French electronic composer Jean Michel Jarre has held talks with Downing Street officials in recent months, the British prime minister’s office confirmed yesterday, about setting up business operations in London.
The talks come after France’s highest court struck down a proposed 75 percent tax rate on individual income above 1 million euros (US$1.3 million) a year, a plan which saw the republic’s biggest film star, Gerard Depardieu, relocate to Belgium.
“Jean Michel Jarre visited Downing Street to meet with officials about ‘Tech City,’ London’s media and technology hub,” a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said.
“There are a growing number of businesses and entrepreneurs from across the world who want to be part of the technology cluster in east London and we are keen for that to continue,” he said.
The 64-year-old pioneer — known for his spectacular concerts and whose hit albums include Oxygene (1976) and Equinoxe (1978) — has a company, Jarre Technologies, which makes products like the AeroPad One, a dock speaker for iPods, iPads and iPhones.
Tech City is a project to transform the Old Street roundabout in east London and its environs into a European center of media and technology innovation for blue-chip firms, investors and start-up companies.
Cameron announced a £50 million (US$80 million) injection into the project last month.
“The UK is in a global race and I am determined that we as a government continue doing everything we can to equip the UK to compete and thrive in that race,” he said.
Cameron’s coalition government has set up policies it says are aimed at making Britain the “first choice” for entrepreneurs and investors.
They include the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, introduced in April last year, which provides 50 percent tax relief for the first £100,000 seed investment.
The 75 percent tax rate in France was a flagship promise of the election campaign that saw Francois Hollande defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election in May last year. It is due to take effect next year.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not