Latin Financial News

EKA Mobility has formed a strategic partnership with Japan’s Mitsui & Company and Netherlands-based VDL Groep to manufacture electric buses and light commercial vehicles in the country. As per the agreement, Mitsui and VDL together will invest $100 million (approx Rs 830 crore) in EKA Mobility for ‘significant’ minority stakes. The resources will be utilized to scale up research and development and enhance manufacturing capacity. EKA Mobility, which commissioned a production unit in Pune earlier this year, plans to scale up production capacity to roll out 5000 electric buses and 6000 light commercial vehicles per annum in the first phase.

migrants and Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepares for a state visit to Mexico, a fresh wave of up to 15,000 migrants is set to crash into the already flooded US southern border of Mexico. A caravan of nearly 8,000 asylum-seekers began its march through Mexico to the border days before Blinken’s meeting with Mexican President Andres Lopez Manuel Obrador to discuss the illegal immigration crisis. They are mostly from Cuba, Haiti and Honduras.

no joy" this Christmas as Israel bombed the besieged Palestinian territory on Monday, with no end in sight to the war that Hamas says has claimed more than 20,000 lives. Festivities were effectively scrapped in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, revered as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, with few worshippers or tourists on the usually packed streets.

Pope Francis has kicked off global Christmas celebrations with a call for peace, as Israel's war on Hamas and Russia's invasion of Ukraine cast a shadow over one of the world's favourite holidays. Having said earlier in the day that he was thinking of people «who are suffering from war — we are thinking of Palestine, of Israel, of Ukraine», the pope struck a sombre tone during his Christmas Eve mass.

Red Sea crisis, shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk Sunday decided to resume voyages through the Suez Canal. This followed the setting up of the multi-national security initiative Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG), led by the US. “As of Sunday 24 December 2023, we have received confirmation that the previously announced multi-national security initiative Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) has now been set up and deployed to allow maritime commerce to pass through the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden and once again return to using the Suez Canal as a gateway between Asia and Europe, the shipper said in an advisory to its customers. “This is most welcome news for the entire industry and indeed the functionality of global trade. With the OPG initiative in operation, we are preparing to allow for vessels to resume transit through the Red Sea both eastbound and westbound,” it added.

external affairs ministry announced that, as part of its development assistance programme, India has extended 308 lines of credit aggregating to $32.02 billion to partner countries over the years. Of this, about $17.06 billion has been extended to Asia, $12.15 billion to Africa and $2.81 billion to others, it said. Around 600 projects have been taken up and executed in several sectors, including infrastructure, power, connectivity, agriculture, education and health, the minister of state for external affairs V Muraleedharan informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. He said grant assistance projects are concentrated primarily in India’s neighbourhood in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. “India’s developmental projects are based on the needs and aspirations of the partner countries. The main instruments of support include lines of credit, grants-in-aid as well as capacity building programmes.

Mint’s queries till press time. Furthermore, the two countries are now exploring opportunities in Asia, expanding their focus beyond Latin America and Africa.

SDGs) and SDG-related climate targets, including through multilateral institutions where India and Germany are members, such as the International Solar Alliance (ISA)," the two sides said in a joint declaration of intent released in May 2022. The two sides are also considering expanding their collaboration into Madagascar and Ethiopia, Dhanda told Mint.

There is a rather telling story behind why Google’s ‘ChatGPT-killer’ was christened Gemini. Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google and the former head of Google Brain, explained on X (formerly Twitter): “The Gemini effort came about because we had different teams working on language modelling, and we knew we wanted to start to work together. The twins are the folks in the legacy Brain team (many from the PaLM/PaLM-2 effort) and the legacy DeepMind team (many from the Chinchilla effort) that started to work together on the ambitious multimodal model project we called Gemini, eventually joined by many people from all across Google." (bit.ly/46XO1sk).

Peso Pluma, the singer who played a crucial role in elevating the regional Mexican sound to the top of the pop charts, has secured the title of YouTube's most-viewed artist of the year. While expressing gratitude, Pluma stated, «I feel humble and grateful that my music has made it to the top spot on YouTube. A huge thank you to my musicians and team, my fans, everyone at YouTube, and all the people who have made this project possible,» as said to The Hollywood Reporter.

Lok Sabha polls are just months away, the BJP in Kerala resumed its 'Sneha Yatra' on Thursday -an outreach programme aimed at connecting with the Christian community in the state. The saffron party initially launched the initiative during this year's Easter. In a recent state committee meeting, the party decided to resume the yatra during the Christmas season.

Earth's axial tilt is the protagonist behind the winter solstice, causing the North Pole to tilt farthest away from the Sun. This phenomenon, documented by NASA, results in minimal direct sunlight and shorter days in the Northern Hemisphere. Contrary to intuition, the day of the winter solstice does not house the earliest sunset.

The poinsettia has long been a symbol of the holiday season.

As 2023 draws to a close, investors are shifting their focus to the upcoming fiscal year.

Chilean voters have rejected a conservative constitution to replace the country’s dictatorship-era charter, a little over a year after turning down a proposed leftist charter

stocks of large, well-established firms. This is understandable, as these stocks provide steady returns, pay good dividends, and are not likely to crash due to a change in fundamentals. Large, stable companies may face challenges but are likely to overcome them.

Guatemala violated Indigenous rights by permitting a huge nickel mine on tribal land almost two decades ago, according to a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

LEEDS, England—At a testing center here, for three days in a row 10 women at a time line up with their arms raised over their heads. A technician wearing a face mask and gloves sprays them with antiperspirant for precisely two seconds.

LTIMindtree has opened a new delivery centre in Mexico City to expand its presence in Latin America, the company said on Friday. The centre will enable workforce transformation and localisation for LTIMindtree in the Americas and was inaugurated on Thursday. It will support the company’s capabilities in the region, bringing LTIMindtree’s services closer to its customers in the SAP and digital engineering service lines. As the LATAM delivery & operations head, Anurag Tripathi, associate vice president of LTIMindtree will lead the Mexico City delivery centre with a focus on future growth and delivering high-quality results for customers.

By Hernan Nessi

The painful economic steps that Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, announced this week sound draconian: Slashing the currency’s value in half