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India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor more significant than silk and spice routes: Saudi minister

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 9 announced the launch of the India-Middle East-Europe mega economic corridor during G20 summit. The project includes India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, France, Italy, Germany and the US

India-Middle East- Europe economic corridor will be more significant than the silk and spice routes of the world, Saudi’s Investment Minister Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih has said.

“The economic corridor will be historical. People talk about the Silk route, the Spice route of India through the Arabian Peninsula, but this is going to be more significant and relevant. Because it’s going to be about new energy, data, connectivity, human resources, aviation routes and it’s about aligning countries that are of the same mind and same vision,” Al-Falih added. He was speaking on the sidelines of the Saudi-India Investment Forum to reporters in New Delhi.

“Both countries (Saudi Arabia and India) have great human capital and access to financial resources. The next step is to make sure that the private sector fully understands what we have right before them, in terms of opportunities… we need to clear the roadmap for them and I think great things will happen,” Al-Falih added.

The rail and shipping corridor is part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment (PGII) — a collaborative effort by G7 nations to fund infrastructure projects in developing nations. PGII is considered to be the bloc’s counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The project will aim to enable greater trade among the involved countries, including energy products.

The corridor will include a rail link as well as an electricity cable, a hydrogen pipeline and a high-speed data cable, according to a document prepared by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The declaration document also called the project “a green and digital bridge across continents and civilizations.”

“Today we all have reached an important and historic partnership. In the coming times, it will be a major medium of economic integration between India, West Asia and Europe,” PM Modi said while announcing the project. The corridor will give a new direction to connectivity and sustainable development of the entire world, he added.

Source: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world/india-middle-east-europe-economic-corridor-more-significant-than-silk-and-spice-routes-saudi-minister-11349771.html

Europe’s Euclid space satellite launched to explore ‘dark matter’

Euclid will use a telescope to survey galaxies as far away as 10 billion light-years from Earth across an immense expanse of the sky beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

A European-built orbital satellite blasted off from Florida on a quest to explore the mysterious cosmic phenomena known as dark energy and dark matter, unseen forces scientists say account for 95 percent of the known universe.

The telescope Euclid, named for the ancient Greek mathematician known as the “father of geometry”, was carried aloft in the cargo bay of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday.

New insights from the $1.4bn European Space Agency mission, designed to last at least six years, are expected to transform astrophysics and perhaps understanding of the very nature of gravity itself.

Following a short flight to space, Euclid will be released from the Falcon for a month-long voyage to its destination in solar orbit nearly 1.6 million kilometres (one million miles) from Earth – a position of gravitational stability between the Earth and sun called the Lagrange Point Two, or L2.

From there, Euclid is designed to explore the evolution of what astrophysicists refer to as the “dark universe” using a wide-angle telescope to survey galaxies as far away as 10 billion light-years from Earth across an immense expanse of the sky beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

The two-tonne spacecraft is also equipped with instruments designed to measure the intensity and spectrums of infrared light from those galaxies in a way that will precisely determine their distances.

The lead scientist said Euclid will measure dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision.

“It’s more than a space telescope, Euclid. It’s really a dark energy detector,” Rene Laureijs noted.

The mission focuses on two foundational components of the dark universe. One is dark matter, the invisible but theoretically influential cosmic scaffolding thought to give shape and texture to the cosmos.

The other is dark energy, an equally enigmatic force believed to explain why the expansion of the universe, as scientists learned in the 1990s, has long been accelerating.

Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/1/europes-euclid-space-satellite-launched-to-explore-dark-matter

Macron says Europe must not be ‘follower’ of US, China on Taiwan

French President Emmanuel Macron (right) met Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a three-day state visit last week. (Photo: POOL/AFP/NG Han Guan)

French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published Sunday that Europe must not be a “follower” of either the US or China on Taiwan, saying that the bloc risks entanglement in “crises that aren’t ours”.

His comments risk riling Washington and highlight divisions in the European Union over how to approach China, as the US steps up confrontation with its closest rival and Beijing draws closer to Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

“The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must be followers and adapt ourselves to the American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron told media including French business daily Les Echos and Politico as he returned Friday from a three-day state visit to Beijing.

Citing his prized ideal of EU “strategic autonomy”, the French leader said that “we must be clear where our views overlap with the US, but whether it’s about Ukraine, relations to China or sanctions, we have a European strategy”.

“We don’t want to get into a bloc versus bloc logic,” he added, saying Europe “should not be caught up in a disordering of the world and crises that aren’t ours”.

China views democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to take it one day, by force if necessary.

Angered by Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting last week with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Beijing launched massive military exercises around the island immediately after Macron departed for France, including simulated strikes on its territory.

“AMBIGUITY”

Macron discussed Taiwan with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday, during a visit in which he was feted but more hawkish EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was kept mostly at arm’s length.

His Elysee Palace office said the talks had been “dense and frank” and that the French president was concerned about “growing tensions in the region” that could lead to “a terrible accident”.

Macron was “simply talking about the risk of Chinese ‘overreaction’, forgetting China wishes to change the status quo by taking over Taiwan one way or the other”, Antoine Bondaz of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) commented on Twitter.

“Why this desire never to recall we have an interest in maintaining stability?” he added, warning that “this ambiguity … instils doubt in our like-minded partners”.

Taiwan island was just one area that risked “an acceleration of tensions breaking out between the duopoly” of China and the US, Macron said.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/macron-europe-follower-us-china-taiwan-3406691