Sunday, October 18
India is reviewing a US request to lift restrictions on ethanol imports as it negotiates a wider trade deal with Washington to avoid punitive tariffs.US negotiators want the South Asian country to allow shipments of the biofuel for blending with gasoline, according to people familiar with the matter, a change from current rules that promote domestic supply and permit overseas purchases of ethanol only for non-fuel use. India, one of the first countries to begin trade negotiations with the US, has been pushing for an early deal. President Donald Trump said in Qatar on Thursday that New Delhi had offered to abolish all tariffs on US goods — comments that were walked back only hours later by India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, who said talks were ongoing. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal
Yes Bank expects Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp (SMBC) to maintain at least 20% stake in the lender but said that regulatory requirements may be keeping it from raising shareholding significantly beyond that, the bank's chief executive said. SMBC on Friday said it had signed a definitive agreement to take a 20% stake in Mumbai-based Yes Bank, a deal that marks the largest cross-border merger and acquisition deal in India's financial sector. SMBC, is a unit of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and is Japan's second-biggest bank. "For potential capital raises in the future, SMBC would be contributing," Yes Bank's CEO Prashant Kumar told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "It also means they (SMBC) would not like to get their stake below 20%." As part of the deal, SMBC will acquire a 13
The man convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced Friday to serve 25 years in prison. A jury found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of attempted murder and assault in February. Rushdie did not return to court to the western New York courtroom for his assailant's sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement. During the trial, the 77-year-old author was the key witness, describing how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and body more than a dozen times as he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution to speak about writer safety. Before being sentenced, Matar stood and made a statement about freedom of speech in which he called Rushdie a hypocrite. M
