NEWS

Tata supplies airframes for Sikorsky S-92

Tata has now supplied a total of 15 airframes to the US based Sikorsky that are designed for Sikorsky S-92 twin-engine helicopters.

Arvind Walia, the Air Vice Marshal (retd) Arvind Walia, who is the regional executive for India and South Asia at Sikorsky said that the company has supplied the cockpits, engines, systems and rotors and the US company has started fitting them in the helicopters.

He fought darkness to give reading solutions for blind

New Delhi, Aug 20 - Over two decades back, visually impaired student Dipendra Manocha stood outside Delhi University's Hindu College waiting to get an application written. After the life-altering struggle of finding a writer, Manocha set himself on a mission - helping the blind read and write.

Manocha, 45, introduced reading aids and support mechanisms for the visually challenged. India has over 15 million blind.

Today Manocha juggles between managing three such organisations that help the blind 'read'.

Government to approve FDI in multi-brand retail in September

According to some indications, the central government in India will soon approve Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail sector in the country but the state governments will have the reight to decide on the issue.

The central approval for the FDI proposal is expected to come in September after the Parliament’s monsoon session. The UPS government has reportedly convinced Trinamool Congress, which was against multi-brand FDI earlier.

Call to limit China's UK nuclear stake

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Chinese companies competing for Horizon reactor project are unlikely to end up with a majority stake
• Chinese companies have joined groups hoping to own one of the UK's biggest nuclear projects

Chinese companies competing for one of the UK's biggest nuclear projects are unlikely to end up with a majority stake in any winning consortium in an attempt to allay concerns about Beijing gaining control of the Horizon reactor programme.

Chinese nuclear companies have joined groups hoping to take ownership of the project, which was put up for sale earlier this year by its current joint owners, German utilities Eon and RWE. The deal represents a big test for large-scale Chinese investment in UK infrastructure projects given the sensitivities surrounding the nuclear industry.

Several people familiar with the sale process said UK officials had signalled a preference for the two competing consortiums' Chinese partners to be minority investors in the project. Restricting their stakes could be difficult, however, particularly as the billions of pounds in funding needed to build the plant will most probably come from Chinese-backed lenders.

"It has always been understood that the Chinese could not have more than 50 per cent, for reasons of public acceptance and political acceptance," said one person familiar with deliberations at the UK energy department.

UK officials insisted the government had no "fixed view" over the final shareholding mix of any bidding consortiums, saying the deal was a matter for Eon and RWE.

Similar concerns have complicated deals involving Chinese state-backed companies in the US and Europe, especially in the energy and telecommunications sectors. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and Germany's decision to phase out its nuclear plants, the UK is one of the few developed economies aggressively pursuing new reactor projects.