India's Modi Hails 'Strong Ties' Ahead Of Visit

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a three-day visit later as his country seeks to strengthen commercial ties with Britain.

Mr Modi will meet Prime Minister David Cameron for talks in London, and later at Chequers, with Mr Cameron hailing the trip as an "historic opportunity".

The visit is the first by an Indian Prime Minister in almost a decade.

Britain is already the largest investor in India among G20 nations, and India invests more in the UK than it does in the rest of the EU combined.

Billions of pounds worth of commercial deals between the two are expected to be signed over the coming days.

One of the major events on Mr Modi's itinerary will be an address at London's Wembley Stadium on Friday evening.

Mr Modi will also address British Parliament, despite the fact Parliament is not in session, and tour the Jaguar Land Rover factory in Solihull.

But the visit comes at a difficult time for Mr Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party at home in India.

The party was defeated recently in a bitterly-fought regional election, which many attributed to Mr Modi's waning influence.

Protests have been planned for outside Downing Street against Mr Modi, whose government has been criticised for undermining Indian democracy.

Writing on Facebook before the visit began, Mr Modi said the trip was aimed at "strengthening cooperation with a traditional friend".

The visit will also build on the "strong ties" between the two countries on defence and security, he wrote.

"I am confident my UK visit will deepen our ties and we will cooperate extensively in a range of areas of shared interests," Mr Modi wrote.

Speaking ahead of the visit, Mr Cameron said: "This isn't just a historic visit; it's a historic opportunity.

"It's an opportunity for two countries, tied by history, people and values, to work together to overcome the biggest challenges of our age.

"Prime Minister Modi and I intend to grab that opportunity with both hands. Because in doing so, we can make two of the greatest countries in the world even greater."

Egypt will lose £181m ($280m) a month because of Britain and Russia's decision to suspend all flights to Sharm el Sheikh after a plane crash killed 224 people, the tourism minister said.

The Metrojet plane crashed in the Sinai peninsula shortly after take-off en route to St Petersburg on 31 October.

Russia stopped all flights to all destinations in Egypt two days after Britain halted flights to Sharm el Sheikh amid fears that the  aircraft was downed by a bomb.

Tourism minister Hesham Zaazou said Russian and British holidaymakers accounted for two-thirds of tourist traffic to Sharm el Sheikh, while Russians alone made up half the tourists in Egypt's other main Red Sea destination, Hurghada.

A £3.3m ($5m) public relations campaign has been planned to promote Egypt in Britain and Russia, he added.

Sergei Ivanov, the head of the Russian presidential administration, has said it likely to be a "long time" before flights are resumed.

Thousands of tourists from both countries were trapped for days after the crash and the complete backlog will not be cleared until Sunday.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the delay was caused by "significantly increased security requirements".

Meanwhile, members of a Russian search and rescue team investigating the crash have left Egypt to return to Moscow

The team of 48 had been recovering bodies at the crash site in Sinai's Hassana area, some 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of the peninsula's city of el Arish.

Other Russian officials are still in Egypt as part of the investigation committee looking to discover why the plane crashed.

US and British officials have cited intelligence reports as indicating the passenger plane was probably caused by a bomb on board.

Egypt has come under criticism over the investigation with sources saying there has been an "unacceptable" lack of transparency following the crash.

MTN CONTINUES TO WORRY OVER NIGERIA’S $5.2BILLION FINE

Presently in talks with Nigerian regulators, Africa’s largest telecoms provider, MTN Group is working tirelessly to review Nigeria’s $5.2 billion (N1.04 trillion) fine to $1.04 million (N208 million ) as the company cooperates with the Nigerian banking sector for loans to balance out the huge fine.

This development was revealed by the head of research, Renaissance Capital (RenCap) Nigeria, Adesoji Solanke, in his note to clients on Wednesday. “MTN is pushing to reduce the fine by 60 to 80 percent,” Bloomberg quoted Solanke to have said.

As Nigeria is MTN’s largest and profitable market, the fine is a massive blow to the company, as it has led to a 16% drop of the company’s share on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The company’s shares reportedly lost almost a quarter of its value after this fine was disclosed, before managing to recover nine percent in the past two sessions. Also, South African vice president, Cyril Ramaphosa, says MTN must respect any laws given by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The Nigerian government’s decision to impose such an excessive fine on a multinational company is not out of place, considering the imposition of a $10million and $3.9 bn fine in 2010 and 2014 respectively on Shell for the oil spillage and environmental damage it has caused in the Bodo Community.

According the the commission, the telecommunications company failed to comply despite being given a 12-month warning on the importance of ensuring that only SIM cards with valid SIM registration details should be active on telecommunications networks. They also said that the fine issued to the company was imperative.

MTN Nigeria currently controls 43 percent of the country’s telecommunications market and the failure to fully deactivate unregistered subscribers would impede the government’s ability to tracecriminal activity especially in the fight against terrorism. Nigeria’s state security has alleged that unregistered SIM cards were being used for criminal activity.

MTN has 11 days to meet its November 16 deadline for paying up the fine it has been slammed with, making it one of the biggest fine cases in Nigeria’s history of telecommunications.