Tata Power to build India's first floating solar plant

MUMBAI: Tata Power on Tuesday said it will be building the country's first low-cost, high-efficiency floating solar plant in partnership with an Australian company which invented the technology.

Sunengy, the Australian company, and Tata Power will begin constructing a pilot plant that uses the Liquid Solar Array (LSA) technology from August this year, a press release issued here said.

LSA uses traditional concentrated photovoltaic technology but rather than mounting the cells on a frame, it is made to float on water, making it low-cost, cyclone-proof and less tedious as it does not involve any land acquisition, it added.

"It effectively turns a dam into a very large battery, offering free solar storage and opportunity for improved water resource management," the inventor of the technology and Sunengy's Executive Director aInd Chief Technology Officer, Phil Connor, said.

Tata Power's Executive Director, Banmali Agrawala, confirmed the tie-up for the "nascent technology" and said this is a part of the company's effort to invest in clean and eco-friendly technologies.

Rumors about Dr.Abdul Kalam's Death

NEW DELHI: Abdul Kalam, Abdul Kalam death, Abdul Kalam passed way and other similar key words were among the top 20 searches on Google Trends India on Tuesday after a false rumour that the former president had passed away.

Kalam was also one of the top Twitter trends, which made its way to other social networking services.

It was A P J Abdul Kalam's advisor, Dr Hafiz Saleh Muhammad Alladin, who died on Monday night at the age of 80. It seems that some people mistook the news for the former president's death.

Russia, China call for immediate ceasefire in Libya

BEIJING/MOSCOW: China and Russia have called for an immediate ceasefire in Libya expressing concern over civilian casualties in the military strikes by allied forces in areas controlled by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

"China noticed reports of civilian casualties from the multinational military action against Libya and is very concerned with this," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a news briefing.

"We urge (the sides) to do everything to end the violence," Russia defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov told visiting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates after closed-door talks with him. He added that Moscow believed Libyan civilians had been killed in the Western air strikes.

Both the countries, along with India, Brazil, and South Africa, abstained from last week's UN Security Council vote approving international military involvement in Libya, which aims to protect civilians against Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

China is opposed to "abuse of force causing more civilian casualties".

According to reports from Libya at least 64 Libyans had been killed and 150 others wounded by the missiles and bombs fired by the foreign forces over the weekend.

The majority of Libya's civil airports and seaports were destroyed.

"The UN resolution on no-fly zone over Libya aimed to protect civilians. We oppose abuse of force causing more civilian casualties and more serious humanitarian disasters," said Jiang.

I-T dept issues Rs 616.53cr tax notice to Mahindra Satyam, freezes bank accounts

HYDERABAD: In a fresh twist to the Satyam scam, the Income Tax department on Tuesday froze the bank accounts of Mahindra Satyam after the latter failed to pay a tax of Rs 616.53 crore.

The department issued notice to Mahindra Satyam, the new brand identity of Satyam Computer Services Ltd, to pay Rs 616.53 crore in taxes, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Tuesday.

This demand for was raised on the basis of the income declared by the company during disgraced former chief Ramalinga Raju's time. The department refused to buy the line that Satyam had fictitious income and insisted it was real income.

Mahindra Satyam has now moved the Andhra Pradesh high court for a stay.

The company said the Central Board of Direct Taxes, under Section 119 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, rejected various petitions filed by the company seeking reliefs for reopening of past assessments for the Assessment Years 2003-04 to 2008-09; determining the actual income based on the findings of investigating agencies; and granting a stay on recovery proceedings for the said assessment years.

"Notice under Section 226(3) has been issued by the Additional Commissioner of Income Tax, Hyderabad, for recovery of Rs 616,53,92,660. The company filed a writ petition before the Hon'ble High Court of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, challenging the said impugned order and seeking stay of further proceedings," the company said in a statement.

Shares of Satyam were being quoted at Rs 66.45 on the BSE in early trade on Tuesday.

7 Biggest tech MNCs in India

1. GE
2. Nokia
3. Vodafone Essar
4. HP
5. Samsung
6. LG
7. IBM

(Source: Times Of India)

Doc who did Sadhick Batcha autopsy resigns

CHENNAI: Dr V Dekal, the forensic surgeon who conducted the postmortem on the body of Sadhick Batcha on Friday, has resigned from government service.

Sadhick Batcha, 39, a close aide of former telecom minister A Raja and a person the CBI considered a vital link in the 2G spectrum money trail, was found hanging at his Chennai residence last Thursday. ( Read: Sadiq Batcha was under pressure to turn approver, claims friend )

Dr Dekal, who heads the department of forensic sciences at the Madras Medical College, said he put in his papers on March 3, more than a fortnight before Batcha's suicide, to contest the Tamil Nadu assembly
elections.

"I am yet to make up my mind since the relieving order is yet to come. If it comes soon, I may contest as an independent," he said. Dr Dekal's father was a DMK member.

Dr Dekal had said that asphyxiation was the cause of Batcha's death, but did not elaborate on the details since he was awaiting results of laboratory tests on Batcha's visceral organs.

The immediate police reaction to the suicide had raised several,questions last Thursday. Though Batcha was declared 'brought dead' to Apollo Hospitals, Chennai at 1.20pm, the postmortem was not carried
out the same day.

The police said the process could not be initiated as by the time Batcha's wife came to sign the papers, it was too late. The body was taken to the Government Royapettah Hospital which does not have a forensic expert, and one had to be brought from the Madras Medical College the next day for the autopsy.

Six terrorists had slipped into Mumbai to strike during World Cup

MUMBAI: At a time when the intelligence agencies have warned the Maharashtra police about 17 tickets being bought by possible terror suspects for theWorld Cup final, the city cops are struggling to locate the six terror suspects who had reportedly sneaked into Mumbai in the last six months.

The World Cup final will be played at Wankhede stadium in Mumbai on April 2. Police sources say the plot is a joint operation between the Lashkar-e-Taiba(LeT) and the Jamaat-e-Ahle-Sunnat. Someone linked to this collaboration between the LeT and the Barelvi group has bought 17 tickets for the final, the sources said.

The search into locating the six terrorists has not yielded any result so far with the police saying they are clueless. The terrorists belong to the Bangladesh-based banned outfit, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami ( HuJI) and Pakistan's outlawed outfit, LeT. The city crime branch on September 11 issued sketches of two terror suspects-Kalimuddin Khan alias Rameshwar Pandit and Hafeez Sharif-both bomb makers. On December 23, 2010 the then crime branch chief Himanshu Roy released four new names. While Roy said four terrorists of the LeT have sneaked into the city, he released one mugshot of a terrorist, Waleed Jinnah. "There is specific information that LeT members, identified as Abdul Karim Moosa, Noor Elahi, Jinnah and Mahfooz Alam, have entered the city to cause major destruction and violence," Roy had said.

A senior police official said, "We are working on some intelligence alerts and trying to locate the terrorists. We are working closely with other agencies and coordinating with them." In September 2010, when additional commissioner of police (crime branch) Deven Bharati sent letters to his units, he wrote that the terrorists Kalimuddin Khan alias Rameshwar Pandit and Hafeez Sharif were last seen in Lalbaug, home to one of the city's most celebrated Ganpati pandals. However, the intelligence agencies, say policemen, lost track of them two terrorists after tracking their movements for close to a week from the point of their entry into India through the Bangladeshborder.