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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.American courts are not supposed to be venues for performance art. If counter-parties in a lawsuit do not have adverse interests—say, because they answer to the same person—judges balk. So when Donald Trump sued his own administration seeking $10bn in damages, the judge had questions.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.We have all been in meetings that “could have been an email,” so why not have a jury trial that could have been an AI prompt?“Is Elon Musk able to sue OpenAI for breach of contract?” we might have asked an artificial intelligence (AI) model before the three-week circus at a federal court in downtown Oakland, California. “No,” should have been the AI model’s answer.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit entity in 2015 along with Sam Altman and others, has suffered a setback. His lawsuit against Altman for turning a carved-out subsidiary of OpenAI into a profit-oriented entity has been rejected by a US court. Musk’s suit was found to be too late under the law of limitations, which prevents legal action against an event after a specified time lapse.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Elon won.Well, technically, he didn’t. A jury on Monday sided with Sam Altman and OpenAI, and their arguments that the statute of limitations had run out for Elon Musk to bring his whole “stole-a-charity” claims against his former AI lab partner-turned-corporate rival.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The finance ministry, on Monday, has directed all public sector banks, insurance companies, and financial institutions to implement austerity measures, including switching to electric vehicles (EVs), curtailing foreign travel, and shifting to video conferencing for meetings, as the government moves to reduce expenditure and protect the country's financial system from economic instability due to the West Asia war.“All organisations may aim at replacing the petrol and diesel cars hired by them in their head offices and branch offices with electric cars as far as possible,” according to an official circular of the department of financial services (DFS) reviewed by Mint.Earlier this month Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made seven big appeals, austerity measures so to speak, to cushion India from the economic uncertainties arising from the prolonged West Asia war. These included conserving petrol and diesel by using public transport and metro; avoiding purchasing gold for a year, and restricting foreign travel to conserve forex."It is time for us to use petrol, diesel and gas with great care,” Modi said on Sunday while inaugurating projects in Hyderabad, Telangana.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi/Mumbai: The Supreme Court’s decision to send the high-profile Kapur family dispute over late Sona Comstar chairman Sunjay Kapur’s estimated ₹30,000-crore estate to mediation under former chief justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud has drawn attention to how Indian courts are handling promoter-family battles outside traditional courtroom litigation.Mint explains whether mediation can really solve inheritance battles that carry financial and emotional stakes, and how mediation works in high-profile family business disputes.The inheritance battle emerged last year after Sunjay Kapur, the then chairman of Sona Comstar, one of India’s largest automotive technology and EV component makers, died following a heart attack.Sunjay Kapur’s children – Samaira and Kiaan – from his earlier marriage to actor Karisma Kapoor, moved the Delhi High Court, challenging a will that allegedly left his entire estate to his widow, Priya Kapur.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The opening sequence of RJ Balaji’s Karuppu is all sparks and embers in a bichrome backdrop of red and black. It’s a nightmare in which a man gets assaulted by unknown assailants and a majestic rageful God descends to save him. The man, played by Indrans, jolts up in a train and looks at his daughter Binu (Anagha Ravi).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s social capital deficit registers as a factor in its current account deficit through the demand for gold. Our appetite for gold is not an irrational cultural quirk. It is, in part, a revealed preference and a tangible symptom of our collective distrust in one another, society and civic institutions.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Jim Courier, former World No.1, called it the revenge tour. Last year, Jannik Sinner missed out on some of the biggest events on the tennis tour—Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo and Madrid—since he was serving a three-month doping ban.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.OAKLAND, Calif.—U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers opened the last day of testimony in the titanic trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s OpenAI with a simple question: Should a trophy of a golden donkey’s backside be entered into evidence?The judge held the statue in her hands with a bemused look.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the mid-1980s, when a personal computer in India cost as much as ₹80,000, a young Tamil entrepreneur walked into the stalled market and crashed prices by more than half.Chinnakannan Sivasankaran, known simply as Siva, had just bought Sterling Computers from Robert Amritraj, father of tennis star Vijay Amritraj. His opening move was to launch the Siva PC at ₹33,000 with the tagline “The Power of Siva.”The market responded immediately as rivals were forced to cut prices.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: The US market regulator’s $18-million settlement of a civil case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and nephew Sagar Adani has no immediate bearing on a parallel criminal investigation initiated against them by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Adanis acknowledged that the settlement does not grant them immunity from any criminal liability related to the case, they said in their filings with a New York court.“This settles the civil action brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has no implications for the existing criminal charges brought by the DoJ or any other criminal investigation that may be pending,” said Russell A.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India's gold imports from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) under the 2022 trade agreement are drawing fresh attention amid India's push to curb bullion imports to conserve foreign reserves.Gems and jewellery imports from the UAE, dominated by gold, have surged to one-third of India's total shipments in 2025-26, according to commerce ministry data reviewed by Mint.Even as India’s gems and jewellery imports hit a record $71.98 billion in 2025-26, imports from the UAE rose from $14.79 billion in 2022-23 to $27.09 billion in 2024-25, and stood at $24.08 billion during April-February 2025-26.Total gems and jewellery imports from the UAE stood at $15.93 billion in 2021-22, according to the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council.At the same time, utilization of the tariff rate quota (TRQ), which allows a limited quantity of gold imports from the UAE at a duty rate one percentage point lower than the standard rate, has remained modest at about 140 tonnes in 2024-25 and just 8.58 tonnes so far in 2025-26.The trend has raised concerns that higher inflows under the concessional route could dilute the impact of 15% customs duty on gold and silver, as traders may increasingly route imports through the lower-duty quota, weakening efforts to curb imports and manage the trade deficit.It also assumes significance as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed to citizens to avoid buying gold for at least a year, urging them to invest in productive assets instead to help reduce the country’s import burden and strengthen the economy.“The trade agreement does offer some price advantage due to differential duty and would hence need to be monitored.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Ten years ago, only two or three students from a class of 30 would pass the class 10 board exam at this government school. Today, only two or three from a class of 60 do not.The class has grown because the school changed. As the class 10 board results were transformed, parents began moving their children here from other schools—mostly private ones.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bengaluru and Mumbai: A 37-year-old transfer of shares of Tata Sons from a trust to the late Naval Tata—later inherited by his sons, Tata Trusts chair Noel Tata, the late Ratan Tata and his brother Jimmy Tata—has surfaced as an issue for the philanthropic entities that control the group.On Tuesday, Sunil Tulsiram Patilkhede, through his lawyer, Katyayani Agrawal, sent a legal notice to the six trustees of Sir Ratan Tata Trust, or SRTT, which owns 23.56% of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group.This is the third such legal notice against SRTT in the last month. First, lawyer Agrawal had complained to the Maharashtra Charity Commissioner that three among its six trustees—Noel Tata, Pune philanthropist Jehangir HC Jehnagir, and Jimmy Tata—were permanent trustees.This, she alleged, violated rules that capped the number of lifetime trustees at a fourth of the total number of trustees.Last week, Suresh Patilkhede, a Mumbai resident, had sought an adjournment of a Tata Trust meeting before the Bombay High Court.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.At first, the legal battle between Nayara Energy Ltd—the Indian refiner backed by Russia’s Rosneft—and SAP India appeared to be a conventional contract dispute.However, it quickly raised larger questions around foreign sanctions, India’s technological dependence on multinational software providers, and whether global geopolitical developments could disrupt critical infrastructure operations within the country.After Justice Vikas Mahajan heard both parties, the court recorded its judgement on 30 April.Mint explains the case and why it matters.The dispute started in July 2025, when SAP India Pvt Ltd suspended all critical software support services including SAP ECC support (maintenance for its legacy core business suite), marketplace access, SSCR keys (developer credentials required to modify SAP source code), and expert services.SAP said this was done after the European Union imposed sanctions on Rosneft, the Russian oil refinery that has a 49.13% stake in Nayara.Nayara approached the Delhi High Court in September, saying the suspension blocked access to software critical for refinery operations and regulatory compliance. The company noted it was unable to implement GST 2.0 updates and argued that the disruption "poses a serious risk to India’s sovereignty and public interest", given that its refinery accounts for 8.5% of the nation’s energy production.Nayara argued that SAP was using the European Union trade curbs to not provide services to the energy firm despite its contractual obligations in India.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: Investors are beginning to finance commercial lawsuits in India in exchange for a share of future settlements or court awards, as litigation funding— a niche alternative asset class long established in some global markets—starts to take shape locally.At least three entities, including alternative investment fund (AIF) Five Rivers, New Delhi-based LegalPay, a litigation funder, and Singapore-based ELF Partners, a litigation finance consultancy, are active in the space, marking early institutional entry into what is also known as third-party funding (TPF).Five Rivers, a Mumbai-based AIF, is in talks with investors to close its first fund of $25-50 million,according to Irfan Mughal, the managing director of Five Rivers. It positions itself as the first dedicated fund of its kind in India, offering investors exposure to returns linked to outcomes in commercial disputes.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.An employee comes forward with embarrassing workplace allegations fraught with legal risks. For company bosses, it presents a thorny dilemma: Fight or pay?It is a situation JPMorgan Chase found itself in weeks before a former banker filed a lawsuit filled with sensational accusations.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: The few seconds of music you hear while waiting for someone to answer a phone call is copyrighted intellectual property, and telecom operators offering caller tunes may now need separate licences and royalty payments to lyricists and composers after a recent Calcutta High Court ruling.On 8 May, the Calcutta High Court ruled against Vodafone Idea in its long-running dispute with the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS), holding that telecom operators cannot offer caller tunes and ringtones solely on the basis of licences obtained from music labels.Mint explains the ruling and what it could mean for telecom operators and digital platforms.The dispute centres on whether telecom operators offering caller tunes and ringtones require separate licences from lyricists and composers, apart from licences obtained from music labels such as Saregama.Telecom companies treat caller tunes as a value-added service, a paid add-on beyond regular calling and SMS facilities that generates additional revenue and improves user engagement.Vodafone Idea signed agreements with Saregama in 2014 to use songs for caller tune services. However, IPRS argued that while music labels may own sound recordings, lyricists and composers retain separate rights over the underlying literary and musical works under the Copyright Act, particularly after the 2012 amendments that strengthened creators’ royalty rights.In 2018, Vodafone Idea approached the Calcutta High Court challenging IPRS’s claim that telecom operators required separate licences and royalty payments for using songs as caller tunes and ringtones.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Imagine how mortifying it would be if anyone ever read your diary.Now imagine it’s a diary from a stressful period of your life and it’s being read in a courthouse and people all over the world are paying attention because you’re being sued by the richest man on the planet and the future of your company might just depend on your private thoughts that have suddenly become much too public.It was also unimaginable for Greg Brockman.But over two excruciating days this week, journal entries from OpenAI’s president and co-founder were entered as exhibits in the trial captivating Silicon Valley.Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Brockman and Sam Altman has shaken loose a trove of evidence, offering a peek inside the minds of the people who have spent the past decade building artificial intelligence. We have read their unvarnished emails, dishy texts, notes from meetings that determined OpenAI’s future—and one deeply human journal.In any other part of civilized society, rifling through someone else’s diary is considered an outrageous invasion of privacy.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 1580, the sultan of Bijapur was stabbed to death in his own bedroom. Ali Adil Shah was an interesting type of chap. He ate not less than 12 eggs per day for his health; he liked to read, travelling even to battlefields with books; had interests in philosophy and the occult; and also styled himself a Sufi.