Daily Briefing: PM Modi heads to Saudi Arabia next week; uncovering fake Dr Camm; Kesari 2 movie review

With that, let’s move on to the top 5 stories from today’s edition:

🚨 Big Story

🤝 From the quarters of diplomacy

India-US ties ‘trending positive’: Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to US billionaire Elon Musk about the “immense potential” for collaboration in technology and innovation. The PM underlined that India was committed to advancing partnerships with the US in these domains. Their conversation comes days before US Vice President J D Vance is scheduled to visit India next week from April 21 to 24. This also comes in the middle of negotiations for a bilateral trade agreement between India and the US, as well as amid an ongoing tariff war, primarily between the US and China, which India believes presents opportunities.

Advancing India-Saudi Arabia relations: PM Modi will be headed to Saudi Arabia next week — his first visit to the country in his third term. Trade and investments, energy cooperation, reviving the IMEEC (India-Middle East-Europe Corridor) and defence partnership will be among the issues on the agenda for discussion when Modi visits the country on April 22-23. His visit comes ahead of US President Trump’s expected visit to Saudi Arabia in mid-May. As the meeting comes at a time when Houthis are trying to disrupt maritime traffic in the Red Sea, India’s engagement with Saudi Arabia and other partners will focus on restoration of stability in the region.

⚡ Only in Express

Over 18,000 complex procedures, fellowships at some of the best universities abroad and an enviable academic record – for over a decade, Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav pulled off an elaborate fraud for about 12 years, pretending to be Dr N John Camm, a celebrated UK-based cardiologist. How did the lid get blown off? His carefully crafted fakery at the Mission Hospital in Damoh, Madhya Pradesh, where his 42-day stint as a senior cardiologist ended on April 7 following an uproar over the deaths of seven patients under his care.

💡 Express Explained

Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Donald Trump: There’s a common thread that binds them all. And that is the function of the US economy. While Smith balked at restraints on free trade ‘either by high duties, or by absolute prohibitions’ during his time, Ricardo went one step further with his theory of “comparative advantage”. However, the return of high tariffs and industrial policy in the US under Donald Trump and Joe Biden mark the end of the era of hyper-globalisation propelled by the ideas of the classical economists Smith and Ricardo. How? We explain.

✍️ Express Opinion

In our Opinion section today, Peggy Mohan shares the story of the modern languages of North India, which goes back to a time just before the 12th century. Focusing on Hindi and Urdu as identical twins, Mohan writes: “The division of Hindi and Urdu into two separate languages goes back precisely to that office memo, described in the press at that time as “inadvertent”, and “a mistake”. What do you call two life forms that started out as a single embryo, but split into two? Identical twins. Not identical in terms of thoughts, choices or life story: It is often easy to tell identical twins apart. But whatever they become, and wherever they go, they will always be identical at the genetic level.”

🍿 Movie Review

Wondering what to watch this weekend? Let me tell you that Kesari Chapter 2, starring Akshay Kumar, R Madhavan, and Ananya Panday, has hit the screens, with a spotlight, yet again, on a fightback against the British empire, accompanied by a surge of patriotic pride. Based on the book ‘The Case That Shook The Empire’ by Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat, the film, this time, focuses on the April 1919 massacre of Jallianwala Bagh. Shubhra Gupta, in her review of the film, writes: “While the film is clearly aligned with the Make India Great Again thinking, you can spot a couple of smartly subversive ideas nestling in there… is a film of its time, for its time, unpacking a tragic chapter of our past with dollops of explanatory, patriotic fervour, whose opening disclaimer states that ‘though inspired by true events, it is a work of pure fiction’.”

That’s all for today. Have a lovely weekend!

Until next time,
Ariba

Business As Usual by E P Unny