Category World News

Ratan Tata, ‘titan’ of Indian business, dies at 86

Ratan Tata, a former chairman of Indian conglomerate Tata Sons, died at a Mumbai hospital on Wednesday night. He was 86.

Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran confirmed Tata’s death and described him in a statement as his “friend, mentor, and guide”. He did not provide a cause of death.

Tata was admitted this week to the Breach Candy Hospital in south Mumbai, the city where he lived. Soon after he was hospitalised, Tata issued a statement on Monday saying there was no cause for concern regarding his health and that he was undergoing checkups for age-related medical conditions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Tata as a visionary leader and a compassionate and extraordinary human being.

“He provided stable leadership to one of India’s oldest and most prestigious business houses. At the same time, his contribution went far beyond boardrooms,” Modi said on X.

“Tata endeared himself to several people, thanks to his humility, kindness and an unwavering commitment to making our society better,” Modi said in his tributes, referring to his philanthropy work.

Industrialist Harsh Goenka called him a “titan”.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Tata left behind an extraordinary business and philanthropic legacy, and he was instrumental in mentoring and developing modern business leadership in India.

“My last meeting with Ratan Tata at Google, we talked about the progress of Waymo and his vision was inspiring to hear,” Pichai said on X.

“He deeply cared about making India better,” he added.

Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, said, “It is a very sad day for India and India Inc. Ratan Tata’s passing away is a big loss, not just to the Tata Group, but to every Indian. ”

“With him gone, all we can do is to commit to emulating his example,” Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra Group, said on X.

Tata received the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s most distinguished civilian awards, in 2000 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2008.

Tata Group’s sprawling empire

Tata Group is a sprawling collection of nearly 100 companies, including the country’s largest automaker, the largest private steel company and a leading outsourcing firm. The companies employ more than 350,000 people worldwide. In June 2008, Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for $2. 3bn.

Tata pioneered commercial aviation in India when it launched an airline in 1932 that later became Air India. The government later took it over.

Tata Group bought state-owned Air India in 2021. It also started a full-service carrier, Vistara, with Singapore Airlines, but recently merged it with Air India.

Tata companies include Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power and the information technology company, Tata Consultancy Services.

In 2009, the company surprised the automobile industry by launching Tata Nano, a tiny vehicle with a rear engine costing about 100,000 rupees (then $2,000). Publicised as a “people’s car”, it could seat up to five adults. Tata had said it would provide a “safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport” to millions of middle- and lower-income Indian consumers.

However, due to the low sales of the tiny car, the company stopped its production in 2018.

Tata graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in architecture. He joined the Tata group in 1961 and succeeded JRD Tata as chairman of Tata Sons upon the latter’s retirement in 1991. He took the helm of the conglomerate just as India embarked on major reforms that opened up its economy to the world and ushered in an era of high growth.

Harris campaign hits $1bn in fundraising: Reports

US Vice President Kamala Harris has pulled in more than $1bn in fundraising since becoming her party’s presidential nominee in July, according to US media reports.

While the Harris campaign has yet to disclose the exact total, several sources familiar with the figures, cited by The New York Times and NBC News, confirmed she has surpassed the $1bn mark. It includes funds directed to her campaign as well as to related Democratic Party committees.

The dizzying fundraising surge gives Harris far more cash than her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, to spend in the final leg of a neck-and-neck race.

In August, Trump and the Republican Party brought in $130m, leaving them with $295m in cash available compared with Harris and the Democrats’ $404m.

Harris is also poised to greatly exceed Trump’s September fundraising total of $160m, having raised $72m from three end-of-month events, reports The New York Times.

However, Republicans are making up some ground via super political action committees (PACs), organisations that can pool unlimited funds for candidates without directly coordinating with their campaigns.

So far in the 2024 election cycle, the largest super PAC supporting Trump has outspent the largest super PAC backing Harris by tens of millions of dollars, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit focused on campaign finance and transparency.

Too close to call

Harris’s deep campaign war chest is likely to boost her advertising and operations in battleground states in the month before the November 5 elections, which polls show is currently a toss-up.

While Harris retains a slight national lead in the polls, most of the seven key swing states that could decide the election are too close to call.

A new poll by InsiderAdvantage for Pennsylvania, the swing state with the greatest potential to sway the election, shows Trump up by two points.

Millions evacuate prior to Hurricane Milton making landfall in Florida

Millions of Florida residents have fled the US state as Hurricane Milton approaches, with officials there warning that those who stayed would “die” and that single-story homes would turn into “a coffin”.

“We are a few hours away from an epic catastrophe,” Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor told CNN. The Tampa metropolitan area, home to more than 3 million people, is directly in the hurricane’s path, as is a vast swath of Florida’s western coast.

Forecasters have described the hurricane, which is expected to make landfall either Wednesday night or the early hours of Thursday, in apocalyptic terms, warning it would be the “storm of the century”. The words emphasised the power of Milton in a state that is no stranger to hurricanes, having already been battered by a series of devastating storms in recent years.

The National Hurricane Center said Milton would cause an “extremely life-threatening situation” and is expected to bring damaging winds and torrential rainfall that will extend inland and outside the forecast cone. It weakened slightly from a Category 5 storm to a Category 4 as it approached the west coast of Florida, but is still extremely powerful.

“Winds will begin to increase along the west coast of Florida by this afternoon,” the NHC said. “Preparations, including evacuation if told to do so, should be rushed. ”

“I am nervous. This is something we just went through with the other storm – ground saturated, still recovering from that,” Sarasota resident Randy Prior, who owns a pool business, told AFP.

Prior, 36, says he plans to ride out the storm at home, after recently toughing out Hurricane Helene, which flooded the same western parts of Florida before wreaking havoc across remote areas of North Carolina and further inland.

“I own a business, so once the storm stops, I’ve got to be here, help clean up, get everything back to normal. But this one’s a big one for sure. ”

Tampa resident Luis Santiago said he would “close up everything” and leave.

Airlines added flights out of Tampa, Orlando, Fort Myers and Sarasota, as highways clogged up with escaping traffic and petrol station pumps ran dry.

Argentina’s Congress fails to overturn Milei’s university funding veto

Argentina’s lower house of Congress has failed to reverse a presidential veto of legislation that would have shored up public university funding – a win for the country’s libertarian leader after mass protests opposing university cuts in recent months.

Wednesday’s vote upheld President Javier Milei’s veto of a bill that would have brought public university funding in line with Argentina’s inflation rate, one of the world’s highest. Argentina faces an economic crisis with annual inflation close to 240 percent and more than half of its population in poverty.

Thousands of people have demonstrated against austerity measures that Milei has introduced since his election win last year.

Milei, a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, has pledged to gut public spending and derided the education system, calling the university funding bill “unjustified”. He argued that the law would jeopardise a fiscal balance he has promoted to tackle the long-running economic crisis.

Argentina’s health, pension and education spending have been the hardest hit by the cuts. University salaries have lost about 40 percent of their purchasing power due to inflation.

Voting in favour of the university funding bill were 160 parliamentarians with 84 against and five abstentions. The tally fell six votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to reverse the president’s veto. Milei’s far-right party makes up only a small minority in Congress, but it has formed alliances with conservative lawmakers to prevent the opposition from reaching the two-thirds threshold needed to pass the legislation.

Students have been calling for more investment in public universities, which are free to all. Thousands rallied outside Congress in central Buenos Aires earlier this month, holding up signs with slogans such as: “How can we have freedom without education? ”

Psychology graduate Ana Hoqui said she showed up to the protest to defend the education system, which enabled her to pursue a career in medicine.

“I could never have trained without the free public university system,” she told the AFP news agency. “That’s why I came to defend it because I feel it’s in danger. ”

EU members approve $38bn loan for Ukraine backed by Russian assets

European Union envoys have agreed to provide Ukraine up to 35 billion euros ($38bn) as part of the bloc’s share in a larger planned loan from the Group of Seven (G7) nations, backed by frozen Russian Central Bank assets, a statement from the Council of the EU says.

Kyiv is desperate for funds as it seeks to prop up its economy, equip its military and keep its electricity grid functioning this winter after ferocious bombardments by Moscow’s forces.

The EU’s loan – which was signed off by a majority of ambassadors at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday – is part of a bigger $50bn initiative agreed by G7 powers in June.

The EU is the first of the G7 powers to announce how much it is putting forward as its share of the plan and is still waiting for others, including the United States and Britain, to do their part.

The European Parliament is expected to approve the loan at a sitting later in October, enabling it to be paid out next year.

In June, the G7 and EU announced they would provide a $50bn loan to help Ukraine, serviced by profits generated by Russian assets immobilised in the West. These assets were frozen shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The EU has frozen roughly $235bn of Russian Central Bank funds, the vast bulk of immobilised Russian assets worldwide.

About 90 percent of the funds in the EU are held by the international deposit organisation Euroclear, based in Belgium.

The G7 plan seeks to leverage the interest earned on the assets to get more funds to Ukraine and will replace an EU scheme currently in place that funnelled $1. 7bn to Kyiv in July.

However, there has been a delay in implementing the G7 loan as the US had sought guarantees from the EU that the Russian assets would remain frozen.

Currently, EU member states have to agree every six months to extend the asset freeze.

Could the Middle East be heading for a new era?

More than one year on, Israel’s war on Gaza shows no sign of abating.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has escalated into a regional war.

Israeli boots are on Lebanese soil and Israeli warplanes are bombarding parts of the country’s south and east, as well as the capital, Beirut.

Hezbollah is firing barrages of rockets into Israel almost daily.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels are targeting ships in the Red Sea and earlier this week launched missiles at central Israel.

And other Iran-linked armed groups in Iraq have targeted Israel.

A range of diplomatic efforts has proved unsuccessful.

So, what’s next?

Presenter: Cyril Vanier

Guests:

Bassam Haddad – Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at George Mason University

Raja Khalidi – Director general of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute