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International Current Affairs

March 2021
All the material is taken from various Web news sources.
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Russia announced on March 31, 2021, it had registered what it said was the
world’s first coronavirus vaccine for animals, describing the step as important for
disrupting virus mutations. It said mass production of the vaccine could begin in
April.

Researchers at Tufts University have developed robots named ‘Xenobots’ from

the stem cells of frogs. These robots are able to self-heal after damage and move
using particles on their surface -cilia. They can work together in teams and can
record information about their surroundings. Robots can be used in biomedical
and environmental studies.

9th Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process Ministerial Conference being held March 30,
2021, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process (HoA-IP) is
an initiative of the Republic of Afghanistan and the Republic of Turkey, which
was officially launched at a conference hosted by Turkey in Istanbul on 2
November 2011.

Iran and China signed a 25-year `strategic cooperation pact` on March 27, 2021
in the latest expansion of Beijing`s flagship trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative
as the US rivals build closer ties.

President of the United States Joe Biden had invited 40 world leaders to
participate in the Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22-23 but
surprisingly he left out Pakistan, a country severely and frequently affected by
climate change, global warming and rising temperatures.

World Development Report 2021 has been released with the theme of ‘Data for
Better Lives’— Leveraging greater value from data to help the poor. This is the
first World Development Report which focused solely on the role of data for
development. As the Covid pandemic made the global data inequalities even
greater, the report speaks on how do we tap the full value of data, to ensure
equitable access for poor people.

Mount Merapi is an active volcano located in the Central Java province of

Indonesia. Being the most active volcano in Indonesia, it has erupted constantly
since 1548.
Recently, the volcano was observed releasing ash high into the air and sending
streams of lava and debris along its slopes. As per media reports, clouds of hot
ash were blown 200 meters or 656 feet above the surface. The Government of
Saudi Arabia has proposed a plan to end the ongoing civil war in Yemen and has
proposed a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire. It is awaiting a response from the
rebel Houthi movement. Saudi has proposed this plan after missile and drone
attacks on Saudi Arabia especially on its oil refineries and production units. India
has welcomed Saudi Arabia’s peace initiatives.

Every year, World Meteorological Day is observed on March 23rd. It

commemorates the formation of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO),
which is an intergovernmental body, on March 23, 1950. This day also highlights
the role played by humans and organizations in protecting Earth’s atmosphere.

Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) including India,

Pakistan, and China will hold a joint anti-terrorism exercise this year. The joint
exercise ‘Pabbi-Antiterror-2021’ was announced during the 36th meeting of the
Council of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure held in Uzbekistan.

India men’s cricket team captain Virat Kohli has become the first-ever batsman
to score 3,000 runs in T-20 International. Virat Kohli achieved the milestone
during the second T20-International against England at Ahmedabad. Virat has
achieved the feat from 87 T20 international matches. He is followed by New
Zealand’s Martin Guptill at second place and Rohit Sharma in 3rd place.

It’s been 50 years since Bangladesh first began the fight for independence, which
resulted in it breaking away from Pakistan to become a separate country. Before
this the area that is now Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan. In March 1971
the liberation war started, which lasted for nine months and ended with
Bangladesh officially having its status as an independent nation recognised on 16
Dec 1971. Bangladesh Independence Day is celebrated on 26 March every year
to mark the day Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – who would later become Bangledesh’s
first leader – declared independence, before the war began.

Singapore is one of the smallest countries in the world. But it is also among the
biggest per capita carbon dioxide emitters in Asia. In a bid to tackle climate
change, the country is building one of the world’s largest floating solar farms. It
has resorted to setting up these energy plants off its coasts and on reservoirs.

Nowruz marks the first day of the first month, called Farvardin, of the Iranian
calendar. This date mostly falls in March and is usually celebrated on March 21.
However, the date can shift either a day ahead or behind based on the movement
of the sun and planets. Nowruz falls on March 20 in 2021.
North Korea on March 25, 2021, test-fired its first ballistic missiles since
President Joe Biden took office, as it expands its military capabilities and
increases pressure on Washington while nuclear negotiations remain stalled.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the launches threaten peace and
safety in Japan and the region, and that Tokyo will closely coordinate with
Washington and Seoul on the North`s testing activities.

Like other parts of the globe, International World Water Day is being observed
across the country today, with this year’s theme “Valuing Water.” Each year,
World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater. The theme this year
is how we value water beyond its price. It determines how it is managed and
shared.

World Water Day is an annual United Nations observance day held on 22 March
that highlights the importance of fresh water. The day is used to advocate for the
sustainable management of freshwater resources.

United States Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin met Afghan President Ashraf
Ghani during an unannounced visit to Kabul on March 21, 2021, just weeks
before Washington is due to withdraw the last of its troops under a deal struck
with the Taliban last year. Austin said on Twitter he had come to `listen and
learn`, on his first trip to Afghanistan since his appointment. `This visit has been
very helpful for me, and it will inform my participation in the review (of the
Afghan peace process) we are undergoing here (with President Joe Biden),` he
added.

The parliament of New Zealand has recently passed legislation giving mothers
and their partners the right to paid leave following a miscarriage or stillbirth. It
has become only the second country in the world to pass the law, after India. One
in four New Zealand women experienced a miscarriage. This law will give
employees three days’ leave when a pregnancy ends with a stillbirth.

Recently, a new view of the black hole has been released by astronomers working
with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). In this view, the astronomers have
mapped the magnetic fields close to the hole. The event horizon telescope first
revealed the images of the black hole, in the year 2018, which is located in the
galaxy M87 at a distance of 55 million light-years.

Sri Lanka and China have signed a $1.5 billion currency swap deal, the island
nation`s central bank said on March 23, 2021, as it struggles with a major foreign
exchange crisis and debt repayments. Colombo had been negotiating for months
to secure credit from China -its largest single source of imports -as the island`s
foreign reserves plummet amid the pandemic.

For the year 2021, India has assumed the chairmanship of BRICS. Recently, the
BRICS Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues (CGETI) held its first
meeting under India’s chairmanship from March 9 to 11. The theme of this year’s
BRICS is “BRICS@15: Intra BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation,
and Consensus”.

Russian scientists on Saturday, 13 March 2021 launched one of the world’s

biggest underwater space telescopes to peer deep into the universe from the
pristine waters of Lake Baikal. The telescope, Baikal-GVD, is designed to search
for neutrinos, which are nearly massless subatomic particles with no electrical
charge.

Elliot Page, known most-prominently for his role in the 2007 Oscar-winning film
Juno, has become the first transgender man to be featured on the cover of Time
magazine.

World’s First Ship Tunnel to be built in Norway. The Norwegian Coastal

Administration has received the green signal to start working on the construction
of the world’s first tunnel, being built exclusively for ships.

Switzerland voted in favor of banning full facial coverings including the niqab
and burqa in almost all public places. Around 51.21 percent of voters voted in
support of the proposal. France was the first country in Europe to ban facial
coverings in public places in the year 2011 and the European Court of Human
Rights upheld the ban in 2014.

The government of China has approved its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025).
This plan contains a large number of strategic projects to be pursued by the nation.
Some of these projects include a dam in Tibet on the lower Brahmaputra,
Sichuan-Tibet railway line near the India border, etc.

New Delhi was the world`s most polluted capital for the third straight year in
2020, according to IQ Air, a Swiss group that measures air quality levels based
on the concentration of lung-damaging airborne particles known as PM2.5. India
was home to 35 of the world`s 50 most polluted cities, according to IQ Air`s 2020
World Air Quality Report, which gathered data for 106 countries.
The World Poetry Day is celebrated every year on March 21 by UNESCO. It was
first adopted by UNESCO in the 30th General Conference in Paris in the year
1999. This day honors poets across the globe and promotes reading, writing, and
teaching of poetry. It supports linguistic diversity through poetic expressions.

Samia Suluhu Hassan is a soft-spoken, Muslim woman thrust from the obscure
role of the vice president to become Tanzania’s first female leader after John
Magufuli’s sudden death. Under the constitution, Hassan, the country’s 61-year-
old vice president, will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term,
which does not expire until 2025. She took office on 19 March 2021.

Covid-19 has done little to alter the ranking of the world`s happiest countries,
with Finland at the top for the fourth year running, an annual UN-sponsored report
said on March 19, 2021. The researchers behind the World Happiness Report,
now in its ninth year, used Gallup data asking people in 149 countries to rate their
own happiness, also taking into account measures such as GDP, social support,
personal freedom, and levels of corruption to give each nation a happiness score,
which is an average of the past three years.

Samia Suluhu Hassan is a Tanzanian politician who is serving as the sixth

president of Tanzania. She took office on 19 March 2021 after the death of the
previous president, John Magufuli, two days earlier.

Russia is hosting the second round of Afghan dialogue aimed at breaking the
deadlock in the Doha peace process from 18th March in Moscow, diplomatic
sources confirmed. The dialogue under the Russian Foreign Ministry would be
attended by US officials, as well as Pakistan, Kabul government, China, and
Taliban representatives.

John Pombe Joseph Magufuli was a Tanzanian politician who served as the fifth
president of Tanzania from 2015 until his death in 2021. Tanzanian President
John Magufuli died on March 17, 2021, aged 61 from a heart condition, his vice
president said, after more than five years of divisive, authoritarian rule capped by
his refusal to take Covid-19 seriously.

International Boxing Association (AIBA) on Monday, March 15, 2021,

announced that Asian Boxing Championships 2021 will be hosted by New Delhi,
India from May 21-31, 2021.
The United States and Japan warned China against what they called `coercion and
destabilizing behavior` on March 16, 2021, after top-level diplomatic and defence
talks aimed at bolstering their alliance against rising Chinese influence.

Kosovo said on March 14, 2021, it had officially opened its embassy in Jerusalem
after becoming the first Muslim-majority territory to recognize the city as Israel`s
capital. The move was in exchange for Israel recognizing Kosovo, a major victory
for Pristina`s efforts to gain full global recognition of the independence it
declared in 2008 following a war with Serbia in the 1990s. The new embassy was
opened during a brief ceremony during which Kosovo`s flag was raised in front
of the building in Jerusalem, the Kosovo foreign ministry said in a statement.

Turkey on March 12, 2021, said it had established its first diplomatic contacts
with Egypt since 2013 and was ready to improve relations with other rivals as it
seeks to break its isolation.

Hashmatullah Shahidi became the first Afghanistan player to smash a Test double
hundred while his team notched up several batting records on a memorable day
two of their second and final match against Zimbabwe in Abu Dhabi on March
11, 2021. Playing their sixth Test match, the Afghans racked up 545-4, their
highest total ever, before captain Asghar Afghan declared their first innings. Their
previous highest total was 342 when they beat Bangladesh in 2019 to register
their first Test victory.

Russia`s X5 group, the country`s leading food retailer, announced on March 10,
2021, the launch of a facial recognition payment system, the latest expansion of
a technology that has sparked privacy and security concerns. The service will
only be available at self-service checkouts for Sberbank customers after the bank
recently allowed its users to set up facial recognition to pay from their accounts.

Libya`s parliament on March 10, 2021, approved a unity government to lead the
war-ravaged North African nation to December elections, hailed as a `historic
step towards ending a decade of chaos. Oil-rich Libya descended into conflict
after dictator Moamer Qadhafi was toppled and killed in a Natobacked uprising
in 2011, resulting in multiple forces vying for power. `This will be the
government of all Libyans,` interim prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said,
in a brief but emotional speech after the vote.

Every year, World Kidney Day is marked on the second Thursday of March.
This year (2021), the day is being observed on March 11 worldwide.
A transgender started her journey as a news anchor in Bangladesh on
International Women’s Day. Tashnuva Anan Shishir debuted on air on March 8,
2021 presenting all with late afternoon news bulletin for a private news channel.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has partnered with Apple Inc to
produce several new programmes including dramas, children series’ and
documentaries that would air on the tech giant’s streaming service. Yousafzai and
her production company, Extracurricular, are expanding an already existing
partnership with Apple, a blog post on the company’s website said on March 8,
2021. In 2018, the iPhone maker teamed up with Yousafzai on the “Malala Fund”
that seeks to extend secondary education opportunities to girls across the globe.

Britain and Nigeria on March 9, 2021, signed a deal to return £4.2 million ($5.82
million) recovered from a former governor of oil-rich Delta state, who served a
jail term in London for fraud. “This is the first time that money recovered from
criminals will be returned to Nigeria (from Britain) since an agreement was
signed in 2016 to recover and return the proceeds of bribery or corruption in a
responsible and transparent way,” Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement to
AFP in Lagos. It said the money stolen by James Ibori, governor of southern oil-
rich Delta state between 1999 and 2007, was retrieved by British law enforcement
agencies.

The Russian Space Agency has launched its satellite Arktika-M. This satellite is
intended to monitor the climate in the Arctic region. In the recent past, Russia has
been taking keen interest in exploring Arctic region and is seeking to develop the
energy-rich region for the nation’s developmental interest.

Exercise Desert Flag is a multinational exercise, which is to be held in the United

Arab Emirates. Ten countries are to take part in this exercise including India,
France, and the U.S. This exercise will be held for three weeks this month. This
semi-annual exercise will involve multiple, intensive air combat sorties. IAF’s
Su-30-MKI and C-17s fighter jets took off recently to participate in this exercise.

The Germany-based think tank Germanwatch has recently released Climate Risk
Index (CRI) 2021. The index ranks countries as per their vulnerability to climate
risks both in terms of fatalities and economic losses. As per the report, India is
the 7th worst-hit country on account of extreme weather events in the year 2019.

Powerful person of the world is Xi jinping according to ofrbes magazine.

US President Joe Biden has inducted a third Pakistani American, Dilawar Syed,
into his team, says a White House media statement. Mr Syed will serve as the
deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) if confirmed
by the US Senate. Confirming his nomination on Twitter, Mr. Syed said he was
`deeply humble d & honored` and will `put my heart and soul into helping small
businesses everywhere` as the `grit of small businesses` made America strong.

China moved on March 5, 2021, to grant itself veto powers over selecting Hong
Kong`s lawmakers, part of a campaign to eliminate dissent and ensure a
`patriotic` government in the city following huge democracy rallies in 2019.
Legislation to allow China`s communist rulers to vet all election candidates in
Hong Kong was tabled at the opening of the nation`s rubber-stamp parliament in
Beijing.

The United States of America has officially re-joined the Paris international
climate pact recently. Earlier, the USA under former President Donald Trump’s
leadership quit the agreement and remained outside the pact for 107 days. With
the change in government in the USA led by Joe Biden, the US decided to rejoin
the Paris pact. Biden has set 2022 as the deadline for the achievement of 2030
emission cuts as envisaged in the Paris pact.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States would
pay the World Health Organization (WHO) USD 200 million. The U.S. is the
largest funder of the World Health Organisation, contributing over 15% of its
total funds. Former U.S. President Donald Trump had begun the process of
withdrawing from the WHO, which has been stopped now by the incumbent
President.

World Hearing Day is observed on 3 March to raise awareness about the measures
that can be taken to prevent hearing loss. It is a campaign held each year by the
Office of Prevention of Blindness and Deafness of the World Health Organization
(WHO). The theme of the campaign for 2021 is Hearing Care for All.

The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBGs) met on
Friday 26 February 2021 for the first time under the Italian G20 Presidency. The
event was held online. The Ministers and Governors acknowledged that health
and economic conditions remain difficult despite the launch of vaccination
campaigns and signs of strengthening economic activity.
Israel`s president on March 2, 2021, formally received the first-ever ambassador
from the United Arab Emirates to the Jewish state, following last year`s
agreement between the countries to normalize ties. Mohamed Al Khaja, the UAE
envoy, arrived in Israel on Monday, March 1, 2021, delivered his credentials
to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at a ceremony in Jerusalem.

The US House passed an enormous, $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package early
on February 27, 2021, hailed by Democrats as a critical step in funneling new
funding towards vaccinations, overburdened local governments, and millions of
families devastated by the pandemic.

Anas Sarwar is a Scottish politician who has served as Leader of the Scottish
Labour Party since 2021. He has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament for
the Glasgow region since 2016, having been a Member of Parliament for Glasgow
Central from 2010 to 2015. Scottish Labour named Anas Sarwar as their new
leader on February 27, 2021, ahead of an election for the country`s devolved
parliament in May.

An Indian commercial Flight made an Emergency Landing at Karachi’s Jinnah

Terminal International Airport on Tuesday, March 2, 2021, after a passenger on
the Aircraft fell ill. The aircraft, of India’s private airline IndiGo, was en route
from Sharjah to Lucknow when a medical emergency was reported on board.