News in Short

• The blowout from an Oil India Limited (OIL)-owned well near Assam’s Dibru Saikhowa National Park caught fire on the fourteenth day of the gas leak.
• On May 27, the Baghjan 5 well in Assam’s Tinsukia district — located at a 900m aerial distance of the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park, and next to the Maguri-Motapung wetland — reported a blowout or a sudden, uncontrolled release of gas/oil.
• The incident occurred when two simultaneous operations were on at the site: servicing of the well-head, or the top portion of the well, and an operation to test a new sand in the same well.

• Most of India’s top higher education institutions have slipped in the latest edition of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings (WUR), including at least 10 which had been marked out by the government under the Institution of Eminence (IoE) scheme.
• Among the IoEs that have fallen in rank over the past 12 months are IIT-Delhi, IIT-Madras, IIT-Kharagpur, IISc-Bangalore, Delhi University, Hyderabad Central University, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS-Pilani), Anna University and Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT).
• IIT-Bombay retains its status as country’s top university, followed by IISc-Bangalore, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Madras, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Roorkee, IIT-Guwahati, Delhi University and IIT-Hyderabad.

• Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) has won one of world’s largest solar contract from Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) to develop 8 GW of solar projects along with a commitment to establish 2 GW of additional solar cell and module manufacturing capacity.
• With this win, AGEL will now have 15 GW capacity under operation, construction or under contract thereby accelerating its journey towards becoming the world’s largest renewables company by 2025.
• This is the single biggest investment announced since the launch of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self Reliant India Program). It is also another significant step in India continuing to lead the world in battling climate change and furthering the commitment made to the world at the COP 21 summit in Paris in 2015.

• TikTok topped the list of most downloaded non-game apps worldwide for May, according to a recent report by analytics platform Sensor Tower.
• The video sharing app was downloaded about 112 million times in May. About one-fifth of these downloads were from India – one of its largest markets.
• The U.S. took the second spot with a little over nine per cent of the downloads coming from the country. Globally, the number of downloads increased two-fold year-over-year from May 2019.

• International Business Machines Corp will no longer offer general purpose facial recognition or analysis software, according to new Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna.
• The company will stop offering facial recognition software and oppose any use of such technology for purposes of mass surveillance and racial profiling.
• The tech giant's decision to get out of the facial recognition business, employed by multiple companies, comes as the United States grapples with nationwide protests over the death of a black man, George Floyd, under police custody in Minneapolis.