India pays more millions for Gorshkov

India has paid another staggering USD 102 million to Russia, to speed up refit work on the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, pending a final agreement on a huge price hike of almost USD 2 billion demanded by Moscow.

"The advance payment of USD 102 million has given a fillip to repairs and refit works. The workforce would be increased to 2500 for work in two shifts," spokesperson of the Sevmash shipyard Anastasia Nikitinskaya said as Russian officials committed that they would meet the 2012 delivery deadline.

The increasing delay in the delivery of the warship has been described by President Dmitry Medvedev as the 'sole irritant' in Indo-Russian relations.

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Japan will loan $1billion for metro in Chennai

The first beneficiary of the coming together of the “samurai” and the “swami” will be the Chennai metro, for which Japan will give a $1 billion loan.

Japan will also extend a soft loan of $4.5 million over three years as part of the first tranche of funding for the 1,469-km Mumbai Delhi western freight corridor from Jawaharlal Nehru Port near Mumbai to Tughlaqabad near Delhi.

The move to invest in the southern city as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived here Tuesday on a three-day visit to Japan is certain to give a fillip to bilateral relations. Indian officials openly acknowledge they owe the Taro Aso government in Japan a “debt of gratitude” for unreservedly backing the NSG waiver for India in Vienna.

Chennai’s connection to Japan stems not just from superstar Rajnikanth, whose films are dubbed in Japanese and hugely popular here. This country is also the major donor to war-torn Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, where New Delhi has huge stakes.

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Crew, including 18 Indians, of hijacked ship safe

Eighteen Indians are among 22 crew aboard a Mumbai-bound ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden near the Horn of Africa on Monday.

The Hong Kong-registered MT Stolt Valor was bound for Mumbai from the Suez Canal with a load of oil products when armed pirates seized it about 38 nautical miles off the coast of Yemen.

The pirates have taken the ship to Somalia but no demands have yet been made. The crew is reported to be safe.

The Indians aboard the Stolt Valor are mostly from Mumbai. The other crew includes two Filipinos, a Bangladeshi and a Russian.

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