rich777 casino Global 5G Iot Market Set For 66.9% Growth, Reaching $95.4 Billion By 2028Adani Group is facing fallouts on several fronts as investors and partners rethink ties with the Indian conglomerate in the wake of bribery and fraud accusations by U.S. authorities. Projects and investments tied to the Indian conglomerates' businesses spanning across the world have come under the spotlight, following the indictment of its billionaire founder on bribery and fraud charges. Adani Group is facing fallouts on several fronts as investors and partners rethink ties with the Indian conglomerate in the wake of bribery and fraud accusations by U.S. authorities. 24/7 San Diego news stream: Watch NBC 7 free wherever you are Projects and investments tied to the Indian conglomerates' businesses spanning across the world have come under the spotlight, following the U.S. indictment of its billionaire founder on bribery and fraud charges last Thursday. "The US indictment is likely to constrain the group's access to new financing in the near term, particularly in the offshore capital markets, Leonard Law, a senior credit analyst at Lucro Analytics told CNBC. The group has denied any wrongdoing . The allegations are "more serious" than those from short-seller Hindenburg Research's report in 2023, and the legal proceedings are likely to be protracted , he added. Fitch Ratings has put several dollar bonds issued by Adani Group companies on its negative ratings watchlist, which means the bonds could potentially be downgraded. The action reflects higher corporate governance risk and "potential contagion risk" that could affect access to funding and liquidity. Money Report Walmart pulls back on DEI efforts, removes some LBGTQ merchandise from website Gold plunges 3% as Trump Treasury pick and potential Israel-Hezbollah truce fuel risk-on mood Following the bombshell indictment last week, which triggered a selloff in the conglomerate's stocks, Kenyan president William Ruto scrapped airport and electricity deals worth about $2.5 billion with the group, Reuters reported. French energy giant TotalEnergies, on Monday suspended new investments linked to Adani Group and claimed it was not informed of the investigation into the alleged corruption scheme. "Until such time when the accusations against the Adani group individuals and their consequences have been clarified, TotalEnergies will not make any new financial contribution as part of its investments in the Adani group of companies," the French company said. Shares of the French oil major, which owns a 19.75% stake in Adani Green Energy and a 50% holding in joint ventures with Adani Green, fell 2.4% on Monday. The U.S. International Development Finance Corp has said it would review its prior agreements to lend $553 million t o a Sri Lankan port development that's backed by the Adani Group. "DFC is aware of the recent allegations related to Adani and is actively assessing the ramifications in light of the recent DOJ announcement," an official with the development agency said in a statement. The New York Federal Prosecutors last week indicted Adani and seven other people on charges of paying about $265 million in bribes to Indian government officials to secure solar energy contracts that could yield more than $2 billion of profits over 20 years. The charges also included misleading U.S. and international investors about the its compliance with antibribery and anticorruption practices, while raising more than $3 billion in capital to fund these energy contracts. In an escalation of its stateside legal battle, Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group, and his nephew, Sagar Adani, were reportedly summoned by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over their involvement in the alleged bribery. The Adani group representatives did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comments on Tuesday. The company had earlier said the U.S. authorities' accusations were " baseless " and that it will seek "all possible legal recourse." Meanwhile, India's opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has already called for Adani's arrest , according to domestic media . Indian securities watchdog is reportedly probing whether the Adani group failed to disclose information regarding the U.S. DOJ's investigation into its bribery charges. Proceedings in the country's parliament were suspended on Monday after disruptions from lawmakers who demanded a discussion on the Adani's corruption allegations. A fresh petition has also been filed in the Indian Supreme Court seeking a probe into the bribery charges by the Indian authorities , according to local media. Adani Group had spent the bulk of last year attempting to move past a scathing report by the short-seller Hindenburg Research that accused it of financial misconduct and stock manipulation. Shares of the Indian group's flagship firm Adani Enterprises has declined over 20% as of Tuesday since the notice of indictment, while the company in the eye of the storm Adani Green Energy has lost more than 35%. Adani Power has shed around 15% while Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone shares price dropped 11% since then. Also on CNBC 'Limited' number companies to be affected by planned U.S. tariffs on China: HSBC Marcellus Invmt Managers Founder: India econ fundamentals strong, under pressure Avendus CEO: 'no comfort' with India valuations, more volatility coming

BERLIN (AP) — Former German chancellor Angela Merkel recalls Vladimir Putin's “power games” over the years, remembers contrasting meetings with Barack Obama and Donald Trump and says she asked herself whether she could have done more to prevent Brexit, in her memoirs published Tuesday. Merkel, 70, appears to have no significant doubts about the major decisions of her 16 years as German leader, whose major challenges included the global financial crisis, Europe’s debt crisis, the 2015-16 influx of refugees and the COVID-19 pandemic. True to form, her book — titled “Freedom” — offers a matter-of-fact account of her early life in communist East Germany and her later career in politics, laced with moments of dry wit. Merkel served alongside four U.S. presidents , four French presidents and five British prime ministers. But it is perhaps her dealings with the Russian president that have drawn the most scrutiny since she left office in late 2021. Putin's power games Merkel recalls being kept waiting by Putin at the Group of Eight summit she hosted in 2007 — “if there's one thing I can't stand, it's unpunctuality.” And she recounts a visit to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi that year in which Putin's labrador appeared during a photo opportunity, although Putin knew she was afraid of dogs. Putin appeared to enjoy the situation, she writes, and she didn't bring it up — keeping as she often did to the motto “never explain, never complain.” The previous year, she recounts Putin pointing to wooden houses in Siberia and telling her poor people lived there who “could be easily seduced,” and that similar groups had been encouraged by money from the U.S. government to take part in Ukraine's “Orange Revolution” of 2004 against attempted election fraud. Putin, she says, added: “I will never allow something like that in Russia.” Merkel says she was irritated by Putin's “self-righteousness” in a 2007 speech in Munich in which he turned away from earlier attempts to develop closer ties with the U.S. She said that appearance showed Putin as she knew him, “as someone who was always on guard against being treated badly and ready to give out at any time, including power games with a dog and making other people wait for him.” “One could find this all childish and reprehensible, one could shake one's head over it — but that didn't make Russia disappear from the map,” she writes. As she has before, Merkel defends a much-criticized 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine that she helped broker and her government's decisions to buy large quantities of natural gas from Russia. And she argues it was right to keep up diplomatic and trade ties with Moscow until she left power, Obama and Trump Merkel concluded after first meeting then-Sen. Obama in 2008 that they could work well together. More than eight years later, during his last visit as president in Nov. 2016, she was one of the people with whom she discussed whether to seek a fourth term. Obama, she says, asked questions but held back with an opinion, and that in itself was helpful. He “said that Europe could still use me very well, but I should ultimately follow my feelings,” she writes. There was no such warmth with Trump, who had criticized Merkel and Germany in his 2016 campaign. Merkel says she had to seek an “adequate relationship ... without reacting to all the provocations.” In March 2017, there was an awkward moment when Merkel first visited the Trump White House. Photographers shouted “handshake!” and Merkel quietly asked Trump: “Do you want to have a handshake?” There was no response from Trump, who looked ahead with his hands clasped. Merkel faults her own reaction. “He wanted to create a topic of discussion with his behavior, while I had acted as if I were dealing with an interlocutor behaving normally,” she writes. She adds that Putin apparently “fascinated” Trump and, in the following years, she had the impression that “politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits” beguiled him. Could Brexit have been avoided? Merkel says she tried to help then-Prime Minister David Cameron in the European Union as he faced pressure from British Euroskeptics, but there were limits to what she could do. And, pointing to Cameron's efforts over the years to assuage opponents of the EU, she says the road to Brexit is a textbook example of what can arise from a miscalculation. After Britons voted to leave the EU in 2016, an outcome she calls a “humiliation” for its other members, she says the question of whether she should have made more concessions to the U.K. “tortured me.” “I came to the conclusion that, in view of the political developments inside the country at the time, there would have been no acceptable possibility for me to prevent Britain's way out of the European Union from outside,” Merkel says. Giving up power Merkel was the first German chancellor to leave power at a time of her choosing. She announced in 2018 that she wouldn't seek a fifth term, and says she “let go at the right point.” She points to three 2019 incidents in which her body shook during public engagements as proof. Merkel says she had herself checked thoroughly and there were no neurological or other findings. An osteopath told her that her body was letting off the tension it had accumulated over years, she adds. “Freedom” runs to more than 700 pages in its original German edition, published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. The English edition is being released simultaneously by St. Martin's Press. Geir Moulson, The Associated PressIndia's former PM Manmohan Singh dies aged 92

Drop in Boxing Day footfall ‘signals return to declining pre-pandemic levels’NFL warns players after home break-ins: Organized groups are targeting pro athletes

Last year, the internet mulled over the enigma that was Skibidi Toilet and found more complexity to this narrative of sentient toilets than what meets the eye. This year, the levels of absurdity were hardly different, though the memes have been equally entertaining. The internet has come a long way, especially now that it's being helmed by a generation of youngsters who have grown up hacking into their parents' phones instead of licking dirt off their fingers. But this unblinking exposure to screens did make them intelligent in their own ways. Now, memes are no longer a simple template of hasty comedy. No, no, pookies. The internet of 2024 gave us a scroll of new slang, in-depth lore, and a gaping case of brainrot. Year of the wordsmiths If you were diagnosed as chronically online this year, then congratulations! You've been promoted and you're now one of the elite employees. Of what, exactly? You may never find out. But that's okay, because you're low-key just a chill guy—or an anthropomorphic dog with your hands stuffed in your pants' pockets as the soft lull of Gia Margaret's Hinoki Wood plays in the background. If none of that makes sense to you, then you're probably of the opposite demographic and might need a little context. Except, any explanation might render you even more perplexed. But that's the fun of written memes; they are a mouthful and often accompanied by visual elements, but their appeal lies in the text. And this year, they've been a common culprit of the collective internet brainrot—which, by the way, has been deemed Word of the Year by the Oxford University Press (OUP), if you want to get a sense of the impact of memes that were born this year. From one-liners to long-form passages, these memes encourage personal touches so you too can make them hyper-specific for that extra relatability. You can credit that to X's essay-writing tweaks or the fact that everyone with a general understanding of the world wants to pen think-pieces on TikTok. But sometimes these memes are just phrases that function as social cues for like-minded individuals to find each other. A greeting, if you will. "Send it to me, Rachel" does not mean anything in isolation, but this year found teenagers echoing it like a chant all the same. A user on YouTube admitted that the source clip has "literally been my vocal stim for weeks." Lore of the new lingo Aside from their unique intelligence, the generation currently prevailing over the big web is also known for its creativity. Entire musical numbers have been created based on "brainrot" terminology, which is essentially just modern slang. Although carried over from 2023, this level of creativity dominated the digital horizon for its magical ability to incorporate an extensive vocabulary of memes into high-quality music. Internet lists and video tutorials for Gen Alpha slang are graciously at the disposal of rookies from the former generation. Words like 'mewing', 'rizz', and 'sigma' might seem like they mean nothing at first glance, but translation manuals are also available online for the nonplussed oldies. But hey, don't judge the new internet culture. That's not very demure of you. Pictorial takeover No matter how much our critical faculties continue to evolve, it seems likely that we'll always view memes as visuals that potently substitute slapstick comedy. This sentiment persisted in 2024, which saw the rise of AI-generated content, and a hoard of inexplicable memes as a result of that. This collection of memes is referred to as 'slop', a word which made it to OUP's Word of the Year shortlist before 'brainrot' took the crown. Take, for example, the AI-made graphic slides of a ludicrous story centering a cat as Bongo Cat's cover of Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For? plays in the background. The song, composed only of sorrowful instrumentals and committed meow-meows, even caught the singer's attention and made a concert debut. As you can expect, the crowd was more than eager to sing along. But AI didn't dominate the illustrative category of memes this year. For a sarcastic show of depression, Clean Bandit's Symphony was revived and an artwork of dolphins and rainbows was slapped over it to reel it in. In a similar yet grimmer fashion, Thomas Lea's painting The Two-Thousand Yard Stare depicting a dissociated soldier became symbolic of youthful angst, with the subject sometimes being replaced by a cat to really highlight what's popular with the current generation. Aside from the idiosyncrasies of cats, one thing the internet tirelessly and unanimously enjoys is absurdity. Observe memes ever since the birth of the digital sphere and you'd hardly find a consistent pattern, which is honestly the best part about this ever-changing humour. Each year, it becomes stranger and proudly so. Oh, how far we've come from stock photos and block text. COMMENTS Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive. For more information, please see our

John McNulty has described as ‘sad’ the loss of a Fine Gael TD in Donegal for the first time since 1937. Both McNulty and his running mate Senator Nikki Bradley failed to impress at the polls. The duo managed to take just 9% of the overall vote leaving them trailing well behind Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail. Speaking with Donegal Daily , the Kilcar man admitted that the combined vote of the two Fine Gael candidates may have made an impact. Watch the full interview here:

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Texas vs. Texas A&M live score, updates, highlights from 2024 college football rivalry game | Sporting NewsThousands of people have descended on the site where former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by an Israeli air strike, after the group allowed access to the area for the first time for a public memorial. The massive crater left by the Beirut strike was lit up in red and festooned with Hezbollah flags. At its centre, torches projected light beams into the night sky. Men, women and children wept at the sight of the crater, while the crowd chanted “At your service, Nasrallah” – a common rallying cry among Hezbollah supporters. Nasrallah led Hezbollah for more than 30 years as it became a formidable force in Lebanon, turning him into one of the most influential figures in the Middle East. A ceasefire deal agreed between Hezbollah and Israel on Wednesday paved the way for the southern suburb where Nasrallah was killed, on 27 September, to be opened to journalists and the public. The militant and political group had previously closely guarded access to the suburb, known as the Dahieh, particularly the place where Nasrallah was assassinated, which was entirely closed off. The Israeli strike that killed the Hezbollah leader was reportedly made up of as many as 80 bunker busting bombs, and it destroyed several residential buildings in Harek Hreik – the neighbourhood that forms the centre of Hezbollah’s operations in Beirut. When the crowd was granted access to the site for the first time on Saturday night, people surged into the open area left by the destroyed buildings and climbed up around the edges of the crater. Many held aloft candles and pictures of Nasrallah, who was 64, while a speech by the former leader played from a sound system. “For these two and half months we have refused to believe that he is really gone,” said Narjis Khshaish, 31, who wept and clutched a candle. “We have all just been waiting to reach this place to receive his blessings,” she said. Moussa Dirani, 57, brought his teenage son to the memorial event. “It is very sad and painful to see this site,” he said. “But the resistance does not stop with Nasrallah, his death gives us power to continue along his path.” The hundreds of Hezbollah flags at the event would “continue to fly high”, said Fida Nasreddine, 34. “We are with Hassan Nasrallah until the last breath,” she said. Nasrallah’s assassination shocked Lebanon and the wider world when the news broke in September. He had rarely been seen in public since Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel, and was protected by tight security at all times. He was one of a number of senior Hezbollah figures killed by Israel in air strikes between September and the ceasefire agreement struck on Wednesday. The group had been badly damaged by the assassinations, but the sense of celebration in the Hezbollah-dominated areas of Beirut "cannot be dismissed as insincere", said David Wood, a Lebanon analyst with Crisis Group. "The achievements that Hezbollah has promoted - maintaining its ground operations against Israel, ensuring that tens of thousands of Israelis couldn't return to their homes, and having a severe impact on Israel's economy, I don't think those achievements are nothing, and I think lots of its supporters will see an element of victory in that." Additional reporting by Joanna Mazjoub.

The slump in the number of people heading to the shops during Boxing Day sales signals a return to declining pre-pandemic levels, an analyst has said. Boxing Day shopper footfall was down 7.9% from last year across all UK retail destinations up until 5pm, MRI Software’s OnLocation Footfall Index found. However, this year’s data had been compared with an unusual spike in footfall as 2023 was the first “proper Christmas” period without Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, an analyst at the retail technology company said. It found £4.6 billion will be spent overall on the festive sales. Before the pandemic the number of Boxing Day shoppers on the streets had been declining year on year. The last uplift recorded by MRI was in 2015. Jenni Matthews, marketing and insights director at MRI Software, told the PA news agency: “We’ve got to bear in mind that (last year) was our first proper Christmas without any (Covid-19) restrictions or limitations. “Figures have come out that things have stabilised, we’re almost back to what we saw pre-pandemic.” There were year-on-year declines in footfall anywhere between 5% and 12% before Covid-19 restrictions, she said. MRI found 12% fewer people were out shopping on Boxing Day in 2019 than in 2018, and there were 3% fewer in 2018 than in 2017, Ms Matthews added. She said: “It’s the shift to online shopping, it’s the convenience, you’ve got the family days that take place on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.” People are also increasingly stocking-up before Christmas, Ms Matthews said, and MRI found an 18% increase in footfall at all UK retail destinations on Christmas Eve this year compared with 2023. Ms Matthews said: “We see the shops are full of people all the way up to Christmas Eve, so they’ve probably got a couple of good days of food, goodies, everything that they need, and they don’t really need to go out again until later on in that week. “We did see that big boost on Christmas Eve. It looks like shoppers may have concentrated much of their spending in that pre-Christmas rush.” Many online sales kicked off between December 23 and the night of Christmas Day and “a lot of people would have grabbed those bargains from the comfort of their own home”, she said. She added: “I feel like it’s becoming more and more common that people are grabbing the bargains pre-Christmas.” Footfall is expected to rise on December 27 as people emerge from family visits and shops re-open, including Next, Marks and Spencer and John Lewis that all shut for Boxing Day. It will also be payday for some as it is the last Friday of the month. A study by Barclays Consumer Spend had forecast that shoppers would spend £236 each on average in the Boxing Day sales this year, but that the majority of purchases would be made online. Nearly half of respondents said the cost-of-living crisis will affect their post-Christmas shopping but the forecast average spend is still £50 more per person than it was before the pandemic, with some of that figure because of inflation, Barclays said. Amid the financial pressures, many people are planning to buy practical, perishable and essential items such as food and kitchenware. A total of 65% of shoppers are expecting to spend the majority of their sales budget online. Last year, Barclays found 63.9% of Boxing Day retail purchases were made online. However, a quarter of respondents aim to spend mostly in store – an 11% rise compared with last year. Karen Johnson, head of retail at Barclays, said: “Despite the ongoing cost-of-living pressures, it is encouraging to hear that consumers will be actively participating in the post-Christmas sales. “This year, we’re likely to see a shift towards practicality and sustainability, with more shoppers looking to bag bargains on kitchen appliances and second-hand goods.” Consumers choose in-store shopping largely because they enjoy the social aspect and touching items before they buy, Barclays said, adding that high streets and shopping centres are the most popular destinations.Israel strikes Houthi rebels in Yemen's capital while the WHO chief says he was meters away