Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 05 March 2021

SSC CGL Current Affairs

::NATIONAL::

Among Indian cities with a population of more than a million, Bengaluru has emerged as the best city on ease of living parameters among 49 million-plus cities in 2020.
The IT capital of India has pushed the earlier top ranker Pune to number two, while Ahmedabad ranked the third among 111 other cities.
"Bengaluru emerged as the top performer in the Million+ category [in category of 'population more than million], followed by Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Surat, Navi Mumbai, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore, and Greater Mumbai," a PIB press release said.
The ease of living is the lowest in Bareilly, Dhanbad and Srinagar.
In cities with a population of less than a million, Shimla was ranked the highest followed by Bhubaneswar while Muzaffarpur in Bihar was had the lowest score, according to the Ease of Living Index 2020 prepared by the ministry of housing and urban affairs.

Pakistan's election commission has convened a crucial meeting on Friday after Prime Minister Imran Khan accused it of discrediting democracy and damaging the morality of the nation, according to media reports.
Prime Minister Khan, in a televised address to the country on Thursday, lashed out at the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) which he said failed to stop corruption in Wednesday's closely-contested Senate elections.
"You (ECP) discredited democracy…you damaged the morality of the nation by doing nothing to stop vote-buying," he alleged.
"You allowed corruption to occur at the top, and this happened right before you, and you knew it would happen. I kept saying that markets have opened and there is an auction going on. And when the Supreme Court gave you a chance, what reason was there to not bar code a mere 1,500 ballots?" Khan said.
According to the official, the ECP is bound to follow the law which provides for a secret ballot and any hasty attempt to make the votes traceable would have been a violation of the Constitution, the report said.
The official said that the prime minister instead of taking note of the uncalled for remarks made by members of his Cabinet chose to join the blame game, it said.

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has likely fixed the interest rate on provident
fund deposits at 8.5 per cent for financial year 2020-21, according to a report by news agency PTI.
The retirement fund body is likely to announce the rates today. The Central Board of Trustees (CBT), which is the main decision-making body of EPFO, is meeting in Srinagar.
The decision will come on the back of large withdrawals and fewer contributions through out the last year amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In March, last year, the EPFO had reduced the interest rate to a 8.5 per cent for 2019-20, which is a seven-year low. The interest rate was 8.65 per cent in 2018-19 and 8.55 per cent for 2017-18. It was 8.65 per cent in 2016-17.
Net new enrolments with the retirement fund body grew by 24 per cent to 1.25 million in December, indicating a return to the pre-Covid levels of subscriber growth for the EPFO, according to the payroll data released.

A new research by the scientists at The Lundquist Institute spells out an innovative strategy that has led to the discovery of a natural compound as a safe, effective and reversible male contraceptive agent in pre-clinical animal models.
The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
Despite tremendous efforts over the past decades, the progress in developing non-hormonal male contraceptives has been very limited.
The compound is triptonide, which can be either purified from a Chinese herb called Tripterygium Wilfordii Hook F, or produced through chemical synthesis. Single daily oral doses of triptonide induce altered sperm having minimal or no forward motility with close to 100% penetrance and consequently male infertility in 3-4 and 5-6 weeks.
Once the treatment is stopped, the males become fertile again in ~4-6 weeks, and can produce healthy offspring. No discernable toxic effects were detected in either short- or long-term triptonide treatment. All of their data suggest that triptonide is a highly promising non-hormonal male contraceptive agent for men because it appears to meet all of the criteria for a viable contraceptive drug candidate, including bioavailability, efficacy, reversibility and safety.

West Indies white-ball captain Kieron Pollard on Wednesday became only the third man to hit 6 sixes in an international match during the opening T20I against Sri Lanka. Pollard followed in the footsteps of South Africa’s Herschelle Gibbs (2007 World Cup against Netherlands) and India’s Yuvraj Singh (2007 T20 World Cup against England) to achieve the rare feat.
Akila Dananjaya was the bowler who was the recipient of the onslaught, as Pollard took him apart with consummate ease. Pollard was on 4 runs off 4 balls when he decided to launch the attack on Dananjaya, who interestingly in his previous over had claimed a hat-trick that had put the hosts on the back foot.