Current Affairs - 18 January 2014

Rahul leads LS campaign against Modi

A combative Rahul Gandhi, without naming Narendra Modi, led a no-holds-barred attack on the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for seeking to establish a “Congress-free India,” saying the country could not be run on the diktat of one man.
Stressing that his party’s ideology encapsulated the soul of India articulated through the ages by Emperor Ashok, Guru Nanak, Akbar and Gandhi, the Congress vice-president said: “Anyone who wants to destroy this will be destroyed himself.”
A day after the Congress Working Committee announced that Mr. Gandhi would lead the party’s campaign in Election 2014, he rallied party workers with a 45-minute rousing speech.
The day-long session also sent out the message that a generational shift was needed with even Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram suggesting that half of the Congress’s candidates should be under 35, a theme that many speakers took up.
Ranking system & higher education institutions
With the country’s higher education institutions failing to make the cut on international ranking lists year after year, a move is now on to develop an Indian ranking system that would help portray the proper metrics of importance, and rank institutions accordingly.

Some walked, others were luckier and hitched a ride, but all ended up in the open at a Sudanese border checkpoint, waiting to cross and leave South Sudan's war behind.
Hundreds of crying children and exhausted adults have converged on the border post at Joda, where Sudan’s White Nile state meets the South’s Upper Nile, which saw heavy fighting this week.
They are among an estimated 10,000 who have fled north to Sudan in an exodus that the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) says has seen almost 80,000 people seek refuge abroad from deadly fighting between government and rebel forces in South Sudan over the past month.
Others have been waiting at the border gate for longer, after arriving with not much more than some spare clothes carried in bags or wrapped in blankets.

It is seen as one of the most important votes in Algeria’s history. But just three months before the North African country’s presidential election, no one is sure who is running.
The elections could offer a rare chance for change and new personalities in a country long dominated by aging military figures.
Ailing three-term President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has not made clear whether he will run again. Even if the 76-year-old steps aside for a new generation he or his military and government cohorts could have a huge influence in naming his successor.
The uncertainty before the April 17 vote comes at a pivotal time for the country, as it faces economic turmoil, endless protests and a revival of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African branch of the terror network that grew out of the Algerian radical Islamist movement.
Since its turn in 1989 to pluralism, a system in which there is more than one centre of power, Algeria has been run by the generation that fought in the 1958-1962 war for independence against France. Once the world’s youngest Foreign Minister in the 1960s, Mr. Bouteflika took the presidency in 1999, and has dominated the country in the 15 years since.
The lack of clarity on whether he is running has kept other possible contenders from announcing their candidacies as the time for campaigning slips away. And the longer he waits, the less time they will have.

The country’s renewable energy sector is likely to miss its capacity addition target for the second year in a row.
As against the annual target of 4,325 MW, only 1,922 MW has been achieved during the first nine months of the current fiscal, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
However, amid concern over slow progress, the installed capacity for wind power has crossed 20,000 MW this fiscal, while the overall grind-interactive renewable power capacity is set to cross 30,000 MW shortly.
With the addition of 1,922 MW in nine months (marginally higher when compared with 1,763 MW in the year-ago period), India’s total grid-interactive renewable energy capacity addition stood at 29,989 MW as on December 31, 2013.
During April-December 2013, wind and solar segments contributed 1096 MW and 495 MW respectively, while the rest was contributed by small hydro, bagasse co-generation, biomass and waste-to-energy categories.
Besides, 67 mw of off-grid/ captive power generation capacity from different renewable energy sources were also added during the period.

A record $28 million of bitcoins has been formally transferred to the U.S. government after it was seized from the server of black market website Silk Road.
The government claimed that the digital currency was used to facilitate money laundering, prosecutors announced.
The action came a day after a Manhattan judge approved the forfeiture of the bitcoins and the website, and three months after San Francisco entrepreneur Ross Ulbricht was arrested on charges he operated an online marketplace for illegal drugs, following a crackdown on the website. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said it was the largest forfeiture of bitcoins ever by the government.

Four minutes from time, the technical officials realised that India had 12 players on the field, holding up play for a while.
This was only one of the dramatic events in a game that saw India bounce back from a two-goal deficit and stun Olympic champion Germany 5-4 in the fifth-eighth place classification match at the Hero Hockey World League Final on Friday.
India’s first win over the top-ranked side in five years was also its first in an FIH-ranked event in a decade, the last one coming at the 2004 Champions Trophy.
On Friday, Germany was keen to get off the mark and did so with an all-out attack. Captain Oliver Korn deflected the ball into the net in the 4th minute. Two minutes later, Thilo Stralkowski doubled the lead off a penalty corner.

Source: upscportal.