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. Some dusted off old camping stoves and refilled oil canisters. “When the pain becomes deep enough, the fear fades,” a 42-year-old Iranian woman said, citing five weeks of war and years of repression and economic crisis in the country.Less than 30 minutes after Trump’s post, Iranian officials told Egypt that Tehran had cut off direct communications with U.S. negotiators, according to officials from an Arab government.

On April Fools’ Day, the American president addressed the nation and the world to send not one message about the war that the US and Israel launched against Iran a month ago, but all possible messages at once.The conflict is “nearing completion,” Donald Trump said, before repeating that the US might also escalate by hitting Iran’s power plants if there’s “no deal.” The US is “on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he asserted, before claiming that “we never said ‘regime change’” while simultaneously musing that the regime, which remains ensconced, sort of has changed, since American and Israeli forces have killed so many leaders.Again he claimed that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, even though evidence is accumulating that the Iranians had safely moved their enriched uranium to other locations before those strikes. Trump knows this too, since he has been considering ordering ground troops to try to seize that fissile material, while fearing the quagmire such a mission could end in.“We have all the cards, they have none,” the president boasted.

Mint earlier reported that amid high oil prices and a supply squeeze due to the war in West Asia, OMCs halted supplies on credit to fuel retailers.On 26 March, the petroleum and natural gas ministry had said that efforts were underway to increase the supplies from one-day credit period to up to three days of supplies on credit.“In most cases, it is still advance payment. For large retailers there may be instances of a day's credit, but not all are getting that,” said Marri Amarender Reddy, general secretary of the UPDA.

A leading stockbrokers' association plans to ask the government to defer the increase in the securities transaction tax (STT) on equity futures and options after the Reserve Bank of India postponed implementation of rules on bank funding of capital market intermediaries amid the Iran war-induced rout in the stock markets."The RBI deferment comes as a major reprieve, given the doldrums the market is in because of the West Asia crisis," said K Suresh, national president of the Association of NSE Members of India (ANMI). "Now, we will request the ministry of finance to temporarily hold back imposition of the hike in securities transaction tax on equity futures and options, given the drop in volumes it could lead to, given the extant conditions."In the FY27 budget presented on 1 February, the government proposed to increase the STT on equity futures to 0.05% from 0.02% and on options premium and exercise of options to 0.15% from 0.1% and 0.125%, respectively, from 1 April.

A simpler income tax law will come into force from 1 April, along with other changes announced in this year’s Budget including higher benefit of deductions for salaried tax payers and a new buyback taxation scheme.The new tax regime modifies the return filing timeline in certain cases and rationalises penalties while looking to reduce complexity and encourage voluntary compliance.Mint takes a closer look at the changes that will kick in on Wednesday.The changes proposed through Finance Act of 2026, signed off by President Droupadi Murmu on Monday, include the rationalisation of certain penalties, greater leeway to update tax returns and disclose previously unreported foreign assets and income below a limit, changes to the taxes deducted or collected at source (TDS and TCS) including on overseas tour packages and education, and a new tax regime for share buybacks. From 2026-27, businesses not subjected to a tax audit will be able to file their income tax returns up to the end of August.Starting in 2026-27, taxpayers can revise their returns even after the department initiates a tax case.

software companies, which often billed clients by the number of hours an engineer spent on a task, are now forced to redefine what is worth a developer’s time.This shift is being felt by young Indians across the workforce, from final-year students appearing for placements to entry-level software engineers and mid-level engineers at information technology (IT) companies.Ansh Masand, a final-year MBA tech engineering student at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, is witnessing this shift firsthand.Masand, who also works at a Bangalore-based AI startup, says he began freelancing in his second year despite not having the skills to build full-fledged software applications at the time.“I didn’t really know how to make production-ready software,” he says. “But I could ask questions, use AI and deliver something that worked.”Masand says what stood out to his clients was not how the code was written, but how quickly it was delivered.“I was building things in a day and solving problems that existed in their current workflow” he says.

₹5,191.06 crore redemption, small-cap funds saw inflows of ₹3,881.06 crore in February, prompting fund houses to launch new schemes and reopen existing ones.The opportunity is real, but so are the risks. Experts warn that low liquidity, stretched valuations, and governance weaknesses can turn potential gains into sharp losses.“The runway is huge and positive, but the interim perils are also real,” remarked Harsh Gupta Madhusudan, fund manager-PIPE, Ionic Asset.Following this renewed interest, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund reopened subscriptions to its Small Cap Fund in January, Groww Mutual Fund launched a new small-cap scheme around the same time.

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

NSE), typically happens on the last Tuesday of every month. With markets shut on Tuesday for Mahavir Jayanti, the rollover will take place a day earlier, on Monday.“Investors or traders opting to exercise or physically settle their stock options and futures upon monthly expiry could provide an element of support to the market,” said Kruti Shah, quant analyst at Equirus Securities.If, instead, traders close out positions or roll them over to the next month, it would signal more short aggression, Shah said.

The Wall Street Journal has reported. That would add to roughly 5,000 Marines and 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division already ordered to the region. The additional troops would likely include infantry, armored vehicles and logistics support.That’s far fewer than the 150,000 troops the U.S.

BPCL) signed a long-term contract to procure 12 million barrels of crude in 2026-27 from Petrobras in January this year, renewing a previous contract signed in 2025.While Brazil is largely self-sufficient in crude oil production, it has one “vulnerability”, according to Nóbrega. “One vulnerability is that we are self-sufficient in crude oil production, but we are not self-sufficient in refined oil,” he said, adding that diesel is required for a bulk of the freight transport in the country by road and rail.“India also could install refineries in Brazil because you are one of the largest countries in terms of oil refining,” he said, noting that one of India’s biggest exports to the largest country in South America is refined oils, including diesel.India has a refining capacity of 258 million tonnes per year and has helped countries such as Nigeria and Mongolia develop refineries.

Give credit where it’s due. Despite all the setbacks, Donald Trump is right that the US-Israeli war in Iran war hasn’t triggered the oil price super-spike many feared—at least not yet. “I thought it would be worse, much worse,” the American president said last week, and it’s hard to disagree.

shaky five-day truce in West Asia looms, leaving investors caught between hopes of de-escalation and the reality of a US military deployment."While the sellers are relatively more bullish after the two-day rally, they aren't taking any chances lest last-minute nasty surprises crop up on Friday," said Sudhir Joshi, consultant at Khambatta Securities.The bullishness of sellers or writers is reflected in the relative number of puts to calls sold as of Wednesday. For every 100 calls sold, the writers sold 124 puts, underscoring their belief that they would retain premiums on the puts sold as markets would rise by 30 March.The put-call ratio typically ranges from a very bearish 0.70 to an extremely bullish 1.30.A put seller gains when the market rises or remains flat, while a call seller gains when the market falls or remains flat at the level sold.

Investors have grown accustomed to the idea that US President Donald Trump-induced shocks rarely last long, because, as the popular TACO acronym tells us, ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’ But the American president’s decision to join Israel in starting a war with Iran has opened a geopolitical and macroeconomic Pandora’s box that may make a tidy walk-back impossible. Under the surface, financial markets are starting to take note.The ‘TACO regime’ in American stocks—under which every selloff was a buying opportunity—may be over. That thesis will now get a test after Trump postponed threatened strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure and power plants for five days, pending the outcome of what he said were talks with Iran to end the war.

A silver lining seems to have appeared around the clouds of war over West Asia. Donald Trump put off by five days the US threat of bombing Iran’s energy infrastructure just hours before his 48-hour deadline was to expire for Iranian forces to open the Strait of Hormuz.The US President cited “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East” between the US and Iran over the past two days as the reason for his decision.

Don ko samajana mushkil hi nahi namumkin bhi hai (Understanding Don is not just difficult, but impossible), quipped market veteran Nilesh Shah, MD of Kotak Mahindra AMC, as conflicting statements on the Iran war emanated from US President Donald Trump over the weekend.Inspired by a dialogue from the 1978 Amitabh Bachchan starrer Don, it encapsulates the uncertainty among India's investors and traders amid frequent changes in President Trump's stance on the conflict's objectives and duration.In a post on Truth Social on Friday, the US President said he was considering ‘winding down’ military operations in the Middle East after getting ‘very close’ to meeting the US' objectives.While investors could see this as a positive sign, they would again be flummoxed by Trump's plan to deploy more troops to the region, explained Shah.Hapless investors and traders have sought to deal with frequent flip-flops preceding Trump's latest comments by initiating an options strategy that enables them to profit from sharp market movements in either direction.Known as a long straddle in options parlance, the strategy aims to profit from a steep move in the Nifty on either side of 23100 by this Monday or Tuesday.This is borne by a 58% rise in open or outstanding positions on the 23100 call and a 79% rise in the 23100 put, per National Stock Exchange (NSE) data as of Friday closing.The market closed at 23114.5 on Friday (20 March), down 8.2% over the past three weeks since the war began.

drug carries a warning that it must be administered only under the supervision of an endocrinologist to ensure that complex metabolic side-effects are properly regulated. There is a concern that if other medical professionals begin prescribing it, they may not be able to properly manage its side-effects,” one of the two officials cited above said, requesting anonymity.According to a Lancet study, India could have the world's second-highest obesity burden by 2035, with 449 million overweight and obese people by 2050, when a third of the country's population will be obese.

Indian trade negotiators and diplomats soliciting foreign investment never miss an opportunity to showcase the country’s swelling middle and its robust legal system as the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy. Data emerging from recent research, however, shows both these bragging points to be over-wrought and unsaleable today.The size of India’s vaunted middle-class is projected to go from 500 million individuals currently to over 700 million in 4-5 years.

₹60,000 crore in revenue, or closer to ₹80,000 crore when the broader Indian ceramic industry is counted. India is the world’s second-largest tile manufacturer, behind China, and Morbi is the engine of that position.The industry’s growth has tracked India’s real estate expansion with unusual fidelity.

The international system is entering a phase that increasingly resembles an earlier era of geopolitics—one defined less by shared rules and more by competing spheres of influence. Signals emerging from Washington’s strategic thinking, particularly during the presidency of Donald Trump, point to a worldview in which power, leverage and bilateral bargaining take precedence over the norms and institutions that have guided global governance for decades.With the next Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) approaching, the future of multilateralism is in the spotlight.

, born as Robert Prevost in Chicago and known for most of his life as “Bob,” has had a quiet start to his pontificate. But with the world facing crisis after crisis, the first-ever American pope is stepping up his efforts at moral suasion in defense of a fading international order that the American president, among other leaders, is rapidly dismantling.The papacy has always been political.