Mukesh Ambani to fly to Qatar for Donald Trump's state dinner—here's why this high-profile visit matters
Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest man and chairman of Reliance Industries, is travelling to Doha to attend a state dinner hosted by the Emir of Qatar in honour of US President Donald Trump. The event, set to take place at Lusail Palace on Wednesday, will be Ambani's second meeting with Trump since the US leader resumed office in January this year.
No business talks, but key ties remain
Although business discussions will not be part of the dinner agenda, Ambani's visit is significant. His oil-to-retail group, Reliance Industries, operates in sectors that are closely influenced by US policy. In 2023, Reliance had obtained waivers from the US to import crude oil from Venezuela, but was forced to halt imports this March after President Trump imposed a 25% tariff on countries continuing oil trade with Venezuela. Reliance also exports fuel made from Russian oil into the US market.
Strong connections with US and Qatar
Ambani's group has ongoing ties with Qatar too. The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the Gulf state's sovereign wealth fund, has invested around USD 1 billion in Reliance Retail. In the US, Reliance's digital arm has received equity investments from major tech firms such as Google and Meta, underlining its international partnerships.
Continuing personal ties with Trump
Ambani and his wife, Nita Ambani, were present at Trump's second inauguration in January and also attended a private dinner hosted the night before the ceremony. They met US Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha at the event. Ambani has maintained longstanding personal ties with the Trump family. He was present during Ivanka Trump's 2017 visit to Hyderabad for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and attended Trump's official visit to India in 2020.
Trump-Ambani ties visible at family celebrations
The Ambani family's recent wedding festivities in March 2024 also saw close involvement of the Trumps. Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, and their daughter Arabella Rose were among the high-profile attendees at the pre-wedding celebrations of Ambani's youngest son, Anant Ambani, and Radhika Merchant in Jamnagar, Gujarat.
This meeting in Qatar underscores the continued engagement between the Ambanis and the Trump circle, both on the business front and through personal ties.
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Hindustan Times
13 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
How did things get from bad to worse between Donald Trump and Elon Musk? A step-by-step guide
A no-holds-barred and very public blow-up between the world's richest man and the president of the United States has had social media agog in recent days, with each making serious accusations against the other. And while tech billionaire Elon Musk appears to have cooled the spat somewhat – deleting some of his more incendiary social media posts about Donald Trump – the president still appears to be in no mood to make up, warning Musk of 'very serious consequences' if he backs Democrats at the mid-term elections in 2026. Tensions erupted over Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' (OBBB). The OBBB proposes extensive tax cuts which could add roughly USD 3 trillion (AUD 4.62 trillion) to the US national debt. After stepping down from his role as advisor to Trump, Musk criticised the OBBB as 'disgusting abomination' that would 'burden America [sic] citizens with crushing unsustainable debt'. Trump returned fire, suggesting 'Elon was 'wearing thin', I asked him to leave […] and he just went CRAZY!'. In a dramatic escalation, Musk responded by calling for Trump's impeachment. Musk also tweeted allegations that Trump was implicated in the Epstein files related to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He has since deleted those tweets. Why has the much-hyped 'bromance' between Musk and Trump suddenly ended? And what was the basis of their alliance in the first place? Like many billionaires, Musk had previously been hesitant to get involved in frontline politics. He says he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, but claimed in 2021 'I would prefer to stay out of politics'. In early 2024, Musk was still claiming to be politically non-aligned, suggesting he would not donate to either presidential campaign. This apparent neutrality ended following the attempted assassination of Trump at a July 2024 campaign rally, with Musk immediately endorsing Trump. In reality, Musk's conversion to the MAGA movement long predated the assassination attempt. Musk's hyperactive Twitter/X account shows a steady radicalisation. Across 2020-2024, Musk engaged with accounts sharing MAGA and far-right conspiracy theories. These include the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory, and the related South African white genocide conspiracy. Musk's posts also show the obsession with opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies characteristic of the MAGA movement. After endorsing Trump, Musk spent USD 288 million (AUD 444 million) supporting Trump's election and appeared at campaign events around the country. Musk's support for Trump was both ideological and pragmatic. From tax cuts to immigration restrictions to opposing DEI, there were clearly many ideological commonalities between Musk and Trump. There were also clear practical benefits for both men. Trump gained the financial backing of the world's wealthiest man. Musk gained not only unparalleled access to the US president, but also a role leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Early reporting on the second Trump presidency noted the omnipresence of Musk, who at one point moved into Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort to be close to the president. However, observers were sceptical about the potential effectiveness of DOGE, and Musk's claim it would save the government USD 2 trillion (AUD 3.02 trillion). In the early months of the Trump administration, Musk cut government programmes and employees at a remarkable rate. The USAID programme was particularly hard hit, as were the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As the spending cuts picked up pace, Musk began to attract more controversy. Critics questioned the apparent power wielded by the unelected billionaire. Musk's ties to the far right were also in the spotlight after he appeared to perform two 'Roman salutes', which many observers believed to be a Nazi salute. Musk's apparent rampage through government did not last long. As Trump's executive appointees assumed control of their departments, Musk and DOGE experienced increasing resistance. After a series of fractious cabinet meetings, Trump reportedly reduced the power of DOGE in March. Political attention was also clearly affecting Musk's businesses. The negative publicity has significantly damaged the Tesla brand, leading to declining sales around the world and repeated falls in Telsa's share price. On May 1, Musk announced he would be leaving DOGE, claiming the department had saved the government USD 180 billion (AUD 277 billion) in spending. This number is likely an exaggeration, but still falls well short of his original target. Musk has learned a harsh lesson in politics – that the complexities of government resist simple reform and cannot be easily rolled back in the way a CEO might slim down a company. For Trump, his manoeuvring of Musk appears to be another smart political move. As the public face of DOGE, Musk bore the negative rap for early government cuts and chaos. Having used his money and reputation, Trump dispensed with Musk as he has with so many advisers and appointees before. Musk departed his role in a muted White House ceremony, where Trump thanked him for his service and presented him with a ceremonial 'golden key' to the White House. However, behind the public show of civility, tension was brewing over Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill. Trump and Musk had originally claimed the USD 2 trillion (AUD 3.02 trillion) in DOGE savings could be used to fund a substantial tax cut. With the efficiency savings not eventuating, Musk worried the OBBB would significantly increase US public debt. Unable to convince Trump or other Republican legislators, Musk took to X, launching a 'Kill the Bill' campaign that ultimately led to his incendiary showdown with Trump. For his part, Trump has belittled Musk, suggesting Musk only opposed the OBBB because it cut subsidies for electric vehicles. Though the subsidy cuts will affect Tesla, Musk has previously supported eliminating subsidies. Musk's anger at the OBBB is more likely driven by the realisation he has been played by Trump. Trump has used and discarded many other powerful figures in his chaotic political career. Musk has more power than most, and might be able to strike back at Trump. Yet, with his public reputation and brands already tarnished, Musk would be ill-advised to pick further fights with Trump and his adoring MAGA movement. Accordingly, Musk has indicated over the weekend he is open to a détente. Tesla investors will no doubt be relieved if Musk makes good on his pledge to step back from politics and return to his businesses. More concerning are the prospects for democracy. With wealth and power continuing to concentrate in a handful of billionaires, voters appear reduced to the role of viewers forced to watch the reality TV drama unfold. Though Trump appears to have won this round of billionaire battle royale, whatever happens next, democracy is the real loser.
Mint
18 minutes ago
- Mint
Modern tech and old-school spycraft are redefining war
Deception, infiltration and spycraft have played a major role in warfare at least since the ancient Greeks gifted a wooden horse to the citizens of Troy. In more recent times, such operations rarely had a strategic effect, but the spectacular operations of Israeli intelligence against Hezbollah in Lebanon last fall and of Ukraine against Russia's strategic bomber fleet last weekend have brought them back to the forefront of conflict in the 21st century. Both showed how technological advances—such as drones, communications networks and smaller but more powerful batteries and explosives—can potentially alter the course of a war when they are coupled with superior tradecraft. 'Technology today allows you many new possibilities: There is a larger surface where you can actually detect places where your enemy is vulnerable due to the fact that you can bypass a lot of physical barriers that in the past you couldn't bypass," said Eyal Tsir Cohen, a former senior division director of Israel's Mossad intelligence service. Yet, he added, many of the same technologies can also empower one's opponents. 'It always works both ways—it depends on which side is more sophisticated in exploiting the vulnerabilities of the other side," Cohen said. 'You need good people to work with technology—technology rides on the shoulders of the human factor and not vice versa." Ultimately, success in this rapidly changing world depends on the ability to anticipate the new opportunities—something that big powers such as Russia and perhaps the U.S., can be slow to understand as the very nature of warfare evolves. 'The failure of thinking through the insecurities of the supply chain on the part of Hezbollah and the astounding failure by Russia—those were failures of imagination," said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. The new way of war redresses the balance of power in favor of weaker actors, he added: 'If you can punch above your weight while also having limited costs and blowback to yourself, it can level the playing field." Israel's multistage operation to intercept and booby-trap pagers used by Hezbollah, then the militia commanders' walkie-talkies, followed up by targeted strikes that killed leader Hassan Nasrallah last September and wiped out most of the organization's leadership, reshaped—at least temporarily—the balance of power in the entire Middle East. In that campaign, the result of a yearslong effort to infiltrate Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors, Israel didn't just dramatically weaken the U.S.-designated terrorist group, its most formidable immediate foe that has lost its stranglehold over Lebanon's government. Israel also helped create conditions for the downfall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria two months later and the overall shrinking of Iran's regional power. The Ukrainian operation on June 1 to target five Russian airfields that house Moscow's strategic bomber fleet was also the result of a lengthy intelligence operation deep behind enemy lines. The simultaneous attack, launched by drones hidden in prefabricated homes moving on trucks, showed that even the farthest parts of Russia are within Ukraine's reach—and that Ukrainian intelligence is able to operate throughout Russia's surveillance-intensive police state. Four of the five airfields—including one just north of Mongolia—were hit. The fifth drone launcher malfunctioned. Ukraine struck more than 20 aircraft and destroyed at least 12, according to drone footage released by Ukrainian intelligence from the four bases and independent satellite photos. The attack has seriously eroded Russia's ability to launch cruise missiles across Ukraine—one of Moscow's most important advantages in this war. Russia owned some 112 Tu-22 and Tu-95 strategic bombers before Sunday's attack. It is no longer able to manufacture the bombers and as little as half of the fleet was operational. Unlike the Israeli pager operation, which caused a number of civilian casualties in Lebanon, Ukraine didn't strike any Russian civilians in the airfield attack, dubbed Operation Spiderweb. Before the wide-scale killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's overtures to Russia soured many Ukrainians' opinion of Israel, Ukrainian officials openly spoke of their admiration for the daring and the inventiveness of the Israeli intelligence. During a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov made sure to display a book about the Mossad atop his desk. 'Back in the 1970s, when Israel faced an existential threat and was surrounded by much more powerful enemies that plotted its elimination, it survived through asymmetric warfare. Ukraine, too, has to think asymmetrically—it's our only chance to survive," said Ukraine's former defense minister, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, who currently advises the Ukrainian government. Using innovative naval drone tactics, Ukraine had already severely curtailed the ability of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to operate, turning expensive warships into a liability rather than asset for Moscow, he said. If Ukraine similarly disables Russia's strategic aviation, it would be 'an enormous achievement," he added. Despite Sunday's losses, Russia retains the capacity to lob cruise missiles at Ukraine from its strategic bombers and it fired a salvo on Friday morning, hitting Kyiv and several other cities. In another drone attack Friday, Ukraine also blew up the fuel facility at the Engels airfield, one of the main bases of the Russian strategic bomber fleet, and hit the Bryansk airfield. Israel's pager operation against Hezbollah caused a strategic pivot only because it was followed up by additional successes in the following days and weeks, said Nadav Pollak, an Israeli intelligence veteran and a lecturer at Reichman University. 'If there wasn't a cumulative aspect and effect, we wouldn't think of it as strategically successful. One thing needs to happen after another—and if Ukraine continues to hit strategic assets, eventually they will have a cumulative effect as well," he said. No matter how daring, operations behind enemy lines don't necessarily lead to a war-altering outcome. Italian divers, after all, sank or damaged four British ships by riding torpedoes and attaching explosives to the vessels in Alexandria harbor in 1941—but still failed to prevent an Allied victory in North Africa. Creating paranoia and chaos within enemy ranks is often as useful as the actual physical damage. The Israeli strikes against Hezbollah and the assassination of the leader of Hamas in a government guesthouse in Iran made its enemies spend considerable resources on revising plans and procedures and on hunting for possible moles while trying to figure out to what extent they have been compromised, intelligence officials say. The same goes for President Vladimir Putin's Russia, where Ukrainian intelligence was able to mount a complicated operation likely involving a considerable number of agents—who operated under the nose of the FSB security service. In the past, Putin has spoken proudly that his own father was assigned to a 'demolition battalion" of the NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB, at one point dropping into a forest behind enemy lines to blow up a Nazi munition depot. Before joining the KGB, Putin grew up on the spy thrillers produced by the Soviet spy service that dramatized Moscow's sabotage operations against the Third Reich. 'What amazed me most of all is how one man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not," Putin later said in his autobiography. Now, the tables have turned. 'Ukraine is behind enemy lines, using asymmetric warfare to strike back at a nuclear-armed enemy," said Dan Hoffman, a former CIA station chief in Moscow. 'The symbolism is potent because Putin is an intel officer himself and yet he's suffering numerous intel failures." Operation Spiderweb is already reverberating through NATO allies who are studying the innovations Ukraine deployed—including the use of artificial intelligence to help guide the drones to their targets. The operation has shown how Ukraine, with less manpower to draw from, can use a technological edge to increase the potency of its intelligence operations. It turned a Russian advantage—its vastness—into a weakness, by simultaneously striking targets thousands of miles apart. 'In the past, you would have special forces in a small submarine maybe, getting close to a bridge, and planting some explosives," said Tomáš Kopečný, a Czech governmental envoy for Ukraine. 'Now you have drones doing all that. It's the technologization of these operations." 'Every military is learning from this," he said, referring to Operation Spiderweb. 'If you had asked me point-blank, I would have not come up with this." Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at Drew Hinshaw at and Joe Parkinson at
Indian Express
19 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Los Angeles burns as Trump deploys National Guard amid immigration crackdown
Protests erupted across Los Angeles over the weekend as thousands gathered to oppose the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and the unprecedented federal deployment of National Guard troops without the state's consent. Here are the key developments: 1. On the third day of protests over the US administration's crackdown on immigration, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets Sunday in response to President Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles. 2. About 300 federal troops were deployed in the city—reportedly the first time in decades that the National Guard was activated without a governor's consent. 3. Groups of protesters, many carrying Mexican flags and signs denouncing US immigration authorities, gathered in multiple areas around the city. 4. As protests turned violent near the Metropolitan Detention Center, demonstrators blocked the 101 Freeway and Alphabet's Waymo self-driving vehicles were on fire. Demonstrators shouted 'Shame on you!' at police and some appeared to throw objects, video images showed. In return, law enforcement responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to disperse the crowd. 5. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the last time the National Guard was activated without a governor's permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama. 6. Federal authorities said the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the Los Angeles area surpassed 100. Many more were arrested during protests, including a prominent union leader accused of impeding law enforcement. 7. Calling the deployment unlawful, California Governor Gavin Newsom requested the Trump administration to withdraw the order. Newsom accused Trump of trying to manufacture a crisis and violating the state's sovereignty. 'These are the acts of a dictator, not a president,' he wrote on X. The White House dismissed Newsom's comments, saying in a statement, 'Everyone saw the chaos, violence and lawlessness.' 8. In a social media post Sunday, Trump called the demonstrators 'violent, insurrectionist mobs' and said he had directed Cabinet officers 'to take all such action necessary' to stop what he called 'riots'. Speaking to reporters in New Jersey, Trump threatened violence against protesters: 'They spit, we hit.' 9. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum criticised the US government over the immigration raids and National Guard deployment. 'We do not agree with this way of addressing the immigration issue,' Sheinbaum said at a public event. 'The phenomenon will not be addressed with raids or violence. It will be by sitting down and working on comprehensive reform.' 10. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out the largest single-day immigrant arrest operation in its history this week, detaining more than 2,200 people, according to NBC News. Trump has pledged to deport record numbers of undocumented immigrants and set a goal for ICE to arrest at least 3,000 migrants a day. –With inputs from AP and Reuters
