Author: ALJAZEERA

The recent re-election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States has dented clean energy prospects in the country. A climate sceptic, Trump has promised to turbo-charge America’s fossil fuel sector and to end offshore wind projects on “day one” of his presidency. On the campaign trail, he repeatedly criticised President Joe Biden’s flagship climate bill – the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). He called the $370bn federal programme a “green new scam”, and pledged to “terminate” it. Some clean energy projects – both planned and ongoing – have been halted, including Canadian solar manufacturer Heliene, which paused…

Republicans have long accused Hunter Biden — the son of President Joe Biden — of taking a board seat on a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma, which he held from 2014 to 2019, in exchange for influence in US – Ukraine policy decisions. The claims led to investigations in both the House and the Senate, which led to myriad issues, as the conservative-led inquiries became a means to undermine President Joe Biden’s credibility by targeting his son. But the same Senators and House members behind the investigations are now silent as Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, takes board seats…

Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, is seeking to put his son Lachlan in control of the media empire.A United States probate commissioner has ruled against billionaire media baron Rupert Murdoch‘s bid to change his family trust to put his global television and publishing empire under the control of his eldest son Lachlan, The New York Times has reported. Nevada commissioner Edmund Gorman concluded that Murdoch and his son Lachlan, who run Fox Corp and News Corp, the owners of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, had acted in “bad faith” in their effort…

New York Police Department releases CCTV stills showing a man wearing a hooded jacket with his face clearly visible.Police in the United States have released new images of a “person of interest” in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York City hotel. The CCTV stills released by the New York Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday show a man wearing a hooded jacket with his face clearly visible. Previous images released by police showed a man with most of his face concealed by a mask. Thompson, 50, was shot dead on Wednesday in an early morning ambush…

It is a tumultuous time for Gautam Adani, the billionaire chairman of one of India’s biggest corporate conglomerates, the Adani Group, and one of the richest people in the world. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Adani and others of conspiring to pay about $265m in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain contracts and develop India’s largest solar power plant project. US prosecutors unveiled in November an indictment of Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and five others. The Adani Group has rejected these claims, calling them baseless. Amid all this, Adani remains defiant. “This…

A United States federal appeals court has upheld a law requiring Chinese-based ByteDance to divest itself of its popular short video app TikTok in the US by early next year or face a ban. The decision is a complete win for the Department of Justice and opponents of the app and a devastating blow to ByteDance. The ruling now increases the possibility of an unprecedented ban in just six weeks on a social media app used by 170 million Americans. The ruling is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court. Free speech advocates immediately criticised the decision. The American…

International development organisation says sum will be deployed to support 78 countries that ‘need it most’.The World Bank has announced that it has raised close to $24bn to provide loans and grants for some of the world’s poorest nations, which it can leverage to generate a record $100bn in total spending power. Donor countries committed $23.7bn to replenish the bank’s concessional lending arm, known as the International Development Association (IDA), a World Bank spokesperson told the AFP news agency, marking a slight increase from the roughly $23.5bn pledged during the last fundraising round three years ago. The bank can use…

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – In one of his first appearances of the year, South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol pledged to boost confidence in the country’s stock market, which is famed for being undervalued compared with its peers. As the curtain closes on 2024, Yoon has achieved the opposite, rattling markets with a short-lived declaration of martial law that has thrown Asia’s fourth-largest economy into its biggest political crisis in decades. “South Korea is supposed to be the bulwark,” Geoffrey Cain, the author of Samsung Rising and a managing partner at Alembic Partners, told Al Jazeera, describing the country as…

Mashinsky was one of several crypto moguls charged with fraud after a slump in prices in 2022 caused firms to collapse.Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, has pleaded guilty in the United States to two counts of fraud. Mashinsky, 59, was indicted on July 13, 2023, on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and market manipulation charges. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said he misled Celsius customers to persuade them to invest, and artificially inflated the value of his company’s proprietary crypto token. He pleaded not guilty later that day. On Tuesday, during a hearing before…

Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger has been forced out less than four years after taking the helm of the company, handing control to two lieutenants as the faltering United States chipmaking icon searches for a permanent replacement. Gelsinger resigned on December 1, according to a statement from the company on Monday. The resignation came after a board meeting last week during which directors felt Gelsinger’s costly and ambitious plan to turn Intel around was not working and the progress of change was not fast enough, the Reuters news agency reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. The board told…