An Indian businessman who is one of the world’s richest people has been indicted in the U.S. on charges he duped investors by concealing that his company's huge solar energy project on the subcontinent was being facilitated by an alleged bribery scheme. Gautam Adani, 62, was charged in an indictment unsealed Wednesday with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The case involves a lucrative arrangement for Adani Green Energy Ltd. and another firm to sell 12 gigawatts of solar power to the Indian government — enough to light millions of homes and businesses. The indictment paints Adani and his co-defendants as playing two sides of the deal. HC orders formation of committee to review power deals with Adani Group It accuses them of portraying it as rosy and above-board to Wall Street investors who poured several billion dollars into the project over the last five years while, back in India, they were paying or planning to pay about $265 million in bribes to government officials to help secure billions of dollars' worth of contracts and financing. Adani and his co-defendants sought to “obtain and finance massive state energy supply contracts through corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller said. U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said the defendants “orchestrated an elaborate scheme” and sought to "enrich themselves at the expense of the integrity of our financial markets.” In a parallel civil action, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Adani and two co-defendants of violating antifraud provisions of U.S. securities laws. The regulator is seeking monetary penalties and other sanctions. Not demanded full payment from Bangladesh in 7 days: Adani Group Both cases were filed in federal court in Brooklyn. Adani's co-defendants include his nephew Sagar Adani, the executive director of Adani Green Energy's board, and Vneet Jaain, who was the company's chief executive from 2020 to 2023 and remains managing director of its board. Online court records did not list a lawyer who could speak on Adani's behalf. An email message seeking comment was left with an arm of his conglomerate, the Adani Group. Emails were also sent to lawyers representing his co-defendants. Sagar Adani's lawyer, Sean Hecker, declined the comment. The others did not immediately respond. Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said Gautam and Sagar Adani are accused of persuading investors to buy their company's bonds by misrepresenting "not only that Adani Green had a robust anti-bribery compliance program but also that the company’s senior management had not and would not pay or promise to pay bribes.” Adani is a power player in the world’s most populous nation. He built his fortune in the coal business in the 1990s. The Adani Group grew to involve many aspects of Indian life, from making defense equipment to building roads to selling cooking oil. In recent years, the Adani Group has made big moves into renewable energy, embracing a philosophy of sustainable growth reflected in its slogan: “Growth with Goodness." The company has a clean energy portfolio of over 20 gigawatts, including one of the world’s largest solar power plants in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Adani Group has stated its goal of becoming the country’s biggest player in the space by 2030. In 2022, Gautam Adani said the company would invest $70 billion in clean energy projects by 2032. Last year, a U.S.-based financial research firm accused Adani and his company of “brazen stock manipulation” and “accounting fraud.” The Adani Group called the claims “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations.” The firm in question is known as a short-seller, a Wall Street term for traders that essentially bet on the prices of certain stocks to fall, and it had made such investments in relation to the Adani Group. The company's stock plunged as a result and dipped again in August when the firm, Hindenburg Research, levied more corruption allegations. Jaain told The Associated Press last year that Hindenburg's allegations had little impact on its ongoing projects, including work building 20 gigawatts of a solar and wind energy project in the northwest Indian village of Khavda. Prosecutors allege that Adani and his co-defendants started plotting the bribery scheme in 2020 or 2021 to guarantee demand for the energy that Adani Green and another firm were under contract to produce for the national government's Solar Energy Corporation of India. Adani Green and the other firm’s high prices turned off India's state-run electricity distributors, which buy power from the national government and provide it to homes and businesses. But the companies needed those deals to make the project worthwhile and keep revenues high, so they offered bribes to get them done, prosecutors said. After the defendants started promising bribes to government officials, in 2021 and 2022, electricity distributors in five Indian states or regions entered into agreements to purchase their energy, prosecutors said. Adani's company issued a statement in which he touted his deals as the “world's largest” power purchase agreement. At the same time, prosecutors said, the Adanis and Jaain were attesting to global investors that Adani Green was and would never be involved in bribery. Those claims enabled them to secure billions of dollars in financing for the project at terms that “did not account for the true risk” involved, prosecutors said.

The United States vetoed a U.N. resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, with the Americans saying they the resolution Wednesday was not linked to an immediate release of hostages still held by Hamas. Meanwhile in Lebanon, a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hezbollah was showing signs of progress. However Israel’s defense minister says his country wants the right to act militarily against Hezbollah in any agreement to end the fighting. Lebanon’s government is likely to view any such demand as an infringement on its sovereignty, complicating efforts to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that erupted into all-out war in September. Israeli strikes and combat in Lebanon have killed more than 3,500 people and wounded 15,000, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The war has displaced nearly 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, 87 soldiers and 50 civilians, including some foreign farmworkers, have been killed by rockets, drones and missiles. Hezbollah began firing into Israel the day after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the conflict in Gaza. US vetoes UN resolution demanding a cease-fire in Gaza Israel’s blistering war of retaliation in the Gaza Strip has killed nearly 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Some 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack, mostly civilians, and another 250 were abducted. Around 100 hostages remain inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Guyana on Wednesday, marking the first visit by an Indian leader in more than 50 years to the South American country with diaspora ties. Guyana serves as headquarters for the 15-member Caribbean trade bloc known as Caricom, and Modi was expected to meet with regional leaders Wednesday as part of the India-Caricom summit. They last met in 2019. He arrived with promises to help the region in areas including health, energy and agriculture. But Modi also was thinking of home. Noting Guyana’s growing importance as an oil-producing nation after vast quantities of oil and gas were discovered off its coast in 2015, he said: “Guyana will play an important role in India’s energy security.” Indian and Nigerian leaders vow to deepen security ties and strengthen support for Global South Speaking after meeting with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, Modi promised to help Guyana and the region improve agriculture production, saying food security is important to island nations. Trade between India and Guyana has strengthened in recent years, with India providing Guyana lines of credit for military passenger planes and funding to buy a fast river ferry that services far-flung jungle areas close to neighboring Venezuela. India's Modi likely to find comfort in Trump's return and a shared worldview Modi also noted that indentured laborers from India were brought to Guyana during the British colonial era and now make a significant contribution to the country. Nearly 40% of the population is East Indian. Modi's visit marks the first time an Indian prime minister has come to Guyana since Indira Ghandi in 1968.

The United States on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the war in Gaza because it is not linked to an immediate release of hostages taken captive by Hamas in Israel in October 2023. The U.N. Security Council voted 14-1 in favor of the resolution sponsored by the 10 elected members on the 15-member council, but it was not adopted because of the U.S. veto. The resolution that was put to a vote “demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent cease-fire to be respected by all parties, and further reiterates its demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” The Security Council in June had adopted its first resolution on a cease-fire plan aimed at ending the war between Israel and Hamas. The U.S.-sponsored resolution welcomed a cease-fire proposal announced by President Joe Biden that the United States said Israel had accepted. It called on the militant Palestinian group Hamas to accept the three-phase plan – but the war goes on. With more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed, according to its health authority, the threat of famine, especially in the north, and no sign of an end to the war, the council’s 10 elected members decided to focus first on a cease-fire. Guyana’s U.N. Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett introduced the resolution on behalf of the elected members, saying “It was prompted by the council’s deep concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, including what was unfolding in North Gaza, and the need for an urgent response to that situation.” She stressed the resolution's demand for immediate access for humanitarian aid deliveries throughout Gaza, and the Security Council’s primary responsibility to uphold international peace and security and its demands for an immediate cease-fire, and for the release of hostages. U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood said the United States worked for weeks to avoid a veto and expressed regret that compromise language was not accepted. “We made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional cease-fire that failed to release the hostages,” he said. “Hamas would have seen it as a vindication of its cynical strategy to hope and pray the international community forgets about the fate of more than 100 hostages from more than 20 member states who have been held for 410 days.” Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters shortly before the council meeting that the resolution was “nothing short of outrage – a betrayal of the 101 innocent hostages still held by Hamas.” Its adoption, he said, would “send a message that terrorists can act with impunity." Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative and an elected member of the council, was sharply critical of the U.S. vote and the council’s failure to take action. “Today’s message is clear to the Israeli occupying power: First you may continue your genocide. You may continue your collective punishment of the Palestinian people with complete impunity. In this chamber, you enjoy immunity,” he said. Bendjama called the resolution’s defeat a missed opportunity that will have “devastating consequences for the international order.” But he vowed that the elected members will return soon with an even stronger resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable – and they will not stop until the council takes action.

Spain will legalize about 300,000 undocumented migrants a year, starting next May and through 2027, the country's migration minister said Wednesday. The policy aims to expand the aging country’s workforce and allow foreigners living in Spain without proper documentation to obtain work permits and residency. Spain has largely remained open to receiving migrants even as other European nations seek to tighten their borders to illegal crossings and asylum seekers. Spain needs around 250,000 registered foreign workers a year to maintain its welfare state, Migration Minister Elma Saiz said in an interview on Wednesday. She contended that the legalization policy is not aimed solely at “cultural wealth and respect for human rights, it’s also prosperity.” “Today, we can say Spain is a better country,” Saiz told national broadcaster Radiotelevisión Española. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has often described his government's migration policies as a means to combat the country's low birthrate. In August, Sánchez visited three West African nations in an effort to tackle irregular migration to Spain’s Canary Islands. The archipelago off the coast of Africa is seen by many as a step toward continental Europe with young men from Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and elsewhere embarking on dangerous sea voyages there seeking better job opportunities abroad or fleeing violence and political instability at home. The new policy, approved Tuesday by Spain’s leftist minority coalition government, simplifies administrative procedures for short and long-term visas and provides migrants with additional labor protections. It extends a visa offered previously to job-seekers for three months to one year. By mid-November, some 54,000 undocumented migrants had reached Spain this year by sea or land, according to the country's Interior Ministry. The exact number of foreigners living in Spain without documentation is unclear. Many irregular migrants make a living in Spain's underground economy as fruit pickers, caretakers, delivery drivers, or other low-paid but essential jobs often passed over by Spaniards. Without legal protections, they can be vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Saiz said the new policy would help prevent such abuse and "serve to combat mafias, fraud and the violation of rights." Spain's economy is among the fastest-growing in the European Union this year, boosted in part by immigration and a strong rebound in tourism after the pandemic. In 2023, Spain issued 1.3 million visas to foreigners, according to the government.  

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use American-supplied antipersonnel land mines to help fight off Russian forces. Speaking to reporters during a trip to Laos, he said the shift in policy follows changing tactics by the Russians. Austin said Russian ground troops are leading the movement on the battlefield, rather than forces more protected in armored carriers, so Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians.” “The land mines that we would look to provide them would be land mines that are not persistent, you know, we can control when they would self-activate, self-detonate and that makes it, you know, far more, safer eventually than the things that they are creating on their own,” Austin said.  

Thousands of workers marched through the Greek capital Athens on Wednesday as part of a 24-hour general strike called by labor unions to protest the rising cost of living and timed to coincide with the government submitting the 2025 budget to Parliament. Public and private sector workers walked off the job as part of the labor action that disrupted public transport and left ferries connecting the Greek islands with the mainland tied up in port. Medical staff at state-run hospitals and teachers were among those who joined the strike, which was called by labor unions to protest the high cost of living and demand collective wage agreements that were scaled back during Greece’s nearly decade-long financial crisis that began in 2010. Around 12,000 protesters marched through central Athens, while another 5,000 demonstrated in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city. “We want to showcase the rage and resentment of salaried employees for what is happening to their income,” said Yannis Panagopoulos, head of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece, the umbrella union representing private sector workers. “We have no other way to be able to cope with the high cost of living other than with an increase to our income. But our incomes remain frozen in the bailout era,” he said. Greece’s financial crisis saw a quarter of the country’s economy wiped out after decades of profligate spending left it locked out of international bond markets. Successive international bailouts came on condition the country implement deeply unpopular reforms that included pension and wage cuts and saw poverty and unemployment rates spiral. Greece has since returned to healthy growth and recently achieved investment-grade status again, but it still retains the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the European Union. “Greece needs a pay rise,” Esther Lynch, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, said Tuesday ahead of the strike. She said she was in Athens “to bring the solidarity greetings from 45 million workers and their trade unions from around Europe.” The European confederation supports “all workers in Greece who are going to come out to demand that pay rise and to demand the genuinely binding collecting agreement to guarantee a fair day's pay for a fair day's work,” she said. Unions have criticized the center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for failing to tackle inflation and housing policies, which have eroded workers’ living standards. Journalists at Greek media outlets held their own 24-hour strike in support on Tuesday, pulling all news broadcasts off the air for the day so they could cover Wednesday’s general strike.

A Pakistani court granted bail Wednesday to former Prime Minister Imran Khan in a graft case, his lawyer said. But with a slew of other charges pending against him, the opposition leader is staying in prison. Still, the order by a superior court in the capital, Islamabad, was a boost for Khan in the case in which he is accused, along with his wife, Bushra Bibi, of keeping and selling state gifts in violation of government rules when he was in power. Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in parliament in 2022, has denied the charge. The hearings in the trial on the graft charges started in July and are still ongoing. Khan has so far been embroiled in over 150 cases and has been sentenced in several, including to three years, 10 years, 14 years and seven years to be served concurrently under Pakistani law. His convictions were later overturned in appeals but he cannot be freed due to other, pending cases against him. His lawyer, Salman Safdar said he remained confident Khan would be freed but experts say there are at least eight cases standing in the way of Khan's release on bail. Khan, who has been held in a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi for over a year, has maintained his innocence and has argued that the cases are an attempt to sideline him politically by keeping him out of the public area. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, has also been demanding his release. Khan’s supporters have called for a rally in Islamabad on Sunday to demand his release — despite a government ban on the gathering. A suicide car bombing at a security post in northwestern Pakistan has killed 12 troops Pakistan’s laws allow government officials and politicians to keep gifts given to them by foreign dignitaries, but they must correctly declare the market value of those gifts and declare any money they earned after selling them. Last month, Bibi was freed on bail in the same case but will have to appear in court for the hearings alongside her husband.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said it would stay closed Wednesday after receiving a warning of a potentially significant Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital. The precautionary step came after Russian officials promised a response to President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets on Russian soil with U.S.-made missiles — a move that angered the Kremlin. The war, which reached its 1,000-day milestone on Tuesday, has taken on a growing international dimension with the arrival of North Korean troops to help Russia on the battlefield — a development which U.S. officials said prompted Biden’s policy shift. Russian President Vladimir Putin subsequently lowered the threshold for using his nuclear arsenal, with the new doctrine announced Tuesday permitting a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. That could potentially include Ukrainian attacks backed by the U.S. Western leaders dismissed the Russian move as an attempt to deter Ukraine’s allies from providing further support to Kyiv, but the escalating tension weighed on stock markets after Ukraine used American-made ATACMS longer-range missiles for the first time to strike a target inside Russia. The U.S. Embassy said its closure and attack warning were issued in the context of ongoing Russian missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and anticipated a quick return to regular operations. Western and Ukrainian officials say Russia been stockpiling powerful long-range missiles, possibly in an upcoming effort to crush the Ukrainian power grid as winter settles in. Military analysts say the U.S. decision on the range over which American-made missiles can be used isn't expected to be a game-changer in the war, but it could help weaken the Russian war effort, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. “Ukrainian long-range strikes against military objects within Russia’s rear are crucial for degrading Russian military capabilities throughout the theater," it said. Ukraine has seen success in building clean energy, which is harder for Russia to destroy Meanwhile, North Korea recently supplied additional artillery systems to Russia, according to South Korea. It said that North Korean soldiers were assigned to Russia’s marine and airborne forces units and some of them have already begun fighting alongside the Russians on the front lines. Ukraine struck a factory in Russia’s Belgorod region that makes cargo drones for the armed forces in an overnight attack, according to Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the counterdisinformation branch of Ukraine’s Security Council. He also claimed Ukraine hit an arsenal in Russia’s Novgorod region, near the town of Kotovo, located about 680 kilometers (420 miles) behind the Ukrainian border. The arsenal stored artillery ammunition and various types of missiles, he said. It wasn't possible to independently verify the claims.

Japanese officials said Wednesday they are closely watching to see if China keeps its promise to prevent further violations of Japan's airspace after explaining that an incursion by a Chinese military aircraft nearly three months ago was unintentional and caused by turbulence. Tokyo protested and sought an explanation from Beijing after a Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance plane briefly entered Japanese airspace off the southern main island of Kyushu on Aug. 26, prompting Japan's military to scramble fighter jets and warn the plane. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said China acknowledged the airspace violation and assured Japan that it would make efforts to prevent a recurrence. “We take note of China's explanation, and we will closely watch Chinese military activity from now on,” Hayashi said. China said the airspace violation occurred when the plane's pilot took emergency measures in response to turbulence in the area and was not intentional, Japan's Foreign Ministry said. Japanese officials did not disclose further details, such as when China provided the explanation, citing the protocol of diplomatic exchanges. Even though aircraft can encounter turbulence, such a significant deviation from a flight route is unthinkable, Japanese officials said. NHK public television reported that Japanese defense officials said they still find the airspace violation unacceptable because it was a serious breach of territorial sovereignty. A suicide car bombing at a security post in northwestern Pakistan has killed 12 troops Japanese officials are concerned about China's growing military activity around Japan's southwestern waters and airspace. It has led Tokyo to significantly reinforce its defenses in the area, which includes remote islands that are considered key to Japan's defense strategy. Japan is also worried about joint military activities between China and Russia. A Chinese survey ship violated Japanese territorial waters off a southern island in August. In September, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and two destroyers sailed between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni — just east of Taiwan — and nearby Iriomote, entering Japan's “contiguous zone,” an area just outside of a country’s territorial waters in which it can still exercise some control over maritime traffic.