Indian billionaire businessman and Adani Group founder Gautam Shantilal Adani at a past function.
The Adani Group has been hit with a fresh scandal, barely months after Kenya pulled the plug on two major investment deals with the conglomerate.
Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani is facing a new headache after a media report linked his company to the alleged shipment of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Iran - a country which is facing a string of sanctions.
US media outlet The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, June 2, that tankers exhibiting suspicious patterns had travelled between the Gulf and Adani’s Mundra Port in western India.
The report further said the suspicious activities linked with the tankers are very common in sanction-dodging operations. This has reportedly prompted the US Justice Department to review the activities of several LPG tankers, which are alleged to be involved in shipping cargo to Adani's flagship company.
In the wake of the report, which threatens to further dent Adani's image, the company has hit back by strongly denying the claims while slamming the WSJ's report as malicious.
“The WSJ story is baseless and mischievous. We categorically deny any deliberate engagement in sanctions evasion or trade involving Iranian-origin LPG,” Adani Group insisted in a statement through a stock exchange filing.
According to the group, they were not aware of any investigations by US authorities on the allegations.
To further clean up its image, the Adani Group also emphasised its strict internal policies, reiterating that the company does not handle cargo originating from Iran.
The statement added: “Due diligence and KYC checks are done on all LPG suppliers to ensure they are not on the US sanctions list,” Adani added. “We do not own, operate, or track the vessels mentioned and cannot comment on ships we have not contracted or controlled.”
The fresh allegations come at an extremely sensitive time for the Adani group, which is still recovering from legal trouble with US prosecutors last year. In November 2024, Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani, were indicted in the US over bribery claims and allegations of misleading investors.
This scandal had ripple effects reaching as far as Kenya, as President William Ruto swiftly cancelled two highly controversial deals between the government and the Adani Group after the scandal.
One of the deals that was scrapped was a KSh 240 billion (USD1.85 billion) plan to upgrade and manage the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) for 30 years. The other deal, a KSh 96 billion (USD 736 million) contract with the Ministry of Energy for the construction of power lines, was also tossed out.
Recently, Nelson Amenya, the man who famously blew the whistle on the Kenya's potential partnerships with Adani, sounded the alarm over an alleged new arrangement between the government and a company in the Middle East.
The whistleblower, who has been under the radar in recent months, emerged with explosive sentiments as he claimed there were plans by the government to hand over control and rights of a key airport to a firm from Dubai. by Rene Otinga , Kenyans.co.ke
Eight people have been injured at a pro-Israel event in Colorado after they were attacked by a man with a makeshift flamethrower and petrol bombs.
A group of people in Boulder were holding a regular demonstration to raise awareness of Israeli hostages in Gazawhen they were allegedly targeted by a man who shouted "Free Palestine". He was arrested at the scene.
Four women and four men aged between 52 and 88 were injured and transported to hospitals, Boulder police said. Some of them were airlifted to hospital.
Authorities had earlier put the count of the injured at six and said at least one of them was in a critical condition. The FBI says the attack was a targeted "act of terrorism" and named the suspect as 45-year-old Mohamed Soliman from El Paso County, Colorado.
He was also taken to hospital after the alleged attack. Two senior law enforcement officials told Sky News' US partner network that Soliman is an Egyptian national who seemingly acted alone. They said he has no previous significant contact with law enforcement.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said it appeared to be "a hate crime given the group that was targeted".
The White House described the suspect as an "illegal alien" who had received a work permit under the Biden administration despite overstaying a tourist visa.
A large part of downtown Boulder was cordoned off as sniffer dogs and the bomb squad searched for potential devices.
However, police currently believe no one else was involved . Police chief Steve Redfearn said the attack happened around 1.26pm on Sunday and that initial reports were that "people were being set on fire".
He said injuries ranged from "very serious" to "more minor".
"When we arrived we encountered multiple victims that were injured, with injuries consistent with burns," Mr Redfearn told the media.
The police chief also said he did not believe anyone else was involved.
"We're fairly confident we have the lone suspect in custody," he said.
Boulder's police chief said the attack happened as a "group of pro-Israel people" were peacefully demonstrating.
The walk is held regularly by a volunteer group called Run For Their Lives, which aims to raise awareness of the hostages who remain in Gaza.
Video from the scene showed a bare-chested man shouting and clutching two bottles after the attack. Other footage showed him being held down and arrested by police as people doused one of the victims with water. Nearby there appears to be a large black burn mark on the ground.
Brooke Coffman, a 19-year-old student, described seeing four women on the ground with burns on their legs. She said one appeared badly burned on most of her body and had been wrapped in a flag.
She described seeing a man whom she presumed to be the attacker standing in the courtyard shirtless, holding a glass bottle of clear liquid and shouting.
"Everybody is yelling, 'get water, get water,'" Ms Coffman said.
Lady on fire 'from head to toe'
Another eyewitness, who did not give his name, said he saw the suspect throw Molotov cocktails - an improvised bomb made from a bottle filled with petrol and stuffed with a piece of cloth to use as a fuse.
He said: "It was very strange to just hear a crash on the ground of a bottle breaking and then it sounded like a boom and then people started yelling and screaming.
"But I saw fire, I saw people screaming and crying and tripping and I saw the attacker - he had three Molotov cocktails.
"One of them he threw inside a group and one lady lit on fire from head to toe and then the other four people were also injured in the fire, but not as bad as the first one."
The eyewitness continued: "The attacker came out from the bushes and the trees... he threw another cocktail, and on the second one he lit himself on fire - I imagine accidentally.
"He seemed to have a bullet proof vest on, or some kind of vest, and then a shirt underneath it.
"And after he lit himself on fire he took off the vest and the shirt and he was shirtless.
"But he still had his Molotov cocktails in his hands ready to use them... ready to throw them and explode them on people."
Lynn Segal, another eyewitness, said: "These shoots of fire, linear, about 20 feet long, spears of fire, two of them at least, came across right into the group, about 15 feet from me."
The 72-year-old said two neighbours of hers, a husband and wife in their 80s, were at the demonstration. She added that the wife was one of the victims and appeared to be the most seriously injured.
"They're both elders in their 80s, and you can't take something like this assault to your body as easily as someone younger."
Ms Segal, who was wearing a "Free Palestine" T-shirt, said she watches the demonstrations to "try and listen" to what the volunteers are "talking about" because she is concerned about the hostages.
She added that she is concerned the attack will "divide this community".
Another eyewitness told MSNBC that he saw the suspect "lighting people on fire while spraying gasoline on them".
Brian, who is himself Jewish and askd that his last name not be made public, add that he saw victims "having their skin melt off their bodies".
A statement from Boulder's Jewish community said "an incendiary device was thrown at walkers at the Run for Their Lives walk on Pearl Street as they were raising awareness for the hostages still held in Gaza".
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a prominent Jewish Democrat, said it was an antisemitic attack.
"This is horrifying, and this cannot continue. We must stand up to antisemitism," he said on X.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on X he was shocked by the "terrible antisemitic terror attack", describing it as "pure antisemitism".
Boulder is a university city of about 105,000 people on the northwest edge of Denver, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Tensions are simmering in the US over Israel's war in Gaza. There has been an increase in antisemitic hate crime, as well as moves by some supporters of Israel to brand pro-Palestinian protests as antisemitic.
President Trump's administration has detained protesters without charge and pulled funding from elite universities that have permitted such demonstrations. SKY NEWS
THE United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) state operator Etihad Rail has signed memorandums of understanding (MoU) with the railways of four African countries: Chad, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda.
The MoUs were signed as a result of a high-level ministerial meeting hosted by Etihad Rail in Abu Dhabi. Attendees included Sheikh Shakhboot bin Nahyan Al Nahyan, UAE minister of state, Suhail bin Mohammed Al Mazrouei, minister of energy and infrastructure, Shadi Malak, CEO of Etihad Rail, and high-ranking ministerial representatives from Kenya, Chad, South Sudan, Uganda, and Cameroon.
They included Madut Biar Yel, minister of transport in South Sudan, Mathieu Guibolo Fanga, minister of trade and industry in Chad, Davis Chirchir, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Roads and Transport in Kenya, Dr Richard Sendi Nyunzi Hans, assistant undersecretary, head of planning and strategy department, Standard Gauge Railway Project, Ministry of Works and Transport in Uganda and Claude Ntone, general director of railways at the Ministry of Transport in Cameroon, who attended virtually.
The aim of the meeting was to build long-term strategic relationships in the fields of infrastructure, logistics and transport. This will include a feasibility study for the development of railway, logistics and infrastructure projects in the countries that participated in the meeting.
The four MoUs are designed to strengthen cooperation frameworks between the countries, particularly in the railway sector, and encourage the transfer of expertise and knowledge to enhance transport systems.
"These MoUs reflect the UAE’s dedication to fostering long-term partnerships with African nations to advance sustainable transport infrastructure as a catalyst for economic transformation and regional integration,” says Malak. By Mark Simmons, IRJ
African forest buffalo (Syncerus caffer nanus) in Lango Bai, Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Cuvette-Ouest Region, Republic of the Congo. (Photo by: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The Conversation
The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit media outlet that uses content sourced from the academic and research community. The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo passed a law in January 2025 to lead efforts to establish the largest tropical forest reserve in the world. It will be set up as a 2,600km long green corridor the size of France – 540,000km² – situated in the Congo Basin.
The green corridor will follow the course of the Congo River, the world’s second largest after the Amazon, which meanders 4,374km in a long arc through central Africa. The river gets its water from draining a huge 3.6 million km² area (a watershed) where the rain falls. This massive area is called the Congo Basin.
The Congo Basin straddles ten countries: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia.
However, the country has also been gripped by conflict. This has already disrupted conservation in the protected areas in North and South Kivu (Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Virunga National Park). Conflict creates a void in law enforcement which complicates the nature conservation work in the parks.
Congo Basin. (Kmusser. CC BY-SA 4.0)
We are scientists who study the biogeochemical cycles and social and economic dynamics of land use change of the Congo Basin. Together with environmental economist Glenn Bush of the US-based Woodwell Climate Research Center, who co-authored this article, we’ve been investigating different aspects of sustainable agriculture, greenhouse gas fluxes, and soil erosion in the Congo Basin.
The green corridor will be very important in connecting different ecosystems so that animals can move freely (to escape predators and look for new food sources). Many are unique to the Congo Basin, like the bonobo great ape, the Congo peafowl, and the mysterious okapi – the giraffe’s only living relative, first photographed in the wild in 2008.
Odzala-Kokoua national park in the Republic of Congo will be part of the new green corridor. Education Images/Getty Images
About 1.45 million km² or 67% of the Democratic Republic of Congo is made up of old growth primary forest – large, old trees that have never been disturbed by humans. This pristine forest is so large and under-researched that major scientific discoveries are still happening there. For example, the world’s largest peatland complex, which started forming 10,600 years ago, was only identified there in 2017.
There is much still left to discover. Scientists still do not know just how many species live in the Congo Basin or how much more carbon could be stored by its trees and plants. Understanding and protecting this critical region is paramount.
Current threats to the Congo Basin
Between 2000 and 2015, the most critical threat came from slash and burn farming. It’s a form of farming closely tied to the local conditions of poverty.
Cutting down trees to make charcoal that’s sold in distant cities is also a major problem; 87% of cooking in the Democratic Republic of Congo uses charcoal made from forest trees as a fuel.
Underfunding is another threat. Already, the Congo Basin doesn’t have the money to pay for adequate protection and monitoring services or enough game rangers. US president Donald Trump’s order to terminate 90% of the US Agency for International Development’s foreign projects may make things worse, because the agency funded the Central African Regional Program for the Environment’s 25 year Congo Basin forest protection project.
If the conflict spreads, that could derail the plans for the green corridor. Nature protection will become the least of people’s worries. The success of the corridor also depends on mobilising local people to implement community based conservation arrangements. If people are displaced by conflict, this will seriously disrupt community organising. Displaced people (local farmers and internal migrants) may also turn to forest products and wildlife to sustain themselves.
How the new green corridor will help
The green corridor will place an additional 15% of the Congo Basin and an extra 23% of the Democratic Republic of Congo under legal protection. More than 100,000 km² of this is old and undisturbed, pristine forest.
The green corridor has been designed to include community rights and sustainable resource use. The plan is for environmentally friendly jobs to be developed along the corridor for the 31.5 million people currently living there.
This approach is based on a working model built up over decades around the country’s Virunga National Park, where local communities earn money for their work in protecting the environment. It will be vital for the governments involved in the green corridor to develop plans for sustainable agriculture, ecotourism, green energy, forestry, and sustainable extraction of minerals for the global green energy transition along the corridor.
What might derail the new plans
Education: A very wide range of technicians and scientists is needed to transfer technology and engage communities in the central government strategy at the local level. It’s not clear that all these skills are available.
Organisation: Huge, organised programmes will be needed to communicate the plan to the 31.5 million people living in the green corridor, especially to get their buy-in to protect the area.
Attracting investments: A vast amount of private and public financing will be needed to set up the green corridor. Selling carbon credits is likely to be an idea put forward to raise these funds. Carbon credits are where polluting companies from anywhere in the world can contribute money to protect the Congo Basin and gain credits to offset their pollution elsewhere.
These schemes can generate money to support sustainable development with local communities. However, if they are badly governed and reduce local communities’ access to land, they may end up not delivering lasting ecological or social benefits. Strong scientific evidence and proper data will be needed to show that they are both benefiting the environment and supporting local communities.
Conflict: The recent conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo means that it will continue to be very difficult for green corridor staff to work in the region and move around safely.
The government must rapidly develop a strategy that sets out how the green corridor will be paid for, established and operated. This strategy should ensure that plans for the green corridor are carried out with integrity and guided by science. Everyone living and working in the area, and those affected by the plan, must be involved so that forest landscapes can be protected for people and nature.
The 34th Chinese medical team in Tanzania's Zanzibar on Sunday provided free health services and donations to more than 60 children at an orphanage during a special International Children's Day event.
According to Chen Wei, the team leader, the team set up a mobile clinic at the orphanage, where doctors offered guidance on nutrition and hygiene.
Chen said that they assessed growth indicators and advised on safe physical activity, while specialists in dentistry, ophthalmology, and ENT (ear, nose and throat) conducted screenings for cavities, vision problems and hearing impairments using professional equipment.
Following the clinic, the team distributed a range of gifts, including sports equipment, books and food items, all carefully selected to support the children's development and well-being.
"Seeing the kids smile is the most precious gift we could receive on International Children's Day," said Chen. "This event is not only about medical service, but also about strengthening the friendship between China and Tanzania." (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liu Ning) Xinhua
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