20.08.2007

• Pope is against tax havens
• Pope Benedict XVI, the current Pope is known among Church hierarchy as the thinking Pope. He is of the view that tax havens should not be used by the wealthy companies and individuals for avoiding tax payment. The Vatican is pained by the injustice meted out to the poor of the world, as it feels that the money siphoned off by the rich through the use of tax havens, can be used for public welfare activities.
• A bit about Roman Catholic Church in India
• It is part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, under the leadership of the Pope and curia in Rome.
• Curia is the central administration governing the Roman Catholic Church.
• All the Bishops in India, both Western and Eastern, form the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, which was founded in 1944.
• There are over 17 mn Catholics in India, which represents about 1.5% of the total population.
• Myth, reality and subprime crisis
• This is an excellent article from Mythili Bhusnurmath. She argues that each new financial crisis is an opportunity to sift myth from reality. Provided we do that and learn the right lessons, our systems will only emerge stronger from it.
• She lists out seven myths and realities with regard to the current crisis. It is a must read for developing a deeper understanding of the crisis.
• Take a look at it here.
• A little about Murali’s doosra
• Muthia Muralitharan, the Sri Lankan bowler was called for throwing by umpire Darrell Hair during a 1995 Test series in Australia. An ICC panel subsequently went into the matter and accepted Murali’s view that his bowling with a bent arm was not deliberate and was due to a congenital deformity.
• However, a few years ago, the umpires again questioned the legality of his action while bowling the doosra. Murali was sent to the Biomechanics Laboratory of the University of Western Australia to correct his action.
• About the importance of safety related to shipping
• India is a cargo consolidation centre. It attracts about 12,000 ships annually to its ports. This makes it an average of 33 ships calling at various ports.
• With the number of accidents relating to various ships, having crossed 18 so far this monsoon season, urgent action is called for. Some suggestions by an expert from the shipping industry include:
• Indian ports must deny entry to ships if they don’t have adequate insurance cover for wreck removal and oil pollution risk.
• We need to sign a harmonized system of port state control (PSC) with neighbouring countries to weed out all the ‘junk’ ships from the seas around the country. This is important as most of the vessels involved in recent accidents are over 25 years old and are from the so called FoC countries. These are the Flag of Convenience countries, which offer their flag to any vessel for a relatively small fee, but exercise no control over them.
• India boasts of about 750 ships on its registers with about 8.4 mn gross tonnage.
• The country that offers free sex change operations in the world?
• Brazil. It has been so ordained by an internal court ruling in the matter.
• Gubernatorial appointments
• AP: N.D. Tiwari
• Karnataka: Rameshwar Thakur
• Orissa: Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare
• Rajasthan: Shilendra Kumar Singh
• Uttarkhand: B.L. Joshi
• Sikkim: Sudarshan Agarwal
• World Photography Day
• It is celebrated on August 19^th. This is commemoration of the announcement of a photograph on August 19th, 1839.
• Indian Air Force pilots create a record
• They successfully flew around the world in 80 days in a microlight aircraft.
• Wing Commanders Rahul Monga and Anil Kumar achieved this feat. They achieved a speed of 21.092 kmph bettering the record of 16.53 kmph set by Colin Bodil of the UK in 2001.
• The aim was to circumnavigate the earth (minimum distance of 36,889 km) in the shortest period of time.
• World Badminton Championships
• China won the Mens and Womens titles, in the championships held at Kuala Lumpur.
• Men: Lin Dan
• Women: Zhu Lin