Peace Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.WASHINGTON—President Trump said he would hold off on a planned U.S. attack on Iran at the request of Gulf leaders to make room for negotiations with Tehran over a prospective deal to end the war.In a social-media post on Monday, Trump said he had directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.AS AN UNEASY truce holds between America and Iran, experts are struggling to predict what new phase the conflict may enter next. Might an artificial-intelligence model know any better? To find out, The Economist asked RAND, a think-tank, to see if its new AI forecasting system thought a popular uprising was in the offing in Iran. Integrated Strategic Forecasting (ISF), as the system is known, put the chance of regime collapse or replacement by the end of 2026 at 20%—higher than many experts would hazard.There are caveats.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The U.S. and Iran are locked in a diplomatic stalemate over issues that have bedeviled the two sides for years, as the conflict settles into a gray zone that is neither war nor peace.The cease-fire is entering its second month and, despite sporadic violence, has now lasted almost as long as the fighting which preceded it. There is little to indicate that either the U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mollie Amkraut Mueller’s mumbling was starting to get on her husband’s nerves.What was once a sacred nightly routine—putting the toddler to bed, collapsing onto the couch and opening their laptops to finish their work in peace—had become anything but peaceful. Instead of typing quietly, Amkraut Mueller started to hold down the function key and talk in hushed tones to her computer.Amkraut Mueller, who runs her own artificial-intelligence business in Seattle, is hooked on Wispr Flow, a dictation app that users are pairing with coding tools like Claude Code and Codex to turn rambling, stream-of-consciousness prompts into coherent, usable text in seconds.Efficient, yes.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), should India create its own large language models (LLMs) that can work on a trillion-plus parameters? Scale-wise, this would put them in contention with LLMs created by US players OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta and their Chinese rivals Alibaba, DeepSeek and Moonshot, with ByteDance, Tencent and Zhipu AI not far behind. Or should India focus on creating AI tools and agents based on available models? Eminent leaders of India’s success in IT services have argued in favour of the latter option. Scarce resources need not go into building frontier models from scratch, they say, as we could gain more by using what already exists to go further.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Stock market recap: Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty 50 ended higher on Tuesday amid US-Iran peace talks and broad-based sectoral strength.The Sensex rose by 753 points, or 0.96%, to end at 79,273.33, while the Nifty 50 ended with a healthy gain of 212 points, or 0.87%, at 24,576.60.Amid the geopolitical developments, we are seeing some steady buying opportunities as the result season unfolds. A very strong upmove with a buy on dips can be considered in the days ahead.ADANIPORTS (Cmp ₹1594.10) Indian equities rallied for the third consecutive session on 21 April 2026, supported by optimism over US–Iran peace talks and broad-based sectoral strength. The Sensex climbed 753 points to 79,273, while the Nifty advanced 211 points to 24,576.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The sudden twists in West Asia peace talks underscore just how fluid the situation is. On Friday, Iran showed some keenness to engage with the US as it declared the Strait of Hormuz open, but only to slam it shut again the next day.Since then, Tehran has professed itself unready to hold truce talks with the US. Not only was America making excessive and shifting demands, it argued, its blockade of Iranian ports was a violation of the ceasefire due to expire only on 22 April.To make matters between the two adversaries worse, this week began with armed US action against an Iranian commercial vessel.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Vice President JD Vance is expected to lead a new round of peace talks with Iran in Pakistan this week in a fresh effort to end the war with Tehran, but there still appear to be significant gaps between both sides as the U.S. pushes Iran to lock up its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.Vance is expected to arrive in Pakistan on Monday evening for talks with Iran on Tuesday—although Iran was still threatening on Sunday that it wouldn’t attend talks, saying Washington’s demands remain excessive. Pakistan helped broker a two-week cease-fire between the U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A week is a long time in geopolitics. Consider the Hormuz flip in the theatre of economic warfare. Last Monday, after peace talks failed, America sought to choke Iran’s economy with an armed blockade of Iranian ports.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Among the worst analyses of human nature is the notion that poverty creates criminal behaviour. Yet, this is a popular perception. As a result, every time an agitation of the poor turns violent, the rich think they know what is going on.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Dozens of world leaders were discussing how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in a videoconference on Friday when a murmur went up among the presidents and prime ministers. Aides off-screen began furiously tapping their shoulders and passing them notes.In the middle of the meeting, led by France and Britain, President Trump declared on social media he had reached a breakthrough with Iran and the strait would be fully reopened.Foreign leaders, aware that Trump has declared victory before, stayed on the line and kept planning.The details of the coalition meeting, described by several officials on the line, underscored the mix of head-spinning confusion and cautious optimism that has gripped foreign leaders and financial markets over Trump’s efforts to strong-arm Iran into a peace deal.For several hours on Friday, through a series of interviews and social-media posts, Trump insisted he got most of what he wanted from Iran after launching a war against the U.S.’s largest Middle Eastern rival: A full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, falling oil prices, a promise from Iran that it would give up its supply of enriched uranium, and commitments for Iran to halt its support for proxy terror groups in the region.Trump’s optimism had followed a social-media post by Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, declaring the Strait of Hormuz “completely open” during the cease-fire.Then walk-backs began.Mahmoud Nabavian, a conservative lawmaker and member of Iran’s negotiating team, rebuffed Trump’s announcement that the strait was fully open.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.China’s economy got off to a solid start in 2026, with its GDP growing 5% in the first quarter, according to official data released on Thursday. This exceeded the expectations of economists and struck the top-end of the 4.5-5% growth aim set by Beijing for the full year. Driving the expansion were China’s robust exports for the quarter, although its March shipments faced severe headwinds.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BE GRATEFUL FOR small mercies. The ceasefire between America and Iran holds. Talks that began in Islamabad last weekend may soon resume.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.American military forces began blockading all traffic attempting to enter and leave Iranian ports on Monday, setting up a risky new showdown after peace talks in Pakistan collapsed this past weekend.With enough warships, a blockade could intimidate many tankers attempting to move oil to and from Iran. But U.S. forces would also need to be ready to board and seize hostile ships that try to break the blockade.

GDP may be greater than on inflation, as the government will try to shield vulnerable consumers using policy tools, and in the worst case, growth may possibly be lower by 60-100 basis points,” added Shukla.The failure of talks could impact the stock market's fledgling recovery from its 52-week low, and unsettle the currency and energy markets."This is bad news and puts the recent recovery at risk," said Nirmal Jain, founder of IIFL Group, advising investors to wait rather than rush in to buy a likely dip.The bellwether Nifty had recovered 8.4% from its 52-week low of 22,182.55 on 2 April to Friday's closing of 24050.6. A further recovery toward the pre-war level of 25,178.65 on 27 February, which analysts had expected ahead of the peace talks, looks like a "tough ask," said Rohit Srivastava, founder of analytics firm IndiaCharts.While analysts including Srivastava do not believe the market will test its 52-week low again unless the fighting widens, options traders have baked in a 23,000-25,000 range for the Nifty in April.

Strait of Hormuz.The nuclear question is the oldest and most fundamental source of Western suspicion. Iran insists it has never sought to build a bomb.

For centuries the so-called cannon shot rule determined who controlled the seas. The legal concept, codified by Dutch jurist Cornelius van Bynkershoek in 1702, was simple: The distance a cannonball reached from shore set the maritime boundary of a coastal state.

Vietnam War. It was 8 June 1972. Dozens of children were running for safety after the US bombing in Vietnam’s Trang Bang region.

Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

the New York Times. This is to give Trump additional military options even as he weighs a new diplomatic initiative with the Islamic republic, according to the report.“About 2,300 Marines from the 31st Expeditionary Unit are scheduled to arrive in the Middle East later this week, and U.S.

Mystery shrouds the prospect of official talks between the US and Iran to stop the war in West Asia, but reports have emerged of feelers from America in the shape of a 15-point ceasefire plan sent via Pakistan.The US reportedly wants Iran’s nuclear facilities dismantled, stockpile of enriched uranium handed over, nuclear-weapon ambitions renounced and missile threat capped, plus the Strait of Hormuz opened and more, all in lieu of relief from bombs and sanctions.Iran recently reiterated its right to enrich uranium while asking for reparations and a no-aggression commitment as conditions to stop its attacks. To this list, it later added a closure of all US military bases in the region and formal control over the Strait of Hormuz.