Hutt Valley Police are investigating a fire at a previously targeted Stokes Valley residential address which left one person fighting for his life.
Around 3:10am this morning emergency services responded to a block of flats in Hanson Grove, an 81 year old man was located in a critical condition and was transported to Wellington Hospital.
The area was cordoned and a forensic scene examination is currently being conducted with the assistance of Fire and Emergency New Zealand and ESR.
The fire is being treated as suspicious and is suspected to be linked to two other fires at the same block of flats on Thursday 10 and Monday 14 October 2024, both of which were also lit during the early hours of the morning.
Police are appealing for information from people who have CCTV footage, witnessed the incident, or were in the area at the time of the fire to please get in contact.
Even the smallest piece of information could prove vital in our investigation.
If you have any CCTV footage from dashcam, residential, or commercial premises in any areas of Stokes Valley, witnessed any three of the fires, or were in the area at the time of the fires, even if you didn’t witness the incidents please contact us.
To report information please update us online now or call 105.
Please use the reference number 241105/2249 and quote Operation SOVE.
Information can also be provided anonymously via Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.
Digby RCMP is asking for the public’s assistance in locating 14-year-old Summer Herman-Fontaine. She was last seen at approximately 5:50 p.m. on Queen St. in Digby.
Herman-Fontaine is described as being approximately 4-foot-8. She has brown eyes and dark brown hair, which she had in a ponytail. She was last seen wearing a white long-sleeved shirt with “Twinkle twinkle little star; brave & wonderful is what you are” printed on the front, a copper/dark orange coloured zip-up hoodie, pink leggings, and dark green Crocs.
When someone goes missing, it has deep and far-reaching impacts for the person and those who know them. We ask that people spread the word respectfully.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Summer Herman-Fontaine is asked to contact Digby RCMP at (902) 245-2579. To remain anonymous, call Nova Scotia Crime Stoppers, toll-free, at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), submit a secure web tip at www.crimestoppers.ns.ca, or use the P3 Tips app.
Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, today visited the Royal Thai Police as part of his working visit to Thailand, where he met with high-ranking officials led by Acting Deputy Commissioner General of the Royal Thai Police, Pol Lt Gen Prachuap Wongsuk, to discuss the current trends and challenges of transnational crime in Thailand and its contribution to regional efforts undertaken by the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC) in addressing these threats. Dr. Kao commended Thailand’s proactive role as the ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting on Transnational Crime (SOMTC) Voluntary Lead Shepherd for illicit drug trafficking and illicit trafficking of wildlife and timber (ITWT) priority areas. Both sides also exchanged views on the rising threats of cybercrime, among others.
The post Secretary-General of ASEAN visits the Royal Thai Police appeared first on ASEAN Main Portal.
Western publics are being subjected to a campaign of psychological warfare, where genocide is classed as ‘self-defence’ and opposition to it ‘terrorism’. Jonathan Cook reports as the world marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists at the weekend.
ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook
Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.
They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a “Hamas claims” or “Gaza family members allege”. Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.
Israel could shroud its slaughter in a fog of confusion and disputation. The natural revulsion evoked by a genocide would be tempered and attenuated.
For a year, the networks’ most experienced war reporters have stayed put in their hotels in Israel, watching Gaza from afar. Their human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians.
That is why Western audiences have been forced to relive a single day of horror for Israel, on October 7, 2023, as intensely as they have a year of greater horrors in Gaza — in what the World Court has judged to be a “plausible” genocide by Israel.
That is why the media have immersed their audiences in the agonies of the families of some 250 Israelis — civilians taken hostage and soldiers taken captive — as much as they have the agonies of 2.3 million Palestinians bombed and starved to death week after week, month after month.
That is why audiences have been subjected to gaslighting narratives that frame Gaza’s destruction as a “humanitarian crisis” rather than the canvas on which Israel is erasing all the known rules of war.
Western media’s human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net
While foreign correspondents sit obediently in their hotel rooms, Palestinian journalists have been picked off one by one — in the greatest massacre of journalists in history.
Israel is now repeating that process in Lebanon. On the night of October 24, it struck a residence in south Lebanon where three journalists were staying. All were killed.
In an indication of how deliberate and cynical Israel’s actions are, it put its military’s crosshairs on six Al Jazeera reporters last month, smearing them as “terrorists” working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are reportedly the last surviving Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza, which Israel has sealed off while it carries out the so-called “General’s Plan”.
Israel wants no one reporting its final push to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by starving out the 400,000 Palestinians still there and executing anyone who remains as a “terrorist”.
These six join a long list of professionals defamed by Israel in the interests of advancing its genocide — from doctors and aid workers to UN peacekeepers.
Sympathy for Israel Perhaps the nadir of Israel’s domestication of foreign journalists was reached last month in a report by CNN. Back in February whistleblowing staff there revealed that the network’s executives have been actively obscuring Israeli atrocities to portray Israel in a more sympathetic light.
In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable — but sadly was all too predictable — CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.
Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews “provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society”.
In its lengthy piece, titled “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him”, the atrocities the soldiers admit committing are little more than the backdrop as CNN finds yet another angle on Israeli suffering. Israeli soldiers are the real victims — even as they perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinian people.
One bulldozer driver, Guy Zaken, told CNN he could not sleep and had become vegetarian because of the “very, very difficult things” he had seen and had to do in Gaza.
What things? Zaken had earlier told a hearing of the Israeli Parliament that his unit’s job was to drive over many hundreds of Palestinians, some of them alive.
CNN reported: “Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza.”
Doubtless some Nazi concentration camp guards committed suicide in the 1940s after witnessing the horrors there — because they were responsible for them. Only in some weird parallel news universe, would their “psychological burden” be the story.
After a huge online backlash, CNN amended an editor’s note at the start of the article that originally read: “This story includes details about suicide that some readers may find upsetting.”
Readers, it was assumed, would find the suicide of Israeli soldiers upsetting, but apparently not the revelation that those soldiers were routinely driving over Palestinians so that, as Zaken explained, “everything squirts out”.
Banned from Gaza Finally, a year into Israel’s genocidal war, now rapidly spreading into Lebanon, some voices are being raised very belatedly to demand the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza.
This week — in a move presumably designed, as November’s elections loom, to ingratiate themselves with voters angry at the party’s complicity in genocide — dozens of Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to President Joe Biden asking him to pressure Israel to give journalists “unimpeded access” to the enclave.
Don’t hold your breath.
Western media have done very little themselves to protest their exclusion from Gaza over the past year — for a number of reasons.
Given the utterly indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment, major outlets have not wanted their journalists getting hit by a 2000lb bomb for being in the wrong place.
That may in part be out of concern for their welfare. But there are likely to be more cynical concerns.
Having foreign journalists in Gaza blown up or executed by snipers would drag media organisations into direct confrontation with Israel and its well-oiled lobby machine.
The response would be entirely predictable, insinuating that the journalists died because they were colluding with “the terrorists” or that they were being used as “human shields” — the excuse Israel has rolled out time and again to justify its targeting of doctors in Gaza and UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
But there’s a bigger problem. The establishment media have not wanted to be in a position where their journalists are so close to the “action” that they are in danger of providing a clearer picture of Israel’s war crimes and its genocide.
The media’s current distance from the crime scene offers them plausible deniability as they both-sides every Israeli atrocity.
In previous conflicts, western reporters have served as witnesses, assisting in the prosecution of foreign leaders for war crimes. That happened in the wars that attended the break-up of Yugoslavia, and will doubtless happen once again if Russian President Valdimir Putin is ever delivered to The Hague.
But those journalistic testimonies were harnessed to put the West’s enemies behind bars, not its closest ally.
The media do not want their reporters to become chief witnesses for the prosecution in the future trials of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, at the International Criminal Court. The ICC’s Prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for them both.
After all, any such testimony from journalists would not stop at Israel’s door. They would implicate Western capitals too, and put establishment media organisations on a collision course with their own governments.
The Western media does not see its job as holding power to account when the West is the one committing the crimes.
Censoring Palestinians Journalist whistleblowers have gradually been coming forward to explain how establishment news organisations — including the BBC and the supposedly liberal Guardian — are sidelining Palestinian voices and minimising the genocide.
An investigation by Novara Media recently revealed mounting unhappiness in parts of The Guardian newsroom at its double standards on Israel and Palestine.
Its editors recently censored a commentary by preeminent Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa after she insisted on being allowed to refer to the slaughter in Gaza as “the holocaust of our times”.
Senior Guardian columnists such as Jonathan Freedland made much during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour party that Jews, and Jews alone, had the right to define and name their own oppression.
That right, however, does not appear to extend to Palestinians.
As staff who spoke to Novara noted, The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, had no problem opening its pages to British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson to smear as a “blood libel” any reporting of the provable fact that Israel has killed many, many thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.
One veteran journalist there said: “Is The Guardian more worried about the reaction to what is said about Israel than Palestine? Absolutely.”
Another staff member admitted it would be inconceivable for the paper to be seen censoring a Jewish writer. But censoring a Palestinian one is fine, it seems.
Other journalists report being under “suffocating control” from senior editors, and say this pressure exists “only if you’re publishing something critical of Israel”.
According to staff there, the word “genocide” is all but banned in the paper except in coverage of the International Court of Justice, whose judges ruled nine months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocide. Things have got far worse since.
Whistleblowing journalists Similarly, “Sara”, a whistleblower who recently resigned from the BBC newsroom and spoke of her experiences to Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, said Palestinians and their supporters were routinely kept off air or subjected to humiliating and insensitive lines of questioning.
Some producers have reportedly grown increasingly reluctant to bring on air vulnerable Palestinians, some of whom have lost family members in Gaza, because of concerns about the effect on their mental health from the aggressive interrogations they were being subjected to from anchors.
According to Sara, BBC vetting of potential guests overwhelmingly targets Palestinians, as well as those sympathetic to their cause and human rights organisations. Background checks are rarely done of Israelis or Jewish guests.
She added that a search showing that a guest had used the word “Zionism” — Israel’s state ideology — in a social media post could be enough to get them disqualified from a programme.
Even officials from one of the biggest rights group in the world, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, became persona non grata at the BBC for their criticisms of Israel, even though the corporation had previously relied on their reports in covering Ukraine and other global conflicts.
Israeli guests, by contrast, “were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback”, including lies about Hamas burning or beheading babies and committing mass rape.
An email cited by Al Jazeera from more than 20 BBC journalists sent last February to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, warned that the corporation’s coverage risked “aiding and abetting genocide through story suppression”.
Upside-down values These biases have been only too evident in the BBC’s coverage, first of Gaza and now, as media interest wanes in the genocide, of Lebanon.
Headlines — the mood music of journalism, and the only part of a story many of the audience read — have been uniformly dire.
For example, Netanyahu’s threats of a Gaza-style genocide against the Lebanese people last month if they did not overthrow their leaders were soft-soaped by the BBC headline: “Netanyahu’s appeal to Lebanese people falls on deaf ears in Beirut.”
Reasonable readers would have wrongly inferred both that Netanyahu was trying to do the Lebanese people a favour (by preparing to murder them), and that they were being ungrateful in not taking up his offer.
It has been the same story everywhere in the establishment media. In another extraordinary, revealing moment, Kay Burley of Sky News announced last month the deaths of four Israeli soldiers from a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base inside Israel.
With a solemnity usually reserved for the passing of a member of the British royal family, she slowly named the four soldiers, with a photo of each shown on screen. She stressed twice that all four were only 19 years old.
Sky News seemed not to understand that these were not British soldiers, and that there was no reason for a British audience to be especially disturbed by their deaths. Soldiers are killed in wars all the time — it is an occupational hazard.
And further, if Israel considered them old enough to fight in Gaza and Lebanon, then they were old enough to die too without their age being treated as particularly noteworthy.
But more significantly still, Israel’s Golani Brigade to which these soldiers belonged has been centrally involved in the slaughter of Palestinians over the past year. Its troops have been responsible for many of the tens of thousands of children killed and maimed in Gaza.
Each of the four soldiers was far, far less deserving of Burley’s sympathy and concern than the thousands of children who have been slaughtered at the hands of their brigade. Those children are almost never named and their pictures are rarely shown, not least because their injuries are usually too horrifying to be seen.
It was yet more evidence of the upside-down world the establishment media has been trying to normalise for its audiences.
It is why statistics from the United States, where the coverage of Gaza and Lebanon may be even more unhinged, show faith in the media is at rock bottom. Fewer than one in three respondents — 31 percent — said they still had a “great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media”.
Crushing dissent Israel is the one dictating the coverage of its genocide. First by murdering the Palestinian journalists reporting it on the ground, and then by making sure house-trained foreign correspondents stay well clear of the slaughter, out of harm’s way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
And as ever, Israel has been able to rely on the complicity of its Western patrons in crushing dissent at home.
Last week, a British investigative journalist, Asa Winstanley, an outspoken critic of Israel and its lobbyists in the UK, had his home in London raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police.
Though the police have not arrested or charged him — at least not yet — they snatched his electronic devices. He was warned that he is being investigated for “encouragement of terrorism” in his social media posts.
Police told Middle East Eye that his devices had been seized as part of an investigation into suspected terrorism offences of “support for a proscribed organisation” and “dissemination of terrorist documents”.
The police can act only because of Britain’s draconian, anti-speech Terrorism Act.
Section 12, for example, makes the expression of an opinion that could be interpreted as sympathetic to armed Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation — a right enshrined in international law but sweepingly dismissed as “terrorism” in the West — itself a terrorism offence.
Those journalists who haven’t been house-trained in the establishment media, as well as solidarity activists, must now chart a treacherous path across intentionally ill-defined legal terrain when talking about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Winstanley is not the first journalist to be accused of falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In recent weeks, Richard Medhurst, a freelance journalist, was arrested at Heathrow airport on his return from a trip abroad. Another journalist-activist, Sarah Wilkinson, was briefly arrested after her home was ransacked by police.
Their electronic devices were seized too.
Meanwhile, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, which seeks to disrupt the UK’s supply of weapons to Israel’s genocide, has been charged over speeches he has made against the genocide.
It now appears that all these actions are part of a specific police campaign targeting journalists and Palestinian solidarity activists: “Operation Incessantness”.
The message this clumsy title is presumably supposed to convey is that the British state is coming after anyone who speaks out too loudly against the British government’s continuing arming and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Notably, the establishment media have failed to cover this latest assault on journalism and the role of a free press — supposedly the very things they are there to protect.
The raid on Winstanley’s home and the arrests are intended to intimidate others, including independent journalists, into silence for fear of the consequences of speaking up.
This has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, it is terrorism by the British state.
Once again the world is being turned upside down.
Echoes from history The West is waging a campaign of psychological warfare on its populations: it is gaslighting and disorientating them, classing genocide as “self-defence” and opposition to it a form of “terrorism”.
This is an expansion of the persecution suffered by Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who spent years locked up in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison.
His unprecedented journalism — revealing the darkest secrets of Western states — was redefined as espionage. His “offence” was revealing that Britain and the US had committed systematic war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, on the back of that precedent, the British state is coming after journalists simply for embarrassing it.
Late last month I attended a meeting in Bristol against the genocide in Gaza at which the main speaker was physically absent after the British state failed to issue him an entry visa.
The missing guest — he had to join us by zoom — was Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, who was locked up for decades as a terrorist before becoming the first leader of post-apartheid South Africa and a feted, international statesman.
Mandla Mandela was until recently a member of the South African Parliament.
A Home Office spokesperson told Middle East Eye that the UK only issued visas “to those who we want to welcome to our country”.
Media reports suggest Britain was determined to exclude Mandela because, like his grandfather, he views the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid as intimately linked to the earlier struggle against South Africa’s apartheid.
The echoes from history are apparently entirely lost on officials: the UK is once again associating the Mandela family with terrorism. Before it was to protect South Africa’s apartheid regime. Now it is to protect Israel’s even worse apartheid and genocidal regime.
The world is indeed turned on its head. And the West’s supposedly “free media” is playing a critical role in trying to make our upside-down world seem normal.
That can only be achieved by failing to report the Gaza genocide as a genocide. Instead, Western journalists are serving as little more than stenographers. Their job: to take dictation from Israel.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.
Aktsiaselts Infortar (Infortar) will organize a webinar for introducing third quarter 2024 results today. Please join the webinar via the following links:
Following the acquisition of a majority stake in Aktsiaselts Tallink Grupp (Tallink), Infortar’s total assets have reached €2.5 billion. For the first nine months of this year, the company’s consolidated revenue amounted to €926 million, net profit reached €187 million, and investments totaled €138 million.
“We’ve grown into Estonia’s largest investment company in the third quarter—our consolidated asset volume has increased by €1 billion within just nine months. Infortar’s structure and outlook have transformed significantly over a short period; we’re literally fuelled by growth,” remarked Ain Hanschmidt, Chairman of Infortar’s Management Board.
“Infortar actively seeks and invests in growth across various sectors and beyond borders. When we went public last year, we committed to invest €110 million from 2023 to 2025, yet we have already invested €138 million in the current year alone,” said Hanschmidt.
In the third quarter of 2024, Infortar increased its shareholding in Tallink to 68.5% through a public share offering. Alongside with other investors, Infortar envisions a strong and stable future for Tallink. The voluntary takeover offer attracted those who wished to exit the region for various reasons.
In the third quarter of 2024, Tallink transported a total of 1,715,496 passengers, with the company’s ships completing 1,840 departures. Compared to the same period last year, Tallink´s unaudited sales revenue decreased by 3.7%, totalling €231.9 million, with a net profit of €36.8 million.
AS Eesti Gaas, the largest private energy company in the Finnish and Baltic region, increased its sales volume of natural gas and electricity by 27% year-on-year, reaching 13.9 TWh and a market share of 25.7%. Operating under the Elenger brand in foreign markets, the company is focused on expanding its energy business in Poland and Germany and establishing access to the wholesale gas market in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The construction of Rimi’s logistics centre and the new Pärnu bridge are going according to the schedule. In July, the bridge arch was installed, introducing new engineering solutions to Estonia.
At the end of the third quarter, Infortar announced plans to acquire Tallinna Raamatutrükikoda, in addition to the printing houses Printon and Vaba Maa. This acquisition aims to enhance synergies and bolster the company’s extensive experience in the printing sector.
KEY FIGURES
9 months 2024
9 months 2023
Q3 2024
Q3 2023
Revenue (in thousands of EUR)
925 607
746 892
349 468
186 540
Gross profit (in thousands of EUR)
93 758
107 238
40 669
18 887
EBITDA (in thousands of EUR)
117 384
105 865
41 874
19 294
EBITDA margin %
12,7%
14,2%
12,0%
10,3%
Operating profit (in thousands of EUR)
83 817
94 661
20 422
14 234
Net profit (in thousands of EUR)
187 339
269 624
114 322
185 941
Profit attributable to the owners of the parent company (in thousands of EUR)
184 122
269 546
111 105
185 658
Earnings per share (EUR)*
9,1
13,3
5,5
9,2
Total equity (in thousands of EUR)
1 223 058
771 700
Total liabilities (in thousands of EUR)
961 419
480 816
* For the period ending 30.09.2024, earnings per share (EPS) in euros have been calculated using a share count of 21,166,239, with company´s own shares deducted for comparability.
Revenue
During the first nine months of 2024, Infortar’s consolidated revenue increased by €178.7 million, reaching €925.6 million, compared to €746.9 million in the same period in 2023. This growth was significantly impacted by the line-by-line consolidation of Tallink results into Infortar’s financial statements.
EBITDA and Segment Reporting
The acquisition of a majority stake in Tallink does not significantly impact segment reporting; Infortar’s management continues to monitor business segments using existing principles.
Energy Segment: Nine-month EBITDA for 2024 was €79.5 million, down from €99.1 million in 2023.
Maritime transportation segment: nine-month EBITDA for 2024 was €149,5 million, compared to €177.7 million in 2023. Until 31.07.24, Infortar consolidated Tallink results by the equity method according to its ownership percentage, switching to line-by-line reporting as of 01.08.24.
Real Estate Segment: EBITDA for real estate in the first nine months of 2024 reached €12 million, up from €11 million in the same period of 2023.
Net Profit
Consolidated net profit for the first nine months of 2024 was €187.3 million, compared to €269.6 million for the same period in 2023. The previous year’s results included a one-time profit from the AS Gaso acquisition.
Financing
Loan and lease obligations totalled €961.4 million for the first nine months of 2024, up from €480.8 million in 2023 due to the consolidation of Tallink liabilities. The net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, considering Tallink’s full-year EBITDA for 2024, stands at 2.4.
Income statement, in thousands of EUR
Q3 2024
Q3 2023
9 months 2024
9 months 2023
Sales Revenue
349 468
186 540
925 607
746 892
Cost of Sales
-308 803
-169 764
-831 796
-634 815
Impairment of Receivables
4
2 111
-53
-4 839
Gross Profit
40 669
18 887
93 758
107 238
Marketing Expenses
-7 789
-394
-8 627
-1 109
General Administrative Expenses
-13 423
-3 975
-27 679
-12 563
Profit (Loss) from Biological Assets
44
0
17
0
Loss on Changes in Fair Value of Investment Properties
-3 047
0
-2 891
0
Profit (Loss) from Derivative Instruments
52
380
24 574
1 067
Other Operating Income
4 368
308
5 449
1 065
Other Operating Expenses
-452
-972
-784
-1 037
Operating Profit
20 422
14 234
83 817
94 661
Profit from Investments Accounted for Using the Equity Method
3 243
22 254
22 128
37 701
Financial Income and Expenses
Income from Financial Investments
69 782
-34
72 520
-58
Interest Expense
-11 340
-5 520
-24 466
-14 004
Interest Income
1 215
467
4 219
2 300
Profit (Loss) from Foreign Exchange Rate Changes
160
-23
156
-160
Other Financial Income and Expenses
-393
159 216
-395
159 216
Total Financial Income and Expenses
59 424
154 106
52 034
147 294
Profit Before Tax
83 089
190 594
157 979
279 656
Corporate Income Tax
31 233
-4 653
29 360
-10 032
Profit (Loss) for the Reporting Period
114 322
185 941
187 339
269 624
Including:
Profit (Loss) Attributable to Owners of the Parent Company
111 105
185 658
184 122
269 546
Profit (Loss) Attributable to Non-controlling Interests
3 217
283
3 217
78
Other Comprehensive Income for the Reporting Period
-33 463
-60 195
Total Comprehensive income for the Reporting Period
153 876
209 429
Including:
Comprehensive Income (Loss) Attributable to Owners of the Parent Company
150 659
209 351
Comprehensive Income (Loss) Attributable to Non-controlling Interests
3 217
78
Basic Earnings per Share
9,11
13,20
Diluted Earnings per Share
8,78
12,80
* The non-cash revaluations of derivative instruments in comprehensive income do not affect the profitability or cash flow generating ability of AS Eesti Gaas or Infortar’s core business operations.
Balance sheet, in thousands of EUR
ASSETS
30.09.24
30.09.23
31.12.2023
CURRENT ASSETS
Cash
95 863
90 456
87 115
Short-term Financial Investments
1
1
0
Short-term Derivative Instruments
2 246
21 216
28 728
Receivables from Realized Derivative Instruments
2 773
1 279
5 958
Receivables from Customers
115 992
91 071
162 575
Tax Prepayments
4 161
1 192
925
Other Receivables and Prepayments
31 098
20 228
20 185
Prepayments for Inventories
2 885
29 354
3 493
Inventories
221 174
177 824
146 884
Biological Assets
420
0
0
Total Current Assets
476 613
432 621
455 863
NON-CURRENT ASSETS
Investments in Associates
15 756
341 490
346 014
Long-term Derivative Instruments
1 451
3 485
1 125
Long-term Loans and Other Receivables
29 668
9 771
Investment Properties
67 791
171 046
9 072
Property, Plant, and Equipment
1 816 338
449 014
176 024
Intangible Assets
39 276
13 474
446 748
Right-of-use Assets
47 548
10 421
14 366
Biological Assets
2 840
0
11 300
Total non-current assets
2 020 668
998 701
1 004 649
TOTAL ASSETS
2 497 281
1 431 322
1 460 512
EQUITY AND LIABILITIES
CURRENT LIABILITIES
Loan Liabilities
199 247
204 468
184 259
Lease Liabilities
8 499
956
1 766
Payables to Suppliers
136 017
60 687
74 751
Tax Liabilities
35 702
17 341
32 822
Customer Prepayments
34 741
3 171
3 099
Realized Derivative Instruments
222
3 395
1 463
Other Short-term Liabilities
53 351
21 374
10 851
Short-term Derivative Instruments
11 680
226
3 659
Total Current Liabilities
479 459
311 618
312 670
NON-CURRENT LIABILITIES
Long-term Provisions
9 208
7 255
8 399
Deferred Income Tax Liability
2 391
34 920
33 233
Other Long-term Liabilities
28 612
30 426
30 679
Long-term Derivative Instruments
880
11
186
Loan liabilities
713 212
265 805
246 410
Lease liabilities
40 461
9 587
8 725
TOTAL NON-CURRENT LIABILITIES
794 764
348 004
327 632
TOTAL LIABILITIES
1 274 223
659 622
640 302
EQUITY
Share Capital
2 117
1 985
2 105
Treasury Shares
-95
-95
-95
Share Premium
32 484
0
29 344
Statutory Reserve
212
205
205
Option Reserve
7 647
3 068
3 864
Hedging Reserve*
20 725
22 084
24 118
Unrealized Exchange Differences
1 114
32
-39
Reserve for Post-employment Benefit Obligations
-44
0
-44
Retained Earnings
728 559
474 015
466 140
Profit for the Reporting Period
184 122
269 546
293 778
Equity Attributable to Owners of the Parent Company
976 841
770 840
819 376
Non-controlling Interests
246 217
860
834
TOTAL EQUITY
1 223 058
771 700
820 210
TOTAL EQUITY AND LIABILITIES
2 497 281
1 431 322
1 460 512
* This represents the change in the accounting hedging position, which affects the comprehensive income result.
Cash flow statement, in thousands of EUR
9 months 2024
9 months 2023
2023
Cash Flows from Operating Activities
Profit for the Reporting Period
187 339
269 624
293 830
Adjustments
Depreciation and Impairment of Fixed Assets
30 676
11 204
15 581
Change in Value of Investment Properties
2 891
0
4 074
Profit/Loss from Equity Investments
-156 017
-37 701
-39 639
Change in Value of Derivative Instruments
26 156
59 284
54 122
Other Financial Income/Expenses
-66
-161 433
-161 965
Accrued Interest Expenses
24 466
14 004
22 573
Profit/Loss from Disposal of Fixed Assets
-301
-76
-91
Income from Targeted Financing Recognized in Revenue
-319
-347
784
Accrued Income Tax Expense
-29 360
10 032
8 610
Income Tax Paid
-1 482
0
-267
Change in Receivables and Prepayments Related to Operating Activities
79 126
130 325
54 540
Change in Inventories
-22 986
-118 715
-61 914
Change in Liabilities Related to Operating Activities
35 968
-24 650
-406
Change in Biological Assets
112
0
0
Total Cash Flows from Operating Activities
176 203
151 551
189 832
Cash Flows from investing activities
Payments for Purchase of Associates
0
-7 728
-10 314
Payments for Purchase of Subsidiaries
-67 810*
-103 410
-103 414
Dividends paid
20 862
0
0
Repayments of Loans Granted
2 057
5 966
6 652
Interest Received
4 019
2 301
2 691
Payments for Acquisition of Investment Properties
-10 566
-10 506
-18 304
Payments for Acquisition of Property, Plant and other assets
-17 042
-13 972
-18 143
Proceeds from Sale of Investment Properties and Fixed Assets
707
78
-252
Total cash Flows from investing activities
-67 773
-127 271
-141 084
Cash Flows from Financing Activities
Change in Overdraft
-30 457
30 546
14 348
Loans Received
106 303
148 955
287 606
Repayments of Loans Received
-114 706
-150 790
-312 846
Repayments of Principal Portion of Lease Liabilities
-8 674
-1 562
-2 233
Interest Paid
-24 968
-13 100
-22 224
Dividends Paid
-30 332
-7 875
-15 750
Proceeds from Issuance of Shares
3 152
0
29 464
Total Cash Flows from Financing Activities
-99 682
6 174
-21 635
Total cash flows
8 748
30 454
27 113
Cash and Cash Equivalents at Beginning of Period
87 115
60 002
60 002
Cash and Cash Equivalents at End of Period
95 863
90 456
87 115
Change in Cash and Cash Equivalents
8 748
30 454
27 113
Aktsiaselts Infortar operates in seven countries, the company’s main fields of activity are maritime transport, energy and real estate. Aktsiaselts Infortar owns a 68.47% stake in Aktsiaselts Tallink Grupp, a 100% stake in AS Eesti Gaas and a versatile and modern real estate portfolio of approx. 116,000 m2. In addition to the three main areas of activity, Aktsiaselts Infortar also operates in construction and mineral resources, agriculture, printing, taxi business and other areas. A total of 105 companies belong to the Aktsiaselts Infortar group: 96 subsidiaries, 4 affiliated companies and 5 subsidiaries of affiliated companies. Excluding affiliates, Aktsiaselts Infortar employs 6,108 people.
In an Australian first, Sydney Airport and Melbourne Airport have joined forces to launch a public awareness campaign to fight human trafficking.
The country’s two largest international airports have partnered with anti-human trafficking organisation, A21, to run the “Can You See Me?” campaign, with guidance and input from the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
This initiative will educate people on how to recognise and report the signs of human trafficking.
From today, digital screens and billboards at both airports will display images and messages, stating that slavery still exists and urging people: “If you suspect it, report it.” QR codes also link to videos and information on how to identify and stop these crimes. Digital screens in key areas will display these messages, including check-in counters, gates and baggage carousels.
Combined, Sydney and Melbourne airports cater for 68% of Australia’s total international passenger traffic. While the “Can You See Me?” campaign runs over the next month, close to 7 million passengers are expected to pass through both the domestic and international terminals at the two airports.
A21 has rolled out this program in high-profile spaces worldwide—from Times Square billboards, screens at Heathrow Airport, train stations in Thailand to inflatable screens in vulnerable Cambodian communities—reaching an impressive 3.4 billion people globally.
Modern slavery is a growing issue in Australia, with the AFP receiving 382 reports in 2023/2024 financial year, a 12 per cent increase on the previous year. Cases include trafficking, forced marriage, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, debt bondage, forced labour, deceptive recruitment and organ trafficking. The Global Slavery Index estimates 41,000 people in Australia live under conditions of modern slavery.
A united response to human trafficking
Scott Charlton, Sydney Airport CEO said: “Every person who steps through our airport deserves to travel safely, without fear of exploitation.”
“We deeply value the AFP’s dedication to catching and prosecuting traffickers and the A21 ‘Can You See Me?’ campaign will amplify their efforts by raising critical public awareness and support.
“Sydney Airport is proud to join forces with Melbourne Airport, united in our mission to tackle the scourge of modern slavery.”
Lorie Argus, Melbourne Airport CEO said: “This partnership goes beyond just airports—it’s about people’s lives.”
“By joining forces with Sydney Airport, the AFP, and A21, we’re taking a stand against modern slavery, a hidden crime that destroys people’s futures.
“Knowing that human trafficking is a real and daily threat, we feel a deep responsibility to protect our passengers.”
Acting Commander Human Exploitation Frank Rayner from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said: “The increase in reported cases of human trafficking and slavery in Australia highlights the urgent need for action.”
“Airports are key environments where traffickers seek to move victims across borders. It is important to remember that traffickers have many ways of controlling a person and a person can be exploited without physical restraint or abuse.
“Engaging travellers and frontline airport staff to recognise the signs and report suspected cases will help disrupt these crimes and protect vulnerable people.”
Nick Caine, A21 CEO, said: “Everyone has a role to play in the fight against human trafficking. Awareness is the first step, and we believe that through this campaign, more victims will be recognised and rescued.
“The ‘Can You See Me?’ campaign has already changed lives across the world, and we are grateful to Sydney and Melbourne airports for bringing this powerful message to Australia.”
Christian Elliott, Director of “Can You See Me?” said: “As the director of the Can You See Me? campaign, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of awareness.”
“This initiative goes beyond just sharing information—it equips every individual who passes through Sydney and Melbourne airports to become a part of the solution.
“Human trafficking hides in plain sight, but through this campaign, we are making the invisible visible, empowering travellers, staff, and the public to take action. With just one report, one moment of recognition, a life can be saved. Together, we can stop the traffickers and protect the most vulnerable among us.”
The Rotary Clubs of Botany Randwick and Marrickville have announced that all cash collected from 11 donation boxes across Sydney Airport over the next month will be donated to A21 to support survivors of human trafficking.
Airport-specific signs & indicators of human trafficking
Avoids eye contact and social interaction
Is not in control of own passport/documentation
Language barrier with their travelling companions
Unusually submissive
Unaware of their destination
Clothing is not appropriate/does not fit the route of travel
If you, or someone you know, are in immediate danger, call 000 for help.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) protect people who are victims of modern slavery and can help keep you safe. If you suspect someone is at risk, you can:
Make an anonymous report through Crime Stoppers 1800 333 000
Australia’s largest airports join forces in the fight against human trafficking
Monday 4 November 2024
In an Australian first, Sydney Airport and Melbourne Airport have joined forces to launch a public awareness campaign to fight human trafficking.
The country’s two largest international airports have partnered with anti-human trafficking organisation, A21, to run the “Can You See Me?” campaign, with guidance and input from the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
This initiative will educate people on how to recognise and report the signs of human trafficking.
From today, digital screens and billboards at both airports will display images and messages, stating that slavery still exists and urging people: “If you suspect it, report it.” QR codes also link to videos and information on how to identify and stop these crimes. Digital screens in key areas will display these messages, including check-in counters, gates and baggage carousels.
Combined, Sydney and Melbourne airports cater for 68% of Australia’s total international passenger traffic. While the “Can You See Me?” campaign runs over the next month, close to 7 million passengers are expected to pass through both the domestic and international terminals at the two airports.
A21 has rolled out this program in high-profile spaces worldwide—from Times Square billboards, screens at Heathrow Airport, train stations in Thailand to inflatable screens in vulnerable Cambodian communities—reaching an impressive 3.4 billion people globally.
Modern slavery is a growing issue in Australia, with the AFP receiving 382 reports in 2023/2024 financial year, a 12 per cent increase on the previous year. Cases include trafficking, forced marriage, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, debt bondage, forced labour, deceptive recruitment and organ trafficking. The Global Slavery Index estimates 41,000 people in Australia live under conditions of modern slavery.
A united response to human trafficking
Scott Charlton, Sydney Airport CEO said: “Every person who steps through our airport deserves to travel safely, without fear of exploitation.”
“We deeply value the AFP’s dedication to catching and prosecuting traffickers and the A21 ‘Can You See Me?’ campaign will amplify their efforts by raising critical public awareness and support.
“Sydney Airport is proud to join forces with Melbourne Airport, united in our mission to tackle the scourge of modern slavery.”
Lorie Argus, Melbourne Airport CEO said: “This partnership goes beyond just airports—it’s about people’s lives.”
“By joining forces with Sydney Airport, the AFP, and A21, we’re taking a stand against modern slavery, a hidden crime that destroys people’s futures.
“Knowing that human trafficking is a real and daily threat, we feel a deep responsibility to protect our passengers.”
Acting Commander Human Exploitation Frank Rayner from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said: “The increase in reported cases of human trafficking and slavery in Australia highlights the urgent need for action.”
“Airports are key environments where traffickers seek to move victims across borders. It is important to remember that traffickers have many ways of controlling a person and a person can be exploited without physical restraint or abuse.
“Engaging travellers and frontline airport staff to recognise the signs and report suspected cases will help disrupt these crimes and protect vulnerable people.”
Nick Caine, A21 CEO, said: “Everyone has a role to play in the fight against human trafficking. Awareness is the first step, and we believe that through this campaign, more victims will be recognised and rescued.
“The ‘Can You See Me?’ campaign has already changed lives across the world, and we are grateful to Sydney and Melbourne airports for bringing this powerful message to Australia.”
Christian Elliott, Director of “Can You See Me?” said: “As the director of the Can You See Me? campaign, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of awareness.”
“This initiative goes beyond just sharing information—it equips every individual who passes through Sydney and Melbourne airports to become a part of the solution.
“Human trafficking hides in plain sight, but through this campaign, we are making the invisible visible, empowering travellers, staff, and the public to take action. With just one report, one moment of recognition, a life can be saved. Together, we can stop the traffickers and protect the most vulnerable among us.”
The Rotary Clubs of Botany Randwick and Marrickville have announced that all cash collected from 11 donation boxes across Sydney Airport over the next month will be donated to A21 to support survivors of human trafficking.
Airport-specific signs & indicators of human trafficking
Avoids eye contact and social interaction
Is not in control of own passport/documentation
Language barrier with their travelling companions
Unusually submissive
Unaware of their destination
Clothing is not appropriate/does not fit the route of travel
If you, or someone you know, are in immediate danger, call 000 for help.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) protect people who are victims of modern slavery and can help keep you safe. If you suspect someone is at risk, you can:
Make an anonymous report through Crime Stoppers 1800 333 000
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
It would have been cheaper for an angler to have bought a rod licence after he was caught and fined.
Money raised from the sale of rod licences supports the sport, fish stock and pays for improvements
William Greaves, 39, from Moorland Road, St Austell, pleaded guilty to fishing without a rod licence at Bilberry Lake, St Austell. He was fined £40 and ordered to pay a £16 victim surcharge at Swindon Magistrates Court on 29 October 2024.
Benjamin Pessl, Environment Agency fisheries enforcement officer, said:
Money from rod licence sales is put back where it came from to improve the experience of anglers and fisheries. Not doing that cheats everyone.
Buying a rod licence is not expensive. Always check your licence is in date before you go out fishing
Any angler aged 13 or over, fishing on a river, canal or still water needs a licence. A 1-day licence costs from just £6 and an annual licence costs from just £30 (concessions available). Junior licences are free for 13 – 16-year-olds. Licences are available from www.gov.uk/get-a-fishing-licence or by calling the Environment Agency on 0344 800 5386 between 8am and 6pm, Monday to Friday.
The Environment Agency carries out enforcement work all year round and is supported by partners including the police and the Angling Trust. Fisheries enforcement work is intelligence-led, targeting known hot-spots and where illegal fishing is reported.
Anyone with information about illegal fishing activities can contact the Environment Agency incident hotline 24/7 on 0800 80 70 60 or anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Background
William Greaves was charged with:
On 21 April 2024 at Bilberry Lake, St Austell, in a place where fishing is regulated fished for freshwater fish or eels by means of an unlicensed fishing instrument, namely rod and line, contrary to Section 27(1)(a) of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975.
Local Met officers in south east London have led an investigation into a series of phone thefts, as part of the service’s commitment to tackling mobile phone robbery and theft.
A man and two teenage boys were sentenced for their involvement in a spate of phone theft incidents in Bermondsey and Greenwich.
The trio were brought to justice for their part in snatching phones in 35 separate incidents. Thanks to the actions of Met officers, 32 mobile phones were recovered, with 30 of them successfully returned to their rightful owners. The total estimated value of the stolen phone’s amounts to over £20,000.
To tackle the rising issue of phone thefts in London, officers have been listening to community concerns and using data and technology to target hotspots where offending is more likely to take place.
As part of the A New Met for London plan, the Met are focusing on improving community policing, with officers patrolling busy areas and town centres to help deter offenders and ensure they are present to act on anything suspicious. Local residents have fed back the increased presence has provided a sense of safety to residents and visitors.
The Met is employing CCTV in busy areas to monitor and identify people involved in mobile phone thefts, allowing them to capture real time footage for analysis and evidence gathering.
Police Constable Alex Earley, who led the investigation, said:
“I am pleased our investigation has brought three offenders to justice for their part to play in a spate of phone thefts in our local area. This demonstrates our commitment to addressing concerns from those living and working here.
“Our top priority is to drive down crime that impacts our communities the most, creating neighbourhoods where everyone feels safe.”
The Met investigation was launched in 2023 and focused on the three individuals who used electric motorbikes to steal phones from unsuspecting victims. They targeted individuals by aggressively riding their bikes on pavements and approaching people at high speeds, creating an intimidating environment that made it difficult for victims to react or escape.
Kie Joyce, 21 (20.03.03) of Neckinger Estate, SE16 was sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment on Thursday, 19 September at Inner London Crown Court for conspiracy to steal and eight counts of dangerous driving offences.
A 16-year-old boy – who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced to six months on Friday, 1 November at Central Criminal Court for conspiracy to steal and eight counts of dangerous driving.
A second 16-year-old boy – who also cannot be named for legal reasons – was sentenced to a nine-month supervision requirement on Friday, 26 February at South London Magistrate’s court for conspiracy to commit theft and handling stolen goods. He was also subjected to a Youth Rehabilitation Order, curfew requirement and is required to pay compensation of £425.00.
Commander Owain Richards, the lead for mobile phone thefts in London, added:
“We understand the impact of mobile phone theft can have on victims, it’s an invasive and sometimes violent crime- and we’re committed to protecting Londoners and tackling this issue as we make the capital safer.
“We continue to use data and technology to build intelligence and track stolen items to target offenders. We are also working phone firms to ‘design out’ the ability for phones to be reused and sold on as we seek to dismantle the criminal market that fuels robbery and theft.
“We encourage people to report as soon as they can whenever they have been a victim of mobile phone theft, so officers can investigate swiftly”.
If you witness or are a victim of a crime, it is crucial to report it promptly by calling 999 in the case of an emergency. For non-emergency situations, you can call 101 or report online.
For advice on how to stay safe from mobile phone theft please our website for further information.
Stage set for 76th Republic Day Celebrations at Kartavya Path Indonesian President Mr Prabowo Subianto to be the Chief Guest
The ceremony to showcase India’s rich cultural diversity, unity, equality, development & military prowess; Special focus on 75 years of enactment of the Constitution
Around 10,000 Special Guests from different walks of life to witness the parade
31 Tableaux to roll down Kartavya Path on the theme ‘Swarnim Bharat: Virasat aur Vikas’; In a first, a Tri-services tableau to display the spirit of jointness & integration among the Armed Forces
Cultural performance by 5,000 artists to cover entire Kartavya Path for the first time
Posted On: 25 JAN 2025 2:58PM by PIB Delhi
President Smt Droupadi Murmu will lead the Nation in celebrating the 76th Republic Day from Kartavya Path in New Delhi on January 26, 2025. With special focus on 75 years of enactment of the Constitution and Jan Bhagidari, the celebrations this year will be a unique blend of India’s rich cultural diversity, unity, equality, development and military prowess. President of the Republic of Indonesia Mr Prabowo Subianto will be the Chief Guest.
Around 10,000 Special Guests have been invited to witness the parade, in line with the Government’s objective to increase ‘Jan Bhagidari’ in events of national importance. These Special Guests from different walks of life are the architects of ‘Swarnim Bharat’. They include best performers in various fields and those who have made best use of the schemes of the Government.
The parade
The Republic Day parade will start at 1030 hrs and run for a duration of approx. 90 minutes. The ceremony will commence with the visit of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to the National War Memorial, where he will lead the nation in paying solemn tributes to the fallen heroes by laying a wreath. Thereafter, the Prime Minister and other dignitaries will head to the saluting dais at Kartavya Path to witness the parade.
The arrival of the President of India and her Indonesian counterpart will be escorted by the President’s Bodyguard, the senior most Regiment of the Indian Army. The two Presidents will arrive in the ‘Traditional Buggy’, the practice which made a comeback in 2024 after a gap of 40 years.
As per tradition, the National Flag will be unfurled followed by the National Anthem with a thunderous 21-gun salute using 105-mm Light Field Guns, an indigenous weapon system.
The parade will be heralded by 300 cultural artists playing ‘Sare Jahan Se Achha’ with musical instruments of different parts of the country. This indigenous mix of instruments would resonate with the melody, beat and hopes of a billion Indians hearts. The ensemble of instruments includes Shehnai, Sundari, Nadaswaram, Been, Mashak Been, Ransingha – Rajasthan, Flute, Karadi Majalu, Mohuri, Sankha, Tutari, Dhol, Gong, Nishan, Chang, Tasha, Sambal, Chenda, Idakka, Lezim, Thavil, Gudum Baza, Talam and Monbah.
Showering of flower petals will be carried out by Mi-17 1V helicopters from 129 Helicopter Unit in the Dhwaj Formation. Trooping the National Flag, this formation of helicopters will be led by Group Captain Alok Ahlawat.
The parade will then begin with the President taking the salute. The parade will be commanded by Parade Commander Lieutenant General Bhavnish Kumar, General Officer Commanding, Delhi Area, a second-generation officer. Major General Sumit Mehta, Chief of Staff, HQ Delhi Area will be the Parade Second-in-Command.
The proud winners of the highest gallantry awards will follow. They include Param Vir Chakra winners Subedar Major (Honorary Captain) Yogendra Singh Yadav (Retd) & Subedar Major Sanjay Kumar (Retd), and Ashok Chakra winner Lt Col Jas Ram Singh (Retd). The Param Vir Chakra is awarded for the most conspicuous act of bravery and self-sacrifice in the face of the enemy, while the Ashok Chakra is awarded for similar acts of valour and self-sacrifice but, other than, in the face of the enemy.
Indonesian Contingent
Kartavya Path will be witness to a march past by the Marching Contingent of Indonesian National Armed Forces and Military Band of Indonesia’s Military Academy. The marching contingent will consist of 152 members, with 190 members in the military band.
Indian Army Contingent
The first Army contingent leading the Mounted Column will be of 61 Cavalry, led by Lt Ahaan Kumar. Raised in 1953, the 61 Cavalry is the only serving active Horsed Cavalry Regiment in the world, with the amalgamation of all the ‘State Horsed Cavalry Units’. It will be followed by nine Mechanised Columns and nine marching contingents.
Tank T-90 (Bhishma); NAG Missile System along with BMP-2 Sarath; BrahMos; Pinaka Multi-launcher Rocket System, Agnibaan Multi-barrel Rocket Launcher; Akash Weapon System; Integrated Battlefield Surveillance System; All-Terrain Vehicle (Chetak), Light Specialist Vehicle (Bajrang), Vehicle Mounted Infantry Mortar System (Airawat), Quick Reaction Force Vehicles (Nandighosh & Tripurantak) and Short-Span Bridging System will also be on display at the Kartavya Path.
Marching down the Kartavya Path will be the contingents of Brigade of the Guards, The Jat Regiment, The Garhwal Rifles, The Mahar Regiment, The Jammu & Kashmir Rifles Regiment, the Corps of Signals, among others.
Tri-Services Tableau
For the first time, a Tri-services tableau will roll down on Kartavya Path, displaying the spirit of jointness and integration. With the theme ‘Shashakt aur Surakshit Bharat’, the tableau will depict a Joint Operations Room facilitating networking and communication among the three Services. It would display a battlefield scenario demonstrating a synchronised operation in land, water and air with the indigenous Arjun Main Battle Tank, Tejas MKII fighter aircraft, Advanced Light Helicopter, destroyer INS Visakhapatnam & a Remotely Piloted Aircraft, reflecting the Tri-services synergy in multi-domain operations. These platforms exemplify the vision to achieve ‘Aatmanirbharta’ in defence.
Veterans’ Tableau
Another highlight would be the Veterans’ Tableau on the theme ‘Viksit Bharat ki Ore Sadaiv Agrasar’, a heartfelt tribute to the unwavering spirit of our veterans, who are the symbols of discipline, resilience, and unyielding dedication.
Adding to the display of honor will be the esteemed veterans who have brought glory to India in sports. Among them are Padma Shri awardees Subedar Murlikant Petkar, whose story inspired the Bollywood film Chandu Champion, and Honorary Captain Jitu Rai. Arjuna and Khel Ratna awardees Colonel Balbir Singh Kular, Captain (IN) Homi Motivala, Master Chief Petty Officer Tajinder Toor, Master Warrant Officer Ram Mehar Singh, and Wing Commander Gurmeet Sandhu will also be present.
Representing Nari Shakti will be veteran women officers from all three services – Lieutenant Colonel Ravinderjeet Randhawa, Lieutenant Commander Mani Agarwal, and Flight Lieutenant Ruchi Saha, showcasing the pivotal role of women in shaping our armed forces.
Indian Navy Contingent
The Indian Navy contingent will consist of 144 personnel, led by Lt Cdr Sahil Ahluwalia as Contingent Commander and Lt Cdr Indresh Choudhary, Lt Cdr Kajal Anil Bharani & Lt Devender as Platoon Commanders. It will be followed by the Naval Tableau, depicting a strong ‘Aatmanirbhar’ Navy capable of protecting India’s maritime interests.
The tableau showcases the newly-commissioned indigenous frontline state-of-the-art combatants including the Destroyer INS Surat, Frigate INS Nilgiri and Submarine INS Vaghsheer, highlighting India’s rapid progress in indigenous warship design and construction and reinforcing Indian Navy’s commitment to build a robust and self-sufficient defence eco system.
Indian Air Force Contingent
The Indian Air Force contingent will comprise four officers and 144 personnel, led by Sqn Ldr Mahender Singh Garati, with Flt Lt Nepo Moirangthem, Flt Lt Damini Deshmukh & Fg Offr Abhinav Gorsi being supernumerary officers. It will be followed by a fly-past by three MiG-29 aircraft in ‘Baaz Formation’.
Indian Coast Guard
The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) contingent will be led by Deputy Commandant Navita Thakran followed by three officers of the guard – Deputy Commandant Sumit Kumar, Deputy Commandant Pankaj Saini and Assistant Commandant Priya Balurkar.
It will be followed by a tableau of ICG focussing on coastal security and maritime search and rescue. The theme is ‘Swarnim Bharat: Heritage and Progress’.
DRDO Tableau & Equipment
DRDO will display some path-breaking innovations for national security during the parade. The DRDO Tableau, with the theme ‘Raksha Kavach – Multi-layer Protection against Multi-domain Threats’ will feature Quick Reaction Surface-to-Air Missile; Airborne Early Warning & Control System; 155 mm/52 Cal Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System; Drone Detect, Deter & Destroy; Satellite-Based Surveillance System; Medium Power Radar – Arudhra; Advanced Light Weight Torpedo; Electronic Warfare System – Dharashakti; Laser-Based Directed Energy Weapon; Very Short Range Air Defence System; Indigenous Unmanned Aerial System; V/UHF Manpack Software Defined Radio for Land Forces; Indigenous Secure Satellite Phone and UGRAM Assault Rifle.
Apart from this, DRDO’s major landmarks of 2024 will also be showcased in the tableau posters namely Long Range Hypersonic Anti-Ship Missile; Light Weight Bullet Proof Jacket ‘ABHED’; Divyastra – Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle; ‘Zorawar’ Light Tank and the Dornier Mid-Life Upgrade with radar, Electronic Warfare System, Software Defined Radio etc.
Contingents of paramilitary & other auxiliary civil forces
Among the contingents marching down the Kartavya Path will be a 148-member all-women marching contingent of Central Reserve Police Force, led by Assistant Commandant Aishwarya Joy M. The marching contingent of Railway Protection Force will be led by Divisional Security Commissioner Aditya.
The Assam Rifles contingent will be led by Captain Karanveer Singh Kumbhavat of 29 Assam Rifles. It will comprise soldiers recruited from all over the country.
The Delhi Police marching contingent will be led by Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Rishi Kumar Singh. The Delhi Police all-women band will be participating for the second time, led by Band Master Ruyangunuo Kense.
The Camel contingent of Border Security Force will be under the command of Deputy Commandant Manohar Singh Kheechee.
The all-girls marching contingent of NCC – SW (Girls) – will be led by Senior Under Officer Ekta Kumari of Jammu Kashmir & Ladakh Directorate. The all-boys marching contingent – SD (Boys) – will be led by Senior Under Officer Prasad Prakash Waikul of Maharashtra Directorate. The National Service Scheme (NSS) marching contingent of 148 volunteers will be led by Mr Deepak from Punjab.
Tableaux
Tableaux from 16 State Government/Union Territories and 10 Ministries/Departments of the Central Government highlighting ‘Swarnim Bharat: Virasat aur Vikas’, will participate in the parade this year. These tableaux would showcase India’s diverse strengths and its constantly-evolving cultural inclusiveness marching into a glorious future. The details of the participating tableaux of States/UTs are as follows:
States/UTs
Cultural Heritage of Goa
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand: Cultural Heritage and Adventure Sports
Haryana
Showcasing Bhagwad Gita
Jharkhand
Swarnim Jharkhand: A Legacy of Heritage and Progress
Madhya Pradesh’s Glory: Kuno National park- The land of CHeetahs
Tripura
Eternal Reverence: The worship of 14 Deities in Tripura – Kharchi Puja
Karnataka
Lakkundi: Cradle of Stone craft
West Bengal
The ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’ & ‘Lok Prasar Prakalpa’ – Empowering Lives and Fostering Self-Reliance in Bengal
Chandigarh
Chandigarh: A Harmonious Blend of Heritage, Innovation and Sustainability
Quality Education
Dadra Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu
Daman Aviary Bird Park along with Kukri Memorial- a tribute to the valiant sailors of the Indian Navy
The details of tableaux of Ministries/Departments are as follows:
Departments/Ministries
Department of Social Justice and Empowerment
The Constitution of India, a cornerstone of our Virasat (Heritage), Vikas and Path-Pradarshak
Ministry of Tribal Affairs
Janjatiya Gaurav Varsh
Ministry of Women & Child Development
Multifaceted journey of women and children nurtured under the Ministry’s comprehensive schemes
Ministry of New & Renewable Energy
Swarnim Bharat: Heritage and Development
Ministry of Rural Development
Lakhpati Didi
Department of Financial Services
India’s remarkable journey in financial evolution
Ministry of Earth Sciences (IMD)
Modern Science forecasting extreme weather conditioning- saving lives and livelihood
Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying
Golden India Heritage and Development Honouring India’s Indigenous Bovine Breeds as Icons of Sustainable Rural Growth
Ministry of Culture
Swarnim Bharat: Heritage and Development
75 Years of Constitution of India through flower tableau
Cultural Performance
This year, 5,000 artists in a title of ‘Jayati Jaya Mamaḧ Bharatam’ will perform over 45 dance forms from different part of the country in a 11-minute cultural performance. For the first time, the performance will cover the entire Kartavya Path – from Vijay Chowk to C hexagon – to ensure that all guests get the same viewing experience.
Motorcycle Display
The Corps of Signals Motorcycle Rider Display Team, famously known as ‘The Dare Devils’, will carry out breath-taking stunts during the motorcycle display. The team will showcase their bravery and determination through a number of formations, including Bullet Salute, Tank Top, Double Jimmy, Devils Down, Ladder Salute, Shatrujeet, Shraddhanjali, Mercury Peak, Info Warriors, Lotus and Human Pyramid.
Fly-past
One of the most eagerly-awaited events of the parade, the ‘Fly-past’ will witness a breath-taking air show by 40 aircraft/helicopters – 22 fighter jets, 11 transport aircraft and seven helicopters – of IAF. These include Rafale, Su-30, Jaguar, C-130, C-295, C-17, AWACS, Dornier-228 & An-32 aircraft and Apache & Mi-17 helicopters. They will display a variety of formations including Dhwaj, Ajay, Satluj, Rakshak, Arjan, Netra, Bheem, Amrit, Vajrang, Trishul and Vijay. The concluding Vertical Charlie maneuver will be performed by a Rafale fighter aircraft.
The ceremony will culminate with the national anthem and the release of balloons carrying banners with the official logo depicting 75 years of enactment of the Constitution in both English and Hindi.
A number of unique activities have been carried out as part of the celebrations. These include:
Rashtraparv Portal & Mobile App
‘Rashtraparv Portal’ portal and mobile App (Apple play and Msewa) have been launched to facilitate access to information related to national events such as Republic Day, Beating Retreat Ceremony, Independence Day; live streaming, purchase of tickets, provide information related to seating arrangements & route-maps of events etc.
Ease of Access
Metro Services: Free Metro ride will be provided to Invitees/Ticket holders of RDP-2025 at entry point of the Metro Stations across Delhi. Delhi Metro operations will begin at 4:00 AM on January 26, 2025 across Delhi. Parking spaces of Delhi Metro in Across Delhi will be opened on chargeable basis at regular rates.
Park and Ride Scheme: Park and Ride Scheme will be available. Under this scheme, invitees will park their vehicle at Palika Parking, Connaught Place and Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium’s parking area (Gate -14 & 15). From there, they can avail the ferry services (pick and drop) through the hired DTC buses. The ferry services will start at 6:00 AM and stop at 8:30 AM.
All enclosures are accessible and Divyang friendly with ramp facility. There will also be youth volunteers from NCC with wheelchairs for assistance.
Although the list of prohibited items are communicated well in advance, a cloak room facility will also be available.
Special Guests
Approximately 10,000 Special Guests in 34 categories, including the Sarpanches from villages excelling in key government schemes, have been invited as Special Guests to witness the parade this year. Details are as follows:
S No
Category
No of Guests
Sarpanches
500
Sarpanches from top performing village
200
Disaster Relief Workers
300
Guests from Vibrant Villages
300
Best performing Water Warriors
400
Primary Agriculture Credit (PAC) Societies
200
Pani Samitee
400
Community Resource Person (Krishi Sakhi, Udhyog Sakhi etc.)
400
SHG members
200
Trainees of DGT got training under National Skill Development Corporation
200
PM YASASVI Scheme
400
Forest & Wildlife conservation volunteers/workers
200
Handloom Artisans
200
Handicraft Artisans
200
Special Achievers and Tribal beneficiaries of various schemes
500
ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist)
500
Mann Ki Baat Participants
400
My Bharat Volunteers
400
Paralympic Contingent & winners of International Sports events
RDC comes to a close with the ‘Beating Retreat Ceremony’, which is held every year on the 29th January at Vijay Chowk. It marks a centuries old military tradition, when the troops ceased fighting, sheathed their arms, withdrew from the battlefield and returned to the camps at sunset at the sounding of the Retreat. Colours and Standards are cased and flags lowered. During the Beating Retreat Ceremony 2025, only Indian Tunes will be played by all the participating bands.
Bharat Parv
‘Bharat Parv’ will be organised at the Red Fort, Delhi from January 26-31, 2025 by the Ministry of Tourism. It will showcase Republic Day Tableaux, performances by the Military Bands (Static), cultural performances, Food Courts serving pan India cuisines and Crafts Bazaar.
PM’s NCC Rally
PM’s NCC rally, with the theme of ‘Yuva Shakti-Viksit Bharat’ is scheduled to be organised at Cariappa Parade Ground, Delhi Cantt. on January 27, 2025. During the event, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will review the multifarious activities of the NCC.
Your Excellency, President and my brother Prabowo Subianto, Delegates from both countries, Friends from the media, Namaskar!
Indonesia was our Chief Guest for India’s very first Republic Day. And it is a matter of great pride for us that, as we celebrate our 75th Republic Day, once again, Indonesia has gracefully accepted to be a part of this momentous occasion. On this occasion, I warmly welcome President Prabowo to India.
Friends,
During my visit to Indonesia in 2018, we took our partnership forward to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Today, we held extensive discussions with President Prabowo on various aspects of mutual cooperation. To strengthen our cooperation in the Defence sector, we have decided to work together in the areas of Defence Manufacturing and Supply Chain.
We’ve also emphasized on cooperation in Maritime Security, Cyber Security, Counter-Terrorism and De-radicalisation. The agreement signed today on Maritime Safety and Security will strengthen our cooperation in the areas of Crime Prevention, Search and Rescue, and Capacity Building. Over the past few years, our bilateral trade has grown rapidly, and last year, this exceeded USD 30 billion.
To take this a step further, we’ve also held discussions on diversifying market access and the trade basket. The private sector is also an equal partner in these efforts. We welcome the CEO Forum meeting held today and the agreements finalised in the private sector. We have also decided to further strengthen mutual cooperation in areas like FinTech, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Digital Public Infrastructure.
In the sectors of Health and Food Security, India is sharing its learnings and experience from the Mid-Day Meal Scheme and the Public Distribution System with Indonesia. We have also decided that we will work together in sectors of Energy, Critical Minerals, Science & Technology, Space and STEM Education. The Disaster Management Authorities of both countries shall also come together to perform Joint Exercises.
Friends,
The relationship between India and Indonesia dates back thousands of years. Tales inspired from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the ‘Bali Jatra’ are living testaments of the age-old cultural and historical ties between our two great nations. It gives me great pleasure that, after the Buddhist Borobudur Temple, India will now also contribute towards the conservation efforts of the Prambanan Hindu Temple.
Additionally, the year 2025 shall be celebrated as the Indo-ASEAN Year of Tourism. This shall also promote cultural exchanges and tourism between India and Indonesia.
Friends,
Indonesia is our important partner in the ASEAN and Indo-Pacific regions. Both countries are committed towards maintaining peace, security, prosperity and rules-based order in this entire region. We agree that Freedom of Navigation must be ensured in accordance with International Laws.
In our Act Easy Policy, emphasis has been given to ASEAN unity and centrality. We continue to work together on platforms like G-20, ASEAN and Indian Ocean Rim Association.
Now we are also welcoming the membership of Indonesia in BRICS. At all these forums, we will work in coordination and cooperation for the interests and priorities of the nations in the Global South.
Excellency,
Your visit to India as Chief Guest for our Republic Day tomorrow is a matter of immense pride for us. We are all eager to witness the Indonesian marching squad for the very first time at the event. Once again, I extend a warm welcome to you and your delegation to India.
Thank you very much.
DISCLAIMER – This is the approximate translation of Prime Minister’s remarks. Original remarks were delivered
I am happy to be addressing you on this historic occasion. On the eve of Republic Day, I offer you my heartiest congratulations! On January 26, 75 years ago, our founding document, the Constitution of India, came into effect.
The Constituent Assembly, after nearly three years of debates, adopted the Constitution on 26th of November in 1949. That day, 26th November, has been celebrated as Samvidhan Divas, that is, Constitution Day, since 2015.
Republic Day is indeed a matter of collective joy and pride for all citizens. Seventy-five years, someone might say, is only the blink of an eye in the life of a nation. No, I will say, not these past 75 years. This has been the time when the long-dormant soul of India has awakened again, taking strides to regain its rightful place in the comity of nations. Among the oldest civilizations, India was once known as a source of knowledge and wisdom. There, however, came a dark phase, and inhuman exploitation under colonial rule led to utter poverty.
Today, we should first recall the brave souls who made great sacrifices to free the motherland from the shackles of foreign rule. Some were well known, while some remained little known till recently. We are celebrating this year the 150th birth anniversary of Bhagwan Birsa Munda, who stands as a representative of the freedom fighters whose role in the national history is now being recognised in true proportions.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, their struggles consolidated in an organized nationwide independence movement. It was the nation’s good fortune to have the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Babasaheb Ambedkar, who helped it rediscover its democratic ethos. Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity are not theoretical concepts that we came to learn in modern times; they have always been part of our civilisational heritage. It also explains why the critics who were cynical about the future of the Constitution and the Republic when India had newly become independent were proven so thoroughly wrong.
The composition of our Constituent Assembly was also a testimony to our republican values. It had representatives from all parts and all communities of the country. Most notably, it had 15 women among its members, including stalwarts such as Sarojini Naidu, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Sucheta Kripalani, Hansaben Mehta and Malati Choudhury. When women’s equality was only a distant ideal in many parts of the world, in India women were actively contributing in shaping the destiny of the nation.
The Constitution has become a living document because civic virtues have been part of our moral compass for millennia. The Constitution provides the ultimate foundation of our collective identity as Indians; it binds us together as a family. For 75 years now, it has guided the path of our progress. Today, let us humbly express our gratitude to Dr. Ambedkar, who chaired the Drafting Committee, other distinguished members of the Constituent Assembly, various officers associated with and others who worked hard and bequeathed us this most wonderful document.
Dear Fellow Citizens,
The 75 years of the Constitution are marked by an all-round progress of a young republic. At the time of Independence and even later, large parts of the country had faced extreme poverty and also hunger. But one thing we were not deprived of was our belief in ourselves. We set down to create the right conditions in which everyone would have the opportunity to flourish. Our farmers toiled hard and made our country self-sufficient in food production. Our labourers worked relentlessly to transform our infrastructure and manufacturing sector. Thanks to their sterling efforts, India’s economy today influences the global economic trends. Today, India is taking leadership positions in international forums. This transformation would not have been possible without the blueprint laid down by our Constitution.
In recent years, the economic growth rate has remained persistently high, creating job opportunities for our youth, putting more money in the hands of farmers and labourers, and also lifting more people out of poverty. The bold and far-sighted economic reforms will sustain this trend in the years to come. Inclusion is the cornerstone of our growth saga, distributing the fruits of developments as widely as possible.
As the Government continues to assign top priority to financial inclusion, initiatives such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, MUDRA, Stand-Up India and Atal Pension Yojana have been expanded to provide more people access to a variety of financial support schemes.
Equally importantly, the government has redefined the notion of welfare, making basic necessities such as housing and access to drinking water a matter of entitlement. Every effort is being made to extend a helping hand to the marginalized communities, particularly of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. For example, there have been pre-matric and post-matric scholarships, national fellowships, overseas scholarships, hostels and coaching facilities for the youth from the SC communities. The Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyuday Yojana is making progress in reducing poverty among the SC communities by adding employment and income generation opportunities. There have been dedicated schemes for aiming for the socio-economic development of ST communities, including Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan and Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM-JANMAN). A Development and Welfare Board has been constituted for the De-notified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic Communities.
Meanwhile, the focus on physical infrastructure development, including roads and railways, ports and logistics hubs, over the past decade has created a platform that will support growth for decades to come.
The way the government has used technology in the field of finance has been exemplary. A variety of digital payment options as well as the system of direct benefit transfer have promoted inclusion, bringing a significant number of people within the formal system. It has also brought unprecedented transparency in the system. In the process, within a few years we have created a robust Digital Public Infrastructure that is among the best in the world.
The banking system has been in a healthy condition after a series of bold measures such as the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, effecting a substantial reduction in the Non-Performing Assets of Scheduled Commercial Banks.
Dear Fellow Citizens,
We won freedom in 1947, but many relics of a colonial mindset persisted among us for long. Of late, we have been witnessing concerted efforts to change that mindset. Among the most noteworthy of such efforts was the decision to replace the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam. Based also on Indian traditions of jurisprudence, the new criminal laws place the delivery of justice instead of punishment at the centre of the criminal justice system. Moreover, the new laws grant top priority to countering crimes against women and children.
Reforms of such magnitude require an audacity of vision. Another measure that promises to redefine the terms of good governance is the Bill introduced in Parliament to synchronise election schedules in the country. The ‘One Nation One Election’ plan can promote consistency in governance, prevent policy paralysis, mitigate resource diversion, and reduce the financial burden, apart from offering many other benefits.
There has also been a fresh engagement with our civilisational heritage. The ongoing Mahakumbh can be seen as an expression of the richness of that heritage. An exciting array of initiatives is underway in the domain of culture to preserve and revitalise our traditions and customs.
India is a hub of great linguistic diversity. In order to conserve as well as celebrate this richness, the Government has recognised Assamese, Bengali, Marathi, Pali and Prakrit as classical languages. This category already includes Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Odia. The Government is proactively promoting research in 11 classical languages now.
I look forward to the completion of India’s first Archaeological Experiential Museum in Vadnagar of Gujarat, being developed next to an excavation site that shows evidence of human settlement from around 800 BCE. The museum will bring together in one place a wide range of arts, crafts and cultural elements from different eras.
Dear Fellow Citizens,
It is, after all, our young generation that is going to shape the India of tomorrow. Education, in turn, shapes these young minds. Therefore, the Government has increased its investment in education and made every effort to improve every parameter related to this sector. The results so far are more than encouraging. The last decade has transformed education, in terms of quality of learning and physical infrastructure and digital inclusion. For the medium of instruction, the regional languages are promoted at more levels. It is not surprising that there has been a notable improvement in students’ performance. I am glad to learn that women teachers have played a crucial role in this transformation, since more than 60 percent of those who became teachers in the last decade are women.
The expansion and mainstreaming of vocational and skill education is a welcome development. This is also supplemented now by the scheme to provide our youth internship opportunities in the corporate sector.
With a stronger foundation of the school-level education, India has been scaling new heights in various branches of knowledge, particularly in science, along with technology. For example, India stands sixth in terms of intellectual property filings in the world. We have consistently improved our ranking in the Global Innovation Index, moving from 48th position in 2020 to 39th in 2024.
With rising self-assurance, we are increasing our participation in cutting-edge research with a series of initiatives. The National Quantum Mission aims to create a vibrant and innovative ecosystem in this new frontier of technology. Another noteworthy beginning is with the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical System, which plans to focus on several advanced technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics and cyber security. These technologies were called futuristic till recently, but they are fast becoming part of our daily lives.
The Genome India Project has been not only an exciting venture in exploring nature; it is also a veritable defining moment in the history of science in India. Under its flagship programme, the genome sequencing of 10,000 Indians have been made available for further research only this month. This pathbreaking project will open new vistas in biotechnology research and also give a fillip to the public healthcare system.
The Indian Space Research Organisation has been taking giant leaps in space in recent years. This month, the ISRO once again made the nation proud with its successful Space Docking Experiment. India has now become the fourth country in the world to have this capability.
Our increasing confidence levels as a nation are also reflected in the arena of sports and games where our players have scripted thrilling success stories. Last year, our athletes made a mark in the Olympic Games. In the Paralympic Games, we sent our largest-ever contingent, who came back with our best-ever performance. Our chess champions impressed the world, as our men and women won the gold at the FIDE Chess Olympiad. The achievements in the sports during the year 2024 were capped by D. Gukesh, who became the youngest World Chess Champion.
Supported by a great improvement in training facilities at the ground level, these sportspersons have made us proud with their winning drive and inspired the next generation to aim higher and higher.
Our brothers and sisters living abroad have taken the best of our culture and civilisation to different parts of the globe and have made us proud with their achievements in diverse fields. They have always considered themselves to be a part of the India Story. As I said at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas earlier this month, I am confident of their proactive and enthusiastic participation in the making of a Viksit Bharat, a developed India, by the year 2047.
Dear Fellow Citizens,
Thanks to substantial and concrete progress in a wide range of areas, we are marching towards the future, holding our heads high. The key to our future is our youth and especially the young women. Their dreams are moulding the India of tomorrow, when we will be celebrating the centenary of our Independence. And when today’s children will salute the tricolour on 26th January of 2050, they will tell their next generation that this great quest would not have been possible without our incomparable Constitution guiding them along the way.
Our future generations will also keep in mind the mission of Independent India in the world. In the words of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi [and I quote]
“If Swaraj was not meant to civilize us, and to purify and stabilize our civilization, it would be nothing worth. The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.” [unquote]
Today, let us reaffirm our commitment to strive to realise Gandhiji’s dreams. His watchwords, truth and nonviolence, will continue to remain relevant for the whole world. He also taught us that rights and duties are but the two sides of the coin – indeed, the true source of rights is duty. Today we recall his lessons in compassion too – compassion not only for our human neighbours but also for our other neighbours, namely, flora and fauna, rivers and mountains.
Each of us must contribute to the efforts to counter the global threat of climate change. There have been two exemplary initiatives in this regard. At the global level, India is leading a mass movement, called Mission Lifestyle for Environment, to inspire individuals and communities to be more pro-active in protecting and preserving the environment. Last year, on World Environment Day, we launched a unique campaign, ‘Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam’, paying tribute to the nurturing power of our mothers as well as of Mother Nature. Its target of planting 80 crore seedlings was achieved ahead of the deadline. The world can learn from such innovative moves that people can adopt as their own movements.
Dear Fellow Citizens,
Let me once again congratulate you all on the occasion of Republic Day. My congratulations to the soldiers guarding our borders as well as police and paramilitary personnel keeping it safe within the borders. My congratulations also to the members of the judiciary, the bureaucracy and our missions abroad. My best wishes to you in all your endeavours.
Bharat today is jettisoning the colonial mindset, defying the earlier deified colonial ideas-VP Indian public administration should have Indian characteristics distanced from colonial mindset, says Vice-President
Emotional intelligence and cultural competence among public officials is crucial to understand the struggles of the marginalized and the underprivileged-VP
Technology adoption in public administration must be inclusive and inspired by ‘Antyoday’ – VP
Evidence-based studies essential to assess the impact of welfare policies, stresses VP
Participation of women in policy making will promote empathetic and sensitive governance, underlines VP
Vice President addresses the 70th Annual Meeting of the General Body of IIPA
Posted On: 04 NOV 2024 2:34PM by PIB Delhi
The Vice-President of India, Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar, today said that Bharat is quickly jettisoning the colonial mindset, we are now defying the earlier deified colonial ideas and symbols and Indian public administration should have Indian characteristics distanced from colonial mindset, aligning with our aspirations post independence.
Hon’ble Vice-President, Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar presided over the 70th Annual Meeting of the General Body of Indian Institute of Public Administration in New Delhi today. @iipa9#IIPApic.twitter.com/zhP8KoizbW
While addressing the gathering at the 70th Annual Meeting of the General Body of Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), New Delhi today, Vice-President underlined, “Indian public administration should have Indian characteristics distanced from colonial mindset aligning with our aspirations post independence. Look at the overall trajectory, more so in the last decade.”
“We are now defying the earlier deified colonial ideas and symbols. King’s way is now Kartavya Path and Race Course Road is Lok Kalyan Marg. Netaji now stands in the canopy where once King George’s statue was there. The ensign of India Navy was changed to include our tricolor. 1500 colonial-era statutes are not on the law book anymore.
The new criminal laws — Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam — have unshackled Indian Criminal Justice system from colonial legacy. It is a monumental and revolutionary change that the ‘Dand’ Sanhita has now become the ‘Nyaya’ Sanhita, effecting improvements to protect victim’s interests, carry out prosecution efficiently, amongst many other aspects. Bharat is quickly jettisoning the colonial mindset. Now you do not need English to learn medicine or technology”, he added.
We are now defying the earlier deified colonial ideas and symbols.
King’s way has transformed itself to Kartavya Path and Race Course Road is now Lok Kalyan Marg. Netaji Bose now stands in the canopy where once King George’s statue was there. The ensign of India Navy was… pic.twitter.com/sUgfkTOEuu
Recalling the ‘Panch Prans’ iterated by the Prime Minister during his Independence day speech in 2022, Shri Dhankhar stated, “…Prime Minister reminded us that we need to build an India free of colonial mindset. To that end, he gave panch pran or five resolves. (a) a resolve of developed India, (b) Removing any trace of the colonial mindset, (c) Taking pride in our legacy, (d) Our strength of unity, and (e) Fulfilling the duties of citizens with honesty. Our public administration would be out of sync with national mood and spirit if it does not imbibe these values”.
Highlighting the importance of emotional intelligence and soft skills among public officials, Shri Dhankhar said, “Focus more on emotional intelligence of its trainees. Developing soft skills, emotional intelligence, and cultural competence among public officials is crucial so that officials can understand the struggles of the marginalized and the underprivileged; design and implement policies that truly address those challenges”.
As we progress into a new era of governance, data must be at the forefront of our decision-making process. Evidence-based studies are essential to understand the impact of various welfare policies.
Assessments based on empirical evidence will not only enhance the credibility of… pic.twitter.com/nWLSzKaJTe
In his address, Shri Dhankhar further emphasized the need to enhance civil servants’ problem-solving abilities and reinforce ethical leadership, stating that while ethical standards are fundamental to our civilization, they require constant nurturing to withstand temptation.
Emphasising on the importance of technology adoption in public administration, he said, “Our training programs [IIPA’s] and research initiatives should focus on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and data analytics, while ensuring their ethical and responsible implementation in public service delivery. The cornerstone of effective public administration is continuous learning and capacity building.”
Drawing attention to the concern of digital marginalisation and need of an inclusive approach, Shri Dhankhar underlined, “However, while embracing technology, we must also ensure that it does not create further divisions. Rapidly advancing technology can exclude the most vulnerable sections of society. Therefore, our approach should be inclusive and inspired by ‘antyoday,’ ensuring that technological advancements reach all corners of our population.”
Stressing on the need for data driven and evidence based studies to asses impact of welfare measures, Shri Dhankhar underlined “As we progress into a new era of governance, data must be at the forefront of our decision-making processes. Evidence-based studies are essential to understand the impact of various welfare policies. Assessments based on empirical evidence will not only enhance the credibility of our institutions but also build public trust in governance. It will also give a befitting reply to those who are not ready to accept the phenomenal rise of Bharat and leave no stone unturned to taint and tarnish our institutions!”
“As we integrate technology, we must prioritize cyber security and data privacy. An environment of trust must be fostered where citizens feel that their information is secure and used responsibly”, he added.
Recognizing women’s exemplary administrative acumen and hailing the passing of Women’s Reservation Bill, Shri Dhankhar remarked, “This decision not only acknowledges the leadership potential of women, but also fulfills a profound aspect of Social Justice. I strongly believe increasing participation of women in policy making will promote empathetic and sensitive governance”.
The Vice-President pointed out that while India is a land of fairs and festivals, these celebrations are sometimes marred by avoidable mishaps, underscoring the crucial role IIPA can play in sensitizing district administrations at the national level. He emphasized that with proper anticipatory measures and advanced planning, particularly regarding amenities and safety, such incidents can be minimized.
Shri Surendra Nath Tripathi, Director-General, IIPA, Shri Sunil Kumar Gupta, Secretary to the Vice-President of India and other dignitaries were also present on the occasion.
Union Government initiates enquiry into the death of Elephants in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh MP Government also constitutes five-member State level Committee, comprising members from civil society, scientist and veterinarian, to independently inquire into the matter
Posted On: 02 NOV 2024 6:40PM by PIB Delhi
The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change has constituted a team to enquire into the death of ten elephants in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh. The team is conducting an independent enquiry in the matter.
Further, the State Government of Madhya Pradesh has also constituted a five-member State level committee, to enquire into the matter and submit a report to the Government. The five-member committee is headed by APCCF (Wildlife). The committee has members from civil society, scientist and veterinarian. The matter is also being enquired into by the Head of State Tiger Strike Force (STSF). The STSF has combed the forests and the adjoining villages and is conducting an in-depth enquiry about the incident.
The Principal Chief Conservator of Forest and Chief Wildlife Warden, Madhya Pradesh is camping in Bandhavgarh and supervising the enquiry and actions being taken in the matter. On the other hand, Additional Director General of Forests (Project Tiger & Elephant) & Member Secretary, National Tiger Conservation Authority, along with AIG NTCA, Nagpur, have visited the sites and held discussions with the State officials on the various related issues and probable cause of the deaths of elephants.
As per the preliminary information shared by the concerned officers from the State of Madhya Pradesh, the death of the elephants may be because of poisoning. The final cause of death shall only be ascertained after through enquiry, detailed Postmortem reports, results of histopathological and toxicological reports and other corroborative evidences. Further, preventive measures are being taken to avoid possibilities of such incidents by the State officials and monitoring of other elephant herds in and around Bandhavgarh reserve has been enhanced as informed by the officials.
Background
The patrolling staff of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve detected the death of four elephants in Salkhania beats of Pataur and Khiatuli range of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh on 29.10.24. On further combing of the adjoining areas, six more elephants were found sick or unconscious in the vicinity. The field staff and local veterinary officers started medication of the sick elephants, which was supported by a team of veterinarians from the School of Wildlife Forensic and Health (SWFH). The services of Dr. A. B. Srivastava, Retired Head of SWFH was also taken. The opinion of veterinarian and faculty at Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun was also taken.
However, four sick elephants succumbed to death on 30.10.24. Further, even after continuous medication and treatment, remaining two sick and unconscious elephants lost their lives on 31.10.24. Out of those dead ten elephants, one was male and nine were female. Further, amongst the ten dead elephants, six were juvenile/subadults and four were adults. The information revealed that the herd of thirteen elephants had raided the Kodo millet crop in the vicinity of the forest.
The postmortem of the ten elephants was done by a team of 14 veterinarians/wildlife veterinarian. The viscera after the postmortem have been sent to IVRI Izzatnagar, Bareilly and FSL, Sagar for toxicological and histopathological investigations on 01.11.24. However, the blood and other samples were sent to SWFH on 30.10.24, while treatment of the sick elephants, have prima facie indicated the presence of toxins in the samples sent.
Türkiye’s parliament must reject the draft amendment to the country’s ‘espionage’ laws which, if passed, would significantly threaten the ability of civil society organizations to operate freely within the country, said more than 80 organizations ahead of an expected vote in parliament. Scores of other organizations issued similar statements, calling on the legislators to reject the proposal.
If passed, this law would represent a significant threat to the ability of civil society to operate freely within the country
If approved, the new article – publicly referred to as the “agents of influence” law – would amend the penal code and criminalize unspecified “acts” that are “in line with the strategic interests or instructions of a foreign state or organization against the security or domestic or foreign political interests of the State in line with the strategic interests or instructions of a foreign state or organization.”
“If passed, this law would represent a significant threat to the ability of civil society to operate freely within the country,” the civil society organizations said in a joint statement.
The signatories point at the fact that the draft law fails the test of legal certainty and foreseeability, a fundamental tenet of law – meaning that articles of law must be understandable and predictable by the relevant people; individuals must be able to foresee which acts or omissions will make them criminally liable and what punishment will be applied for the act or omission committed.
The proposed legislative package, passed by the Parliamentary Justice Commission on 23 October, is expected to be voted on by members of the Turkish Parliament in the coming days.
If the provision is adopted, the rights to freedom of expression of all, including seeking and receiving information, would be also at risk of being violated
“We are also concerned that the proposed law fails to set out clear criteria for what specific acts constitute a criminal offence without adequate safeguards or effective remedies against potential abuses of the law,” said the organizations.
“Arbitrary interpretation of broadly worded, vague laws are used to target and prosecute human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and many other civil society organizations in Türkiye. If the provision is adopted, the rights to freedom of expression of all, including seeking and receiving information, would be also at risk of being violated. It would create a chilling effect on important human rights work, and potentially impede their activities.”
Background
The legislative package proposes to add a new penalty, Article 339/A “Committing offenses against the security or political interests of the state” under the seventh section, “Crimes Against State Secrets and Espionage,” of the Turkish Penal Code (Law No. 5237).
Terminology in the proposed article is vulnerable to abuse. For example, “strategic interests,” “instructions,” “organization,” and “domestic or foreign political interests of the State” are overly broad and vague. Ill-defined or overly broad laws can be susceptible to arbitrary application and abuse, thus risk being instrumentalized to target people that the state authorities consider dissenting or criminalize the legitimate activities of civil society organizations, such as those documenting human rights violations in the country.
The proposed article is in violation of international human rights law and standards as well as Türkiye’s Constitution and national laws as it threatens freedom of expression and violates the principle of legality which includes the principle of foreseeability, a fundamental concept of criminal law.
As well as the signatories to this statement, numerous other organizations have published their own statements including the Association of Civil Society Development Center (see here), the Women’s Platform for Equality (see here), the Third Sector Foundation of Turkiye (see here), the International Press Institute (see here), the Committee to Protect Journalists (see here), Human Rights Watch (see here), journalism organisations, trade unions and others (see here).
The number of signatories to thejoint statementis increasingly daily. A copy of the statement is being sent to all Turkish MPs.
SIGNATORIES 1. About Life Foundation (YADA) 2. AG-DA Gender Equality Solidarity Network 3. Ali İsmail Korkmaz Foundation 4. Altyazı Cinema Association 5. Amnesty International Türkiye 6. Ankara Initiative for Freedom of Thought 7. Ankara Solidarity Academy 8. Another School is Possible Association 9. Association for Monitoring Equal Rights 10. Batman Bar Association 11. Bodrum Women’s Solidarity Association 12. Center for Spatial Justice 13. Citizen’s Initiative 14. Citizens’ Assembly 15. DEMOS Research Association 16. Dersim Bar Association 17. Diyarbakır Bar Association 18. Families of LGBTs in İstanbul 19. Free Colors Association 20. GALADER-Ankara Rainbow Families Association 21. Green Thought Association 22. Hakkari Bar Association 23. Human Rights Agenda Association 24. Human Rights Association 25. Human Rights Association Ankara Branch LGBTI+ Commission 26. Human Rights Association Istanbul Branch 27. Human Rights Foundation of Türkiye 28. Izmir Women’s Solidarity Association 29. Kaos GL Association 30. Katre Women’s Counceling and Solidarity Association 31. Kirkayak Culture – Migration and Cultural Studies Center 32. Kuşadası Caferli Beautification and Solidarity Association 33. Lambdaistanbul LGBT Solidarity Association 34. Lawyers for Freedom Association 35. Leader Women Association 36. Life Memory Freedom Association 37. Mardin Bar Association 38. Marmaris Public Assembly 39. May 17 Association 40. Media and Law Studies Association 41. Merdiven Social Initiative and Development Association 42. Migration Monitoring Association 43. Muamma LGBTI+ Education Research and Solidarity Association 44. Muğla Environment Platform 45. Murat Çekiç Association 46. Muş Bar Association 47. Natural Life Association 48. Nonviolence Education and Research Center 49. P24 Independent Journalism Platform 50. Press, Publishing, Communication, and Postal Workers’ Union 51. Pride Istanbul 52. Progressive Journalists Association 53. Red Umbrella Sexual Health and Human Rights Association 54. Rights Initiative Association 55. Romani Godi – Association for Roma Memory Studies 56. Rosa Women’s Association 57. SES Equality and Solidarity Association 58. Siirt Bar Association 59. Social Policy, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association 60. Support for Improvement in Social and Economic Living Association 61. Şanlıurfa Bar Association 62. Şırnak Bar Association 63. Tarlabaşı Community Support Association 64. The Civil Society in the Penal System Association 65. The Confederation of Public Employees’ Trade Unions 66. Trans Pride Istanbul 67. Truth Justice Memory Center 68. Turkish Handicap Association 69. Türkiye Human Rights Litigation Support Project 70. Türkiye Journalists’ Union 71. Türkiye Press, Publishing, and Printing Employees’ Union 72. University Queer Studies and LGBTI+ Solidarity Association 73. Van Bar Association 74. Velvele 75. Women for Women’s Human Rights Association 76. Women’s Culture, Arts, and Literature Association 77. Women’s Solidarity Foundation 78. Women’s Time Association 79. Young Thought Institute 80. Youth Organizations Forum 81. Yuva Association
In accordance with the Methodology for determining the risk parameters of the stock market and deposit market of Moscow Exchange PJSC by NCO NCC (JSC) on 02.11.2024, 10-11 (Moscow time), the values of the upper limit of the price corridor (up to 89.53) and the range of market risk assessment (up to 705.9 rubles, equivalent to a rate of 8.75%) of the security RU000A1020L5 (Samara Region 15) were changed.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
In accordance with the Methodology for determining the risk parameters of the stock market and deposit market of Moscow Exchange PJSC by NCO NCC (JSC), on 02.11.2024, 10-15 (Moscow time), the values of the upper limit of the price corridor (up to 101.7) and the range of market risk assessment (up to 1104.68 rubles, equivalent to a rate of 11.25%) of the security RU000A105G81 (DOM 1P-13R) were changed.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
In accordance with the Methodology for determining the risk parameters of the stock market and deposit market of Moscow Exchange PJSC by NCO NCC (JSC) on 02.11.2024, 10-16 (Moscow time), the values of the upper limit of the price corridor (up to 91.02) and the range of market risk assessment (up to 717.26 rubles, equivalent to a rate of 10.5%) of the security RU000A1020L5 (Samara Region 15) were changed.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
In accordance with the Methodology for determining the risk parameters of the stock market and deposit market of Moscow Exchange PJSC by NCO NCC (JSC), on 02.11.2024, 11-54 (Moscow time), the values of the upper limit of the price corridor (up to 107.73) and the range of market risk assessment (up to 1131.0 rubles, equivalent to a rate of 11.25%) of the RU000A109SK6 security (MTS 1P-27) were changed.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
The PM has announced two new elements of this government’s approach to boost border security and restore order to the asylum system.
The Prime Minister has announced two new elements of this government’s approach to boost border security and restore order to the asylum system – a £58 million boost for the National Crime Agency (NCA) and new figures showing 9,400 people with no right to be here have been returned since the government took power.
The NCA will receive a £58 million increase in its core budget for the 2025/26 financial year, representing a 9% rise compared to 2024/25.
This uplift in funding will:
Deliver specialist operational equipment such as covert audio/video tools and covert tracking capabilities (including in the maritime domain).
Increase the amount of leads we generate through analysis of data to stop criminals in their tracks.
Allow us to keep pace with the ever more sophisticated ways online criminals hide their tracks by bringing in threat specific data from international partners, industry and covert sources.
Expand access to datasets and systems to NCA intelligence and investigative teams, borders staff and policing partners to give them direct access to the single intelligence picture.
Increase the skills and tools available to forensic officers.
Increase the technology available to officers to allow them to collaborate and work more productively.
The PM has also announced new returns figures following an ad-hoc statistical release from the Home Office today.
Since this government took power (up to 28 October), a total of 9,400 returns were recorded (including both enforced and voluntary returns).
There were 2,590 enforced returns of people with no legal right to remain in the UK. This compares with 2,170 enforced returns over the same period in 2023, an increase of 19%.
Of the total returns, 1,520 enforced and voluntary returns were of foreign national offenders (FNOs), this is an increase of 14% compared to 1,330 FNO returns in the same period of 2023.
Source: Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – In English
The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) warns consumers about the website diamondwhale.pro. According to information available to BaFin, financial and investment services are being provided on this website without the required authorisation.
The website operator is simply referred to as “DiamondWhale”, and there is no information regarding its legal form. They give no specific business address.
BaFin has recently become aware of a number of websites with almost identical content and has also warned consumers about them. In each case, the website’s homepage displays the phrase: “Step Up Your Trading with [name of operator]“.
Anyone providing financial or investment services in Germany may do so only with authorisation from BaFin. However, some companies offer these services without the necessary authorisation. Information on whether a particular company has been granted authorisation by BaFin can be found in database of companies.
Theinformation provided by BaFin is based on section 37 (4) of the German BankingAct (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG).
Please be aware:
BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify fraud attempts at an early stage.
Source: Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – In English
The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) warns consumers about the website diamondwhale.pro. According to information available to BaFin, financial and investment services are being provided on this website without the required authorisation.
The website operator is simply referred to as “DiamondWhale”, and there is no information regarding its legal form. They give no specific business address.
BaFin has recently become aware of a number of websites with almost identical content and has also warned consumers about them. In each case, the website’s homepage displays the phrase: “Step Up Your Trading with [name of operator]“.
Anyone providing financial or investment services in Germany may do so only with authorisation from BaFin. However, some companies offer these services without the necessary authorisation. Information on whether a particular company has been granted authorisation by BaFin can be found in database of companies.
Theinformation provided by BaFin is based on section 37 (4) of the German BankingAct (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG).
Please be aware:
BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify fraud attempts at an early stage.
Source: United Kingdom – Prime Minister’s Office 10 Downing Street
The PM has announced two new elements of this government’s approach to boost border security and restore order to the asylum system.
The Prime Minister has announced two new elements of this government’s approach to boost border security and restore order to the asylum system – a £58 million boost for the National Crime Agency (NCA) and new figures showing 9,400 people with no right to be here have been returned since the government took power.
The NCA will receive a £58 million increase in its core budget for the 2025/26 financial year, representing a 9% rise compared to 2024/25.
This uplift in funding will:
Deliver specialist operational equipment such as covert audio/video tools and covert tracking capabilities (including in the maritime domain).
Increase the amount of leads we generate through analysis of data to stop criminals in their tracks.
Allow us to keep pace with the ever more sophisticated ways online criminals hide their tracks by bringing in threat specific data from international partners, industry and covert sources.
Expand access to datasets and systems to NCA intelligence and investigative teams, borders staff and policing partners to give them direct access to the single intelligence picture.
Increase the skills and tools available to forensic officers.
Increase the technology available to officers to allow them to collaborate and work more productively.
The PM has also announced new returns figures following an ad-hoc statistical release from the Home Office today.
Since this government took power (up to 28 October), a total of 9,400 returns were recorded (including both enforced and voluntary returns).
There were 2,590 enforced returns of people with no legal right to remain in the UK. This compares with 2,170 enforced returns over the same period in 2023, an increase of 19%.
Of the total returns, 1,520 enforced and voluntary returns were of foreign national offenders (FNOs), this is an increase of 14% compared to 1,330 FNO returns in the same period of 2023.
Source: Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – In English
The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) warns consumers about services offered by SafeTrades, London, UK, on its website safetrades.com. BaFin has information that the company is offering financial services without the required authorisation. The company does not provide its full company name or legal form.
Financial services may only be offered in Germany if the company providing these services has the necessary authorisation from BaFin to do this. However, some companies offer these services without the required authorisation. Information on whether particular companies have been authorised by BaFin can be found in BaFin’s database of companies.
Theinformation provided by BaFin is based on section 37 (4) of the German BankingAct (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG).
Please be aware:
BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify fraud attempts at an early stage.
Source: Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – In English
The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) warns consumers about services offered by SafeTrades, London, UK, on its website safetrades.com. BaFin has information that the company is offering financial services without the required authorisation. The company does not provide its full company name or legal form.
Financial services may only be offered in Germany if the company providing these services has the necessary authorisation from BaFin to do this. However, some companies offer these services without the required authorisation. Information on whether particular companies have been authorised by BaFin can be found in BaFin’s database of companies.
Theinformation provided by BaFin is based on section 37 (4) of the German BankingAct (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG).
Please be aware:
BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify fraud attempts at an early stage.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Prime Minister Keir Starmer makes a speech to the INTERPOL General Assembly in Glasgow.
Location:
Glasgow
Delivered on:
(Transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered)
It’s great to welcome you all to Glasgow.
It was right here, in this conference centre, exactly three years ago that over 190 countries came together at COP26 to agree the Glasgow Climate Pact.
That was the first global commitment to phase down the use of coal. And a vital step in the fight against climate change – a challenge that no country can meet on its own.
So it’s fantastic that once again today, we have over 190 countries here working together to meet another global challenge: the threat of serious organised crime.
And it’s particularly fitting to be here in Glasgow: a place that was once home to what many consider to be the first professional City Police Force.
And a place that is today home to our state-of-the-art Scottish Crime Campus, just down the road in Gartcosh.
18 different organisations working together, under one roof, co-operating for a common cause. Precisely the kind of co-operation that is so essential to the missions of my government, and the foundation we rest everything upon.
Greater security for our people. Security rooted in our values, in respect for human rights and upholding the rule of law.
Now, I was a prosecutor myself. I served as the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales. Not here in Scotland – we have a complicated set of arrangements across these countries.
But what we know from being a country of four nations – what I know having served in that role – having seen the complexity of operations that fight organised crime, first-hand, is that crime is global.
Criminals do not respect borders. And so I want to start today by thanking you – all of you here in this conference centre. And the thousands that you represent. Those who serve in police, in intelligence, and security services right across the world. Because too often – what you do goes unrecognised.
Some of it necessarily unknown. But just look at some of the operations we can talk about – they tell the story.
The UK working with the US and Ecuador to seize 19 tonnes of cocaine. The global identification of over 40,000 victims of child sexual abuse online, and more than 70 countries working together to save them.
60 countries working together to tackle online scams, resulting in almost 4,000 arrests, and more than $250 million of assets seized.
And of course, the operation which infiltrated and seized the online platform used by LockBit, the world’s most harmful cyber-crime group.
I know the hard work that goes into this. I know how many things have to come together, almost instantly. And most importantly – I know what would happen without you.
The extra lives destroyed by drugs and violence. The unspeakable horrors of child sexual abuse. Gangs forcing the vulnerable into modern slavery or prostitution. People having their life savings stolen through online fraud.
It’s your work, your service, that protects people from these threats. And because so much of your work is done in private, I’m grateful for this opportunity in public to say a huge and heartfelt thank you.
Now, of course INTERPOL is absolutely central to these efforts. As I say – I have seen the importance of global co-operation first-hand. I sent British prosecutors in Pakistan so we could work together on counter-terrorism. In West Africa – to disrupt the flow of drugs from South America to Europe, and ultimately to the UK.
So I understand the power of what INTERPOL does, and why the UK makes great use of those resources…
Handling thousands of enquiries every week from around the world, from intelligence sharing to managing direct threats to life.
So I am pleased to say today that the UK is increasing its funding for INTERPOL projects, investing £6 million this financial year.
This will include support for improved data-sharing, and faster communications capabilities. The first ever Global Fraud Threat Assessment, and new regional networks. From strengthening co-operation across the Pacific to tackling drug and gun smuggling networks in the Caribbean.
Because together, we want to send a clear message to the world’s most hardened criminals: there is no safe haven. There is no place that you can hide from justice. Together – we’ve got the whole world covered. And together – we will defeat you.
And look – there is a particular group of organised criminals that urgently need to hear this message: the vile people smugglers, who think that human life can be trafficked, that borders can be ignored.
And that desperation, misery and hope – they prey on that too – are all emotions that are ripe for exploitation.
Make no mistake – people smuggling needs a global response. And on a scale – way beyond where we are now. We need to unlock the power of that co-operation – across borders, agencies, continents – even.
And look – I know many people in this room are already working hard on this. So I accept that my argument here is a political one, first and foremost.
But I’m afraid we’re still at the stage where the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge. It goes back to security.
I was elected to deliver security for the British people. And strong borders are a part of that – of course they are. But I say it again – security doesn’t stop at our borders.
And illegal migration is, without question, a massive driver of global insecurity. There is nothing progressive about turning a blind eye as men, women and children die in the Channel.
And you don’t advance the cause of global justice – or compassion for those individuals – to pretend that there is.
This is a vile trade that must be stamped out – wherever it thrives. And it exploits the cracks between our institutions, pits nations against one another, profits from our inability – at the political level – to come together.
That’s part of the business model. And so I will work with anyone serious who can offer solutions on this – anyone.
Because without co-ordinated, global action, it will not go away.
And unless we bring all the powers we have to bear on this, in much the same way as we do for terrorism, then we will struggle to bring these criminals to justice.
And that in a sense is my message here today. People-smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism.
We’ve got to combine resources, share intelligence and tactics, and tackle the problem upstream, working together to shut down the smuggling routes.
We do that with terrorism. When I was the Director of Public Prosecutions, it was my personal mission to smash the terrorist gangs. And we worked across borders to ensure the safety of citizens, across Europe and across the world.
Now, as the UK’s Prime Minister, it is my personal mission to smash the people smuggling gangs. And look, that starts here in the UK.
This Labour government is resetting the UK’s whole approach to this challenge. No more gimmicks. No more gesture politics. No more irresponsible, undeliverable promises that almost by design – seek conflict with other countries.
We have turned the page on all of that. Because such promises are not worth the paper they are written on. All they do is waste taxpayer money, destroy people’s trust in politics as a force for good.
Instead, we are approaching this issue with humanity, and with profound respect for international law.
We will never withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. Indeed, we’re proud of the role the UK played in creating that Convention. Respecting international treaties also makes international co-operation easier, because it shows that the UK is a reliable partner.
So our approach is different. As I say – we’re going to treat people smugglers like terrorists. So we’re taking our approach to counter-terrorism – which we know works – and applying it to the gangs, with our new Border Security Command.
We’re ending the fragmentation between policing, Border Force and our intelligence agencies. Recruiting hundreds of specialist investigators. They are best of the best – from our National Crime Agency, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement, the CPS and our intelligence agencies – all working together.
We’re making border protection an elite border force. And not just within our country. We’re also working together with international partners, sharing intelligence and tactics.
Earlier this year I visited the Headquarters of our National Crime Agency. I saw first-hand the ways we are already collaborating, and what it takes to intercept, to disrupt, and destroy these networks. There are so many tools at our disposal.
We can seize their phones at the border, identifying and tracing smugglers wiring payments. We’ve already trained sniffer dogs to detect the smell of dinghy rubber and working with Bulgaria stopped more than 100 small boats upstream, long before they made it to the Channel.
And as we understand how these gangs work, we can invest in new capabilities and enhanced powers to smash them.
So we’re giving our new Border Security Command an additional £75 million of new funding on top of the of £75 million we’ve already committed.
This will support a new Organised Immigration Crime Intelligence Unit, hundreds of new investigators and intelligence officers, backed by state-of-the-art technology.
We’re also investing a further £58 million in our National Crime Agency, including strengthening its data analysis and intelligence capabilities.
And we’ll also legislate to give those fighting these gangs enhanced powers too. Again, look what we’ve done with counter-terrorism. We have the powers to trace suspects’ movements using information from the intelligence services.
We can shut down their bank accounts, cut off their internet access, and arrest them for making preparations to act, before an attack has taken place.
We don’t wait for them to act – we stop them before they act. And we need to stop people smuggling gangs before they act too.
Now, as with any crime – smuggling does not operate in an institutional vacuum, so we also need to rebuild our broken asylum system, process claims swiftly and humanely.
That will make law enforcement’s job much easier. So we’re recruiting hundreds of additional people into asylum case working.
Overall returns since this government came to office are now 9,400 – up almost 6,000 since the end of August.
Enforced returns are up almost a fifth on the same period last year. And returns of Foreign National Offenders are up 14 per cent.
But look, the only way to defeat this vile trade and save lives is to stop people being smuggled here in the first place.
And that means doing everything possible to deepen our cross-border co-operation. So international agreements matter.
We have to use every tool we have – operational, diplomatic, political – to join up our response.
President Macron and I have already agreed to increase intelligence sharing and do more to dismantle smuggling routes further upstream. This is also a priority for the bi-lateral co-operation treaty we are working on with Germany.
We’re also working with Italy to dismantle the supply chains of maritime equipment, combat illicit financial flows, and strengthen our investigative capacities and our data sharing. And as part of the UK’s wider reset with the European Union, we are seeking a new security pact, including restoring access to real-time intelligence sharing networks. And at the European Political Community this Thursday in Hungary, I’ll be putting this issue at the top of the international agenda once again.
But we need your help also. This is the General Assembly of the world’s security experts. It’s your co-operation across borders that saves lives, time and again. It’s your collective efforts that bring organised criminals to justice, wherever they seek to hide.
And it’s your leadership today that can help make a decisive breakthrough against this vile trade in human life.
Because if together we can win this war against the people smugglers, then this gathering will have achieved a victory for humanity – every bit as significant as the Glasgow Climate Pact.
Because you will have helped to smash the gangs, secure our borders, and save countless lives. And it is with that hope, and in that spirit, that I declare the 92nd General Assembly open.
Source: United Kingdom – Prime Minister’s Office 10 Downing Street
Prime Minister Keir Starmer makes a speech to the INTERPOL General Assembly in Glasgow.
Location:
Glasgow
Delivered on:
(Transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered)
It’s great to welcome you all to Glasgow.
It was right here, in this conference centre, exactly three years ago that over 190 countries came together at COP26 to agree the Glasgow Climate Pact.
That was the first global commitment to phase down the use of coal. And a vital step in the fight against climate change – a challenge that no country can meet on its own.
So it’s fantastic that once again today, we have over 190 countries here working together to meet another global challenge: the threat of serious organised crime.
And it’s particularly fitting to be here in Glasgow: a place that was once home to what many consider to be the first professional City Police Force.
And a place that is today home to our state-of-the-art Scottish Crime Campus, just down the road in Gartcosh.
18 different organisations working together, under one roof, co-operating for a common cause. Precisely the kind of co-operation that is so essential to the missions of my government, and the foundation we rest everything upon.
Greater security for our people. Security rooted in our values, in respect for human rights and upholding the rule of law.
Now, I was a prosecutor myself. I served as the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales. Not here in Scotland – we have a complicated set of arrangements across these countries.
But what we know from being a country of four nations – what I know having served in that role – having seen the complexity of operations that fight organised crime, first-hand, is that crime is global.
Criminals do not respect borders. And so I want to start today by thanking you – all of you here in this conference centre. And the thousands that you represent. Those who serve in police, in intelligence, and security services right across the world. Because too often – what you do goes unrecognised.
Some of it necessarily unknown. But just look at some of the operations we can talk about – they tell the story.
The UK working with the US and Ecuador to seize 19 tonnes of cocaine. The global identification of over 40,000 victims of child sexual abuse online, and more than 70 countries working together to save them.
60 countries working together to tackle online scams, resulting in almost 4,000 arrests, and more than $250 million of assets seized.
And of course, the operation which infiltrated and seized the online platform used by LockBit, the world’s most harmful cyber-crime group.
I know the hard work that goes into this. I know how many things have to come together, almost instantly. And most importantly – I know what would happen without you.
The extra lives destroyed by drugs and violence. The unspeakable horrors of child sexual abuse. Gangs forcing the vulnerable into modern slavery or prostitution. People having their life savings stolen through online fraud.
It’s your work, your service, that protects people from these threats. And because so much of your work is done in private, I’m grateful for this opportunity in public to say a huge and heartfelt thank you.
Now, of course INTERPOL is absolutely central to these efforts. As I say – I have seen the importance of global co-operation first-hand. I sent British prosecutors in Pakistan so we could work together on counter-terrorism. In West Africa – to disrupt the flow of drugs from South America to Europe, and ultimately to the UK.
So I understand the power of what INTERPOL does, and why the UK makes great use of those resources…
Handling thousands of enquiries every week from around the world, from intelligence sharing to managing direct threats to life.
So I am pleased to say today that the UK is increasing its funding for INTERPOL projects, investing £6 million this financial year.
This will include support for improved data-sharing, and faster communications capabilities. The first ever Global Fraud Threat Assessment, and new regional networks. From strengthening co-operation across the Pacific to tackling drug and gun smuggling networks in the Caribbean.
Because together, we want to send a clear message to the world’s most hardened criminals: there is no safe haven. There is no place that you can hide from justice. Together – we’ve got the whole world covered. And together – we will defeat you.
And look – there is a particular group of organised criminals that urgently need to hear this message: the vile people smugglers, who think that human life can be trafficked, that borders can be ignored.
And that desperation, misery and hope – they prey on that too – are all emotions that are ripe for exploitation.
Make no mistake – people smuggling needs a global response. And on a scale – way beyond where we are now. We need to unlock the power of that co-operation – across borders, agencies, continents – even.
And look – I know many people in this room are already working hard on this. So I accept that my argument here is a political one, first and foremost.
But I’m afraid we’re still at the stage where the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge. It goes back to security.
I was elected to deliver security for the British people. And strong borders are a part of that – of course they are. But I say it again – security doesn’t stop at our borders.
And illegal migration is, without question, a massive driver of global insecurity. There is nothing progressive about turning a blind eye as men, women and children die in the Channel.
And you don’t advance the cause of global justice – or compassion for those individuals – to pretend that there is.
This is a vile trade that must be stamped out – wherever it thrives. And it exploits the cracks between our institutions, pits nations against one another, profits from our inability – at the political level – to come together.
That’s part of the business model. And so I will work with anyone serious who can offer solutions on this – anyone.
Because without co-ordinated, global action, it will not go away.
And unless we bring all the powers we have to bear on this, in much the same way as we do for terrorism, then we will struggle to bring these criminals to justice.
And that in a sense is my message here today. People-smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism.
We’ve got to combine resources, share intelligence and tactics, and tackle the problem upstream, working together to shut down the smuggling routes.
We do that with terrorism. When I was the Director of Public Prosecutions, it was my personal mission to smash the terrorist gangs. And we worked across borders to ensure the safety of citizens, across Europe and across the world.
Now, as the UK’s Prime Minister, it is my personal mission to smash the people smuggling gangs. And look, that starts here in the UK.
This Labour government is resetting the UK’s whole approach to this challenge. No more gimmicks. No more gesture politics. No more irresponsible, undeliverable promises that almost by design – seek conflict with other countries.
We have turned the page on all of that. Because such promises are not worth the paper they are written on. All they do is waste taxpayer money, destroy people’s trust in politics as a force for good.
Instead, we are approaching this issue with humanity, and with profound respect for international law.
We will never withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. Indeed, we’re proud of the role the UK played in creating that Convention. Respecting international treaties also makes international co-operation easier, because it shows that the UK is a reliable partner.
So our approach is different. As I say – we’re going to treat people smugglers like terrorists. So we’re taking our approach to counter-terrorism – which we know works – and applying it to the gangs, with our new Border Security Command.
We’re ending the fragmentation between policing, Border Force and our intelligence agencies. Recruiting hundreds of specialist investigators. They are best of the best – from our National Crime Agency, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement, the CPS and our intelligence agencies – all working together.
We’re making border protection an elite border force. And not just within our country. We’re also working together with international partners, sharing intelligence and tactics.
Earlier this year I visited the Headquarters of our National Crime Agency. I saw first-hand the ways we are already collaborating, and what it takes to intercept, to disrupt, and destroy these networks. There are so many tools at our disposal.
We can seize their phones at the border, identifying and tracing smugglers wiring payments. We’ve already trained sniffer dogs to detect the smell of dinghy rubber and working with Bulgaria stopped more than 100 small boats upstream, long before they made it to the Channel.
And as we understand how these gangs work, we can invest in new capabilities and enhanced powers to smash them.
So we’re giving our new Border Security Command an additional £75 million of new funding on top of the of £75 million we’ve already committed.
This will support a new Organised Immigration Crime Intelligence Unit, hundreds of new investigators and intelligence officers, backed by state-of-the-art technology.
We’re also investing a further £58 million in our National Crime Agency, including strengthening its data analysis and intelligence capabilities.
And we’ll also legislate to give those fighting these gangs enhanced powers too. Again, look what we’ve done with counter-terrorism. We have the powers to trace suspects’ movements using information from the intelligence services.
We can shut down their bank accounts, cut off their internet access, and arrest them for making preparations to act, before an attack has taken place.
We don’t wait for them to act – we stop them before they act. And we need to stop people smuggling gangs before they act too.
Now, as with any crime – smuggling does not operate in an institutional vacuum, so we also need to rebuild our broken asylum system, process claims swiftly and humanely.
That will make law enforcement’s job much easier. So we’re recruiting hundreds of additional people into asylum case working.
Overall returns since this government came to office are now 9,400 – up almost 6,000 since the end of August.
Enforced returns are up almost a fifth on the same period last year. And returns of Foreign National Offenders are up 14 per cent.
But look, the only way to defeat this vile trade and save lives is to stop people being smuggled here in the first place.
And that means doing everything possible to deepen our cross-border co-operation. So international agreements matter.
We have to use every tool we have – operational, diplomatic, political – to join up our response.
President Macron and I have already agreed to increase intelligence sharing and do more to dismantle smuggling routes further upstream. This is also a priority for the bi-lateral co-operation treaty we are working on with Germany.
We’re also working with Italy to dismantle the supply chains of maritime equipment, combat illicit financial flows, and strengthen our investigative capacities and our data sharing. And as part of the UK’s wider reset with the European Union, we are seeking a new security pact, including restoring access to real-time intelligence sharing networks. And at the European Political Community this Thursday in Hungary, I’ll be putting this issue at the top of the international agenda once again.
But we need your help also. This is the General Assembly of the world’s security experts. It’s your co-operation across borders that saves lives, time and again. It’s your collective efforts that bring organised criminals to justice, wherever they seek to hide.
And it’s your leadership today that can help make a decisive breakthrough against this vile trade in human life.
Because if together we can win this war against the people smugglers, then this gathering will have achieved a victory for humanity – every bit as significant as the Glasgow Climate Pact.
Because you will have helped to smash the gangs, secure our borders, and save countless lives. And it is with that hope, and in that spirit, that I declare the 92nd General Assembly open.
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