• The country's largest lender State Bank of India  has said banking services may get impacted to an extent as various employees' unions have called for a two-day strike on March 28-29.
• SBI said it has been advised by the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) that All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA), Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) and All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA) have served a notice about their decision to go on a nationwide strike.
• The strike has been called to oppose the government's move to privatise public sector banks and the Banking Laws Amendment Bill 2021.

• Ash Barty surprisingly retired from tennis at age 25 while ranked No 1 and less than two months after winning the Australian Open for her third Grand Slam singles title.
• This is not the first time Barty walked away from tennis: She was the Wimbledon junior champion at age 15 in 2011, presaging a promising professional career, but left the tour entirely for nearly two years in 2014 because of burnout, overwhelmed by the pressure and travel required.
• She played professional cricket back home in Australia, then eventually picked up a racket once again and returned to her other sport.
• Barty went on to win major championships on three different surfaces on clay at the 2019 French Open, on the grass at Wimbledon last year and on the hard courts of Melbourne Park in January, becoming the first Australian player in 44 years to triumph at the nation's Grand Slam tournament.
• She won 15 tour-level titles in singles and another 12 in doubles since first turning pro in 2010. She spent 121 weeks at No 1 in the rankings, including the last 114 in a row.
• Her announcement was all the more stunning from an on-court perspective given her recent run of success: Barty had won 25 of her last 26 matches and three of her past four events.
• Only one other woman has walked away from the sport while atop the WTA rankings: Justine Henin was No 1 when she retired in May 2008.

Three years after Bahrain denied them a historic Asian Cup knock-out berth with an injury-time win, India resume their rivalry against the gulf nation in an international football-friendly Manama on March 22.

India was on the verge of booking a knock-out round berth in the 2019 Asian Cup in the UAE before Bahrain scored from a penalty in the stoppage time. That match broke Indian hearts and turned out to be the last one for English coach Stephen Constantine.

Now, as part of their preparations for yet another Asian Cup berth which will be decided in the final round qualifiers in June in Kolkata, 104th-ranked India faces 89th-ranked Bahrain in the first of the two international friendly matches in  Manama.

India plays against Belarus on  March 26 in the same venue. These two matches will be the first real big tests in nine months after India lost to Qatar 0-1 in June last year. All of India's matches after that till now have been against South Asian sides.

In fact, after Croatian Igor Stimac took over from Constantine, India has played 21 matches till now, winning six, including three against South Asian sides.

India has never beaten Bahrain in its football history, the lone drawn match (0-0) in 1982 being its best result out of the six matches between the two sides so far.

Bahrain has had mixed results in the last year, having beaten weaker sides such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Haiti but losing to middle-rung teams like Oman, Jordan, New Zealand. It has also lost to stronger teams like Iran and Qatar.

The center on Mar 22  clarified in the Supreme Court that it has not made COVID-19 vaccines mandatory and has only said that the vaccination should be 100 percent.

The clarification from Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, came after Additional Advocate General for Tamil Nadu Amit Anand Tiwari told a bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and B R Gavai that the union government had issued a mandate to us that 100 percent of people should be vaccinated.

• The ED on Mar 22 said it has attached assets worth Rs 6.45 crore of a company owned by the brother-in-law of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in connection with a money-laundering investigation.
• In a statement, the Enforcement Directorate said it has issued a provisional order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach 11 residential flats in Neelambari project, located in Thane near Mumbai, of Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Private Limited.
• Shridhar Madhav Patankar, the brother of Thackeray's wife Rashmi, "owns and controls" Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Private Limited, it said.
• The agency alleged funds that were allegedly siphoned off in a money laundering case being investigated against a company named Pushpak Bullion were "parked" in the real estate projects of Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Pvt.Ltd.

• The induction of a Naga People’s Front (NPF) MLA into the ministry in Manipur has rekindled the hopes of the National People’s Party (NPP) and Janata Dal (United) about getting ministerial berths.
• The BJP had secured a majority by winning 32 of the state’s 60 seats and the smaller parties were not sure if it will align with them.
• At Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s swearing-in ceremony on Mar 21 , five MLAs had also taken oath as ministers. One of them was Awangbow Newmai of the NPF. Five more can be inducted into the ministry at best.
• The JD-U, which bagged six seats, and the less than three-month-old Kuki People’s Alliance, which won the two seats it contested, had submitted their letter of support to Governor La Ganesan recently.
•  
• The NPP had won four of the nine seats it contested that election and all four MLAs were inducted into the ministry with one being appointed as the deputy chief minister.
• The NPP’s relationship with the BJP has turned sour since. However, considering its alliance elsewhere, it is upbeat that its partnership with the BJP will continue in Manipur.
• The NPP won seven seats this election to emerge as the second single largest party after the BJP.
• NEDA is a non-Congress conglomerate of political parties of the Northeast. The BJP has two MLAs in Meghalaya and is a constituent of the state’s NPP-led ruling coalition. One of the MLAs is a minister.

• UP on Mar 22  witnessed some political moves as CM-designate Yogi Adityanath tendered his resignation from the post of member UP Legislative Council while Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav decided to retain his Karhal seat and quit as MP Azamgarh. SP’s Rampur MP Azam Khan also decided to resign from his Lok Sabha post while retaining Rampur from where he has been elected as MLA in the recently concluded Assembly polls.
• In the recently concluded assembly polls, the BJP and its allies have romped home for a second consecutive term with a two-thirds majority winning 273 seats. On the other, the main opposition, Samajwadi Party along with its allies increased its tally from 47 to 125 in the house. The BSP and the Congress stood decimated with one and two seats respectively.

• UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar has said that the central universities will have to use Common University Entrance Test (CUET) scores to admit students to undergraduate programs this year and not the Class 12 marks.
• He said the CUET, in all likelihood, will be conducted in the first week of July.
• There are 45 central universities funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
• The syllabus of the CUET will be mirrored with the Class 12 model syllabus of the NCERT.
• The CUET will have Section 1A, Section 1B, general test, and domain-specific subjects.
• Section 1A, which will be compulsory, will be in 13 languages and candidates can choose the language of their choice.
• The options are English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
• Section 1B is optional and for students who want to opt for another language apart from the ones that are a part of Section 1A.
• Some of the languages on offer are French, Arabic, German, etc, he added.
• Under the domain-specific subjects, a candidate can choose up to a maximum of six domains that they wish to pursue at the undergraduate level.
• Some of the domains are anthropology, accounting, book-keeping, etc.
• There are some universities that have a general tests as eligibility criteria for admission to even domain-specific courses so that is a part of the CUET
• The UGC chairman said the reservation policy of the universities will not be impacted due to the CUET.
• If a university has a certain percentage of seats reserved for local students, it will be able to retain that.
• The NTA will soon release the detailed guidelines regarding CUET.