Top International News Events of 2014

One of the biggest news events reported and which kept the world glued to their screens in 2014 was the disappearance of MH 370. The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 vanished into thin air with people all over the world speculating its disappearance to be related to hijack, crash and even to UFO abduction.

In fact Astronomy as a general subject was talked much about in 2014 with scientists finally finding the God particle and Philae space probe landing successfully on a comet 67P.

So, to help MBA aspirants in their test prep, Shiksha.com has started a new series wherein we list the top 5 events that happened across Politics, Business, Sports and Entertainment in the world. In this article we will be elaborating on the events that grabbed headlines in the world in 2014.

Malaysian Airlines

The Aviation industry came in the spotlight when Malaysian Airline flight MH 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The last communication from the flight was with the air traffic control at 1:20 MYT wherein one of the pilots was recorded as saying “Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero”. The last reported sighting of the craft was at 2:15 by military radar, 320 kms northwest of Penang located in northwestern Malaysia.

Malaysian Airlines had a bad year when after the disappearance of one of its flight a second flight, MH 17 was shot down in Ukraine. MH 17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile fired by Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. All the 298 people on board perished in this incident.

Ukraine Revolution

A relative calm in Ukraine’s anti-government demonstrations ended on February 18, 2014 when around 20,000 Euromaidan protesters advanced (in Kiev) to Ukraine's parliament to show their support of restoring the Constitution of Ukraine to how it was in 2004. This was followed with clashes between the police and protestors. Officials reveal that more than 82 people (which included 13 policemen) lost their life and another 1,100 were injured in these clashes.

These violent clashes finally lead to the impeachment of Ukraine’s President – Viktor Yanukovych. This was followed by quick succession in the sociopolitical system of Ukraine which included the formation of a brand new interim government followed by the restoration of the previous constitution and the call to “hold impromptu presidential elections” and that too within months.

ISIS Terrorist group

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is a ‘Sunni, extremist, jihadist rebel’ group which is controlling areas in Iraq, the Sinai, Syria and eastern Libya.

The original aim of ISIS was to establish an “Islamic State” in Iraq’s Sunni-majority areas. Following the group’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War, the main objective of ISIS expanded to making all possible efforts to control the Sunni-majority areas of Syria.

ISIS was earlier known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and is known to have had close links to Al-Qaeda till February 2014. However, after an eight month power struggle, Al-Qaeda cut all ties with ISIS, calling the group too extreme.

On June 29, 2014, ISIS appointed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its caliph after which the group proclaimed worldwide caliphate.

ISIS has captured many aid workers in Syria and is known to regularly upload videos of their beheading. Till date, three Americans – Steven Sotloff (Journalist), James Foley (Journalist) and Peter Kassig (Aid Worker) have been killed by the extremist group. The group is known to presently have British journalist John Cantile as well as another woman aid worker from America whose name has not been released yet.

God Particle Found

In 2012, CERN's Large Hadron Collider suggested the presence of Higgs Boson or God Particle whose mass ranged from 125 to 127 GeV/c²   and many scientists even won the Nobel Prize for it but now scientists reveal that this idea was borrowed from the "behaviour of photons in superconductors, which when cooled to very low temperatures, allow electrons to move without resistance".

In 2014, Ryo Shimano and his team revealed that when they “violently shook the superconductor with a very brief pulse of light” then “it is similar to how particle physicists create the real Higgs boson with energetic particle collisions.” The team first created the superconducting Higgs last year, and have now studied its properties to show that, “mathematically speaking, it behaves almost exactly like the particle physics Higgs.”

Virgin Galactic Crash

In an attempt to commercialise space travel, VSS Enterprises has been testing spacecrafts to take people to space. In a similar test flight on October 31, 2014, Virgin Galactic Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo on an experimental (spaceflight) test vehicle suffered from an in-flight breakup and thereafter crashed in Mojave Desert in California.

The co-pilot, Michael Alsbury perished in this crash whereas Peter Siebold, the pilot, suffered from fatal injuries.

Philae Lands on Comet

Rosetta, a robotic space probe launched by the European Space Agency has been following and studying Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P) in detail. Launched in 2004 for the mission, Rosetta on November 12, 2014 released its robotic lander – Philae on the surface of comet 67P. The mission of this lander is to study and transmit data from comet 67P’s surface so that scientist’s can study the composition of the comet.

Philae is tracked as well as operated from the European Space Operations Centre located at Darmstadt, Germany. The station lost contact with the lander on November 15 primarily because the battery charge dwindled. Scientists expect the robotic lander to start functioning by August 2015 when comet is expected to come closer to the sun and so the solar panels of Philae will receive enough illumination to charge the battery.

Malala wins Nobel Peace Prize

Pakistani youth activist, Malala Yousafzai, aged 17 became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala shared this award with Kailash Satyarthi. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that both Malala and Satyarthi were awarded “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education”.