U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan's visit to New Delhi from Jan. 5-6 is expected to include discussions with Indian counterparts about the impact of Chinese dams, a senior U.S. official said late on Friday.
Washington and its Western allies have long viewed India as a counter to China's rising influence in Asia and beyond.
"We've certainly seen in many places in the Indo-Pacific that upstream dams that the Chinese have created, including in the Mekong region, can have really potentially damaging environmental but also climate impacts on downstream countries," a senior U.S. official said ahead of Sullivan's visit.
The official added that Washington will discuss New Delhi's concerns in the visit.
The Indian government says it has conveyed its concerns to Beijing about China's plan to build a hydropower dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo River which flows into India. Chinese officials say that hydropower projects in Tibet will not have a major impact on the environment or on downstream water supplies.
The construction of that dam, which will be the largest of its kind in the world with an estimated capacity of 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, was approved last month.
Washington also expects that topics such as civilian nuclear cooperation, artificial intelligence, space, military licensing and Chinese economic overcapacity will be brought up in the visit, the U.S. official said.
American officials will not be meeting the Dalai Lama during the visit, another U.S. official said.
Washington and New Delhi have built close ties in recent years with occasional differences over issues like minority abuse in India, New Delhi's ties with Russia amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and alleged assassination plots against Sikh separatists on U.S. and Canadian soil.
A contingent of security forces from Guatemala and El Salvador arrived in Haiti's capital on Friday to reinforce a long-delayed United Nations-backed mission tasked with restoring security amid a bloody conflict with armed gangs.
The new arrivals were made up of 75 Guatemalans and eight Salvadorans, a communications officer for the mission said.
The president of Haiti's transitional presidential council, Leslie Voltaire, alongside Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime and U.S. Ambassador Dennis Hankins, welcomed the troops at Port-au-Prince's airport, Haiti's interim government said in a post on social media.
"They have come to reinforce the Multinational Force in the fight against gangsters and guns in the country," the government said.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo had in September pledged to send 150 military police, three months after initially pledging in a letter to the U.N. an unnumbered contingent alongside personal equipment.
El Salvador had in August promised 78 soldiers for medical evacuation operations as well as three helicopters - much needed by Haitian security forces contending with mountainous terrain and highways scattered with gang-controlled checkpoints.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has garnered broad popularity over a harsh crackdown on organized crime in his home country including the use of mass trials and construction of a "mega-jail", has stated that he would be able to "fix" Haiti and that its gangs must be "obliterated."
The mission is being led by Kenya, which deployed nearly 400 police in the middle of last year, far short of the 1,000 it had promised. The police were later joined by 24 Jamaican personnel and two senior officers from Belize.
However, the mission has failed to prevent gangs from taking new territories and committing several massacres as violence dramatically escalated in the last months of 2024, causing thousands more people to flee their homes.
Haiti's national police have meanwhile shed thousands of officers in recent years.
Some 10 countries have together pledged over 3,100 troops for Haiti, but few have so far deployed.
Microsoft (MSFT) is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars to build on its artificial intelligence ambitions this year.
The tech giant is on track to invest $80 billion in AI-enabled data centers in fiscal year 2025, which ends on June 30, Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post on Friday. The data centers will be used for training and deploying AI models and cloud-based applications. More than half of the investment will be focused in the U.S., Smith added.
“As we look into the future, it’s clear that artificial intelligence is poised to become a world-changing GPT [General-Purpose Technology],” Smith said. “AI promises to drive innovation and boost productivity in every sector of the economy. The United States is poised to stand at the forefront of this new technology wave, especially if it doubles down on its strengths and effectively partners internationally.”
The U.S. is the leader in “the global AI race” due to private capital investments and innovation by U.S.-based companies, Smith said, noting Microsoft’s partnerships with ChatGPT maker OpenAI and the startup’s rivals, Anthropic and xAI.
Under the incoming Trump administration, Smith said the U.S. can “build on the foundational ideas set for AI policy” under the president-elect’s first term, including the 2019 executive order on maintaining the U.S.’s AI leadership. He added that “America’s technology success” requires a partnership between the government, the private sector, and educational and non-profit institutions.
In October, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said on the company’s post-earnings call that the tech giant had run into external constraints due to high demand for AI training and inferencing. Data center constraints left investors unimpressed by Microsoft’s first fiscal quarter results, sending its shares down by over 5%.
“[Data centers] don’t get built overnight,” Nadella said. “Even in Q2 for example, some of the demand issues we have, or rather our ability to fulfill demand is because of, in fact, external third-party stuff that we leased moving up. That’s the constraints we have.”
However, Nadella said he felt “pretty good” going into the second half of the fiscal year that some supply would catch up with demand.
Citigroup's stock could double in value over the next three years as profits surge, expenses moderate, and the "most significant" reorganization in five decades improves management accountability, Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a note on Friday.
The third-largest U.S. lender is the brokerage's "dominant pick" among large-cap banks under almost any scenario, barring a recession. The analysts raised their price target to $110 from $95, while maintaining an "overweight" rating.
Citi's shares rose as much as 1.6% to $71.09.
The vote of confidence marks a notable win for Citi CEO Jane Fraser, who has been looking to improve the bank's profitability since taking the helm in 2021.
Wells Fargo's Mike Mayo, known for his blunt critique of the banking industry's missteps, praised Fraser's sweeping overhaul in 2024 to cut costs and simplify the bank's sprawling businesses.
"Investors seem to underappreciate... the improved management accountability after transition from 50 years of a global matrix structure to 5 lines of business," the Citi bull said.
Analysts had described 2024 as a transitional year for the bank and said the reshuffle represents an inflection point that will increase efficiency.
Separately, KBW analysts led by David Konrad also raised their price target on Citi to $85 from $82, calling it one of their "top ideas" for 2025.
Increased capital markets activity and Citi's discounted valuation compared to peers could present a compelling opportunity, it said.
Citi trades at a price-to-book ratio, a common benchmark for valuing stocks, of 0.69, according to data from LSEG. This compares with JPMorgan Chase's 2.08 and Bank of America's 1.25.
A ratio below one typically indicates an undervalued stock.
The bank is expected to report results in mid-January, with all eyes on executive commentary on growing key businesses in 2025.
"The significance of Citi inflecting from multi-year value destruction to value creation is in our view one of the greatest drivers for sustainable stock price outperformance," said Mayo.
South Korea’s presidential guards andmilitary troops prevented authoritiesfrom arresting impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday in a tense six hour stand-off inside Yoon’s compound in the heart of Seoul.
Yoon is under criminal investigation for insurrection over his Dec. 3 martial law bid that stunned South Korea and lead to the first arrest warrant to be issued for a sitting president.
“It was judged that it was virtually impossible to execute the arrest warrant due to the ongoing standoff,” the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said in a statement.
Members from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) scuffle with police officers during a protest against impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Jan. 3, 2025, in Seoul, South Korea.Getty Images
The CIO officials and police evaded hundreds of Yoon supporters who gathered in the pre-dawn hours near his residence on Friday, vowing to block the arrest “with our lives.”
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Some chanted “President Yoon Suk Yeol will be protected by the people,” and called for the head of the CIO to be arrested.
Officials from the CIO, which is leading a joint team of investigators into possible insurrection charges related to Yoon’s brief declaration of martial law, arrived at the gates of the presidential compound shortly after 7 a.m. and entered on foot.
Once inside the compound, the CIO and police were outnumbered by cordons of Presidential Security Service (PSS) personnel, as well as military troops seconded to presidential security, a CIO official told reporters.
As many as 200 formed a human chain to block the CIO and police, the official added.
Police officers stand in front of the impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s official residence on Jan. 3, 2025, in Seoul, South Korea.Getty Images
Pro-Yoon Suk Yeol supporters gather near the official residence of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Jan. 3, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea.Getty Images
South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense said the troops were under the control of the PSS.
The CIO called off the effort to arrest Yoon around 1:30 p.m. due to concerns over the safety of its personnel due to obstruction and said it “deeply regretted” Yoon’s attitude of non-compliance.
The CIO said it would consider its next steps.
Insurrection is one of the few criminal charges from which a South Korean president does not have immunity.
His arrest warrant, approved by a court on Tuesday after Yoon ignored multiple summons to appear for questioning, is viable until Jan. 6.
Yoon has been isolated since he was impeached and suspended from power on Dec. 14.
In a statement after the arrest effort was suspended, Yoon’s legal team said the CIO had no authority to investigate insurrection and it was regrettable that it had tried to “forcibly execute an illegal and invalid arrest and search warrant” in a sensitive security area.
The statement warned police against supporting the arrest effort.
The current warrant gives investigators only 48 hours to hold Yoon after he is arrested. Investigators must then decide whether to request a detention warrant or release him.
Police officers arrive at the gate of the presidential residence as supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stage a rally to oppose a court having issued a warrant to detain Yoon in Seoul, South Korea, on Jan. 3, 2025.AP
SURPRISE MARTIAL LAW
Yoon sent shockwaves through Asia’s fourth-largest economy and one of the region’s most vibrant democracies with his late-night announcement that he was imposing martial law to overcome political deadlock and root out “anti-state forces.”
Within hours, however, 190 lawmakers had defied the cordons of troops and police to vote against Yoon’s order. About six hours after his initial decree, Yoon rescinded it.
He later issued a defiant defense of his decision, saying domestic political opponents are sympathetic to North Korea and citing uncorroborated claims of election tampering.
Footage of President Yoon Suk Yeol on TV in South Korea.Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Two South Korean military officials, including army chief Park An-su who was named martial law commander during the short-lived declaration, have been indicted after being detained by prosecutors investigating insurrection charges, Yonhap reported on Friday.
Kim Yong-Hyun, who resigned as Yoon’s defense minister after playing a major role in the martial law decree, has been detained and was indicted last week on charges of insurrection and abuse of power.
Separate from the criminal investigation, hisimpeachment caseis currently before the Constitutional Court to decide whether to reinstate or permanently remove him.
A second hearing in that case is scheduled for later on Friday.
