Sun TV shares crash due to Maran Issue !

India’s telecom scandal has taken more casualties in the stock market.On Thursday, the share price of Sun TV Network Ltd. fell 28% to close at 272 rupees ($6) and that of airline SpiceJet Ltd. fell 16% to 34.50 rupees (77 cents), on news that a petition was filed linking former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran to an ongoing corruption probe.Dayanidhi Maran’s brother Kalanithi Maran owns Sun TV and has a large stake in SpiceJet. A spokeswoman for the Central Bureau of Investigation said Dayanidhi Maran is part of their wide-ranging preliminary investigation into the telecom scandals which have been going on since January. She added that no new action involving Dayanidhi Maran has been taken in recent days.Dayanidhi Maran is currently India’s textiles minister and served as telecom minister from February 2004 until May 2007. He was succeeded by A. Raja, who has been arrested along with 13 others in relation to the alleged rigged sale of telecom licenses in 2008. Dayanidhi Maran and Mr. Raja both belong to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party.The petition filed by a Delhi-based civil interest nonprofit on Wednesday, asked the Supreme Court to accept new evidence including a piece that ran in Tehelka magazine last week as part of their ongoing public interest litigation case on the telecom scam. This case, which was filed in 2010 has played a key role in keeping a spotlight on the scandal.The Tehelka story raises questions about the telecom license issued by Dayanidhi Maran’s ministry in 2006 to mobile phone operator Aircel Ltd., which had been acquired by a Malaysian company in late 2005. In 2007, a unit of the Malaysian company made investments in broadcasting company Sun Direct Pvt. which is co-owned by Kalanithi Maran. Tehelka alleges that the grant of telecom license and investments in Sun Direct are related.Pranav Sachdeva, one of the lawyers who signed the petition, said they want the Central Bureau of Investigation to look into these allegations.Dayanidhi Maran denied Tehelka’s accusations, saying he did not favor any company during his tenure as telecom minister. Aircel declined to comment.

Windows 8 -Preview

Microsoft has offered its most extensive preview so far of the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.

The new designs are heavily influenced by Windows Phone, with 'tiles' on a new homescreen that the company hopes will be useful for both tablets and traditional PC setups.Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division of Microsoft, said that although the new operating system should be equally at home on very different platforms, it was important that it was also "no compromise".Bridging the gap between mobile and PC, Windows 8 will support both HTML apps, similar to the apps available on smartphones, and also the traditional applications that are familiar to users of Windows 7.Details on more precise specifications and when the new software will ship are, however, not yet known. Microsoft has said that the new version of Windows will be less processor-hungry than Windows 7, and that more details will be revealed at a September developers conference.
Watch the video below

SONY PlayStation Store is back !

Sony flipped the switch tonight to bring the last remaining piece of its PlayStation Network back online, the PlayStation Store.The company announced the service's return in a blog post, saying that customers once again have access to the store to buy games and movies, rent movies, and download other content for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. Music Unlimited by Qriocity, Sony's streaming music service, is also back online. The service's restoration comes two days later than Sony initially promised last month, when it said all services of PSN would be fully accessible by May 31.As the company warned earlier this week, customers in Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea still do not yet have access to any of the restored services.The return of the PlayStation Store follows a partial restoration of some PSN services two weeks ago, after Sony spent more than three weeks rebuilding the security of its online entertainment network following a massive security breach.

Raja then , Maran now !

UPA government's DMK headache shows no sign of going away, with the BJP on Tuesday raising the issue of alleged misuse of office by yet another nominee of M Karunanidhi in the Union Cabinet, textiles minister Dayanidhi Maran. Reacting to reports that Maran as telecom minister in UPA-1 allegedly coerced the promoter of cellular service provider Aircel to sell out to Malaysian company Maxis, BJP said the minister as well as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh owed an explanation. BJP spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad also underlined the allegation that a subsidiary of Maxis, Astro All Asia Network, invested Rs 830 crore in Sun Direct TV -- Maran's family concern -- soon after the Aircel-Maxis deal to demand an explanation from the textiles minister. With the principal Opposition raising the pitch on alleged corruption by DMK ministers and stressing that the PM kept defending A Raja, another DMK nominee to have handled the telecom ministry, even after CBI had launched investigations against him, Congress distanced itself from the controversy over Maran. "If a question has been asked of Dayanidhi Maran, he is the best person to answer it," the Congress spokesperson said. Maran has denied the charge and has slapped a legal suit against publications that levelled the charge. His legal counsel said that C Sivasankaran, promoter of Aircel, wanted to sell his company since 2004. He also said Maran had no share holding or interest in any form in Sun Direct TV and was in no way connected with any of its business transactions. 
BJP was undeterred by the legal notices sent by Maran. "He should clarify, is there a conflict of interest here or not." The party added that the PM clarify his position on the issue. "As you all know, the authority of determining pricing of spectrum was taken out of the purview of group of ministers at Maran's instance," Prasad said. He also emphasized that the PM kept defending Raja even after CBI had started probing the 2G scam. 

Three eclipses in june,july

Over the next month, the world will experience three eclipses: two partial solar eclipses a month apart and one total lunar eclipse exactly in between, and it all starts with a so-called "midnight" eclipse of the sun.

A solar eclipse at midnight? How is such a thing possible?It can happen near midsummer in the high Arctic, the land of the midnight sun. And it will happen this week on June 1 and 2, visible in the northernmost reaches of North America, Europe, and Asia.These two solar eclipse sky maps available here detail what observers could see during some of the upcoming eclipses of the sun and moon in June.'Midnight' solar eclipse of June 2 .The eclipse begins on Thursday, June 2, at dawn in northern China and Siberia, then moves across the Arctic, crossing the International Date Line and ending in the early evening of Wednesday, June 1, in northeastern Canada.That’s right: The eclipse begins on Thursday and ends on Wednesday because of the International Date Line. Because observers in northern Russia and Scandinavia will be observing it over the North Pole, they will actually see it in what is, for them, the middle of the night of June 1 and 2.
Solar eclipse no one will see on July 1 Exactly a month later, on Friday, July 1, an equally bizarre eclipse will occur in the Antarctic.Because this is the southern winter, the sun will be below the horizon for almost all of Antarctica, except for a small uninhabited stretch of coast due south of Madagascar. The only place the eclipse will clear the horizon will be in a small area of the Southern Ocean, far to the south of South Africa.Chances are that this eclipse will be witnessed only by penguins and sea birds.