(1) Manu, Gukesh among four Khel Ratnas
Double Olympic-medallist Manu Bhaker and chess world champion D Gukesh were among four winners of the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award announced by the Sports Ministry, which also named an unprecedented 17 para-athletes in the list of 32 Arjuna awardees to honour their resounding success at the Paris Paralympics.
The other two Khel Ratna winners unveiled by the ministry on Thursday for the year 2024 were men’s hockey captain Harmanpreet Singh and para-athlete Praveen Kumar.
The 22-year-old Bhaker became independent India’s first athlete to win two medals in a single edition of the Olympics with her bronze-winning show in the 10m air pistol individual and 10m air pistol mixed team events in August. In the same Games, Hamranpreet led the Indian hockey team to its second consecutive bronze medal.
The 18-year-old Gukesh, on the other hand, became the youngest ever World champion while also helping the Indian team win a historic gold in the Chess Olympiad last year. The fourth recipient will be para high-jumper Praveen, who was crowned the T64 champion in the Paris Paralympics.
The athletes selected for this year’s Arjuna award include Paris Olympics bronze medal-winning lot of wrestler Aman Sehrawat, shooters Swapnil Kusale and Sarabjot Singh and the men’s hockey team players Jarmanpreet Singh, Sukhjeet Singh, Sanjay and Abhishek.
The para-athletes dominated the list of Arjuna winners this time due to the magnificent Paris showing in which they returned with 29 medals, including seven gold and nine silver.
The President will present the sports awards at the Rashtrapati Bhavan at 11 a.m. on January 17.
(2) Jimmy Carter, 39th U.S. President, dies at 100
Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president and the third American head to make a trip to India, during which a village in Haryana was named Carterpuri in his honour, has died peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia surrounded by his family.
The longest-lived American President died on Sunday (December 29, 2024), roughly 22 months after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said.
Carter is survived by his children — Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.
Carter, a Democrat who served a single term from 1977 to 1981, had been in home hospice care since February 2023 after a series of short hospital stays.
Carter was considered a friend of India. He was the first American president to visit India after the removal of the emergency and victory of the Janata Party in 1977. In his address to the Indian parliament, Carter spoke against authoritarian rule.
Jimmy Carter‘s extended public farewell began on Saturday (January 5, 2025) in Georgia, with the former president’s flag-draped casket tracing his long arc from the Depression-era South and family farming business to the pinnacle of American political power and decades as a global humanitarian.
(3) Ukraine stops transporting Russian gas
Ukraine announced that it will no longer transport Russian gas to the rest of Europe on Wednesday (January 1, 2025) after a pre-war transit agreement with Russia expired. This comes amidst the ongoing war between the two countries.
This is not the first time that the operations of gas pipelines have been impacted due to the war. Russian-owned company Gazprom stopped gas transit through the Nordstream 1 pipeline (not running through Ukraine) in September 2022. Underwater explosions caused leaks in the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines. Gas flow through the Yamal-Europe pipeline ended when Poland and Bulgaria refused to pay Russia for the gas in rubles.
As a consequence, the European Union has significantly reduced its energy dependence on imported Russian gas and decreased overall gas consumption, maintained high gas storage levels and diversified their energy supplies by building more LNG terminals and focusing on renewable energy sources.
Alternative routes for gas to reach Europe will lessen the impact of Ukraine’s decision, according to the Commission’s Assessment Statement. However, some regions face more risk. The breakaway region in Moldova, for instance, gets all of its energy from gas pipelines via Ukraine transporting Russian gas. The coal plant that is currently in operation can run only for around 50 days.
(4) Australia secure World Test Championship final berth
Australia claimed a decisive victory over India in the fifth Test in Sydney on Sunday (January 5, 2025) to seal a 3-1 Border-Gavaskar series triumph and earn themselves a spot alongside South Africa at the ICC World Test Championship Final 2025 at Lord’s in June.
India started the series on a strong note with an emphatic victory at Perth, but Australia bounced back strongly to level the series at Adelaide. Australia took a 2-1 lead in the fourth Test at Melbourne and defeated India in the final Test.
South Africa had earlier secured their WTC final berth with a thrilling two-wicket win over Pakistan in the Boxing Day Test at Centurion.
Currently, Australia holds a points percentage of 63.73, comfortably ahead of the chasing pack. However, there is a slim chance that could lose their place in the final – if they incur an 8-point deduction across the two matches against Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka sweep the series 2-0.
(5) Delhi fog disrupts flight operations
Over the past week, over 500 flights operating from and to the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi were delayed or diverted due to low visibility in the area. Visibility dropped to near-zero levels for nine hours on Satuday (January 4, 2025), the longest such drop.
Low visibility due to dense fog is seen to peak around January every year in Delhi, with the average number of hours recording dense fog (visibility lower than 200m) higher than the preceding months.
Such dense fog inhibits operations of all aircraft that do not have appropriate equipment installed to navigate under low visibility conditions. CAT III fog equipment need to be installed and pilots trained in using the technology are required to continue flight operations. On Thursday (January 2, 2025), the DGCA issued notices to Air India and SpiceJet for rostering pilots not trained for low visibility flying in Delhi flights.
Published – January 06, 2025 12:41 pm IST