NEW DELHI: Elon Musk’s Starlink signed an agreement with India’s top telecom operator on Wednesday to bring the US satellite Internet giant’s services to the world’s most populous country, a day after announcing a similar agreement with the country’s second-largest provider.
The deals with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which together control more than 70 percent of India’s telecom market, could help bring Internet connections to millions of people who live in remote areas.
But they depend on Starlink obtaining government approval to enter India. The partnership announcements come weeks after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Musk in Washington.
Deals will put Starlink devices in stores across India
Wednesday’s deal will allow Starlink to stock and sell its equipment in Jio’s thousands of retail outlets, giving the company direct distribution across India. Starlink will also use its partners’ network infrastructure to enhance satellite coverage across India, where a vast population still lacks Internet access.
A statement from Jio said Starlink will complement the Indian telecom giant’s broadband services “by extending high-speed Internet to the most challenging of locations in a quick and affordable manner.”
Jio will also provide installation and activation support for the Starlink devices, the statement said.
India has long been out of reach for Musk’s companies
Jio has long been at odds with Starlink over methods for awarding satellite service spectrum in India.
Jio had urged Indian government to grant spectrum for satellite services through auctions to ensure fair competition, while Musk wanted spectrum to be allocated administratively, in line with global trends. Indian government eventually decided to assign satellite spectrum.
It is unclear whether Starlink’s license application has already been approved, but local media reports suggest it is nearing initial regulatory approval.
Last November, India’s telecoms minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia, said Starlink had yet to comply with security norms, and that a license would be issued to the company only after it meets all the requirements.
Yet the biggest challenge Starlink faces in India could be pricing.
Mobile data in India is among the world’s cheapest — Ambani’s Jio once even gave it for free with mobile plans.
Tesla, Musk’s electric car maker, has also faced hurdles in India due to the country’s high import duties on vehicles, but it could be getting a boost as well. The copmany began hiring in India last month and has also signed a lease deal to open its first showroom in Mumbai, according to local news reports.
Starlink could help India bring millions online in remote areas
At least 40 percent of the country’s more than 1.4 billion people don’t have access to the Internet. Cheap satellite broadband is needed to bridge this gap, particularly in India’s vast remote and mountainous rural areas.
Starlink has at least 6,900 active satellites orbiting Earth that provide low-latency broadband, including to areas where Internet previously has been completely unavailable.
Musk’s Starlink could help remote parts of India get online under deals with telecoms players
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Musk’s Starlink could help remote parts of India get online under deals with telecoms players
- Deals with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which together control more than 70 percent of India’s telecom market, could help bring Internet connections to millions of people who live in remote areas
Germany mass stabbing suspect has ‘psychological illness’: police
She was subdued by two passersby and law enforcement officers
BERLIN: A German woman accused of a mass stabbing attack that wounded 18 people at a train station in Hamburg suffers from mental illness, police said Saturday.
The suspect, a 39-year-old woman, is accused of going on a stabbing spree on Friday at the main station in Hamburg, stunning the northern city in the middle of the evening rush hour.
The woman has “very clear indications of a psychological illness,” police said in a statement, without giving further details on her condition.
They added there were no signs she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the attack, which left four victims seriously wounded.
The woman was subdued by two passersby and law enforcement officers, then taken into custody at the scene without resisting arrest, police said.
She was due to appear before a judge later Saturday.
Police say they have ruled out a “political motive” for the attack and believe the suspect acted alone.
The victims range in age from 19 to 85.
The four in serious condition were a 24-year-old man and three women, aged 24, 52 and 85, police said.
Emergency officials initially said their wounds were life-threatening, but police say all the victims now appear to be out of immediate danger.
The attack took place just after 6:00 p.m. (1600 GMT) Friday on one of the platforms in front of a standing train, German media reported.
The suspect was thought to have turned “against passengers” at the station, a spokeswoman for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, told AFP.
Some of the victims were treated onboard waiting trains in the station, German daily Bild reported.
Images of the scene showed access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police and people being loaded into waiting ambulances.
Forensic police could also be seen walking up and down the platforms where the attack took place.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed his shock in a call with the mayor of Hamburg.
“My thoughts are with the victims and their families,” Merz said, according to a readout from a spokesman.
Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks with often jihadist or far-right extremist motivations that have put security at the top of the agenda.
The most recent, on Sunday, saw four people injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld.
The investigation into that attack has been handed over to federal prosecutors after the Syrian suspect told the police officers who arrested him that he had jihadist beliefs.
The question of security — and the immigrant origin of some of the attackers — was a major topic during Germany’s recent election campaign.
Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU topped the February vote, which also saw a record score of more than 20 percent for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Last year, Germany toughened its legislation on carrying knives, now banned at public gatherings and on long-distance trains.
They are also banned in specific zones in some cities, including at Hamburg’s train station.
But experts and police unions have previously questioned whether such bans are effective.
Power outage hits Cannes Film Festival and traffic in southeastern France
- A power outage in southeast France disrupts traffic and the Cannes Film Festival
- Restorations are underway as officials urge residents in the area to take caution
CANNES: A major power outage struck southeastern France on Saturday, disrupting traffic and briefly halting events at the Cannes Film Festival as the prestigious event prepared to hand out its top prize.
About 160,000 households in the Alpes-Maritimes department lost electricity after a high-voltage line fell Saturday morning, electricity network operator RTE said on X. The outage came hours after a fire at an electrical substation near Cannes overnight had already weakened the grid.
Cannes Film Festival organizers confirmed the outage affected the early activities of Saturday and said the Palais des Festivals — the Croisette’s main venue — had switched to an independent power supply.
“All scheduled events and screenings, including the Closing Ceremony, will proceed as planned and under normal conditions,” the statement said. “At this stage, the cause of the outage has not yet been identified. Restoration efforts are underway.”
Still, screenings at the Cineum, one of the festival’s satellite venues, were briefly suspended, the festival added.
Traffic lights in parts of Cannes and the surrounding city of Antibes stopped working after 10 a.m., leading to traffic jams and confusion in city centers. Most shops along the Croisette remained closed, and local food kiosks were only accepting cash. Train service in Cannes was also disrupted.
Authorities said restoration efforts were ongoing and urged residents to remain cautious during travel.
Former Minneapolis police chief recalls ‘absolutely gut-wrenching’ moment of seeing George Floyd video
- What he saw conflicted with what his own people had told him about the deadly encounter
- The video shows Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, pinning him to the pavement
MINNEAPOLIS: Former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo vividly remembers receiving a call around midnight from a community activist. The caller told him to watch a video spreading on social media of a white officer pinning a Black man to the ground, despite his fading pleas of “I can’t breathe.”
The dying man was George Floyd. The officer was Derek Chauvin. And Arradondo was the city’s first Black police chief.
“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Arradondo, 58, recalled in an interview ahead of the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
What he saw conflicted with what his own people had told him about the deadly encounter, and he knew immediately it would mean changes for his department and city. But he acknowledged he didn’t immediately foresee how deeply Floyd’s death would reverberate in the US and around the world.
“I served for 32 years,” he said. “But there’s no doubt May 25th, 2020, is a defining moment for me in my public service career.”
The video shows Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, pinning him to the pavement outside a convenience store where Floyd had tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Chauvin maintained the pressure for 9-1/2 minutes despite pleas from onlookers to stop, even after an off-duty firefighter tried to intervene and another officer said he couldn’t find a pulse.
‘Remnants of pain and anger’
Arradondo sat for the interview in a public library that was heavily damaged in the unrest that followed Floyd’s death. It’s on Lake Street, a major artery that saw some of the worst destruction, a street that he says still bears “remnants of the pain and anger of what occurred five years ago.”
Just down the block, there’s the empty shell of a police station that was torched during the riots. And within sight is a Target store and a Cub Foods supermarket that were looted. Storefronts remain boarded up. While some businesses were rebuilt, empty lots sit where others did not.
Arradondo still stands by his and Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to abandon the Third Precinct and let it burn. Protesters breached the building, and police — who were spread thin — didn’t have the resources to hold it. So he ordered his officers to evacuate.
“During the most significant crisis we’ve ever experienced, arguably in the state, when it’s life or death, I’ve got to go on the side of keeping people alive and safe,” he said.
Police reform
Arradondo subsequently helped launch an overhaul of policing in the city despite a resistant police culture and a powerful officers union. He testified against Chauvin in his 2021 murder trial, a rare breach of the “blue wall” that traditionally protects officers from being held accountable for wrongdoing.
Five years on, Arradondo, who retired in 2022, said he believes law enforcement agencies nationwide have made progress on police accountability — albeit incremental progress — and that police chiefs and sheriffs now move faster to hold officers responsible for egregious misconduct.
Arradondo was promoted to chief in 2017, and his elevation was greeted with hope among local African Americans who affectionately called him “Rondo.” But his department had a reputation for being too quick to use force and many were angry about police killing young Black men in Minnesota and beyond.
Arradondo said he wishes he had made more changes to the police department before Floyd was killed.
“I would have pushed harder and sooner at trying to dismantle some of the toxic culture that allowed that indifference to exist that evening, on May 25th, 2020,” he said. “I certainly would have invested more time elevating the voices in our community that had been pleading with police departments for decades to listen to us and change.”
Making amends
Arradondo just published a book, “Chief Rondo: Securing Justice for the Murder of George Floyd,” that explores leadership, justice and race, the broader impacts of policing, and the challenges of working within a flawed system. He closes it with a letter dedicated to Floyd’s daughter, Gianna.
“I never had an opportunity to meet Gianna, but I wanted her to know that, even though I was not out there that evening, at that intersection when her father was pleading for help, that I heard him, and I was going to do everything I could to bring him justice,” he said.
He wanted to say the words that she has not heard from the four former officers who were convicted for their roles in George Floyd’s death:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your father being taken from you.”
Fire in Nairobi informal settlement kills eight
- The fire in the city’s Makina area began at around 5:00 am
- The cause has not been established
NAIROBI: A fire tore through an informal settlement in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Saturday, killing at least eight people, police said.
The fire in the city’s Makina area began at around 5:00 am (0200 GMT), said police official Patricia Yegon.
“Eight people were burnt to death, while several others were injured,” she said, without specifying how many were hurt.
The cause has not been established, but fires frequently occur in the capital’s overcrowded and impoverished informal settlements.
The Kenyan Red Cross said 40 houses were affected before firefighters contained the blaze with the help of the local community.
Bangladesh sounds alarm as ‘extreme desperation’ drives Rohingya into deadly sea journeys
- UNHCR says 427 Rohingya died in accidents off Myanmar’s coast in early May
- Thousands of refugees have attempted perilous sea voyages in past few years
DHAKA: Bangladeshi authorities on Saturday raised the alarm over increasing numbers of Rohingya refugees taking risky boat journeys to flee the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar.
Bangladesh hosts more than 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims, who, for decades, have fled neighboring Myanmar to escape persecution, especially during a military crackdown in 2017. The majority of them live in Cox’s Bazar in eastern Bangladesh, which has become the world’s largest refugee settlement.
Over the years, humanitarian conditions in Cox’s Bazar’s cramped refugee camps have been deteriorating, with aid continuously declining since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly one in five people attempting to flee the settlement by sea have been reported as dead or missing so far in 2025, according to UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency.
Two boats which capsized on May 9 and 10 were carrying a total of 514 Rohingya refugees from Cox’s Bazar and Myanmar’s Rakhine state, according to UNHCR, which estimates that at least 427 of them died.
“The ongoing funding crisis for the Rohingya is severely hampering the lives of Rohingya in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, which fueled the desperation for the perilous sea journey,” Mizanur Rahman, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News.
“Every aspect of their lives — food, livelihood, health, and so on — has been severely impacted. Most importantly, it has darkened their future also. They are at a loss what to do. The uncertainty in their lives triggered many of them to (undertake) the risky sea journeys towards unknown destinations.”
Over the past few years, UNHCR has documented thousands of Rohingya refugees embarking on deadly sea journeys from Bangladesh — and, to a lesser extent, from Myanmar — and reported hundreds dying or going missing.
The Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority, lived for centuries in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state but were stripped of their citizenship in the 1980s. Since then, many of them have fled to Bangladesh, where they are almost entirely reliant on humanitarian aid.
Despite multiple attempts by Bangladeshi authorities, the UN-backed repatriation and resettlement process of the Rohingya has so far failed to take off.
In 2025, aid for the Rohingya faced another cut after US President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was eliminating most US aid globally. Washington was the largest donor of foreign aid to the Rohingya last year, contributing $301 million — 55 percent of all foreign aid received.
UNHCR requires $383 million in 2025 to “stabilize the lives of refugees and their host communities” across Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, as well as those displaced inside Myanmar. But, as of Friday, it had secured only 30 percent of that amount.
The deadly boat accidents earlier this month may have been fueled by “extreme desperation,” UNHCR said, highlighting that it occurred during the monsoon season, which is a particularly dangerous time for boat travel in the region.
“The dire humanitarian situation, exacerbated by funding cuts, is having a devastating impact on the lives of Rohingya, with more and more resorting to dangerous journeys to seek safety, protection and a dignified life for themselves and their families,” said Hai Kyung Jun, UNHCR director for Asia and the Pacific.
“The latest tragedy is a chilling reminder that access to meaningful protection, especially in countries of first asylum, as well as responsibility sharing and collective efforts along sea routes, are essential to saving lives.”
