Finance Ministry suggests alternative formula for gas pricing

The Finance Ministry has rejected the natural gas pricing formula suggested by the Rangarajan Committee and has instead suggested an alternative formula based on wellhead prices charged by suppliers in the region (Oman, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Malaysia) for long-term contracts.

Prices calculated by finance ministry as per the alternative formula may be lower than the Rangarajan Committee figure. Wellhead prices do not take into account transportation costs — a significant price escalator in the case of Liquified Natural Gas. The ministry has made this suggestion in a note for the consideration of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) while deciding the road map for gas pricing.

Death toll crosses 200 in Banglasdesh Building collapse

The death toll from building collapse in Savar, in the outskirts of Dhaka, reached 219 on sday as the rescuers continued frantic efforts to save those trapped inside the rubble of the building, for the second day.

Rana Plaza, a nine-storey building collapsed in Savar, in the outskirts of Dhaka, with a number of people inside. The initial reports says that at least 200 persons died.

Musharraf formally arrested in held in Benazir case

Former President Pervez Musharraf was formally arrested by the Pakistani investigators over the murder of Benazir Bhutto after an Anti-terrorism court directed them to include him in the probe into the 2007 assassination. A team of officials from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) formally arrested Gen. Musharraf at his palatial farmhouse on the outskirts of Islamabad, which was declared a “sub-jail” after he was remanded in judicial custody last week

Shamshad Begum died at the age of 94

Shamshad Begum, who was one of the first playback singers in the Hindi film industry, died at her residence after prolonged illness. She was 94.

She had a distinctive voice and was a versatile artist, singing over 6000 songs in Hindi and the Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil and Punjabi languages. She worked with maestros including Naushad Ali, S. D. Burman, C. Ramchandra and O. P. Nayyar.  Her songs from the 1940s to the early 1970s remain popular and continue to be remixed.

Etihad will invest in Jet Airways

The Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways will pick up a 24 per in the Jet Airways, at a cost of Rs. 2,058 crore ($379 million). The foreign direct investment norms for the airline industry were liberalised in September last year.

The Board of Directors of the Indian carrier approved the stake sale in terms of which Etihad will be investing $600 million, including $70 million paid to Jet for its landing rights at London Heathrow airport. Within the next six months, the gulf carrier will also buy a majority stake in Jet’s frequent flyer programme, JetPrivilege, for $150 million.

Chinese troops intrusion in Indian territory

Several dozen Chinese soldiers have set up a remote camp some 10 km (6 miles) inside the Indian territory in the high altitude Himalayan desert of Ladakh.

However to reduce tensions between the two countries, New Delhi favours diplomatic strings to get Beijing to revert to status quo prior to this incursion.

India has sent an equal complement of the Indian Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel. They are camping 200 yards away from the Chinese in a classic face-to-face posture. A reluctant Chinese side agreed to an Indian request for a second flag meeting in a week to resolve the issue.

In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin basically made three points, besides calling on the Chinese to revert to status quo. He admitted it was now a face-to-face situation, but localised; this was not the first time such an incident has happened and; the accent was on resolving the stand-off peacefully through mechanisms agreed upon by the two sides.

NASA launches three smartphone-powered satellites into space

NASA has successfully launched three smartphones into space to snap images of Earth, and the handsets may prove to be the lowest-cost satellites ever flown into space.

Each smartphone is housed in a standard cubesat structure, measuring about 4 inches square. The smartphone acts as the satellite’s onboard computer. Its sensors are used for attitude determination and its camera for Earth observation.

The smartphones destined to become low-cost satellites rode to space on Sunday aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corporation’s Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.

The trio of “PhoneSats” is operating in orbit, and may prove to be the lowest-cost satellites ever flown in space. The goal of NASA’s PhoneSat mission is to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone can be used as the main flight avionics of a capable, yet very inexpensive, satellite.

NASA engineers kept the total cost of the components for the three prototype satellites in the PhoneSat project between $3,500 and $7,000 by using primarily commercial hardware and keeping the design and mission objectives to a minimum.

The hardware for this mission is the Google-HTC Nexus One smartphone running the Android operating system.

NASA added items a satellite needs that the smartphones do not have — a larger, external lithium-ion battery bank and a more powerful radio for messages it sends from space. The smartphone’s ability to send and receive calls and text messages has been disabled.