International

US authorities have indicted Gautam Adani in a multi-million dollar bribery and fraud case. 

Authorities allege Adani and seven other company executives promised around Rs 2,029 crore (appx $265 million) in bribes to Indian government officials to secure solar energy contracts for Adani Green Energy which are expected to yield $2 billion of profit over 20 years. Of this, $228 million was promised “to a single unnamed official, who secured a deal for electricity suppliers in the state of Andhra Pradesh to purchase seven gigawatts of solar energy from Adani.”

These contracts were used to raise more than $3 billion in loans and bonds in the US from investors concealing the bribery scheme.  The criminal charges, filed on Wednesday in New York, for alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a U.S. anti-bribery law.

Adani group stocks crashed up to 20% reacting to this news today.

India on Wednesday strongly trashed as "smear campaign" a Canadian media report that claimed that the Indian prime minister was aware of the alleged plot to kill Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Referring to the report quoting an unnamed official, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said such "ludicrous statements" should be dismissed with the contempt they deserve. "We do not normally comment on media reports. However, such ludicrous statements made to a newspaper purportedly by a Canadian government source should be dismissed with the contempt they deserve," he said.

"Smear campaigns like this only further damage our already strained ties," he said. The report in question was published by Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail that cited inputs from a senior national security official.

The report claimed the Indian national security advisor and the external affairs minister were also in the loop of the plot.

The US has vetoed a resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that demanded an “immediate, unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, amid Israel’s continued bombardment of the Palestinian territory. 

The US voted down the resolution on Wednesday while the 14 other members of the UNSC voted in favour. The resolution called for the release of captives held in Gaza and Washington voiced opposition to its demand for an “unconditional” ceasefire. This is the fourth time that US President Joe Biden’s administration has vetoed a resolution calling for an end to the war in Gaza since October last year. 

“We made clear throughout negotiations that we could not support an unconditional ceasefire that failed to release the hostages,” Robert Wood, the deputy US envoy to the UN, said during the session in New York.

Since the most recent escalation in violence began, nearly 44,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed. 

Former One Direction member Liam Payne’s family, friends and former bandmates came together to pay tribute at his funeral in England on Wednesday, a month after the singer died at 31. 

Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson, who accompanied Payne on his rise to fame as part of one of Britain’s biggest ever boybands, each attended the private service in Amersham, northwest of London. Payne's coffin arrived at the church on a white horse-drawn hearse carrying floral tributes spelling the words "son" and "daddy".

Payne died on 16 October after falling from the third floor of a hotel room in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday praised the Indian diaspora members in Guyana saying he was glad to see them making a mark across sectors.

The community members were dressed in their traditional bests and many of them were seen carrying the Indian Tri-colour in their hands. PM Modi was also presented a sketch made by a member amid loud chanting of slogans.

There are around 3,20,000 people of Indian origin in Guyana, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which described it as “one of the oldest Indian diasporas, which migrated more than 185 years ago.” Apart from the people of Indian origin, there are about 2,000 Indian nationals, mainly restricted to members of the Indian Mission, Indian Cultural Centre of the Mission, staff of Bank of Baroda and other international agencies, doctors, nurses, students of private medical institutions and workers employed by local companies, hospitals and University of Guyana, according to the High Commission of India.

Modi's visit is the first visit by an Indian head of the state in more than 50 years. 

He arrived in Georgetown (Guyana) in the wee hours after a late Tuesday departure from Brazil and interacted with the Indian diaspora members at the hotel.

US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen television personality and surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a wide-reaching agency with annual spending of $2.6 trillion.

Oz said in a post on social media website X he was looking forward "to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under" Kennedy's leadership. Oz was a regular Fox News commentator during the COVID-19 pandemic and a proponent of unproven treatments for COVID-19 including hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug whose use against the disease was also backed by Trump.

The agency runs Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older and people with disabilities. The office also oversees Medicaid, the state-based health insurance program for low-income people, which is jointly funded by states and the federal government. The two programs provide health insurance for over 140 million Americans.