Experts Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A mock job advertisement that has done the rounds recently calls for a “killswitch engineer" for OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. The description requires the successful applicant to stand by servers all day and unplug them “if this thing turns on us".

India’s government finally announced the implementation of the four labour codes passed by Parliament about five years ago, starting 21 November 2025. These four, namely the Code on Wages of 2019, Industrial Relations Code of 2020, Code on Social Security of 2020 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code of 2020, were meant to rationalize 29 old labour laws by replacing them with new codes, as recommended in a 2002 report by the second National Commission of Labour set up in 1999.The objective was to simplify labour laws and make them effective—for the benefit of workers as well as employers.Reforming these laws has been part of the governance agenda of every successive government since 1991, when India’s economy underwent broad reforms in various other domains.Given the multiplicity of labour laws enacted since independence, the idea of revising them was also to make them enforceable (or justiciable) and reflect the contemporary reality of changing labour relations.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When global rating agencies revised their sovereign debt ratings for France and Portugal earlier this year, aligning them with those of Care Ratings, they “vindicated" the stance of the Indian rating agency that launched its fledgling sovereign rating business just over a year ago, a top official at Care Ratings said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When Sanjay Malhotra became the 26th governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) a year ago, he didn’t inherit a crisis—in fact, the period of high inflation was drawing to a close. He did, however, assume office at a time when the entire world was gripped by uncertainty.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The artificial-intelligence chips that Nvidia is allowed to ship to China will undergo a special security review in the U.S. before they are exported, according to administration officials.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When Sanjay Malhotra walked into Mint Street a year ago, few expected him to move as quickly and as boldly as he did to reform one of the country’s most tightly controlled sectors. Twelve months on, bankers believe the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) suddenly feels more open and accessible, and far more willing to rethink old rules.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI : Nephrocare Health Services, better known as NephroPlus, is pitching itself as a global dialysis disruptor on the back of what chairman and managing director Vikram Vuppala touts as a low-cost, high-efficiency operating model. Built at India’s price point and refined through scale, the company now plans to replicate this template in higher-priced international markets.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Advertising on video-streaming services in India is increasingly resulting in viewer fatigue as these platforms try to supplement plateauing paid subscription revenue with ad money. Users are bombarded with the same long and unskippable ads, often with glitches, that make the viewing experience tedious and disrupt the flow of the show.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made the dramatic call for a “code red" last week to beat back a rising threat from Google, he put a notable priority at the top of his list of fixes. The world’s most valuable startup should pause its side projects like its Sora video generator for eight weeks and focus on improving ChatGPT, its popular chatbot that kicked off the AI boom.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: Wine prices in India are set to rise by 25-30% from levels in January after Maharashtra’s grape crop suffered its worst damage in recent years, sharply increasing input costs and reducing production.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. If you follow Seema Anand, popular sexual health educator, Kama Sutra expert, mythologist and writer on Instagram, you are familiar with her unapologetic, feisty approach –both while talking about sex, pleasure, and intimacy or wielding trolls who cannot fathom a ‘mature woman’ talking about taboo topics.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Several dubbed south Indian films have struck a popular chord with Hindi-speaking audiences and found box-office success in the past. Yet, makers of recent mid-budget Tamil, Telugu, or Malayalam movies such as The Girlfriend and Kaantha have refrained from aggressive distribution and marketing push in north India.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : With hundreds of flight cancellations and delays affecting thousands of fliers since Tuesday, IndiGo—India’s largest budget carrier by market capitalization—is grappling with one of its most severe operational disruptions, prompting a probe by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Crew shortages due to new duty-time rules, technical breakdowns at key airports, and heavy winter congestion have precipitated the crisis, according to the airline.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Theatres are looking to 2026 for a turnaround after two uneven years. The coming year packs a rare concentration of star-heavy releases, with Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Vijay and several others returning to the big screen.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : The tenure of Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) new chief executive P.B. Balaji, has begun with twin crises of dealing with the exit of chief creative officer Gerry McGovern and the loss of business due to the halt in production in September and October owing to the cyberattack.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The rupee breached 90 to the US dollar on Wednesday, marking a new low for India’s currency, which has steadily weakened over the year and is now the worst performer among major emerging- and advanced-market currencies. The rupee's slide (it has fallen more than 5.5% this year as of 2 December) has been driven largely by a trade impasse with the US and continuing foreign portfolio investor (FPI) outflows from Indian markets.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: India's premium whisky, including single malts, headed to the US may not be hit even as the liquor sector may feel the heat of the additional 26% reciprocal tariffs introduced by the US. “An increase in tariffs does have an impact, but whether it will be significant or just a knee-jerk reaction will become clear only after the release of the detailed schedule in the next few days," said Vinod Giri, director general, Brewers Association of India (BAI).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Budget 2024 scrapped the indexation benefit—a provision that allowed adjusting prices for inflation—to make tax rates uniform across asset classes. For real estate, the tax on long-term capital gains (LTCG) — when a property is held for at least two years—was reduced from 20% with the indexation benefit to 12.5% without it.

The Blaze Star, also known as T Coronae Borealis, is expected to shine as brightly as Polaris for about a week, starting soon. Astronomers describe it as a «once-in-a-lifetime» sky show, best seen near the Corona Borealis constellation. Only once every 80 years does T Coronae Borealis explode, making it a new star in the night sky for about a week. Bradley Schaefer, an astronomer and Blaze Star expert at Louisiana State University told Annie Jennemann of Hearst, «We anticipate that T Coronae Borealis will erupt any night now, any month now,” as quoted in a report by The NY Post. ALSO READ: Monica Lewinsky turns heads at Broadway's star-studded opening night of Good Night, and Good Luck, leaves people stunned; here's what she wore

«Dead» investors often beat the living — at least, when it comes to investment returns.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said while America is willing to continue to help those affected by the Myanmar earthquake, other countries should also pitch in to provide humanitarian assistance during such crises worldwide. «Well, we're not the government of the world. No, we will provide humanitarian assistance just like everybody else does and do it the best we can. But we also have other needs we have to balance that against. We're not walking away from humanitarian assistance,» Rubio told the media at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on Friday. Rubio was responding to a question about the earthquake and how the US offered help during such incidents by saving lives on the ground through special equipment and experts. Rubio was asked if that was not happening because of the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). «There's a lot of other rich countries in the world. They should all be pitching in. We're going to do our part. We already have people there, we'll have more people there. We'll help as much as we can. It's not the easiest place to work. They have a military junta that doesn't like us and doesn't necessarily allow us to operate in that country the way we want to. That would have impeded our response no matter what,» he said.