produced a few more papers. The Irish government didn't produce its own paper until the 30th of November. Now Jean-Claude Juncker had set the 4th of December as the deadline for Britain to get these issues over the line. There was the lunch arranged with, excuse me, with Theresa May on the 4th of December. And it was only the pre, that was a Monday, it was only the previous Thursday that the first Irish paper landed in the inbox of British negotiators in Brussels. And guess what? In there was the demand, no regulatory divergence. Now this was an extremely difficult thing for the British government to swallow. But up until that point the Irish had completely got on board the task force under Michel Barnier for that formulation. So there were, there was a full day of tough negotiating. The Irish side were not budging. Theresa May was getting involved. Eventually on the Sunday night there were more phone calls between Dublin and London and Brussels. And eventually no regulatory divergence, which to the British eyes meant Northern Ireland staying in the customs union and single market while the rest of the UK left. That formulation was changed to continuing regulatory alignment. Now even to someone like me who was following this closely I could not necessarily see the difference between these two phrases. But there was a key difference. And Britain wanted continued regulatory alignment. Now there was absolute lockdown. I can tell you as a journalist it was extremely hard to get information that weekend on what was happening. It was very sensitive. On Monday morning however I managed to talk to one source who was not Irish or British who was able to read to me the key paragraph in the joint report in the text that had been worked on all weekend and had as far as the EU was concerned been agreed in the early hours of Monday morning. And that paragraph read no regulatory divergence. And the source I spoke to said like this is amazing like Britain I can't believe Britain has conceded on this. And the source told me look this was the draft up until Saturday two days previously. So because this is very sensitive and RT will follow a policy of getting two sources on a story. I managed to contact a second non-I resource who confirmed that that had been in the text but that it had been updated to read something along the lines of continued regulatory alignment. So with the two sources I felt confident that we could run the story I checked with the head of news in Dublin in RTE. He says if you've got two sources and you stand by these sources then we can run the story. So I put out a tweet saying something like the the UK has conceded on the issue of no regulatory divergence according to a draft seen by RT news. I put out a second tweet four minutes later saying that the text had been updated to to have the words continued regulatory alignment. Now even at that stage I thought well these are kind of the same thing I can't see with the issues but to me the issue was that the UK had effectively conceded on a major issue that is that Northern Ireland remain tightly bound to the Republic when it came to the single market and the customs union. Now unbeknownst to me my tweets were being followed by Uckrep very closely the UK representation in Brussels. They were also being followed by DUP negotiators who at that very moment were meeting the British Chief of Staff Theresa May's Chief of Staff Gavin Barwell in London and the horses were spooked. Immediately both the British and the DUP thought that the Irish government were briefing and that they were claiming victory. And I can tell you and I've said this publicly that that wasn't the case certainly I wasn't being briefed by Irish sources. But to me this was a genuine and valid news story and that people were interested in what was going on. And the report that we ran on RTE that morning was highly conditional on language like you know these are drafts seen by RTE news. It's not clear if the Irish and British government have agreed to this but if they did this would go some way to reassuring the Irish government. There was then a flurry of conversations and phone calls and as Theresa May arrived in Brussels for her meeting with Jean-Claude Juncker she was told by Ollie Robbins her Sherpa that there was a problem and then the phone call started and she called Arlene Foster and the deal was off. Now at that point of the narrative I will take a pause because we've probably gone as far as we should on the talk and I'm happy to take questions on what happened next and what's the difference between alignment and no regulatory divergence and where we go from here.


So, Thibault joined the IHES in 1989 and actually for good, then he resigned of CNRS a few years later. Before that he had been at Ecole Normale in 1970 and then a PhD in France and in Paris actually. Then four or five years in Princeton and with various hats actually, two years? Well, it says more, but anyway. And so I wanted to show you just a few signs of the presence of Thibault of IHES. Okay, so I don't have the screen there helping me, so I have to look here. Here is Thibault and here is a statement by Thibault in the book called Les Deschifreurs, in which he says, ensuite j'avais, que j'avais beaucoup de chance d'avoir été choisi pour faire partie de cette débaillie scientifique si humainement chaleureuse que je devais me surpasser pour mériter cette chance et que je serais intellectuellement et personnellement heureux à IHES. It's up to him now to tell us whether it's indeed what happened. Here is the version in English for those of you who are uncomfortable with the French. Actually, I also can show you in case you prefer Chinese to see it in Chinese. And here is Thibault's signature in Chinese, so you can't miss it. But maybe you prefer Japanese, so you can get that. Or you prefer Korean, and then you get that. So this was really the statement by Thibault to open. Of course, what I want to talk about is science and briefly. Of course, the topic in which Thibault is working, which is general activity and in all dimensions of the subject, a priori looks for IHES as ideal because it's a topic in which you cannot separate the physics and the mathematics. And as you know, IHES has been built with the idea that mathematicians and physicists should work closely together. And so therefore this topic looks really extraordinary. But actually what is also very extraordinary, as you know, the person who really played a key role for relativity theory is Albert Einstein, already with a special relativity in 1905, but of course later on with a general relativity in 1915. And really what has been extraordinary is developments in the last 40 years. And a development which happened, of course, on the side of the physics with the new objects which allowed to really get the test of the theory of general activity, but also a wonderful extraordinary visionary attempt to detect gravitational waves. But also on the mathematical side, there have been extraordinary progress on the subject. The Einstein equations are very complicated, very complicated systems of nonlinear partial differential equations. And so that's something. And of course the key point is that Thibault was one of the key actors with a few other people who are in the room here of this extraordinary development. But maybe one thing I want to mention, because I know and I had the good fortune to discuss that with Thibault a few times, is also some efforts which indeed didn't conclude fully which was the effort with the step which is the test for equivalence principle, satellite test for equivalence principle. As you know the equivalence principle of inertial mass and gravitational mass is at the very foundation of general relativity. And therefore I think this effort to really test this equivalence principle with a few more digits is very important. So Thibault worked very hard at the step which I don't know whether there's a future for this at the moment now or is there? When I think about it, tell us something. The response of nature to our effort, not our mind. To Stanford and to Thibault being present there and suggesting an observation in astrophysics which was then Michael Kramel will report to you. I think Thibault is not so. Yes, yes. Okay, so anyway, so this combination of a topic which was ideal for IHS and the very central role that Thibault played with a number of other players, many are here, in the development of this subject of course has been extremely important. And also another thing which Thibault did a lot, he brought to IHS a number of collaborators and I'm just going to show a few of them so I don't know where, oh, you're over there. And actually I did teach general activity jointly with Natalie for a number of years which was very good, but also you're here, also with Gary Gibbons and also of course, whoops, and you're here, so wonderful. So I think these are some of the people who really spent quite extensive time here and working with him. But also some other collaborators who are here and here is Herman Nicolai who is over there. And of course two ladies who have been very important in theoretical physics so who played a very key role in relation with the development of modern physics, Cécile David who left us unfortunately, but she was visiting, she was a member of the board of the IHS board for a number of years and Yvonne Chauquet-Bruard who actually after she retired from the university used to come regularly to the institute and Thibault suggested that she should really have the possibility of staying here. And so Yvonne, I know, was very pleased with this possibility. So as you know Thibault has been receiving a number of distinctions. One of them which of course is very important for anybody working in general activity is the Einstein Medal which he got in 1996 in Bern. And he was elected to the academy as a full member in 1999 but also he got the légendeur in 2010 and here you see him, the person who gave him the légendeur with the en vertu des pouvoirs conférés par le président de la République which is the normal formulation is Philippe Stark a good friend of Thibault who has been also associated with the institute in some way. We discussed with him a number of times. He got many other rewards and one of course which for French people is very important is the gold medal of CNRS that he got jointly with Alain Briet in 2017. So here is a picture with Alain, Briet and Thibault and with our minister Mrs. Vidal on the occasion of the ceremony. But of course he got later on some more distinctions and actually in last year there's been incredible accumulation of such and of course the breakthrough price was one of them. Another price given by the ENFN Italian is the Galileo Galileo Medal and also very recently of course another price which I don't have pictures because the ceremony is not yet, when is it planned? For which level? Anywhere in the summer. Okay, very good. Another very important contribution of Thibault of course he produced many research articles I don't have to tell you, you have read many of them but also many also scientific books but also another thing that he did was to publish books for the general public and one which I personally cherish a lot is a joint venture with Jean-Claude Carrière who for French people is a well-known movie person. He has been behind the script of a number of movies but also books, he had very interesting books very actually in-depth knowledge of Indian mythology actually I personally met him before I was director of HES in Mumbai, in Bombay and anyway so this book I find it always very interesting to read. 2002, another one which is very important. In 2005 you measure that it's one century after the first The Anus Mirabilis by Einstein another one of course I'm skipping a few because he has several which is some recording in 2010 and also another one which I'm sure meant a lot of work jointly with an artist which is 2016, this comics on the Quantic world. So these are of course next to a number of other issues, a number of contributions by Thibault related to interviews in the radio or also of course chapters in books and so on and so his contribution to making the science visible, well-known and accessible to a large number of people was very important. But one thing I should not skip is music of course as you know the director of HES has a number of things to do but my knowledge of music was not enough to be able to buy a decent piano the one who is here so the person who chose the piano is actually Thibault after we tried a few, he tried a few and other people tried a few for him and here you see that in this picture that even while playing the piano we can talk to a mathematician and Victor Katz is talking to him on this picture with the piano. But of course the piano very often Thibault was also playing with other people so this is a piano à quatre mains with Hugo Moschela who is somewhere here you're already in the back and this was a celebration, a Christmas celebration at HES and they were playing together and helped by Ingrid for this purpose. But probably you have noticed that there was already very often somebody present in all the pictures who is of course Ulis who was there and also he kept also the staff busy because he needed to be trained to really be an active dog. So, thank you so much Thibault.


Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar IAS Academy for the date 11th of April 2019. Displayed are the list of news articles taken up for today's analysis along with the page numbers of both the Chennai and Delhi editions. Let us now move on to our discussion session. Let's see the first news article of the day from theory to fact. This topic will be useful for prelims preparation under current affairs of international significance and general science. It remains preparation for general studies paper 3 under science and technology, developments in their applications and effects in everyday life and also under awareness in the field of space in particular. Let us start our discussion of the news article. This news article explains in detail about the image of the black hole captured and how Albert Einstein's predictions have become a reality. Let us see the news in detail. For the first time, a shadow of the black hole has been detected by the combined effort of world's astrophysicists. The image was released by the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope. The shadow of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messiah 87, also called M87 in short, has been detected by the Event Horizon Telescope. This M87 galaxy lies in the Virgo constellation and it is located 55 million light-years away from the Earth. Here one light-year is 9.5 trillion kilometer. Now, let us see what the Event Horizon Telescope is. It is an international network of radio telescopes. Catching the shadow of the black hole involved eight ground telescopes around the globe, operating together as if they were one telescope the size of our entire planet. The Event Horizon Telescope set out to image both M87 galaxy and Sagittarius A, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which is our galaxy. M87 as a massive black hole and as said earlier, it is located 55 million light-years away from the Earth. The black hole in our galaxy is closer but much smaller, so they tend to look the same size in the sky. M87 rotates slowly, hence it was easier to take pictures of M87 galaxy. Astronomers created the picture by assembling data gathered by eight radio telescopes spread across the world on six mountains and four continents. The data was gathered by Event Horizon Telescope two years ago but it took so long to complete the image because it was a massive undertaking involving about 200 scientists and supercomputers and huge amount of data delivered by plane.  There are many galaxies present in the universe. For every galaxy, there is a giant star present at the center of the galaxy. For example, in our Milky Way galaxy, where the Earth lies, the Sun is the giant star. When this giant star runs out of energy, black holes are born. They may be of different sizes. This black hole's gravity or the attractive force is very strong that it pulls all the objects that gets too close to it. If too much matter is crammed into one place, the cumulative force of gravity becomes overwhelming such that it becomes an eternal trap which has been termed the black hole. Even the light, which is the fastest object in the universe, does not have a high enough velocity to escape this gravitational pull of the black hole. The term black hole was coined in mid 1960s by an American physicist named John Archibald Wheeler.  Black hole as such cannot be seen. There is an important boundary lying at a definitive distance from the black hole which is called as event horizon. It is called a point of no return meaning that any object that enters this area cannot escape once entered. Not even light can escape as we saw a short while ago.  The object that lies outside this event horizon shines because they are predominantly gas that gets heated and when it gets heated it emits radiation or light. The black hole is seen as a silhouette like an outline against this shine. Now, consider this as a black hole. The stars and other massive objects close to the black hole orbit it and slowly spiral into it as you can see in the picture. There are also gases that are present outside the black hole.  In the accretion disk, the gas gets heated and emits radiation or light. Now we know that the black hole has a strong gravitational power. This power makes the black hole to act like a lens and so this starts to bend the light that is emitted from this accretion disk. This light can escape and even reach farther distances even our earth and can be detected from earth. This is how the event horizon telescopes are able to detect the light signals. This gravitational bending and capturing of light concept has been given or explained in Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity as well. Here, Einstein has predicted a dark shadow like region which is nothing but the black hole. He has also predicted that at this point the matter, space and the time come to an end and it would vanish like a dream. Now Einstein's predictions have become a reality. This is the larger image process of M87 Galaxy where you can see the black hole at the center. If you zoom it, this one is the actual image of the black hole processed by the astronomers based on the radio wave signals received by event horizon telescopes. As we saw 8 ground based radio telescopes across different places in the globe. You can see that it looks like an uneven gold ring. The lower end here is heavier and the upper end is lighter and the matter within the dark inner circle was found rotating clockwise. It is predicted that it can either be the black hole only or the matter falling into the black hole where the matter within the dark inner circle was found to be rotating clockwise. The mass of this huge black hole is found to be 6.5 billion times the mass of the sun. And the diameter of this black hole is 100 billion kilometers. Thus Einstein's general theory of relativity has almost become a reality by capturing the black hole image. So for Tillam's preparation point of view, try to know about Galaxy M87, about Sagittarius A, the center of Milky Way Galaxy and about event horizon telescope present in the news article. Also additionally, try to understand what is a black hole, what is event horizon and what is accretion disk and the differences between them that we discussed as a part of this news article. Have a look at the practice question we shall discuss at the end. The second news article of the day is trickeries of money bill. This topic will be useful for a prelims preparation under polity and governance. And for mains preparation in your general studies paper 2 under Indian constitution, historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure. And also parliament and state legislatures, their structure, functioning, conduct of business, powers and privileges and issues arising out of these. Coming to the news article, Revenue Bar Association case has come up at Supreme Court yesterday in which the validity of the finance act of 2017 is under challenge. Two point of contention discussed in this particular article is that what and how the act was passed. Finance act of 2017 was passed as a money bill, number one. And number two, it contains rationalizing tribunals which is one of the important points of finance act. Though there are several other contentious issues, the current news article limits the discussions to these two points. Before understanding the issue in passing finance act as a money bill, let us know about the money bill in first place. Only those financial bills which contains provisions exclusively on matters listed in article 110 of the constitution of India are called money bills. On this basis, a bill is a money bill, it results in imposition, abolition, remission, alteration or regulation of any tax at union or state level, but not at the local level. Thus, money bills exist in parliament and state legislatures only. If a financial bill results in imposition, abolition, remission, alteration or regulation at local level by a local body, it is not considered to be a money bill. Second, it results in regulation of borrowing of money or results in any guarantee by government of India. Third, it results in withdrawal of money from consolidated or contingency fund. Lastly, if it results in receipt of money in consolidated fund and public account. Unlike ordinary bills, money bills have certain special features which are mentioned in the constitution. These points become important from the prelims point of view. Some of them are, a money bill can be introduced or originated only in Lokshaba or in legislative assemblies only in case of bicameral legislatures in the states if present. A money bill can be introduced only on prior recommendations of the president or governors in case of the states. There is no question of joint sitting in case of money bills because the opinion of Rajesh Abba is immaterial in this case. Even if Rajesh Abba does not return the bill in 14 days, it is still considered passed in both the houses. So, let us now understand the contention here. Question of whether a financial bill is a money bill or not is decided by the speaker and is or her decision is final. This provision exists simply to ensure that the Rajesh Abba is not allowed to bring down a government by refusing its access to the exchequer for everyday governance. However, in the recent case, the power of speaker has been used as a means to nullify the upper houses that is Rajesh Abba's democratic role in making the legislation. This is against the spirit of constitution which Dr. Ambedkar envisaged despite it being a constitutional power. This case thus becomes crucial as it brings the speaker's power under judicial review. Moving to the second contention, it is about rationalization of tribunals. Let us know about few basic points of tribunals. They were introduced through 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act and are inserted under Part 14A of Indian Constitution. Two important articles that deal with them are Article 323A and 323B while Article 323A talks about administrative tribunals. Article 323B talks about tribunals for other matters. The Finance Act of 2017 brought down the number of tribunals from 26 to 19 and also some of the tribunals were merged or in the process of getting merged. For example, Competition Appellate Tribunal will be merged with the National Company Law Tribunal. Until recently, each of these tribunals were governed by a separate statute and separate criteria to select and remove members to and from these bodies and also for salaries, allowances and other such service conditions of the members. The Finance Act has placed them under central government's control thus bringing uniform standards. There are certain issues highlighted by the author with respect to the above changes made. The increased power of central government is seen as hampering judicial independence. Similarly, executive interference in legislative matters is against the concept of separation of powers which is the basic structure of the Constitution. And lastly, there is a visible decline in the standards for selection of members. So, for prelims preparation in particular, try to know about the important aspects of money bill and about tribunals. Have a look at the practice question we shall discuss at the end of the session. The next news article is Anonymity of Poll Bonds Must Go. Says the Election Commission in page 7 of both the editions. There is also one more article under poll call section in page 9 of both the editions about what is an electoral bond. This topic will be useful for prelims preparation under current affairs of national and international significance and in Indian polity and governance. And for mains preparation, in your general studies paper 2 under Indian constitution, next silent features of representation of people's act, government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation. Under important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability. And this topic is also applicable under ethics paper which is general studies paper 4 under probability in governance. Challenges of corruption in particular and case studies on the same. This news article discusses about election commissions stand against the anonymity of the electoral bonds saying it as legalized anonymity. The election commission of India wants to let go of the anonymity saying that it is only against the anonymity not the scheme itself. The election commission has pointed out that it creates a lack of transparency hence the electoral bond system is a retrograde step. Through the electoral reforms we took a step forward from the era of huge cash transactions. But electoral bonds is like 2 steps backwards noted the election commission. And further the commission added that the political parties should put the information on donations on their websites so that people will get to know. And moreover right to vote means making an informed choice as knowing the candidate is only half of the exercise. People should also know the political parties who fund them since it is more important to know the principle than the agent. Now in context of this news article let us first know in detail about the electoral bond scheme 2018. Which is also discussed in the second article under poll call section about what is an electoral bond. An electoral bond is a barrier banking instrument to be used for funding eligible political parties. It is designed to be a barrier instrument like a promissory note in effect. It will be similar to a bank note that is payable to the barrer on demand and free of interest. The bonds will be issued in multiples of Rs. 1000, Rs. 10000, Rs. 1 lakh, Rs. 10 lakh and also Rs. 1 crore. The bonds will be available for purchase for a period of 10 days each in the beginning of every quarter. That is January, April, July and October as specified by the central government. The state bank of India is the only authorized bank by the central government for issuing electoral bonds as of now. Now who can purchase these bonds? It can be purchased by a person who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India. They can be bought by the donor with a KYC compliant account. A person being an individual can buy electoral bonds either singly or jointly with other individuals. Donors can donate the bonds to the party of their choice which can then be cashed in via the party's verified account within 15 days. Further, the eligible political party mentioned in the scheme is the one registered under section 29A of the Representation of the People Act of 1951 and secured not less than 1% of the votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly. These electoral bonds can be redeemed only by an eligible political party by depositing the same in their designated bank account maintained with authorized bank. The electoral bonds shall be valid for 15 days from the date of issue. That is if an electoral bond issued on 1st April 2019, it will be valid up to 15th of April 2019. These bonds will not bear the name of the donor. In essence, the donor and the party details will be available with the bank only but the political party may not be aware of who the donor is. The intention is to ensure that all the donations made to a party will be accounted for in the balance sheets without exposing the donor details to the public. The donor will get a deduction and the recipient or the political party will get tax exemption provided returns are filed by the political party. The amendment to Representation of the People Act allows political parties to skip recording donations received by them through electoral bonds in their contribution reports to the ECI. The amendments introduced to the Income Tax Act allows anonymous donations. Donors to political parties are not required to provide their names, address or pan card if they have contributed less than Rs 20,000. This is being taken advantage by the political parties. The Election Commission noted that many political parties have been reporting a major portion of the donations received as being less than the prescribed limit of Rs 20,000. Now, it is crucial to know the benefits of the scheme amidst this controversy which are transparent political funding, protecting donors from harassment, no disclosure of information to third parties, achieving digital India vision and bringing donations under tax purview. So, for prelims preparation in particular, try to know about the electoral bonds concept and the bank or banks authorized to issue these bonds by the central government. Now, have a look at the practice question. We shall discuss at the end of the session. The fourth news article of the day is, Forcing China's Hand. This topic will be useful for prelims preparation under current affairs of national and international significance and for mains preparation in your general studies paper too, under effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India's interests, Indian diaspora and next important international institutions, agencies and fora, their structure and mandate. Coming to the news article, U.S. opened another front in its ongoing multi-pronged tussle with China and circulated a draft resolution to the powerful 15 nation UN Security Council on March 27th to blacklist Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Majood Azhar, this circumventing the 1267 Al Qaeda sanctions committee of the council. Let us know more about the UN SC 1267 sanctions committee. The United Nations Security Council's 1267 committee was established pursuant to resolution number 1267. It is also known as the Al Qaeda and Taliban sanctions committee. It was established for the purpose of overseeing the actions taken against an individual or terrorist organization which is included in this list. The actions include the implementation of sanctions, restricting their movement, imposing financial penalties and assets freeze. The committee comprises all 15 members of the United Nations Security Council and it makes its decision by census and secretly. So if a single member opposes, it means there is no consensus. That is why China's opposition to India's bid is not allowing the UN Security Council to designate Majood Azhar as an international terrorist. The committee is being criticized for being non-transparent and in recent times there is a demand for its reforms to address procedural shortcomings especially from India. Post Pulverma attacks, France's proposal to get Azhar listed as a terrorist by the UN's 1267 sanctions committee was scuttled by China despite the move having the support of 14 out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council. In a zeal to shield Pakistan, China has used its veto on Azhar's listing at the 1267 United Nations Security Council sanctions committee four times in the past decade. So the news initiative of the USA of draft resolution will give a new turn to the old efforts of combating terrorism. In this context, it is important to note the changing South Asian equilibrium in favour of India. This has been because of the improved diplomatic outreach in the last few years in which the global support has been sought to reverse Pakistan's support to terrorist organizations. But what has given this is an added sense of urgency in India's decision to up the ante after the Pulverma attacks by taking the fight to the Pakistani army. After every crisis, the international community, especially the West, would persuade India to ease tensions. But now, France moved quickly to impose sanctions on Azhar. It is working with its European partners on the matter of putting Azhar on the European Union list of terrorists as well. All these signal a changing South Asian equilibrium in favour of India and the regional peace. So, for the prelims preparation in particular, try to know about the 1267 committee of the United Nations Security Council and also about United Nations Security Council. Have a look at the practice question. We shall discuss at the end of the session. In the fifth news article of the day, May expresses regret for Jaleen Walabak firing. Two news articles have appeared on Jaleen Walabak firing in both the Chennai and Delhi editions in pages number 1 and 12. In the first news article, the United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May expressed regret for Jaleen Walabak firing. She has expressed regret in the British Parliament for the Jaleen Walabak massacre ahead of its 100th anniversary of killings on April 13. In this news article, Theresa May has quoted Queen Elizabeth's remarks calling the incident a distressing example of Britain's past history with India. But Theresa May failed to make a formal apology that many hoped for, instead stopped short of declaring regrets. In the second news article, Labour Party has sought a formal apology. The Labour Party wrote a letter signed by 80 MPs of different parties of UK and sent to Foreign Secretary of UK Jeremy Hunt. This letter was initiated by Labour MP Pat McFadden. We will be having a detailed discussion about Jaleen Walabak massacre in her 13th April session on its 100th anniversary. The sixth news article of the day is, Supreme Court recommends five new Chief Justices to High Courts. This article discusses about the appointment of Chief Justices to High Court. This particular topic will be useful for prelims preparation under current affairs of national and international significance and under Indian polity and governance. And for mains preparation in your general studies paper too, under Indian constitution and structure, organisation and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary. This news article talks about the appointment of Chief Justices to High Court, which is done through Collegium System. The Supreme Court Collegium has recommended five judges for the appointment as Chief Justices in Rajasthan, Kerala, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh. To understand about the appointments, it is important to know about the Collegium System. The detailed analysis about the Collegium System is available in the Hindu News Analysis, dated 9th of April 2019 in Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel, done by our colleague Ms. Divya. Kindly go through the video to gain the subject clarity discussed as per the syllabus given today for this news article. The next news article is, Algeria after Botflika. This news article discusses about the long-serving President's Exit after popular unrest. How is exit as pushed Algeria into an uncharted territory and how this in turn would affect India-Algeria relations and India's role in Algeria's future? This topic will be useful for prelims preparation under current affairs of national and international significance. And, for mains preparation in your general studies, paper 2 under bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and or affecting India's interests. Let us start with some facts about Algeria from geographical point of view. Algeria is located in the northern portion of Africa, bordering Mediterranean Sea as we can see in the map. The northern part of Algeria experiences Mediterranean climate since it lies in the temperate zone. The southern part of Algeria is a part of Sahara Desert and largely experiences Saharan climate. Sirocco winds, which are the local winds, are associated with Algeria and they originate from Sahara Desert. Some other facts about Algeria is that it is a country with about 42 million population, which is next to Egypt in the Arab world. Arab world consists of countries with a predominant Muslim majority population. Algeria is rich in oil reserves and a major oil exporting nation. Also, it is a member of OPEC. Abdulaziz Borflika, ruled as the president of Algeria for the past two decades, has now resigned largely triggered by popular unrest attributed to the worsening socio-economic conditions partly due to the dwindling oil and gas reserves in the country. This popular unrest is seen as a delayed arrival of Arab Spring in India. Let us discuss important aspects of India-Algeria relations enlisted in the news article. Both nations have a strong economic relation. India largely imports oil, gas, cyclical hydrocarbons, phosphates and Mediterranean fruits from Algeria. In turn, Algeria imports foodstuffs, automobiles, farm machinery, pharmaceuticals, mobiles and cosmetics. Both nations have displayed a strong political cooperation in the past few decades under Abdulaziz Borflika's rule. One example is where Algeria has and is consistently supporting India's case against terrorism in international forums. Bilateral amity has been displayed by the leaders of both the nations through state visits and the like. Let us now see India's role post-Borflika's exit from presidency. India has a vital role to play in ensuring socio-political transition of Algeria by helping Algeria with institution building and infrastructure building, provided the successor government carries forward the smooth bilateral agenda that existed in the recent past. We saw that Algeria is a member of OPEC. In this context, let us try to know in brief about OPEC. OPEC is the organization of the petroleum exporting countries founded in Iraq in the city of Baghdad. Try to know who are the other member nations of OPEC. Some of the significant oil exporting nations that are not members of OPEC are Russia, USA and Qatar. Qatar has left OPEC very recently since January 2019. So, for prelims preparation in particular, try to know about Siroccovans and about OPEC. Have a look at the practice question we shall discuss at the end of the session. The next news article is Gubernatorial Impropriety. This article discusses about the controversy of the independence and neutrality of the office of the governor. The word gubernatorial here mentioned in the article means governor. This topic will be useful for prelims preparation under Indian polity and governance and for mains preparation in your general studies paper 2, Indian constitution, next challenges pertaining to the federal structure, devolution of powers and finally structure, organization and functioning of the executive and the judiciary in particular. Pertaining to the news article, let us first discuss about the office of the governor. The constitution of India provides provision for the office of governor in part 6 under the article 152 to article 164. He is the state executive who will act in contingencies as required by the president. Thus, he is the eye and ear of the president. The executive power of the state vested in the governor is exercised under the article 154 by him directly or through the offices subordinate to him. He is appointed by the president and holds office for a term of 5 years during the pressure of the president. Next, the qualification for appointment as governor is that he or she should be a citizen of India and should have completed the age of 35 years. Now, in relation to the news article, it is important to know the conditions of governor's office. Firstly, the governor should not be a member of the either houses of the parliament or the house of legislature of any state. Even if he or she does, it would be deemed that they have vacated their seat in that house when she or he enters upon his office as governor. And secondly, the governor should not hold any other office of profit. Like the president, the governor also has pardoning powers namely pardon, reprieve, remission, respite and commutation. And these powers are exercised where the sentence is not a death sentence. That is, governor cannot pardon a death sentence. The grant of pardon removes both the sentence and the conviction and absolves the convict from all disqualifications and punishment. Reprieve as an effect of staying the execution of punishment for the time being in order to allow the time for disposing the pending application for pardon, commutation, etc. This is a temporary conviction given to the convict from immediate execution of a sentence. Respite means awarding a lesser punishment in place of the given punishment in special cases. For example, a physically handicapped person may be given lesser punishment in place of rigorous punishment due to his special physical condition. Remission as the effect of reducing the amount of punishment without changing its character. For example, the rigorous punishment of two years may be reduced to a rigorous punishment of one year. But it will always remain a rigorous punishment because its character cannot be changed by remission. Under commutation, one form of punishment is substituted by another punishment of a lighter character coming to the removal of the office of the governor. The governor can be removed by the president sparingly in cases such as bribery, corruption, treason and in violation of the constitution. Under article 163 class 1, he exercises his executive and legislative functions with the aid and advice of his council of ministers. Thus, the executive power vested theoretically in the governor but it is really exercised by his council of ministers except in the limited sphere of his discretionary action. Now, let us move on to some observations made by the eminent persons, commissions, institutions regarding the office of governor that have been mentioned in this news article. Firstly, the Constituent Assembly desired that the governor should be a more detached figure to the acceptable province. And Mahatma Gandhi noted that the governor would be an arbiter when there was a constitutional deadlock in the state and he would be able to play an impartial role. According to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the governor is the representative of the people as a whole of the state and not a representative of a particular party. And also, the infamous Sarkaria Commission described the governor as a constitutional sentinel and a vital link between the union and the state. Further, SR Bomaik case in the year 1994, the Supreme Court observed that the office of governor is intended to ensure protection and sustenance of the constitutional process of the working of the constitution by the elected executive. And in Har Govind Panth v. Ragukul Tilak case of 1979, the Supreme Court affirmed that the office of governor was not subordinate or subservient to the government of India. Finally, the First Administrative Reforms Commission envisaged the governor to discharge his functions as judicially, impartially and efficiently. Next, we should know about the reports and recommendations of various commissions, namely Sarkaria Commission of 1983, Punchi Commission of 2007 and Venkatachalaya Commission of 2000. The reports of these commissions reveal that the independence and dignity of the governor's office is invariably undermined by the appointment of persons who are not suited to the post. By lack of security of tenure, the lack of an appropriate removal mechanism with no reasonable post-retirement benefits and limitations on post-retirement political ingratiation. These commissions gave some recommendations regarding the office of the governor. First, regarding the appointment of the governor, he should be an eminent person in some walk of life and he also should be a person from outside the state and he should be a detached figure and not too intimately connected with the local politics of the state. It is desirable that a politician from the ruling party at the union is not appointed as governor of a state which is being run by some other party or a combination of other part. The governor's tenure of office of five years in a state should not be disturbed except very rarely and that too for some extremely compelling reason. And there should be a proper removal mechanism like an advisory group consisting of the Vice President of India and the Speaker of the Lok Sabha or a retired Chief Justice of India who will examine the explanation given by the governor against the proposal of his or her removal from office. A governor should be provided reasonable post-retirement benefits for herself or himself and for her or his surviving spouse at the end of his tenure irrespective of its duration. As a matter of convention on demitting his office, the governor should not be eligible for any other appointment or office of profit under the union or a state government except for a second term as governor or maybe election to as Vice President or President of India. Such a convention should also require that after quitting or laying down his office, the governor shall not return to active partisan politics. These are the excerpts of this news article. So for the prelims preparation in particular, try to know about the important aspects about the office of the governor. Now have a look at the practice question we shall discuss at the end of the session. Let's move on to discuss the next article about artificial intelligence. Two news articles on artificial intelligence have appeared in both the editions. The first news article is professional significant disruptions at work which has appeared in page number 13 of both the editions. The second article is SEBI FIET 2 stock brokers using artificial intelligence applications which has appeared in page number 14 of both the editions. This topic will be useful for prelims preparation under current affairs of national importance in particular and for mains preparation in your general studies paper 3 under science and technology and their applications and effects in everyday life. The first article discusses about the MRSS 2019 global talent trends study. This study focuses about the scenarios abound about the future of work and its implications for individuals, companies and societies with the technological advances, government policies and employee expectations that are reshaping what we know as work. The pace of change continues to accelerate as artificial intelligence and automation infuse into everyday life and hence to achieve an equitable, productive and sustainable future for all. As per MRSS study, executives in India predict significant disruptions about their jobs. It has increased to 88% in 2019 compared with 40% in 2018. 76% of companies in India plan to automate more work in the next 12 months. As per the study, job security is one of the top three reasons why employees in India joined their company and it is also one of the main reasons for them to stay in that particular company. Further, according to the study, two-thirds of professionals are concerned that artificial intelligence and automation will replace their jobs. The second news article discusses about the circular shared by SEBI in January 2019 to all the recognized stock exchanges, clearing corporations and depositories to report on the artificial intelligence and machine learning applications offered or used by them. The article states that with reference to these circulars of SEBI, the Bombay Stock Exchange has asked the stock brokers to give quarterly disclosures about the compliance to the cybersecurity framework of the SEBI with respect to the applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It has also asked them to report on safeguards in place to prevent abnormal behavior of these applications. In addition, we shall know that the SEBI has been conducting a survey and is creating an inventory of the artificial intelligence and machine learning landscape in the Indian financial markets in order to gain an in-depth understanding of their adoption in the markets and also to ensure preparedness for any artificial intelligence and machine learning policies that may arise in the future. This is the end of the discussion of this particular news article. The final news article of the day is, High stock of non-performing assets in India. More progress needed states IMF the International Monetary Fund. This news article has appeared since the Global Financial Stability report has been released by IMF. This topic will be useful for prelims preparation under economic development and for mains preparation in your general studies paper 3 under Indian economy. First, let us see about Global Financial Stability report. The Global Financial Stability report of IMF assesses key risks facing the global financial system. It is a survey prepared by the IMF staff and it is published twice a year in the months of April and October respectively. Now, let us see the comments made by IMF about India. During the release of the report, the IMF head of monetary and capital markets stated that the high stock of non-performing assets in India is a continuing problem and that more progress is needed. Non-performing assets are those assets including a leased asset that ceases to generate income for the bank. The IMF official also insisted that India is required to support the level of capitalization to some banks, particularly the government-owned banks and to continue boosting the capital buffers in banks. We shall now know the important reports that are published by the International Monetary Fund also called IMF. They are Global Financial Stability report, World Economic Outlook and Fiscal Monitor reports. One should not confuse with the reports such as Global Economic Prospects report, World Development report and Doing Business reports as these are released by the World Bank Group. So, for prelims preparation in particular try to know about the reports of IMF and the economic reports of institutions such as World Bank Group and World Economic Forum and also try to know about the non-performing assets concepts for subject clarity. Now, have a look at the practice question. We shall discuss at the end of the session. With this, we come to the end of today's analysis of all the news articles jotted today. Let us now move on to practice question discussion session. The first question. Recently, the first image of the black hole in a galaxy called Messiah 87 has been captured. Which telescope has been used to capture this image? The correct answer is B Event Horizon Telescope which we have discussed in our very first news article of the day. Next question. Consider the following statements. Statement 1. Imposition or abolition or remission or alteration or regulation of any tax at union or state or local levels. 2. Regulation of borrowing money and the third withdrawal of money from Consolidated Fund of India. 4. Recept of money in public accounts of India. Which of the above can be considered as a part of the money bill? Here, statement 1 is wrong because all this of any tax at union or state level only not at the local level. This we have discussed in our news article. So, go for the elimination technique. If you eliminate option 1, option A, option C and option D will be gone. So, the correct answer is option B, 2, 3 and 4 only. Next question. With reference to the electoral bonds, consider the following statements. The statement 1. It is a Barrett banking instrument to be used for funding eligible political parties. Statement 2. It is valid for 30 days from the date of issue. Statement 3. It can be redeemed by the donor and the eligible political party. So, here the statement 1 is correct. Statement 2 is wrong. It is valid for 15 days only. And statement 3 is also wrong. It can be redeemed only by the eligible political party not by the donor. Again, go for the elimination technique. You are eliminating statements 2 and 3 here. So, the correct answer is 1 only because the question is asked for which among the above statements is correct. Next question. 1267 sanctions committee which is sometimes seen in the news is in the context of affairs of. Correct answer is option D, United Nations Security Council. Next question. Which of the following countries are not a member of OPEC? 1. Algeria. 2. Venezuela. 3. Russia. 4. USA. 5. Qatar. In our OPEC topic discussion, we have given the list of important oil exporting countries that are not members of OPEC. So, Algeria is a member of OPEC. Also, Venezuela is a member of OPEC. Russia and USA are not members of OPEC right from the start. But Qatar was a member of OPEC but it left the OPEC in January 2019. So, Qatar is also wrong. Now, the answer is asked the question as which of the following countries are not a member of OPEC? So, here the answer is 3, 4 and 5. Option C, 3, 4 and 5 only because 1 and 2 would be eliminated. Next question. Consider the following statements. Statement 1. The governor of a state shall be appointed by the president of India. This statement is correct. Statement 2. The governor should be a member of either houses of the parliament while she or he enjoys the office of the governor. This statement is wrong because the governor cannot be a member of either of the houses of the parliament while enjoying the office of the governor post. So, the correct answer is A1 only because the question is which among the above statements are correct. Next practice question. This particular question has appeared in your civil services preliminary examination in the year 2016. It is a straightforward question. The global financial stability report is prepared by the option is B International Monetary Fund. Let us move on to discuss a practice main question. The question is define money bill and discuss the constitutional provisions of money bill. It is also a straightforward question. We have explained about what a money bill is and also the constitutional provisions that are pertinent to this money bill in our discussion today. So, just go through the content and try to answer this question. The final question, final main question of the day. The question is analyze the working of the institution of the governor in the context of observations and recommendations by the relevant commissions. The answer for this question should mention above the office of the governor followed and substantiated by the recommendations discussed in today's analysis about the office of the governor. With this, we are winding our today's analysis and discussion of the practice question. Stay focused and motivated friends. Thank you.