LEAD

Japanese PM Kishida announces $75-billion plan during India trip to counter China in Indo-Pacific

The plan announced in New Delhi is seen as Tokyo’s bid to forge stronger partnerships with countries in South and Southeast Asia to counter China’s growing assertiveness.

Kishida said the new free and open Indo-Pacific plan had “four pillars”: maintaining peace, dealing with new global issues in cooperation with Indo-Pacific countries, achieving global connectivity through various platforms, and ensuring the safety of the open seas and skies.

The AAP on Saturday accused Adani Enterprise Limited of doing a Rs 10,000 crore scam in the generation and distribution of electricity in Rajasthan and Maharashtra and demanded a probe by central agencies into the matter. Addressing a press conference, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesperson Sanjay Singh claimed that Adani Enterprise Limited (AEL) took the money for the generation and operation of electricity from the Maharashtra government and also pocketed the profit.

“Today I am exposing another scam. With the money looted in the scam, Delhi can be given free electricity for three years. Lack of resources is not the reason for expensive electricity in Rajasthan and Maharashtra. The reason is Adani’s blatant corruption,” he claimed.Singh said that before 2014, Adani’s six companies entered the power sector in Rajasthan and Maharashtra and not only took expenses for running operations, including generation of power, from the government, but also pocketed the profit they earned from the venture.

Keeping up his party’s criticism of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah said Friday that the logjam in Parliament can end if the Opposition comes for talks.

He said the government will go “two steps ahead” if the Opposition takes “two steps forward”.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave-2023, Shah said, “Let the two sides sit before the Speaker and discuss. They should come two steps forward and we will go two steps ahead. Then Parliament will start running. But you just hold a press conference and do nothing, it can’t go on like that.”

The U.S. military on Thursday morning released dramatic video that it said showed a Russian fighter jet intercepting and then colliding with the American MQ-9 "Reaper" drone that crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday. The U.S. has accused Russia of operating its warplane in an "unsafe and unprofessional" manner during the encounter near Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.

On Wednesday, a senior Russian official said Moscow would try to recover the wreckage of the drone. U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the unmanned aerial vehicle had likely broken during the crash and whatever debris was left likely sank to a depth of thousands of feet in the Black Sea.

Sounding the poll bugle in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took swipes at Narendra Modi over the arrests of his colleagues and said the country needed an "educated prime minister".

speaking at a `Jansabha' gathering here, he promised free electricity, education and health facilities if his party came to power in the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh where Assembly elections are due by year-end.