Current Affairs Updates: 30 July 2014

1) Jacques Kallis retired from all formats of International Cricket: Veteran South Africa cricketer Jacques Kallis on Wednesday announced his retirement from all formats of cricket. He had previously retired from Test cricket after the series against India in December 2013. Kallis - rated as one of the biggest stars of contemporary international cricket - played 166 Tests, 328 ODIs and 25 T20Is in career spanning 19 years. The all-rounder scored 13289 Test runs and another 11579 in ODIs and 666 in T20Is respectively. 

2) Landslide kills 20 in village near Pune: At least 20 persons were crushed to death and 126 others trapped under debris after a landslide triggered by the relentless rain hit the remote tribal village of Malin in Ambegaon taluka of Pune district early on Wednesday morning. District Collector Saurabh Rao said six people had been extricated from the rubble and another 14 were reported injured. Rescue operations will continue through the night. The village with a population of 700 is at the base of a hill, 112 kilometres from Pune city and near the ancient Bhimashankar temple.

3) IAF chief Arup Raha takes over as new CoSC: IAF chief Arup Raha 0n 30 July 2014 took over as the Chairman, Chiefs of Staffs Committee from incumbent Gen Bikram Singh who is retiring on Thursday. The chairman, Chiefs of Staffs Committee is the senior-most military officer in the country. Raha was handed over the baton of the COSC by Gen Singh at a ceremony in South Block, defence officials said. Raha, 59, will hold the office for a period of 29 months and would probably be the longest-serving officer in the chair. He has got the long tenure because of the resignation of former Navy Chief Admiral DK Joshi in February after a series of mishaps involving naval warships. Raha will continue in office till December 2016 and is expected to push for increasing jointmanship among the three services as the CoSC.

4) Iraq elects Fuad Masum as president: Iraqi lawmakers elected a veteran Kurdish politician as the nation’s new president on Thursday, hours after an attack on a prison convoy killed dozens of people, brutally underscoring the challenges faced by the country’s leaders as they struggle to form a new government. The 76-year-old Fuad Masum, one of the founders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party led by Iraq’s previous President Jalal Talabani, accepted the mostly ceremonial position after winning two—thirds of the votes in parliament, noting the “huge security, political and economic tasks” facing the next government.

5) Chowdary tipped to be new CBDT chief: Senior IRS officer K V Chowdary is tipped to be the new Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the apex authority of the Income Tax Department. The 1978-batch Indian Revenue Service officer is presently working as the Member (Investigations) in the CBDT and is expected to take over the new charge from August 1 after incumbent Chairman R K Tewari retires on July 31. Tewari, a 1976-batch IRS officer, has been at the helm for the last five months after he took over the top post on March 1.

6) NASA rover breaks out-of-this-World Distance Record: The US space agency's Opportunity rover has now clocked more miles on Mars than any man-made vehicle to reach another celestial body, NASA said Monday. Since arriving on the Red Planet in 2005, the solar-powered robot has journeyed across 25 miles (40 kilometers) of Martian terrain. That surpasses the previous record, held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover, which landed on the Moon in 1973.

7) Chinese journalist, lawyer win Magsaysay award: An influential Chinese journalist and a crusading environmental lawyer from China are among this year's winners of Asia's Magsaysay awards, the organisers announced. The Manila-based Ramon Magsaysay Award, named after a Filipino president who was killed in a plane crash, was established in 1957 to honour people or groups who change communities for the better and is often described as Asia's Nobel Prize. Among this year's six awardees is Hu Shuli, 61, founder and editor of Caijing, a business magazine famed for its groundbreaking investigative reporting that has had a profound impact on China.