• Starmer begins trip to India to promote trade ties.
• Visas blocked previous efforts to seal trade deal: UK PM.
• Starmer trying to take more restrictive stance on immigration.

Britain will not pursue a visa deal with India, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, as he aims to deepen economic ties with the country following this year’s trade agreement.

Starmer begins a two-day trip to India on Wednesday, bringing a trade mission of businesses to promote the trade deal, which was agreed in May, signed in July, and is due to come into effect next year.

Starmer said that visas had blocked previous efforts to seal a trade deal, and that, having reached an agreement which had no visa implications, he didn’t wish to revisit the issue when he meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks on Thursday.

“That isn’t part of the plans,” he told reporters en route to India when asked about visas, adding the visit was “to take advantage of the free trade agreement that we’ve already struck”.

“Businesses are taking advantage of that. But the issue is not about visas.”

Starmer is trying to take a more restrictive stance on immigration amid high public concern about the issue, as his Labour Party trails the populist Reform UK party in polls.

He said visas would not be on the table in order to attract tech sector professionals from India, after US President Donald Trump hiked fees on H-1B visas, though he said more broadly he wanted to have “top talent” in Britain.

Asked if he would stop issuing visas to arrivals from countries that won’t take back foreign criminals or people wanted to deport, Starmer said it was a “non-issue” with India as there is a returns agreement, but it was something he would look at more broadly.

“We are looking at whether there should be a link between visas and returns agreements,” he said.

Scientists warn that the seas surrounding New Zealand are warming much faster than the global average, highlighting the urgent impact of climate change on the island nation.

A government report, Our Marine Environment, revealed that New Zealand’s ocean waters are heating 34 percent faster than worldwide averages.

Rising temperatures, increasing acidity, and more frequent marine heatwaves are already threatening thousands of coastal homes as sea levels climb.

“Climate change is driving significant changes in our oceans,” the report said. “Ocean temperatures are rising, marine heatwaves are becoming more intense and longer-lasting, and sea-level rise is accelerating at many locations.”

Researchers linked this rapid warming to disruptions in ocean currents between New Zealand and Antarctica, along with changes in atmospheric circulation.

Shane Geange, marine advisor at the Department of Conservation, said, “Global warming is intensifying existing problems in our oceans.

We are witnessing faster sea-level rise, more severe marine heatwaves, and oceans becoming more acidic and losing oxygen.”

Sea-surface temperatures at four sites around New Zealand rose, on average, between 0.16C and 0.26C per decade between 1982 and 2023.

Many native species were struggling to adapt to life in warmer and more acidic oceans, the study found, and risked being overrun by invasive pests.

Warmer-than-normal sea temperatures have previously been linked to deaths of New Zealand’s native yellow-eyed penguins.

“Because of these findings, how we manage New Zealand’s marine environment needs to change,” said Geange.

“We now have enough evidence to take action, and delaying risks further harms to our marine ecosystems.”

Steadily rising sea levels were already being felt in many of New Zealand’s low-lying coastal hamlets, the report found.

More than 200,000 homes worth US$100 billion (NZ$180 billion) were found in areas at risk of coastal inundation and inland flooding.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo will bring the suspense to an end when it announces the winner on Friday at 11:00am (0900 GMT).

The backdrop is bleak: the number of armed conflicts worldwide involving at least one state has never been as high as in 2024, since Sweden’s Uppsala University started its global conflict database in 1946.

Trump has repeatedly said he deserves the prestigious prize for resolving “eight conflicts”, but experts predict he will not be the committee’s choice — at least not this year.

“No, it will not be Trump this year,” Swedish professor Peter Wallensteen, an expert on international affairs, told AFP.

“But perhaps next year? By then, the dust will have settled around his various initiatives, including the Gaza crisis,” he added.

Numerous experts consider Trump’s “peacemaker” claims to be exaggerated and express concerns over the consequences of his “America First” policies.

Donald Trump insists he deserves the prize for resolving ‘eight conflicts’, a claim which experts doubt.

“Beyond trying to broker peace for Gaza, we have seen policies that actually go against the intentions and what’s written in the will of (Alfred) Nobel, notably to promote international cooperation, the fraternity of nations and disarmament,” said Nina Graeger, who heads the Peace Research Institute of Oslo.

For Graeger, the list of Trump’s actions not aligned with the ideals of the Nobel Peace Prize is long.

Trump has withdrawn the US from international organisations and multilateral treaties, launched trade wars against allies and enemies alike, threatened to take Greenland from Denmark by force, ordered the National Guard into US cities and attacked universities’ academic freedoms as well as freedom of expression.

“We take the complete picture into account,” explained Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the five-member committee awarding the peace prize.

“The whole organisation or the complete personality of that person matters, but what we first and foremost look at is what they have been actually achieving for the sake of peace,” he said.

Uncontroversial pick?

This year, 338 individuals and organisations have been nominated for the peace prize, with the list kept secret for 50 years.

Tens of thousands of people are eligible to propose candidates, including lawmakers and cabinet members of all countries, former laureates, certain university professors and Nobel committee members.

The committee’s chair said its five members would take everything into account when awarding the prize

In 2024, the award went to Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo for its efforts to ban nuclear weapons.

With no clear favourite this year, several names have been doing the rounds in Oslo ahead of Friday’s announcement.

Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms — a network of volunteers risking their lives to feed and help people enduring war and famine 1 have been mentioned, as has Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights election watchdog.

The Nobel committee’s choices in recent years have demonstrated “a return to more micro things, somewhat closer to classical ideas of peace”, with a focus on “human rights, democracy, freedom of the press and women”, said Halvard Leira, the director of the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs.

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo won the 2024 award for its efforts to ban nuclear weapons

“My hunch would probably just perhaps be for a not that controversial candidate this year,” he said.

The Nobel committee could also choose to reaffirm its commitment to a world order currently being challenged by Trump by giving the prize to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, or a UN body like its refugee agency UNHCR or the Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.

It could also give the nod to international tribunals such as the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, or champion press freedoms currently under attack by giving it to the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders.

But the committee could also do as it has done many times before and pick a completely unexpected winner.