U.S. Vice President JD Vance began a four-day visit to India on Monday and will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as New Delhi rushes to avoid steep U.S. tariffs with an early trade deal and boost ties with the Trump administration.

Their discussions will cover the first day of Vance’s largely personal visit to the country with his family, which includes visiting the Taj Mahal and attending a wedding in the city of Jaipur, Reuters reported.

Vance’s wife, Usha, is the daughter of Indian immigrants.

Vance landed at New Delhi’s Palam airport on Monday following a visit to Rome, where he held a private meeting with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday.

Modi and Vance are expected to review progress made on the bilateral agenda outlined in February when the Indian leader met President Donald Trump in Washington. It includes “fairness” in their two-way trade and growing their defence partnership.

The Indian prime minister was one of the first world leaders to meet Trump after he took office, and Reuters has reported that his government is open to cutting tariffs on more than half of its imports from the U.S., which were worth a total $41.8 billion in 2024, as part of a trade deal.

However, the U.S. president has continued to call India a “tariff abuser” and “tariff king”.

“We are very positive that the visit will give a further boost to our bilateral ties,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters on Thursday, speaking about Vance’s engagements in India.

The U.S. is India’s largest trading partner and their two-way bilateral trade reached $129 billion in 2024, with a $45.7 billion surplus in favour of India, U.S. government trade data show.

Officials in New Delhi are expecting to clinch a trade deal with the U.S. within the 90-day pause on tariff hikes announced by Trump on April 9 for major trading partners, including Delhi.

Vance’s tour in India is also seen as laying the ground for Trump’s visit to the country later in the year for the summit of leaders of the Quad grouping that includes India, Australia, Japan and the U.S.

Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran.

The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.

Iran and the U.S. started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.

Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the U.S.A.”

Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.

The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.

The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.

U.S. strikes on Yemen’s Ras Isa fuel terminal on the Red Sea coast have killed at least 74 people in the deadliest attack since the U.S. started its bombing campaign against the Houthis last year, according to the Houthi-run health ministry.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the intensification of strikes last month in the biggest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since he took office in January. Washington has vowed to keep attacking the Iran-aligned Houthis until the group halts attacks on Red Sea shipping, Reuters reported.

Health ministry spokesperson Anees al-Asbahi said 171 people were injured in Thursday’s strikes, according to preliminary figures, with rescue teams continuing efforts to search for victims.

The U.S. military said the strikes aimed to cut off a source of fuel for the Houthi militant group. The port has a heavy military presence in addition to being a primary hub for fuel imports, Yemeni sources said.

Among the dead were employees of Safer Oil Company, which operates the port, and the Yemen Petroleum Company, responsible for overseeing imported fuel shipments and their distribution, the sources added.

U.S. Central Command did not comment on the health ministry’s casualty figure.

“The objective of these strikes was to degrade the economic source of power of the Houthis, who continue to exploit and bring great pain upon their fellow countrymen,” it had said in a post on X.

The U.S. and Israel have previously targeted the port, viewing it as a hub for launching drones, missiles, and attacks on ships.

The Iran-aligned Houthis have taken control of swathes of Yemen over the past decade. Since November 2023, the group has launched dozens of drone and missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, saying they were targeting ships linked to Israel in solidarity with Palestinians over the war in Gaza.

Ras Isa terminal, about which is about 55 km (35 miles) north of the port city of Hodeidah, has a storage capacity of 3 million barrels.

Fuel import taxes bring in hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the Houthi administration, sources said.

The Houthis halted attacks on shipping lanes during a two-month ceasefire in Gaza. Although they vowed to resume strikes after Israel renewed its assault on the enclave last month, they have not struck targets in the Red Sea since then.

In March, two days of U.S. attacks killed more than 50 people, Houthi officials said.