Toyota building 2 battery plants in Japan to rev up green-car production

TOKYO (AP) _ Toyota plans to build two plants in Japan to produce batteries for environmentally friendly gas-electric hybrid vehicles, a news report said Friday. The joint venture that Toyota has with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

, the electronics company that makes Panasonic brand products, will set up the battery plants, The Nikkei business daily reported without citing sources. One plant will produce nickel-metal hydride batteries while another will produce lithium-ion batteries, which are planned for future ecological cars, the report said.

Toyota Motor Corp. spokesman Paul Nolasco did not have an immediate comment on the report.

Japan's top automaker, which leads the industry in gas-electric hybrids with its hit Prius, has said it will rev up hybrid sales to 1 million a year sometime after 2010. Hybrids reduce pollution and emissions that are linked to global warming by switching between a gas engine and an electric motor to deliver better mileage than comparable standard cars.

But they are still a relatively niche market. Toyota's Prius, which has been on sale for more than a decade, recently reached cumulative sales of 1 million vehicles.

Lithium-ion batteries, now more common in laptops, produce more power and are smaller than nickel-metal hydride batteries, which are now used the Prius. Toyota has said the lithium-ion batteries may be used in plug-in hybrids, which can be recharged from a home electrical outlet.

The world's other major automakers are also working on environmentally-friendly cars, and the race is on to produce the best batteries to power them. Earlier this week, Honda Motor Co.

, Japan's second-biggest automaker, said it will boost hybrid sales to 500,000 a year by sometime after 2010. Honda said it will introduce a new model sold solely as a hybrid next year, so the Tokyo-based company will have four hybrids in its lineup.

Nissan Motor Co., which still hasn't developed its own hybrid system for commercial sale, said it will have its original hybrid by 2010.

Nissan is focusing more on electric vehicles, promising them for the U.S.

and Japanese markets by 2010. Nissan said this week its joint venture with electronics maker NEC Corp.

will start mass-producing lithium-ion batteries in 2009 at a plant in Japan.

Six bombs in 15 minutes leave at least 80 dead in Jaipur

A series of bomb blasts has claimed at least 80 lives in a popular tourist district of the city of Jaipur in north India.
Officials said that the death toll was expected to rise after the country’s deadliest terror attack in two years.

More than 150 were injured in six explosions that tore through Jaipur over the course of about 15 minutes, according to police. Television news pictures showed pools of blood amid heaps of mangled bicycles and rickshaws in areas that usually draw bustling evening crowds that regularly include hundreds of tourists.

There was no immediate news of any foreign casualties after the attack, which was aimed at some of the city’s busiest areas, including market places and temples, during the rush hour.

Officials at the British High Commission in Delhi, about 160 miles away from Jaipur, said that they were monitoring the situation closely but that telephone lines to the city’s Sawai Mann Singh hospital, where the injured and dead were being taken, were jammed.

Rajasthan state’s Home Minister, Gulab Chand Kataria, told reporters: “We have information that 80 people have died. One suspect was detained and is being investigated.”

Jaipur, gateway to Rajasthan’s forts and palaces and known as the Pink City because of the colour of many of its buildings, usually attracts about 2,000 Britons at this time of year.

Eyewitnesses said they heard six blasts in quick succession at around 7.30pm local time in the city’s walled district. The explosions triggered a stampede in the narrow streets of the old town, they said. “People started running around and I followed them,” Anil Garg told NDTV, the broadcaster. “There are huge traffic jams. I am very scared.”

Among the dead were a 10-year-old boy at the Hanuman (monkey god) temple, a bride in a bright red sari still wearing marriage bangles and a young man covered in blood who was left hanging over the twisted wreckage of a bicycle rickshaw.

Rajasthan’s head of police, Amorjot Singh Gill, said the incident was obviously a terror attack. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, issued a statement condemning the blasts and appealing for calm.

Cities across India, including Delhi and Bombay, have been placed on alert. As many as four other bombs were planted in Jaipur, but failed to explode, reports said.

There was no official comment on potential suspects and no groups had taken responsibility last night. India has been plagued by sporadic bombings in recent years and officials routinely point the finger at foreign-based Islamist terrorists or, more rarely, fundamentalist Hindu groups hoping to trigger communal violence.

There were suggestions from Indian security sources that the latest attacks may have been timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the Pokharan-II nuclear tests, during which India displayed its atomic arsenal, an act taken as a provocative affront by Pakistan at the time. They also suggested that the intensity of the blasts tallied with the use of explosives known to have been adopted by Islamic groups, though they stressed it was too early to make judgments.

India’s Foreign Minister was due to travel to Pakistan, which also lays claim to Kashmir, later this week and there has been a rise in skirmishes in the disputed Himalayan state.

The most recent serious incident was an attack in the southern city of Hyderabad, which claimed 43 lives last August. In October there was another attack in Jaipur, in which two people were killed.

Indian charged for AP girl's murder

A 24-year-old Indian national charged with the sensational murder of Samrajyo Jyothirmayee Vempala, a student from Andhra Pradesh at the Wolverhampton University, will be produced in the Birmingham Magistrates Court today (May 9).

Vijaywada-origin Jyothirmayee, 23, had succumbed to severe head injuries on Tuesday (May 6) while the suspect Nagaraja Kumar Nalluri, also an Indian student, was found seriously injured in the same private accommodation where she was living in Handsworth, a suburb of Birmingham.

Nalluri was admitted to the City Hospital, Birmingham, and arrested soon after he was released on Thursday (may 8). The West Midlands Police told that he has since been cooperating in the murder inquiry. The motive for Jyothirmayee's murder is expected to be revealed when the charges are read out in the court.

Jyothirmayee was enrolled in a postgraduate degree in Health Sciences at the University of Wolverhampton, 11 km from Handsworth. The university, which like many other British varsities maintains offices and agents in New Delhi and other parts of India to recruit high fee-paying students, is sending a representative to meet the family of the deceased student in Vijaywada.

Expressing the university's deepest sympathies, its marketing and communications director Ashar Ehsan said in a statement: "Feedback from fellow students and tutors indicate that she (Jyothirmayee) was a very bright and enthusiastic student.

"She was a model international student, who will be missed by all, here at the University. We have offered our full support in this time of grief to the immediate family and have been in contact with the family to offer this support," he said.

Ehsan said that the university planned to hold a special day of condolence today in the presence of Mrs J D Pavel, Consul General of India in Birmingham, representatives of the European Telegu Association and members of the local community.

The statement said: "The circumstances of this tragic event that took place in Handsworth, Birmingham, in private accommodation, are currently being investigated by West Midlands Police, UK, and the University is fully cooperating with them. The police, meanwhile, have discounted burglary as the motive behind the murder.