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India is weighing a plan to prioritize natural gas supply to critical sectors after LNG (liquefied natural gas) shipments from Qatar were disrupted following an attack on QatarEnergy’s Ras Laffan liquefaction complex on Monday, three people aware of the matter said.The move assumes significance as India imports about 55% of its natural gas requirement. Further, of the $14.9 billion worth of natural gas imports in FY25, Qatar’s share was about 50%, according to data from Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).“The government is looking at multiple options to ensure uninterrupted supply of natural gas,” one of the three people mentioned above said on condition of anonymity.

AIFs. Unlike mutual funds that pool in investors' money to invest primarily in listed equities and bonds, AIFs are also pooled investments but can invest beyond securities and bonds to invest in less traditional assets such as private equity, venture capital, real estate and hedge funds.“My allocation to AIFs was driven by one simple realization that traditional instruments capture broad market beta, but they rarely provide access to early-stage alpha.

A new term that entered the lexicon after India’s budget for 2026-27 was the ‘orange economy.’ Synonymous with the creative economy, it is emerging as a formidable engine of growth that transcends traditional industrial boundaries. Once viewed as niche, the intersection of culture, technology and intellectual property now accounts for roughly 3.1% of global GDP and 6.2% of all employment.For a country like India, where recent budgetary initiatives recognize the strategic value of creative assets, the growth of this sector offers more than just economic expansion.

In today’s ‘digital-first’ times, is it possible the last handwritten note you received was from a grateful small business thanking you for your purchase? These little touches—a personalized feedback request on WhatsApp or a delighted repost of your review on social media—can turn one-off transactions into sustained customer relationships. In these simple yet meaningful ways, small businesses across India are leaning on direct channels and tech infrastructure to connect with buyers.

YouTube and Instagram Reels content increasingly frame celebrities as difficult or unethical. The risks are compounded by AI-generated deepfakes that create false scenarios involving public figures.“Podcasts and YouTube commentary have increasingly become flashpoints for defamation disputes because of their informal tone and rapid virality.

AI summit.“For a creator like me who talks about AI and engineering, I found all the brands I could create content with under one roof. I earned in one week what I usually earn in a month from several of the collaborations with brands I had at the summit,” said Arsh Goyal, a tech and engineering content creator with 488,000 Instagram followers.“I also got to meet the leadership of global tech giants and created content with them out of goodwill to build on my authenticity and long-term relationships with the brands,” Goyal added.

In Indian boardrooms, ‘AI-enabled’ could overtake ‘digital transformation’ in its buzz quotient. If it’s new, app-based and comes with a valuation expressible in unicorns, it must be good, right? Well, India has always had a muscular pro-innovation bias. From UPI to ONDC, from Aadhaar to account aggregators, it has shown the world that technology can leapfrog infrastructure.

₹590 crore siphoned from Haryana government accounts through the bank’s Chandigarh branch, allegedly by employees colluding with outsiders—is dismaying but not surprising. Bank frauds of this kind have happened before and will happen again. That alone is not what is driving the fury on social media.What is driving it is something else entirely.Most of the funds were restored or secured within about a day.

Mint explains this breakthrough initiative for patients with severe facial disfigurement and who have exhausted conventional options to restore critical functions such as breathing, eating, and speaking, besides identity and social acceptance; along with accompanying legal and ethical issues.Face transplantation has transitioned from an experimental procedure to an established clinical practice. Successful procedures have been performed in France (the site of the first partial transplant), the US, China, and Turkey.

Write to Connor Hart at [email protected] all the Business News , Corporate news , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

School textbooks rarely get recalled after their rollout, but it happened this week with a social science book withdrawn by India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a government institution. Of the 38 copies sold on Monday at an NCERT counter in Delhi, 16 had been taken back by Wednesday, as reported, with UPI data trails being sought to retrieve a few proving hard to trace. This recall followed a swift order from the education ministry in response to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s objection to a part on “corruption in the judiciary.” A thin online sample suggests two kinds of reactions popped up on social media to the court’s intervention.

In the past few days, nearly every alternate day has brought news of bomb-threat emails sent to one or more schools in Delhi. The script is wearyingly familiar. An email lands in multiple school inboxes—often routed through encrypted servers, sometimes crudely drafted with digital trails left behind.

In November 2023, a few governments and technologists gathered at Bletchley Park to discuss artificial intelligence (AI), seeking to come to terms with the technology they were developing. The mood was sombre and fear was the dominant register.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Despite the unexpected box office success of some small and mid-budget films, their lead stars are yet to gain social media visibility or see traction from brands. Actors who have featured in controversial but successful films such as The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story or those like Sunny Deol making a comeback via hits Gadar 2 and Border 2 prove that box office success and brand or social media traction are not necessarily linked.

India has recently joined a growing list of countries weighing restrictions on children’s access to social media.Speaking on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit last week, information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the government is discussing age-based restrictions on social media platforms. The remarks follow closely after the Economic Survey flagged the need to address “digital addiction” among the young.At the state level, Goa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala are also examining similar restrictions.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The blast radius of the Epstein files has toppled C-suite executives, shamed financiers and led to the arrest of a former British royal. Now, school picture day is in the crossfire.

A few months ago when the editor of Rahul Pandita’s debut novel asked me for a blurb, I wrote that his book was “addictive”. I thought I had found a way to say something meaningful about a book in a blurb, a form of praise that has become meaningless, filled with tired phrases like “tour de force.” But then I realized that I had not been paying attention to book covers. ‘Addictive’ is the new ‘unputownable.’ Apparently, the world believes addiction is a good thing, as long as it is said of a book.

brands online, ahead of Google.This is where the good part ends.Social media is notorious for harming people’s mental health, driving online harassment, disrupting sleep, creating anxiety and accelerating digital addiction. According to Pew research, 48% of American teens say social media harms people their age. India's Economic Survey 2025-26 has flagged the rapid rise of digital addiction and screen-related mental health challenges.

₹54,000 crore, far exceeding the ₹28,000 crore spent by companies under mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) norms annually.However, most of these contributions remain informal in nature.Titled ‘How India Gives 2025-26’, the report is based on telephonic surveys conducted between April and June 2025, and has a sample size of 7,225 households across 20 states.Donations to destitutes are the second biggest category at 42%. The lowest share of giving was towards friends, family and relatives at 9%.Around 68% of those surveyed reported giving in some form, indicating that everyday giving is widespread.Men (71%) were more likely to donate than women (64%), whereas households in urban areas (70%) were slightly ahead of rural households (66%) in charitable donations.

History is not a catalogue of inventions. It is a record of how societies adapt—or fail to adapt—to them.Every major technological revolution has followed a similar arc. First comes the breakthrough.

Last month, I travelled across India— listening, observing and taking stock. While the journey was energizing and often inspiring, it left me with an open question: Where is the world’s most populous country headed? My trip began in West Bengal’s Purulia district, a relatively poor region marked by beautiful landscapes of lakes and rolling hills, some crowned with small ancient temples. Purulia’s population is a mosaic of cultures and tribal communities.