New Delhi: Japan Defence Minister Minoru Kihara has proposed an “integrated joint exercise” between the Indian army and the Japanese self-defence forces, with the two countries likely to set up a joint operations command by March 2025, reports Nikkei Asia.
Reporting on the India-Japan 2+2 ministerial talks in New Delhi, Nikkei Asia correspondent Satoshi Iwaki writes that India and Japan discussed revising the 2008 security cooperation joint declaration by the year-end, deepening cybersecurity ties, and conducting joint drills.
Other than emphasising the need for integrated exercises between India and Japan to enhance emergency response capabilities, Kihara discussed Japan’s export of finished defence equipment to India, the transfer of a unified complex radio antenna (UNICORN), and the potential of maintenance of Japanese naval vessels in India, writes Iwaki.
The 2+2 talks promoted defence ties between the two countries in alignment with their strategic interests to realise the vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, with Japan looking to support India’s “Make in India” policy as well, Iwaki adds.
The new evidence provided by the Indian rover Pragyan, a part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, supports the Lunar Magma Ocean (LMO) hypothesis about the Moon’s formation, The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach highlights. The LMO hypothesis suggests that the Moon’s crust formed from magma that cooled roughly 4.4 billion years ago.
The rover, which landed near the lunar south pole, discovered soil with a composition similar to that found in more equatorial regions, reinforcing that the Moon’s crust originated from floating anorthosite rock in a molten ocean, Joel Achenbach writes.
“The Moon would have looked like a hot reddish ball,” Santosh Vadawale, a professor at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, tells Achenbach. The rover’s discovery is not “earthshaking” but advances the understanding of the Moon and marks a “significant achievement for the Indian space programme“, Achenbach writes.
India’s burgeoning middle class is driving up global tourism — Indians’ international departures reached 27 million in 2019, and their spending abroad tripled to $33 billion between 2010 and 2023, reports The Economist in the piece, ‘Indian tourists are conquering the world’.
The report highlights how some Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern countries are easing visa requirements to attract Indian tourists. For instance, Thailand eliminated visa requirements, leading to a substantial rise in Indian tourists. Due to the ease of travel and affordability to nearby countries, more and more Indians are visiting Vietnam and Malaysia, too. In contrast, stringent visa requirements in Western countries such as the US and the UK have been deterring Indian tourists, adds the report.
Moreover, countries in the neighbourhood have been winning Indian tourists by making cultural pitches, offering discounts, adventure activities, and even hosting the filming of Indian movies and television shows. “The countries that invest in attracting Indians will shape the mental geography and implicit alliances of the future,” the report says.
Zomato has agreed to acquire Paytm’s movie and events ticketing business for Rs 20.5 billion in cash, Bloomberg’s Sankalp Phartiyal reports, highlighting that this acquisition marks a strategic move by Zomato to expand beyond its core food and grocery delivery services.
Through parent company One97 Communications, Paytm will sell its entire stake in the ticketing business, which generated nearly Rs 3 billion in sales and Rs 290 million in adjusted EBITDA for the fiscal year through March 2024, writes Phartiyal. That will allow Paytm to refocus on its primary payments and financial services in the backdrop of a recent regulatory crackdown, he adds.
Pezeshkian gets nod for cabinet, Walz becomes V-P candidate
After days of debates, Iran’s parliament has given its nod to all 19 ministers of President Masoud Pezeshkian — the first time in over two decades that a leader has been able to get all of his officials approved. To know more, read the Al Jazeera report.
Tim Walz has formally accepted his nomination as the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate for the November US election with a message of freedom and hope for party supporters in Chicago. Read the TIME report for more on Walz.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also read: Delhi-Tokyo 2+2 dialogue to counter Beijing & what’s driving India’s ports expansion — global media