PM Modi works 18 hours a day while Rahul Gandhi takes leave every two months: Amit Shah

Gautam Adani, chairman of multinational conglomerate the Adani Group, has reclaimed the title of the richest person in Asia with a net worth of $111 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This came after the group's shares rallied up to 14 per cent on Friday.

With this, Adani has overtaken Reliance Industries’ Mukesh Ambani after nearly 5 months. Ambani stands at 12th rank with a net worth of $109 billion. He had overtaken Adani in net worth after his conglomerate's shares crashed following the Hindenburg report last January.

So far in 2024, Adani’s net worth has jumped $26.8 billion while Ambani's wealth has increased by $12.7 billion.

Last week, Adani also expressed his optimism about the future of the group saying that its best days are ahead.

“The road ahead is paved with extraordinary possibilities, and I can promise you that the Adani Group today is stronger than it has ever been," he said.

2023 had been quite challenging for the Adani Group after the Supreme Court ordered a panel to probe the allegations in the Hindenburg report. Adani, who was the third richest person in the world before the report, slipped in the rankings rapidly after the group's shares saw a sell-off.

However, later the Supreme Court ordered the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (Sebi) to conclude its investigation into the Adani Group and said no more probes were needed. Sebi had said that it could not reach an outcome in its probe.

The shares of the Adani Group have rallied after the judgement. In January, Adani had overtaken Ambani after nearly 12 months but later the lead was taken again by Ambani. Now Adani has overtaken Ambani again.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that currently, Bernard Arnault is currently the richest person in the world with a net worth of $207 billion. He is followed by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with total wealth of $203 billion and $199 billion respectively.

Mangaluru: Attempting to take political advantage of lack of space in a Masjid, wherein a few people had to offer last Friday prayers on a narrow stretch of an interior road for a few minutes in Mangaluru, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has warned of holding mass recitation of Hanuman Chalisa, if instances of offering namaz on the road is reported from anywhere in Dakshina Kannada.

VHP leader Sharan Pumpwell said “instances of offering namaz on roads and public places have come to light in the district. It is a conspiracy to create unrest in the district.”

“The district administration should take action against those who offered namaz on the road. If such incidents recur, the VHP will hold recitation of Hanuman chalisa on the same spot,” he warned. 

In fact, the VHP members submitted a memorandum to Kadri police to take action against those who offered namaz on the road. The police should consider the incident seriously.

In a memorandum, they claimed in spite of having enough space at the masjid, by offering namaz on the road has caused inconvenience to the public.

It may be recalled that the video of a few offering namaz on the street in Kankanady had gone viral on social media, drawing criticism from various quarters.

Commissioner of Police Anupam Agrawal said that a case has been registered against unknown persons for offering prayers on the road at Mangaluru East Police station limits.

FIR has been registered under IPC Sections 341, 283, 143 and 149 and investigation is in progress.

The Commissioner said "video of unknown persons offering prayers on the public road in front of a masjid on May 24 was being circulated in social media. The video was verified and was found that it posed hindrance to the movement of public and vehicles."

India is currently polling in the Lok Sabha elections, and AI-generated videos that spread disinformation have emerged as a major threat. As per a report, Meta approved several political advertisements manipulated by Artificial Intelligence that spread disinformation during Lok Sabha elections 2024.

Facebook reportedly approved ads that contained slurs towards Muslims in India like “let’s burn this vermin” and “Hindu blood is spilling, these invaders must be burned” along with disinformation about political leaders and other messages with Hindu supremacist language.

Another advert approved by the owner of Facebook and Instagram called for an opposition leader's execution who as per a false claim sought to “erase Hindus from India”. This ad contained the image of a Pakistan flag alongside the message.

The report comes at a time when the social media platform X had to recently take down an animated video shared by the Karnataka unit of the BJP after an Election Commission direction.

India Civil Watch International (ICWI) and Ekō, a corporate accountability organisation created and submitted these adverts to Meta's ad library to test the company's mechanism to detect and block harmful political content.

All adverts “were created based upon real hate speech and disinformation prevalent in India, underscoring the capacity of social media platforms to amplify existing harmful narratives," the report mentioned.

The researchers submitted 22 adverts to Meta in English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Kannada, of which 14 were approved. Another three were approved with small tweaks. However, once approved, the researchers immediately removed the ads before their publication.

The research concluded that Meta failed to detect the presence of AI-manipulated images in all of the approved ads.

While five of the adverts, including one with some allegations against PM Modi were rejected on charge of breaking Meta's policy on hate speech, the report noted that the 14 others approved targetted Muslims and “broke Meta’s own policies on hate speech, bullying and harassment, misinformation, and violence and incitement."

“Supremacists, racists and autocrats know they can use hyper-targeted ads to spread vile hate speech, share images of mosques burning and push violent conspiracy theories – and Meta will gladly take their money, no questions asked,” the Guardian quoted Maen Hammad, a campaigner at Ekō as saying.

In response, Meta clarified that they require advertisers to disclose their use of AI.

“When we find content, including ads, that violates our community standards or community guidelines, we remove it, regardless of its creation mechanism. AI-generated content is also eligible to be reviewed and rated by our network of independent factcheckers – once a content is labeled as ‘altered’ we reduce the content’s distribution. We also require advertisers globally to disclose when they use AI or digital methods to create or alter a political or social issue ad in certain cases," the company said in response.

Meanwhile, Meta has been accused in the past of failing to curb Islamophobia on its platforms.

“This election has shown once more that Meta doesn’t have a plan to address the landslide of hate speech and disinformation on its platform during these critical elections,” Hammad said questioning how one can trust Meta if it fails to detect even a handful of AI-generated images.