Two of Britain’s most senior ministers arrived in India yesterday to seek stronger trade and investment links with the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague and British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne landed in the financial capital, Mumbai, to start their two-day visit, which is expected to focus on forging deeper defense, infrastructure and other ties between the two countries.
“The excitement here is matched by new confidence among international investors abroad in the future of the Indian economy,” Osborne was set to tell business leaders in Mumbai yesterday, according to speech excerpts released by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
“It is a measure of the ambition and drive and pace of the new government of Prime Minister Modi, that this complete turnaround in sentiment about the Indian economy has been achieved in just seven short weeks since that stunning election victory,” the text added.
The pair’s visit follows close on the heels of the French foreign minister, as Western governments rush to court Modi and his right-wing team following their landslide victory in May.
Reform-minded Modi has raised hopes for foreign investors with his pledges to open up India’s stumbling economy, spur investment and launch major infrastructure projects.
European governments and the US boycotted Modi for a decade over deadly religious riots in 2002 while he was running his home state of Gujarat.
However, they are now redoubling their efforts to make up for lost time, with Russia’s deputy prime minister and US Senator John McCain also visiting in recent weeks.
Osborne is set to announce in his speech that Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla is to invest up to £100 million (US$171 million) in pharmaceutical research in Britain, while automaker Mahindra and Mahindra is to invest US$34 million in electric car development in Britain.
Osborne and Hague are to travel to New Delhi to hold talks today with Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Indian Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley among others, before meeting Modi.
The pair said they wanted British companies to win contracts to help build 100 new Indian cities pledged by Modi in his election manifesto, and to develop new roads, railways and ports.
“We want ... our defence and aerospace companies to help bring India more cutting-edge technology, skills and jobs,” they wrote in the Times of India yesterday.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of