6 APRIL 2014

Ø  Afghans voted in large numbers in the country’s first democratic transfer of power as US-led forces end their 13-year war. Despite Taliban threats, voting was largely peaceful with long queues in cities.

Ø  Bhupal Man Damai alias Yusuf Nepali, who was jailed in connection with the hijacking of Indian airlines flight IC-814 to Kandahar in December 1999, was released after a court exonerated him.

Ø  A Chinese patrol ship, the Haixun 01, searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 picked up a pulse signal from its black box detector in the southern Indian Ocean, China’s official media reported, in a possible breakthrough in the nearly month-long multinational hunt for the jet.

Ø  Asia’s largest tulip garden on the banks of Dal Lake here was thrown open to visitors on Saturday, even as inclement weather has delayed blooming of a majority of the bulbs. Formerly known as Siraj Bagh, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip garden was opened in 2008.

Ø  The total grid-connected solar capacity, commissioned under the National Solar Mission, crossed the 2,500-MW mark and stood at 2,632 MW as on March 31, 2014. Of the total, a little over a third of capacity was commissioned in Gujarat. Gujarat (916 MW) topped the cumulative capacity table, followed by Rajasthan (730 MW), Madhya Pradesh (347 MW) and Maharashtra (249 MW), among others.