- Union Minister for Water Resources, Uma Bharti has announced the inauguration of 231 projects to clean the River Ganga. These will take off today in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana and Delhi. The projects are in pursuance of Prime Minister Modi’s electoral promise to clean up the river.
- The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has launched ‘MySpeed’ mobile application for measuring real time mobile Internet speed that consumers get. This is the first application to be launched under the Digital India initiative, which is directly trying to tackle the issue of poor data speeds.
- The Finance Ministry has deferred by a year the implementation of the income computation and disclosure standards (ICDS). The ICDS were earlier meant to come into effect from April 1, 2015, but will now come into force from April 1, 2016. ICDS are tax accounting standards to help compute taxable income of assessees following the mercantile system of accounting.
- The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) has signed a two-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Australian Anti-Doping Agency (ASADA) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to bolster India’s anti-doping programme. A detailed project plan has been established to ensure India implements a more effective anti-doping programme that is fully compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code. WADA will oversee the partnership, including the timeline set for the project, and assist with the implementation of the work required.
- The Iraq Inquiry’s report regarding Britain’s role in invading Iraq 13 years ago, has been published. The report is named after its committee, headed by Sir John Chilcot. The Chilcot Report has stated that then Prime Minister Tony Blair‘s decision to go to war was based on faulty intelligence reports, and there was no ‘imminent threat’ from Saddam Hussein. No weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found despite the war that wreaked destruction in all of Iraq. The war against Iraq began in 2003, led by a United States coalition with UK, Australia and Poland. The invasion toppled the government of Saddam Hussein. A lengthy insurgency took the place of his government, and has ramifications even today.
- Argentine footballer Lionel Messi has been sentenced to 21 months in prison and fined 2 million Euro, after being found guilty of tax fraud. He has been a Spanish citizen for five years, having played for the Barcelona football club, and is unlikely to serve his sentence, as Spanish law allows tax court sentences under two years to be served on probation.
- Roger Federer beat Marin Cilic of Croatia to cruise into the Wimbledon Semi Finals this year. The other qualifiers are Britain’s Andy Murray, Czech Tomas Berdych and Canadian Milos Raonic. In the women’s Semi Final, World No. 1, Serena Williams meets Russian Elena Vesnina, while Venus Williams meets German Angelique Kerber.
- Oscar Pistorius, the South African Paralympian has been given a six year jail term for murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp three years ago. Several mitigating factors were taken into account, including his claim that he thought he was shooting an intruder.
- Christian believers have unveiled a giant Noah’s Ark in Kentucky, USA. The attraction is 510 feet long, and costed $100 million. Inside the ark are museum-style exhibits-displays of Noah’s family along with rows of cages containing animal replicas, including dinosaurs.
- Scientists have discovered the first record of a fossil facial tumour in the jaw of a 69 million-year-old dwarf duck-billed dinosaur. The scans suggested that the dinosaur suffered from a condition known as an ‘ameloblastoma’, a benign, non-cancerous growth known to afflict the jaws of humans and other mammals, and some modern reptiles too.
- An unusual spider specie has been found near the home town of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and named after him. Marquez was a Colombian author known for his books, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982 for his novels and short stories.
Today’s Quiz
The women semifinals are over. Finals – Williams v. Kerber.