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IPO-bound Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI), the mining consultancy arm of Coal India Ltd, is betting on the state-run miner’s ambitious production expansion to drive its own growth in the coming years, even as it looks to diversify into critical minerals and overseas projects.The organization’s relationship with Coal India should not be seen as a dependency but rather a “symbiotic” partnership that has evolved over the last five decades, said Chaudhari Shivraj Singh, chairman and managing director at CMPDI, told Mint.“CMPDI has been with Coal India for nearly 50 years and has played a big role in bringing the company to its current scale. All exploration, mine planning and prioritisation of mining activities have been carried out by CMPDI,” Singh said.Coal India continues to dominate India’s coal output, accounting for about 67% of the country’s production last year, while the remaining 33% came from government, public sector and private companies.

LNG. The ongoing war has brought maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to a halt, a busy channel used to transport oil and gas to many countries, including India. The impasse has highlighted India’s dependence on gas imports, particularly from Qatar, and how that impact isspread across a range of sectors.Over the years, natural gas has progressively come to play a greater role in India’s energy mix, supplementing crude oil (in the transport sector) and coal (in the power sector).

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The war in West Asia that has blocked supplies of crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and refinery products from the Gulf serves India a reality check on the soundness of relying on imported hydrocarbons for cooking food. It is high time we began to wean our kitchens off liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and piped natural gas (PNG); while LPG is essentially a mixture of propane and butane, PNG is mostly methane, like the compressed natural gas (CNG) that is used by vehicles as a low-carbon substitute for petrol and diesel. We should cook, instead, on electric stoves that run on power generated from domestic coal and renewables.Since we have our own coal, its supply cannot be disrupted by a war abroad.

India plans to validate its indigenous artificial intelligence (AI) weather forecasting model after the monsoon season to assess its accuracy and reliability.The evaluation will compare AI-based predictions with actual rainfall and climate data, India Meteorological Department (IMD) director general Mrutyunjay Mohapatra told Mint. If successful, the model could improve early warnings, disaster preparedness, and agricultural planning nationwide, he said, adding that AI systems would analyze large historical weather datasets and real-time observations to detect patterns.The initiative will complement India’s Bharat Forecasting System (BharatFS)—a high-resolution weather prediction system launched in May 2025, operating on a 6-km grid, designed to improve forecasts for monsoon, cyclones and extreme weather events.

Escalating tensions in the Middle East have pushed crude prices into the spotlight, making it the single biggest trigger for the recent sell-off in Indian equities.Brent crude prices experienced a sharp spike and a violent reversal on Monday, skyrocketing to nearly $120 per barrel before settling under $100 amid rising tensions in West Asia, supply constraints, and fears of a prolonged conflict.A blockade at the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point that carries about a fifth of global oil, has reignited supply shock fears, lifting crude prices and heightening risks for import-dependent economies such as India’s. Oil and related energy stocks in India have therefore come into sharp focus.Today, we take a closer look at small cap companies in India’s oil industry.

India’s courts are keeping up with the times in their efforts to curb online piracy of films and television shows by issuing dynamic plus injunctions that are effective even for content that hasn’t been released yet.“We are witnessing a pivotal transition toward the dynamic plus injunction, where the Indian judiciary is providing ex-ante protection for content that hasn't even been expressed yet,” said Yash Vardhan Singh, counsel at Sarvaank Associates. “By moving away from static, URL-based orders, the courts are addressing the intractable reality of digital piracy, ensuring marquee properties like Stranger Things and Friends are protected from the moment of creation.”Experts said recent anti-piracy orders, particularly the dynamic plus injunction, expand the scope of dealing with emerging cyberspace issues.

The fear that artificial intelligence will lead to mass layoffs is spreading. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the financial technology firm Block, laid off nearly half of its workforce last week. Citing AI’s labour-saving capabilities, he predicted other companies would soon follow suit: “Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.”As an economist, I disagree with Dorsey’s prediction.

Mint explores the best- and worst-case scenarios.On Monday the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of Iran’s armed forces, announced that the Strait of Hormuz was closed and attacked a few ships passing through it. The announcement quickly caused panic.

India is fast becoming one of the world’s biggest AI user bases. The question now is how it can turn that scale into superpower status rather than just training Silicon Valley for free.That will be a tall order for a country largely caught flat-footed by the boom. But let’s start with the basics: The three main building blocks of AI are talent, compute (including high-end chips and infrastructure) and data.

Mumbai: At 3:50 am on a quiet Kolkata morning, 35-year-old numerologist Vivek Baid woke up to a string of notifications that would upend his day. One message became two, then three. By 4 am, he had received eight transaction alerts for his forex card.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. “I have to giggle," says Jim Chanos, asked if investors have become overly optimistic about artificial intelligence. “We’ve got to the ‘data-centres-in-space’ stage of the cycle." Firms from SpaceX and Blue Origin to Alphabet plan to shrug off earthly constraints on the computing clusters that power AI, and launch them into orbit.

India’s long-held ambition to become a serious shipbuilding nation on par with giants such as China, South Korea, and Japan may finally get off the starting blocks in the second half of 2026, at a time when the Asian shipyards are packed with orders, with waiting periods stretching into several years.In the first instance of a global shipbuilding giant investing directly in core shipbuilding infrastructure in India, state-run Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) and South Korea’s HD Korea Shipbuilding and Offshore Engineering (HD KSOE)—part of the HD Hyundai Group—are in final stages of forming a joint venture to set up a $500-million manufacturing facility in Kochi, with both partners contributing equally.CSL’s chairman and managing director, Jose V.J. said a CSL team would visit South Korea this month to finalise the deal.

Tata Steel, India's second-largest steelmaker, aims to source half of its iron ore requirements from captive mines after 2030, down from 100% now, as steep premiums in mine auctions make relying only on leased blocks economically unviable—prompting the company to consider open-market purchases and imports to secure ore.“We will certainly look for at least 50% captive so that the operations are stable, but between 50 and 100 will probably depend on the economics,” Tata Steel chief executive officer T.V. Narendran told Mint on the sidelines of a business event on Saturday, 21 February.The shift comes ahead of the expiry of its leases in Jharkhand and Odisha by FY2030 under the amended Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, which mandates auctions for allocation of mineral blocks—which will raise raw material costs at India's oldest steelmakers, as also its peers.The steelmaker will look to buy iron ore from the open market post 2030 when its long term leases of captive iron ore mines end.

Vedanta Ltd is in a race against time to shore up production levels at its oil and gas business that has declined each of the past 10 years.Higher production levels could bolster the business's financials, helping it fend for itself when it is housed in an independent company named Vedanta Oil & Gas Ltd.Over the past decade, ageing oil blocks have more than halved production at Vedanta’s oil and gas vertical from 211 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (kboepd) in FY15 to 103.2 kboepd in FY25. During the first nine months of FY26, average output stood at 89.1 kboepd—below the 95-100 kboepd guidance given by the company at the beginning of the year.To be sure, falling production at ageing blocks is a problem endemic to the oil and gas sector, with peers like Reliance Industries and Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. KAMPALA, Uganda—Ten million people face hunger in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s east, and it isn’t because there is no food to be had. It is largely because people can’t get what food there is.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Nadya Okamoto is getting married this summer and wasn’t sure if she could write off the cost of a professional photographer. The 28-year-old earns most of her income posting about her life on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, and plans to post photos of the ceremony online.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. CONSIDER IT a cautionary tale. In 2022 Kroger announced that it would buy Albertsons, a rival grocer, for nearly $25bn.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Daily life in Cuba is grinding to a halt under a U.S. campaign to block the island’s oil imports, drawing international criticism that the Trump administration is pushing the island toward a humanitarian crisis with no clear endgame.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. With telecom operators now blocking or flagging nearly 400 million suspected spam calls and messages every day, India’s telecom regulator is looking to widen its current enforcement framework alongside a willingness to tighten the rules if gaps persist, while moving toward a full rollout of a digital consent system for commercial communications. In an interview with Mint, Anil Kumar Lahoti, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), said the regulator is reviewing the existing framework governing telemarketers to identify areas where responsibilities are not being met and is open to strengthening the rules if required.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The electricians of Kyiv’s Troyeshina district see the worst of it. For over a week the working-class suburb has been without central heating, with 300,000 people exposed to temperatures as low as -20°C.