28th January 2015 Important Current Affairs

1) Sujatha Singh sacked as foreign secretary, S Jaishankar is the new foreign secretary: Government on 28 January 2015 announced the abrupt "curtailment of tenure of foreign secretary Sujatha Singh with immediate effect" — a not very polite way of saying it was sacking her eight months before she was due to retire. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India's ambassador to the US, who's a batch junior to Singh in the service, will be the new foreign secretary. Singh is the first foreign secretary to be removed unceremoniously after Rajiv Gandhi removed AP Venkateswaran 28 years ago in 1987.

2) Nation remembered Lala Lajpat Rai on his 150th birth anniversary: On 28 January 2015, nation paid tributes to national martyr of freedom movement, Lala Lajpat Rai on his 150th birth anniversary. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari. In his message, the Prime Minister said that Punjab Kesari Lala Lajpat Rai was a unique personality who was ahead of his time. He was born on 28 January 1865 in Jagraon town of Ludhiana district.

3) Sri Lanka reinstated Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake: President Maithripala Sirisena on 28 January 2015 reinstated Shirani Bandaranayake, Sri Lanka’s first woman Chief Justice, days after restoration of all ranks of a former Army chief, reversing the controversial decisions of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. “Shirani Bandaranayake has been restored on the basis that procedure adopted to remove her during the tenure of President Rajapaksa was flawed,” J.C. Weliamuna, Convener of the Lawyers’ Collective attorney-at-law, said. Ms. Bandaranayke was unceremoniously removed from the Supreme Court in 2013 by the Rajapaksa government, always insisted that she was still the “legal” Chief Justice of the country.

4) Hike Messenger introduced free voice calling: Home-grown chat application firm Hike Messenger has rolled out free voice-calling Hike Calls, a company statement said. The introduction of this feature will allow its users to call each other for free, over 2G, 3G and Wi-Fi and across the globe in over 200 countries. The introduction of such calls has come within a month of its first acquisition of a free calling app - Zip Phone.

5) Kalyan Singh takes additional charge as Himachal Governor: Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh was on 28 January 2015 sworn in as the Himachal Pradesh Governor. He was administered oath of office by Himachal Pradesh High Court Chief Justice Mansoor Ahmed Mir at a simple ceremony at Raj Bhawan. Singh has been given an additional charge of Himachal Pradesh after Urmila Singh, completed the full five year term as HP Governor.

6) China’s Yuan among Top 5 most used currencies in the world: China’s yuan has become one of the top five most-used currencies in the world, overtaking the Canadian dollar and the Australian dollar, according to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), an international financial transactions agency.

7) With $18 billion net profit, Apple made corporate history: The world's most valuable company reported a quarterly net profit of $18 billion, the highest ever in corporate history. Apple's net profit for the first quarter, which corresponds to the last 3 months of 2014, topped $15.9b in the second quarter of 2012, according to Standard & Poor's.  This was mainly due to record sales of iPhones by the company.

8) Veteran Malayalam actor Mala Aravindan died: Mala Aravindan, Malayalam film industry's popular comedian, who acted in close to 400 films in the last 37 years passed away. He was 76. He suffered a cardiac arrest on January 19 and was hospitalised. He breathed his last on 28 January 2015 at a private hospital in Coimbatore. A noted theatre personality, Aravindan acted in his first film in 1968. Since then he has been an integral part of the film industry in the state, working in popular films such as "Meesha Madhavan", "Tharavu", "Patalam", and "Thadavara".

9) Justice Narayanan Nadar Paul Vasanthakumar appointed Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court: Justice Narayanan Nadar Paul Vasanthakumar has been appointed as the next Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. His appointment will be effective from the date he assumes charge, a Law Ministry statement said. He is currently a judge in the Madras High Court.

10) Lizard Squad claims responsibility for Facebook, Instagram outage: Internet sites including Facebook, the world's largest social network, Instagram and other popular sites suffered temporary outages and a hacker group associated with other recent high-profile attacks claimed it caused the outages. A Twitter account that purports to speak for hacker group "Lizard Squad" posted messages suggesting that it was behind an attack the temporarily blocked several major web sites.

11) Google gets competition in new search engine: Finnish researchers have developed a new search engine that outperforms current ones and helps people search more efficiently. Developed at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, the SciNet search engine is different because it changes internet searches into recognition tasks by showing keywords related to the user’s search in topic radar. People using SciNet can get relevant and diverse search results faster, especially when they do not know exactly what they are looking for or how to formulate a query to find it.