26th March 2021 Current affairs

1. The External Affairs Minister is scheduled to attend the 9th Ministerial Conference of Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process (HoA-IP) on Afghanistan in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on March 30, 2021 at the joint invitation of Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
2. Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar will pay an official visit to Tajikistan on March 30-31, 2020. He will be undertaking the trip at the invitation of the Foreign Minister of Tajikistan Sirojiddin Muhriddin.
3. Indian captain Virat Kohli has become the second batsman in the history of ODI cricket to score 10,000 runs while batting at number three. He reached the feat during India’s 2nd ODI against England. Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting sits on top of the list with 12,662 runs from 330 innings.
4. The first phase of polling in the Assam State Assembly Elections will take place from 7 am tomorrow, March 27, 2021. Under this phase, 47 constituencies will go to polls across 12 districts in the state. As per the Election Commission, around 81, 09, 815 voters are eligible to cast their votes at 11,537 polling stations under this first phase.
5. India ranked 40 among 53 global economies in the ninth International Intellectual Property (IP) Index that was released on March 23, 2021. India’s overall score increased from 36.04 percent (16.22 out of 45) in the seventh edition to 38.46 percent (19.23 out of 50) in the eighth edition.
6. The world’s first ship tunnel is slated to be constructed in Norway. The construction on the engineering project is expected to begin in 2022 and get completed by 2025-26. The ship tunnel is planned to run underneath the mountains in Norway’s Stadhavet peninsula.
7. New Zealand’s Parliament unanimously approved the bereavement leave law to give couples- who have suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth- three days of paid leave. With this, the nation has become the second country in the world to provide such benefits, as India is the only other country with such legislation.
8. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman raised the limit for tax exemption on interest earned on provident fund contribution by employees to Rs 5 lakh per annum in specified cases as against Rs 2.5 lakh proposed in the Budget.