29th OCTOBER 2014

Cyclone Nilofar is set to make landfall at Naliya village in Kutch district, along the Gujarat coast, on Saturday, a day later than expected, says a revised weather forecast on Tuesday. The landfall was earlier forecast on Friday morning.

Calling India’s defence cooperation with Vietnam “among our most important,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a commitment to “modernise Vietnam’s defence and security forces” on Tuesday after talks with his counterpart Nguyen Tan Dung. The two countries signed several agreements, including a memorandum of understanding for exploration by ONGC Videsh Limited in two blocks in the South China Sea. As  reported on Monday, Mr. Modi also announced the operationalisation of the $100 million line of credit for Vietnam’s defence purchases.

Dozens of Kurdish peshmerga fighters left a base in northern Iraq on Tuesday headed for the battleground Syrian town of Kobane, an AFP journalist reported. The town on the Turkish border has become a crucial front in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, which overran 

large parts of Iraq in June and also holds significant territory in Syria.

SoftBank, kick-starting its plans to put in about $10 billion in India, on Tuesday, announced investments in home-grown market place Snapdeal and popular mobile app for cab bookings Ola.

Global Aircraft major Airbus Defence and Space and India’s Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) of the Tata group have jointly offered the Airbus C295 medium transport to replace the Indian Air Force’s fleet of 56 Avro aircraft, an Airbus release said. The partnership follows a detailed industrial assessment and stringent evaluation of the Indian private aerospace sector by Airbus Defence and Space. In the event of C295 being selected, the first 16 aircraft will come in ‘fly-away’ condition from Airbus’s final assembly line.

Japanese firm Toshiba Corp, in collaboration with the Electronic Corporation of India, has received an order to supply transportable Doppler weather radar system to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). This will be the first weather radar that Toshiba will supply to outside Japan, and will be installed in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, in January next, Toshiba said in a statement.