This week during a three-day visit to India with a British trade delegation David Cameron urged the Indian government to cut “regulation and red tape” in a bid to encourage more trade and investment involving UK businesses. South African Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius was granted bail by a South African court on Friday after his lawyers successfully argued he was not a flight risk. Thirteen Chadian soldiers and 65 Islamist insurgents have been killed in heavy fighting in a remote part of northern Mali. The ringleaders of a UK-based extremist cell are facing life in prison after the unravelling of their flawed plot to unleash a suicide attack deadlier than July 7 terror and the UK has lost its top AAA credit rating for the first time since 1978.
David Cameron’s India visit
David Cameron has said he wants to see UK firms playing a bigger role in a “more open, more flexible” Indian economy. During what was Mr Cameron’s second trip to India as UK PM, he insisted that India was “one of the great success stories of this century”, adding that he believed it would be a “top three [world] economy” by 2030.
“I want Britain to be its partner of choice, helping to build those motorways, helping to provide those universities, helping to invest in healthcare and also encouraging Indian investment back into the UK,” he said. Mr Cameron arrived in Mumbai on Monday with the biggest entourage of British business people ever taken on an overseas trip by a UK prime minister. Those represented include BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, the London Underground and the English Premier League.
At a question-and-answer-session at Unilever headquarters in Mumbai, Mr Cameron said: “We’ve only just started on the sort of partnership that we could build. As far as I’m concerned, the sky is the limit.”
Another of the trip’s aims was to address controversy over the recent toughening of UK visa rules. The PM has outlined a same-day visa scheme to make the process easier for India’s business to travel to the UK more easily. Mr Cameron has also said there will be no limit on the number of Indian students that could come to British universities, as long as they had an English language qualification and a place to study.
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Oscar Pistorius granted bail by South African court
Oscar Pistorius who faces murder charges over the shooting of his girlfriend was granted bail on Friday. At a pre-trial hearing, a Pretoria magistrate ruled the state had not made a case that he would flee, or that he had a violent character. The man known worldwide as the ‘Blade Runner’ was often seen weeping in court this week, but the bail decision elicited little emotion.
Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead at the home of Pistorius in the early hours of Valentine’s Day when he fired four times through a bathroom door. Prosecutors maintain the 29-year old model and girlfriend of Pistorius was a victim of premeditated murder. His defence is that he mistook her for an intruder. Steenkamp sustained gunshot wounds to the head, hip and arm.
Magistrate Desmond Nair set bail at 1m rand (£74,000; $113,000). Mr Pistorius was also ordered to hand over his passport, avoid his home in Pretoria and report to a police station every Monday and Friday. The next hearing is set for 4 June.
Mali conflict continues
On Friday, thirteen Chadian soldiers and 65 Islamist insurgents were killed during heavy fighting in the Ifoghas mountains, a desert area in the Kidal region near the border with Algeria – after being forced from northern population centres in recent weeks. Last month France led an operation to help oust Islamists who seized the vast northern region of Mali in 2012.
The crisis in Mali has disrupted the education of some 700,000 Malian children, leaving 200,000 still with no access to school both in the North and South of the country, according to UNICEF and educational authorities in Mali. France intervened in January in its former colony, fearing that al-Qaeda-linked militants who had controlled Mali’s north since April 2012 were about to advance on the capital Bamako. The French have said they are planning to start withdrawing their 4,000 soldiers next month, and would like the African-led contingent to become a UN peacekeeping operation.
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Men ‘plotted suicide attack more deadly than 7/7’
Three men who wanted to carry out “another 9/11 or 7/7” on the streets of Britain face life in jail after being found guilty of terror offences this week. Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27 and Ashik Ali, 27, were the al-Qaeda-trained ringleaders of a cell that wanted to cause death and mayhem using explosives, firearms and poisons and were found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of being “central figures” in the plot.
They are among a number of extremists in the UK who have been radicalised by the magazine Inspire, a self-help guide produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which is pushed on internet forums to would-be terrorists. When their bomb factory was raided in September 2011, they had not decided on their targets, but they had discussed killing British soldiers, murdering young women because of the way they dressed and carrying out rucksack bombings in crowded places.
The ringleaders, Naseer and Khalid, had travelled to Pakistan twice for training and on the second occasion spent two months at an al-Qaida training facility in Miran Shah, in north Waziristan. Having recruited others, the group posed as legitimate charity workers on the streets of Birmingham and collected thousands of pounds from unsuspecting members of the public. An ingredient for their bombs was to have come from sports injury cold packs, but the group bought the wrong type, containing urea rather than ammonium nitrate. They shopped for components on eBay using the e-mail address be_terror@yahoo.co.uk and the username “terrorshop”.
Alarmed, the police and MI5 mounted an investigation that, at its peak, involved 400 police and intelligence agents. Justice Richard Henriques told the trio it was clear they were planning to carry out a spectacular bombing campaign and that they would all face life in prison when they are sentenced in April or May.
Britain loses its triple AAA credit-rating
The UK has lost its triple AAA credit-rating for the first time ever after ratings agency Moody’s decided on a downgrade. The UK has had a top AAA credit rating since 1978 from both Moody’s and S&P.
Moody’s said the government’s debt reduction programme faced significant “challenges” ahead. The move is a blow to the fiscal policy of UK Chancellor George Osborne, who vowed to defend the triple A rating during the last election in 2010. Slow recovery from the global financial crisis is being blamed on the target of slashing the budget deficit through austerity by 2015, but the Chancellor will remain steadfast in his approach despite the downgrade.
Chancellor George Osborne said the decision was “a stark reminder of the debt problems that Britain faces and the clearest possible warning to anyone who thinks we can run away from dealing with those problems.”
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said the decision was a “humiliating blow to a prime minister and chancellor who said keeping our AAA rating was the test of their economic and political credibility.”
Germany and Canada are the only major economies to currently have a top AAA rating – as much of the world has been shaken by the financial crisis of 2008 and its subsequent debt crises. A downgrade of a credit rating does not necessarily substantially damage the ability to borrow. Financial analysts said the impact was likely to be limited because the markets had been expecting a downgrade for some time.