Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 11 August 2021

SSC CGL Current Affairs

::NATIONAL::

The Constitution (127th Amendment) Bill, 2021 was passed on Tuesday evening in the Lok Sabha with the overwhelming support of all parties through 385 Ayes and zero Noes — ensuring a two-thirds majority mandatory for passing an amendment of the Constitution.
This Bill, which will now be presented in Rajya Sabha, restores the states’ powers to make their own OBC lists by identifying and notifying socially and economically backward classes (SEBCs) for the grant of quota in jobs and admissions.
Over 40 members participated in the debate during a session that has seen little legislative business amid the Opposition’s repeated demands for a debate on the Pegasus spyware controversy.
Raising the Pegasus spyware controversy, Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the party supported the Bill but added “the 50 per cent ceiling, imposed by the Supreme Court after the Indra Sawhney case, should be removed.”
Hitting back at the Opposition party while voicing support for a caste census, BJP MP Dr Sanghamitra Maurya said, “What their government could not do, our government is going to do today. By conducting a census, it is providing rights to OBCs…You were in power for a long time. Every state counted even animals but nowhere the backwards were counted. This happened during your rule…In 2011, your government conducted a census. Why did you not publish that (caste data) then.”

Bangladesh was the most polluted country across the world in 2020, followed by Pakistan, India and Mongolia, according to a report prepared by British company HouseFresh. While the Chinese city of Hotan in Xinjiang province has been named the most polluted city, Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh took the second spot on the list with an average PM2.5 concentration of 106.6µg/m3. PM2.5 refers to fine particulate matter suspended in the air that is two and a half microns or less in width.
The air pollution in China’s Hotan, with a PM2.5 of 110.2µg/m3, was largely attributed to local sandstorms given its proximity to the Taklimakan Desert, the world’s largest shifting sand desert. In the case of Ghaziabad, the report says massive traffic volumes in the “gateway” to Uttar Pradesh were likely the cause of the high levels of air pollution.
Bangladesh’s Manikganj is in the third position on the list of the world’s most polluted cities with a PM2.5 of 80.2µg/m3. “As one of the fastest developing countries around the world, with its industrial sector growing at a rate of 13% per year, vehicles and industrial emissions are the major contributors to air pollution in this country of 165 million people,” the author said.

Scammers are targeting banking customers in India with a new type of phishing attack by impersonating internet banking portals, the country’s cybersecurity agency has warned. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-In, issued an advisory Tuesday, saying the scammers are hosting phishing websites on the ngrok platform to collect sensitive information like internet banking credentials, mobile numbers and One Time Password (OTP).
"It has been observed that Indian banking customers are being targeted by a new type of phishing attack using ngrok platform," the CERT-In advisory said.
"The malicious actors have abused the ngrok platform to host phishing websites impersonating internet banking portals of Indian banks," it added.
Using a sample SMS, the cybersecurity agency elaborated how the “malicious actors” are tricking banking customers into clicking on phishing websites to carry out fraudulent transactions. The scammers send an SMS with embedded phishing links ending with ngrok.io/xxxbank, where xxx denotes the name of the bank.

The Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event, is all set to return on Wednesday night. First spotted by American space agency Nasa's meteor-tracking cameras on July 26, the Perseids are predicted to reach their peak before dawn on August 12, giving the best chance to witness one of the biggest meteor showers of the year.
Astronomy lovers can catch the best glimpses of meteors soon after evening twilight ends. The Perseid meteor shower will be visible in the northern hemisphere and down to the mid-southern latitudes, according to earthsky.org.
Meteors are caused by tiny, sandgrain- to pea-size bits of dusty debris striking the top of Earth's atmosphere roughly 130 km up. The debris was deposited the tail of comet Swift-Tuttle. Every year, the Earth passes through this region - it begins around July 17 and continues till August 24.
In between this period, when the Earth passes through the densest part of the tenuous "river of rubble" (around August 12), it triggers the peak of meteor shower.