BLACK MONEY Kamal: OK up to 'certain level'

Dhaka, June 23 (bdnews24.com) ? The option to whiten black money is acceptable to a 'certain level', says the head of a parliamentary watchdog.

"There are two types of black money ? illegal and immoral (sic). Neither of them is acceptable after a certain level," A H M Mostafa Kamal told reporters after a meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on the finance ministry on Thursday.

He said the committee members reached a consensus on recommending the ministry to give the black money holders a chance to whiten it through investing in the share market.

Finance minister A M A Muhith, in the budget for 2001-12 fiscal year, proposed allowing black money in the government treasury bonds, but not in the share market.

The government had kept the money-whitening provision for four sectors, including the capital market, in 2009-10 fiscal year, when around Tk 4.23 billion black money was invested in the market.

Asked whether the committee is in favour of giving a chance to whiten the type of black money for which BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia's son Arafat Rahman Coco was convicted earlier in the day, Kamal denied comment on the issue.

Earlier in the day, Dhaka's Third Special Judge's Court sentenced Coco, the youngest son of the opposition leader, to six years in jail and slapped a fine of Tk 190.41 million in a money laundering case.

OTHER PROPOSALS

According to Kamal, the panel proposed to retain the tax at source on the commissions the brokerage houses get at its previous rate.

"We proposed not to increase the tax at source on the commissions brokerage houses get and to decrease the corporate tax on banks, insurances and other financial institutions from 42 to 40 percent," he said.

The finance minister proposed to increase the tax from 0.05 to 0.1 percent.

Kamal said the committee proposed to withdraw three percent tax on share premium and make it mandatory for the organisations enjoying tax holiday to offload 25-30 percent of their paid up capital.

He also said the standing committee would hold a meeting on the report of the share scam probe committee, formed to investigate the December-January share market debacle.

Several steps were initiated following a report submitted by the panel, headed by Bangladesh Krishi Bank chief Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled. One such step was to overhaul the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Black hole consumes star

WASHINGTON, June 20 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A monster black hole shredded a Sun-like star, producing a strangely long-lasting flash of gamma rays that probably won't be seen again in a million years, astronomers reported on Thursday.

That is definitely not the norm for gamma ray bursts, energetic blasts that typically flare up and end in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, often the sign of the death throes of a collapsing star.

"This is truly different from any explosive event we have seen before," said Joshua Bloom of the University of California-Berkeley, a co-author of research on the blast published in the journal Science.

Initially spied on March 28 by NASA's Swift spacecraft, which is trolling the universe for gamma ray bursts, this particular flash has lasted more than two months and is still going on, Bloom said in a telephone interview.

What makes this even stranger is that the black hole, located in the constellation Draco (The Dragon) about 4 billion light years, or 24 sextillion miles (38.62 sextillion km) -- 24 followed by 21 zeroes -- from Earth, was sitting quietly, not eating much, when a star about the mass of our Sun moved into range.

"We have this otherwise dormant black hole, not gobbling up an appreciable amount of mass, and along comes this star which just happens to be on some orbit which puts it close to the black hole," Bloom said.

FEEDING FRENZY

"This was a black hole which was otherwise quiescent and it sort of has an impulsive feeding frenzy on this one star," he said.

Bloom figures this may happen once per black hole per million years.

This kind of behavior is different from what active black holes generally do, which is to suck in everything their vast gravity can pull in, even light. Most galaxies, including our Milky Way, are thought to harbor black holes in their hearts.

Black holes are invisible, but astronomers can infer their existence because the material they pull in lights up before it gets sucked in.

In this case, though, the black hole feasted on one star -- about the same mass as our Sun -- with such relish that it tore the star apart before gulping it down. As it did so, the black hole emitted powerful gamma ray jets from its center as bits of the dying star were turned into energy.

The black hole's gravitational pull was so great that it exerted what's called a tidal disruption on the passing star.

Astronomers could use this observation to help them learn more about how black holes grow, Bloom said.

"We still don't understand how black holes and the universe grow," he said. "We think most black holes start off as being no more than the mass of our Sun ... How they go from 10 solar masses to a billion solar masses is critical."

There is a strong connection between the mass of black holes and the mass of the galaxies that host them, with black holes feeding on gas and stars that come near.

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