NEW DELHI: Electric vehicle (EV) industry has “unanimously” agreed they won’t need subsidies once existing subsidy regime ends. “All sections” of the EV industry conveyed this to commerce minister Piyush Goyal in a meeting on Friday. The minister also said India is looking forward to strengthening economic relationship with the US under Trump presidency – “with who we have worked before also” – amid renewed tensions over trade tariffs, with the incoming president having described India as a “very big abuser” of tariffs. And Goyal has sounded a word of caution to quick commerce companies to comply with the law of the land as Blinkit has pilot-launched a 10-minute ambulance service in Gurgaon and others are beginning medicine delivery. “Electric mobility in India is absolutely ready and set to fly. Everybody was unanimous in the room (meeting with EV industry) that once the existing subsidy regime comes to an end, none of them requires a subsidy to grow any further today. We will make it easier to set up charging infrastructure at petrol pumps. I went further (in Friday meeting) to offer making guidelines for that self-monitoring and self-certifying. Whoever is setting up charging stations will self monitor itself. Oil companies can keep a watch,” Goyal said. Last March, India had come out with an EV policy of duty concessions to companies setting up manufacturing units here with a minimum investment of $500 million to woo the global biggies. “They do not need newer incentives or subsidies,” the minister added.
A British national was among at least 14 people killed in the vehicle attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, the Foreign Office has confirmed.
He was named by the Metropolitan Police as Edward Pettifer, 31, of Chelsea, London.
In a statement, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said it was supporting the victim’s family.
During the attack, a man in a pick-up truck ploughed through crowds on the city’s Bourbon Street before being killed by police.
The New Orleans coroner gave Mr Pettifer’s preliminary cause of death as “blunt force injuries” suffered on Bourbon Street, PA reports.
In a statement, Mr Pettifer’s family said: “The entire family are devastated at the tragic news of Ed’s death in New Orleans. He was a wonderful son, brother, grandson, nephew and a friend to so many.
“We will all miss him terribly. Our thoughts are with the other families who have lost their family members due to this terrible attack. We request that we can grieve the loss of Ed as a family in private. Thank you.”
Their names were released by families and relatives before the authorities in the US completed post-mortem examinations.
The attack is believed to have been carried out by a 42-year-old Texas resident and US Army veteran.
After driving the truck through the crowds the suspect is said to have got out and fired a weapon before being shot dead by police.
The FBI says an Islamic State group flag was found inside the vehicle.
Two improvised explosive devices were also found nearby, according to police.
The suspect, named as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, is believed to have acted alone in a “premeditated and evil act”, the FBI has said.
At least 39 other people were injured during the attack, which took place in the city’s French Quarter – a bustling nightspot popular with locals and tourists – at around 03:15 (09:15 GMT) on Wednesday.
Some of the injured have been discharged from hospital but more than a dozen remain, with some being treated in the ICU.
Bourbon Street was opened to the public on Thursday morning ahead of the Sugar Bowl, a much-anticipated college American football match between Notre Dame and the University of Georgia, that draws thousands of attendees.
New Delhi: Punjab National Bank (PNB) has updated its fixed deposit (FD) rates and introduced two new tenures for deposits under 3 crore. It became effective from January 1, 2025. The bank now offers a 303-day FD with an interest rate of 7 per cent and a 506-day FD at 6.7 per cent for regular depositors. These new options provide more flexibility for customers looking to invest in FDs.
Why Fixed Deposits Are a Rewarding Investment Option
Fixed deposits allow investors to deposit a lump sum amount of money for a set period, earning interest over time. They offer high interest rates than a regular savings account which makes them more rewarding investment option.
FD Rates for Senior and Super Senior Citizens
For senior citizens, Punjab National Bank offers a 7.5 per cent interest rate on the new 303-day FD scheme and a 7.2 per cent interest rate on the 506-day FD. Super senior citizens will benefit from even higher rates, with 7.8 per cent on the 303-day FD and 7.5 per cent on the 506-day FD. These new tenures provide attractive options for both senior and super senior citizens looking to invest in FDs.
PNB Fixed Deposit Interest Rates for General Citizens
Punjab National Bank offers fixed deposit interest rates between 3.50 per cent and 7.25 per cent for terms ranging from seven days to 10 years for general citizens. The highest interest rate of 7.25 per cent is available for a 400-day term.
FD Return Calculator
So, if you are investing Rs 1 lakh at the 7.5 per cent rate, you will get Rs 7,500 per year interest income. So, after one year, your maturity amount would be Rs 1,07,500. Similarly, if the interest rate is 7.8 per cent, the yearly return would be Rs 7,800 and the maturity amount would be Rs 1,07,800.
Honduras’s president threatened to push the U.S. military out of a base it built decades ago in the Central American country should President-elect Donald J. Trump carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants from the United States.
The response by President Xiomara Castro of Honduras, in an address broadcast on television and radio on Wednesday, was the first concrete pushback by a leader in the region to Mr. Trump’s plan to send back millions of Latin American citizens living in the United States.
The threat came as Ms. Castro and Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, also called a meeting of foreign ministers later this month to address the deportation issue.
“Faced with a hostile attitude of mass expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change in our policies of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military arena,” Ms. Castro said.
“Without paying a cent for decades,” she added, “they maintain military bases in our territory, which in this case would lose all reason to exist in Honduras.”
Honduras’ foreign minister, Enrique Reina, said afterward in a radio interview that Honduras’s leader had the power to suspend without the approval of the country’s Congress a decades-old agreement with the United States that allowed it to build the Soto Cano air base and operate America’s largest military task force in Central America from there.
The move would present grave risks for the small country, which depends on the United States as its largest trading partner and a source of humanitarian aid.
Will Freeman, a fellow in Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said of the Honduran president’s statement: “I’m surprised a bit by the boldness of it.”
A spokesman for the Trump transition team, Brian Hughes, responding to Ms. Castro’s warning, said in a statement, “The Trump administration looks forward to engaging our Latin American partners to ensure our southern border is secure and illegal immigrants can be returned to their country of origin.”
Mr. Trump promised to swiftly deport undocumented immigrants when he took office, but his transition team has not shared any concrete plans, leaving Latin American governments guessing even as they try to prepare. Mr. Trump also vowed to slap a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada if they did not stop the flow of migrants and fentanyl to the United States.
Most governments in Latin America, including Mexico’s, have worked to stay on a good footing with Mr. Trump, even as they have sought to emphasize the contributions their citizens make to the American economy, whatever their legal status.
This week, Ms. Sheinbaum reiterated: “We will continue to demonstrate how the Mexican people in the U.S. contribute in a very important way to the U.S. economy. And if Mexican people were not in the U.S., there would be no food on American tables.”
The governments have also sought to reassure their citizens in the United States that they are preparing for any large-scale expulsions. Honduras has said it will establish mobile consulates, and Mexico created an online application for its citizens to alert consulate authorities if they are at imminent risk of being detained.
On Friday, in an apparent shift from her previous goal to reach a deal with Mr. Trump to avoid receiving such migrants, Ms. Sheinbaum also suggested that Mexico might take in deportees from other countries, even as she reiterated that her administration did not agree with mass deportations.
“We are going to ask the United States that, as far as possible, migrants who are not from Mexico can be taken to their countries of origin. And if not, we can collaborate through different mechanisms,” Ms. Sheinbaum said.
“There will be a time to talk with the U.S. government if these deportations really occur,” she added. “But here we are going to receive them; we are going to receive them well, and we have a plan.”
Governments in the region rely on remittances from immigrants in the United States. They account for as much as 25 percent of Honduras’s economy. More than half a million undocumented Hondurans — about 5 percent of the Honduran population — were estimated to be living in the United States in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
Since the 1980s, an American task force has operated out of Soto Cano, an air base owned by the Honduran government in Comayagua, a town about 50 miles from the capital, Tegucigalpa. It was originally built by the United States in the 1980s to help contain the communist threat in the region.
Soto Cano currently hosts more than a thousand American military and civilian personnel, a spokeswoman for the task force there, Joint Task Force Bravo, said on Friday.
“We are guests of the Honduran government on a Honduran base,” said the spokeswoman, Capt. Hillary Gibson.
While the task force has played a role in counternarcotics efforts, Captain Gibson said, it has recently focused on disaster relief and administering humanitarian aid.
The United States Embassy in Honduras did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. military maintains a presence at bases in other countries in the region, including in El Salvador, though these have fewer U.S. military troops than Soto Cano.
While many Hondurans celebrated Ms. Castro’s statements, some elected officials sought to distance themselves from the president. Several members of Congress noted the need for dialogue with the Trump administration and pointed out that pushing out the U.S. military from the base would not stop Mr. Trump from carrying out mass deportations.
Mr. Reina, the foreign minister, said on Thursday that Honduras intended to stay on good terms with the United States. But he stood behind the president’s statements, saying that “if mass deportations that violate the rights of migrants come about,” the country’s leaders had “a right to rethink” its relationship with the United States.
Mr. Freeman, the fellow in Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the government’s posture came as a surprise because while Ms. Castro had recently taken what he described as a publicly confrontational approach to the United States — including moving to end a longstanding extradition treaty — behind closed doors she had been known to “play friendly” with the U.S. ambassador, trying to elicit America’s continued support.
He said it was also surprising that Ms. Castro would send such a warning before Mr. Trump assumed office, particularly in light of statements from Mr. Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida.
Mr. Rubio had warned that Honduras under Ms. Castro’s government could become “the next Venezuela,” Mr. Freeman said, where a spiraling crisis under the authoritarian rule of Nicolás Maduro has led to mass migration.
“I think it will sour the relationship, which would have already been sour, with the Trump administration,” Mr. Freeman said. “And I don’t see these northern Central American countries are in a position to leverage much with the U.S. over the shape of migration policy.”
“Now Mexico,” he added, “is a totally different story.”
The United States does not have full diplomatic relations with some countries in the region, including Venezuela and Cuba, which have faced harsh U.S. sanctions. As a result, these countries are unlikely to accept large numbers of deportation flights.
After Ms. Castro’s address, Honduras’s foreign minister announced on social media the meeting between foreign ministers to discuss mass deportations, which he said had been called by the leaders of Honduras and Mexico. The post was accompanied by a photo of Ms. Castro holding hands with Ms. Sheinbaum.
Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which is the operator of DMart, saw its shares going up well over 10% in the morning’s trading session on Friday, January 3, 2025 after it reported a 17.5% surge in revenue.
Macquarie’s main concern for DMart was competition from quick commerce.(dmartindia.com)
The company’s standalone revenue from operations for the third quarter of the financial year 2024-25 was ₹15,565.23 crore, which was higher by 17.5%, compared to ₹13,247 crore in the same period of the previous year.
At 1 pm IST, the company’s shares were up by 406.75 points or 11.24%, trading at ₹4,024.50.
In sharp contrast, the benchmark BSE Sensex was down by a huge 434.70 points or 0.54% at the same time, reaching 79,509.01.
The broader NSE Nifty also fell by 94.95 or 0.39%, reaching 24,093.70.
However, international brokerages Macquarie and Morgan Stanley maintained a bearish views on the stock, though Morgan Stanley added that the revenue jump was 1% higher than expectations, according to a Moneycontrol report.
Its same store sales growth (SSSG) was also around 5.5%, compared to the 4% estimate.
Macquarie’s main concern was competition from quick commerce.
In the second quarter of 2024-25, the retail major’s net profit rose 5.8% year-over-year, reaching ₹659.6 crore, compared to ₹623.6 crore in the same period last year.
For the quarter, Avenue Supermarts revenue rose by 14.4 percent YoY to ₹14,444.5 crore, up from ₹12,624.4 crore year-on-year.
The soldier, Matthew Livelsberger, was found dead in the wreckage of the New Year’s Day explosion outside a Trump hotel.
Authorities in the United States investigating the explosion of a Cybertruck in front of a Trump-brand hotel in Las Vegas have released new details about the motivation behind the blast.
On Friday, investigators with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicated that the soldier behind the explosion appeared to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
“Although this incident is more public and more sensational than usual, it ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with PTSD and other issues,” Spencer Evans, the FBI special agent in charge, explained at a news conference.
The FBI added there was no evidence the soldier, 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger, bore animus against President-elect Donald Trump, despite the explosion’s conspicuous location and details.
Cybertrucks are manufactured by Tesla, the electric vehicle company founded by Trump supporter Elon Musk.
A coroner’s report indicates Livelsberger died of suicide shortly before the explosion. His body was found in the charred remains of the Cybertruck, and a handgun was discovered by his feet.
A charred identification badge belonging to Matthew Livelsberger was found inside the exploded Tesla Cybertruck [Las Vegas Police Department via AP Photo]
The explosion spurred widespread speculation on New Year’s Day, as the US grappled with a suspected “terrorism attack” in the city of New Orleans that killed 14 victims.
Seven people received minor injuries when the rented Cybertruck blew up in the valet circle just outside the glass doors of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on the same day.
One person, later identified as Livelsberger, was also found dead at the scene. The car had been packed with fireworks and fuel canisters.
Friday’s news conference coincided with the release of excerpts of a note Livelsberger left behind, explaining his motivation for the blast.
In the note, Livelsperger – a Green Beret in the army who served in Afghanistan and other locations – described feeling the need to “cleanse my mind” of the “burden of the lives I took”.
“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wakeup call,” Livelsperger wrote. “Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives.”
Originally from Colorado Springs, Colorado, Livelsperger had served in the military in various roles since 2006, and he had received five Bronze Stars for his achievements.
He was on an approved leave of duty when he took his life.
The Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside a hotel in Las Vegas partially owned by President-elect Donald Trump [Alcides Antunes via AP Photo]
The suspect in the New Orleans attack, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was likewise a military veteran. He intentionally rammed a rented Ford pick-up truck into a New Year’s holiday crowd on Bourbon Street, before dying in a shootout with police.
No connection has been found between the two incidents, though investigators have said they are exploring every possible lead.
On Friday, a former girlfriend of Livelsperger, nurse Alicia Arritt, told The Washington Post that the Green Beret suffered from deep guilt over his experiences in combat.
She suspects his symptoms, which included a foggy memory, could have resulted from a head injury or bodily trauma.
“He wanted to get more help,” Arritt told the Post in her interview. “I think it was even harder for him, being on active duty – the shame and the stigma.”
A neighbour, Cindy Helwig, told The Associated Press she remembered Livelsperger had recently come to her for a tool to fix his SUV.
NEW DELHI: NHAI has pre-paid loans of Rs 56,000 crore during the current fiscal year and is looking to further reduce its debt burden by March. Around Rs 40,000 crore has come from budgetary allocation as the overall capex is lower this year due to award of fewer contracts and approval of lesser new projects, and fall in land acquisition. NHAI’s debt was pegged at around Rs 3.3 lakh crore at the start of April and is now estimated to have come down to around Rs 2.8 lakh crore. Loans from the National Small Saving Fund and some commercial banks, which charge high interest rates, have been prepaid, an official said, adding that pre-payment will help save interest cost of around Rs 1,200 crore. “The prepayment of loan has been made to National Small Saving Fund (NSSF) and some commercial banks, which charge high interest rates. Around Rs 15,700 crore has been prepaid from the InvIT monetisation proceeds,” said an official. For the current financial year, govt has set the target of raising around Rs 39,000 crore from monetisation of completed projects and funds raised through this route will be used to further repay loans. Earlier, the total loan had touched the maximum of Rs 3.5 lakh crore in 2021-22 as the highways authority continued heavy borrowing for around six consecutive years for road development. Considering the high burden of debt, the govt stopped NHAI from fresh borrowings and the overall budgetary allocation has been increased substantially. NHAI’s assessment showed that its repayment obligations would peak to Rs 62,000 crore in 2027-28, while its toll revenue would rise to Rs 69,000 crore, leaving it with a small surplus. It is also banking on a massive jump in revenue from wayside amenities, complexes along NHs being developed for rest and refreshment of commuters having facilities for staying, fuel station, food courts and other facilities, which is projected to rise to nearly Rs 1,400 crore by 2027-28. The estimates put together by NHAI are seen to be aimed at countering this perception and suggest that it has not taken over liabilities beyond its capacity to pay back.
A judge has ordered that Donald Trump will be sentenced on 10 January in his hush-money case in New York – less than two weeks before he is set to be sworn in as president.
New York Judge Juan Merchan signalled he’d sentence Trump to a conditional discharge, in which a case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation, and that the president-elect could appear in person or virtually for the hearing.
Trump had attempted to use his presidential election victory to dismiss the case against him.
His team criticised the Judge’s decision and said the “lawless” case should be dismissed “immediately”.
The case stems from Trump being convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 (£105,000) payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The conviction stemmed from Trump’s attempt to cover up reimbursements to his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who in the final days of the 2016 election campaign paid off the adult film star to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
The president-elect has denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty, arguing the case was an attempt to harm his 2024 presidential campaign.
On Friday, Trump’s spokesperson criticised Judge Merchan’s latest order, adding: “President Trump must be allowed to continue the presidential transition process and to execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this or any remnants of the witch hunts,” Steven Cheung said.
“There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead.”
In his latest motion against the case, Trump’s defence had argued the case would hang over him during his presidency and impede his ability to govern.
The Judge had been advised there were several measures he could employ that could assuage Trump’s concerns about being distracted by a criminal case while serving as president that fell short of the “extreme remedy” of overturning the jury’s verdict.
Justice Merchan had been weighing his options, which included delaying the sentencing until Trump, 78, leaves the White House in 2029, or guaranteeing a sentence that would not involve prison time.
Trump had initially, and unsuccessfully, argued the case against him ran afoul of a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity in his first motion to dismiss the case.
In July, the country’s top court ruled that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for “official actions” they take while in office.
However, last month Justice Merchan ruled Trump’s hush money conviction was valid.
His sentencing on 10 January will make him the first felon to serve in the White House.
While falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years in prison in the US, there is no minimum sentence and incarceration is not required.
Even before his election victory, legal experts thought it was unlikely Trump would face jail time given his age and his legal record.
The president-elect was initially scheduled to be sentenced on 26 November, but Justice Merchan pushed the date back after Trump won the presidential election.
New Delhi: The Employees’ Provident Organisation (EPFO) has successfully rolled out the Centralized Pension Payments System (CPPS) across all its regional offices nationwide. This will benefit over 68 lakh pensioners, according to the labour ministry. This modernised system aims to make pension disbursement more seamless, efficient, and convenient, according to the labour ministry.
The CPPS introduces a major change to the current pension disbursement system, which is decentralized. Under the existing setup, each zonal or regional EPFO office manages separate agreements with just 3-4 banks, the ministry said in a statement.
With CPPS, beneficiaries can withdraw their pension from any bank without needing to visit the bank for verification when their pension begins. The pension amount will be credited instantly upon release, the statement said.
A Major Milestone in Modernizing EPFO!
EPFO’s Centralized Pension Payments System is now fully operational. This modern system ensures that pensioners can access their pensions from any bank, anywhere in India swiftly and hassle-free.
The CPPS system January 2025 onwards will also ensure disbursement of pension throughout India without any need for transfer of pension payment orders (PPO) from one office to another even when the pensioner moves from one location to another or changes his bank or branch, it said. This will be a great relief to pensioners who move to their hometown after retirement.
The first pilot of CPPS was completed in October last year in Karnal, Jammu, and Srinagar regional offices with the pension disbursement of about Rs 11 crore to more than 49,000 EPS pensioners, a ministry statement said. The second pilot was taken up in November in 24 regional offices where about Rs 213 crore pension was disbursed to more than 9.3 lakh pensioners, it stated.
According to the statement, in a landmark move towards enhancing pension services, the EPFO completed full-scale rollout of the new CPPS under Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 in December. About Rs 1,570 crore pension was disbursed to more than 68 lakh pensioners pertaining to all 122 pension-disbursing regional offices of the EPFO for December 2024.
Announcing the successful rollout, Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya said, “The full-scale implementation of the CPPS across all regional offices of EPFO is a historic milestone. This transformative initiative empowers pensioners to access their pension seamlessly from any bank, any branch, anywhere in the country.”
The minister said the CPPS eliminates the need for physical verification visits and simplifies the pension disbursement process. “The CPPS is a testament to our commitment to modernise EPFO services and ensuring convenience, transparency, and efficiency for our pensioners.
“With this rollout, we are setting a new benchmark in pension service delivery, aligning with the vision of a tech-enabled and member-centric EPFO,” he said. EPFO is continuously working towards improving services for EPS pensioners and new CPPS system is a major reform in this direction, Mandaviya added. (With PTI Inputs)
Britt Allcroft, a British producer, director and writer who adapted the antics of a cheerful, impetuous locomotive into a TV series, “Thomas & Friends,” which became a sprawling franchise and a longtime favorite of children and adults, died on Dec. 25 in Los Angeles. She was 81.
Her death was confirmed by her daughter Holly Wright.
Ms. Allcroft was the driving force behind bringing Thomas the Tank Engine, an animated locomotive first conceived in a series of children’s books in the 1940s by the Rev. Wilbert Awdry, to television screens. The series spawned a movie, merchandise and even theme parks, ballooning into a billion-dollar franchise.
Her original adaptation was a live-action production with a small budget that premiered in 1984 on the British channel ITV as “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends,” later shortened to “Thomas & Friends.” Audiences were quickly drawn to the show’s life lessons packaged with catchy music, lush landscapes and an entertaining ensemble cast of humanlike locomotives. It became a runaway success that aired for more than three decades in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere.
“Children live these days in a fast-paced world, but I don’t think children really change,” Ms. Allcroft said in a 1995 BBC documentary. “They need in their lives gentleness, comfort. They need fun, and they need stories that, whilst being entertaining for them, also help them interpret the world.”
Ms. Allcroft first encountered the series while researching a documentary on railroads. Earlier attempts to adapt the books to TV had faltered, but she pushed for the rights, envisioning a series with a narrator who hewed closely to the original books.
Her conviction led her to finance much of it herself, even mortgaging her house, she said in a 1995 interview with Australia’s “60 Minutes.”
As for the narrator, Ms. Allcroft had been searching for the right voice when she heard it on television: “I walked into the room and Ringo Starr was being interviewed on a chat show,” she said.
The former member of the Beatles became the first in a long line of stars to narrate the franchise, among them Michael Angelis, George Carlin, Alec Baldwin and Pierce Brosnan.
“This was a woman pioneering the TV industry in the early 80s, and it was mostly male dominated,” said Brannon Carty, the director of “An Unlikely Fandom,” a 2023 documentary on the series’ enduring appeal. “She had all these things going against her which would make the average person give up,” he said. “Despite all that, she took the lead.”
The series found its way to American children in 1989, when Ms. Allcroft took it to PBS in the form of a spinoff series, “Shining Time Station,” which included clips from the British version of the show.
“She was a very good businesswoman,” said Rick Siggelkow, a television producer who collaborated with Ms. Allcroft. “She had a vision, and she had this intuitive understanding of children. She would just forge ahead.”
Some executives were at first skeptical that the show would be a success, Mr. Siggelkow said, but Ms. Allcroft believed that children would be drawn to a slower-paced tale that had the intimacy of a bedtime story.
“There was a gentleness to Thomas that was really very different from everything else that was on the air,” he said in an interview.
“Shining Time Station” became a hit with American children, winning PBS some 1.2 million viewers — rivaling that of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” according to The New York Times in 1991. The series was also aired internationally, seeding a global commercial demand for merchandise, from toys and train sets to posters and puzzles.
“Thomas & Friends” is now one of the world’s largest toy and television franchises for preschoolers, with analysts estimating annual global retail sales of more than $1 billion in 2016. Mattel bought Hit Entertainment, the British owner of Thomas, in 2012 as part of a $680 million deal.
After some criticism that the show’s characters lacked diversity, recent adaptations of the Thomas world, both onscreen and in merchandise, have added locomotives from Brazil, China, India and Mexico.
The franchise made it to the big screen with the 2000 film “Thomas and the Magic Railroad.” A separate, animated version of the series, “Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go,” aired on the Cartoon Network in 2021. A second film is in the works, according to Mattel.
Britt Allcroft was born on Dec. 14, 1943, in West Sussex, England, before moving to London.
When she was 16, she developed an interest in local theater and the work that went on behind the scenes. Ms. Allcroft joined the B.B.C. when she was 19, presenting on shows that included “Blue Peter,” of which she later moved to the production team.
In the early 1970s, she moved to Southern Television and later formed her own company, Britt Allcroft Productions, through which she created television and stage shows while working at local television stations.
At the end of the decade, she was hired to make a short documentary on British steam trains and recalled the books from her youth.
She was married to Angus Wright, a television producer who worked closely with her in developing “Thomas & Friends” for the screen. They divorced in 1997.
In addition to her daughter, her survivors include a son and grandchildren.
The show’s longevity, enduring through generations, has made it a nostalgic favorite for adults as well. In recent years, online communities have cropped up to celebrate the show and even create their own model versions of beloved episodes.
When Ms. Allcroft attended a screening of the 2023 documentary, “people were cheering and screaming” for her, said Mr. Carty, the director. “It was like the Super Bowl in there when she walked out.”
Ultimately, Ms. Allcroft said in the documentary, she wanted her world to be an escape.
“I wanted to make it so that any little child watching could feel that that’s where they could go,” she said. “That they weren’t alone, and they were comforted and that they were inspired.”
