Oil market dynamics: Factors that will drive prices in 2026
INDIA COMMODITIES | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 9:50AM IST
Crude oil posted its sharpest annual decline since 2020 in 2025, with Brent down 19% and WTI falling 20% as prices slid to near multi-year lows. Persistent oversupply, where global production consistently outpaced demand and inventories swelled, outweighed brief price support from geopolitical tensions, keeping the market under pressure.
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25m
Trump tariffs, Q3 earnings among 8 factors to impact D-Street this week
INDIA MARKET | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 9:40AM IST
Markets ended the week sharply lower as weak global cues and rising uncertainty triggered a broad risk-off move. Sentiment was hit by concerns over higher US tariffs on Indian exports, uncertainty around IndiaUS trade ties, geopolitical tensions involving the US and Venezuela, and persistent selling by foreign institutional investors.
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35m
ICICI Lombard alerts exchanges after employee shares draft Q3 results on WhatsApp
INDIA MARKET | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 9:29AM IST
ICICI Lombard reported a corporate governance lapse after draft financial results were accidentally posted on a senior employee's personal WhatsApp status. The insurer promptly removed the post and informed stock exchanges as a precaution. This incident highlights concerns over safeguarding sensitive information amid informal messaging, following a similar case with Hatsun Agro Product.
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46m
Delhi gripped by cold wave, yellow alert
INDIA NEWS | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 9:17AM IST
A cold wave has tightened its grip on Delhi, with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issuing a yellow alert for Sunday and Monday as temperatures are expected to remain low and dense fog to persist during morning hours. Unfavourable weather conditions are also likely to keep air quality in the very poor category over the next two days. The national capital recorded its coldest morning of the ongoing winter on Saturday, with the minimum temperature at Safdarjung dropping to 4.2 degrees Celsius the lowest January reading since 2024. The maximum temperature remained below normal at 19.7 degrees Celsius, underscoring the severity of the cold spell. According to the IMD, cold wave conditions are declared when minimum temperatures fall about 4.5 to 6.4 degrees Celsius below normal, depending on local climatology. Several parts of the city hovered close to this threshold on Saturday. Palam and Ayanagar recorded minimum temperatures of 4.5 degrees Celsius, Lodi Road 4.7 degrees Celsius and the Ridge 5.3 degrees Celsius. Maximum temperatures across weather stations also remained subdued, with Palam recording 17.2 degrees Celsius, the Ridge 17.9 degrees Celsius and Lodi Road 18.8 degrees Celsius. Saturdays readings made it the coldest winter morning of the month in three years. With cold and calm conditions continuing, the IMD has warned that dense to moderate fog is likely during morning hours on Sunday and Monday, potentially affecting visibility across the city. Air quality remains a major concern as the cold wave intensifies. On Saturday, Delhis Air Quality Index (AQI) deteriorated to 346 by evening, slipping into the very poor category. Chandni Chowk recorded the worst AQI at 395, close to the severe threshold. Data from the Central Pollution Control Board showed that 27 monitoring stations were in the very poor category, while 11 stations recorded poor air quality. During morning hours, the AQI remained very poor at 366, indicating limited overnight improvement. According to the Decision Support System, pollution levels were driven largely by industrial activity in Delhi and surrounding areas, transport emissions and residential sources, with calm winds restricting pollutant dispersion. The air quality warning system has forecast that Delhis air is likely to remain in the very poor category till January 13, as cold and stable atmospheric conditions continue to trap pollutants over the region.
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58m
Delhi air quality remains 'very poor' as dense fog disrupts air travel
INDIA MARKET | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 9:04AM IST
Delhi reels under hazardous air quality as dense fog and cold wave conditions persist, reducing visibility, delaying flights and compounding daily hardships for residents across the city
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1h
Violence in Iran protests kills 116 as demonstrations enter third week
INDIA MARKET | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 7:48AM IST
Nationwide protests challenging Iran's theocracy reached the two-week mark Sunday, as the death toll in violence surrounding the demonstrations reached at least 116 people killed, activists said.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency gave ...
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2h
Global AI race shows Asia leading as tech stocks start 2026 with bang
INDIA MARKET | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 7:25AM IST
Strategists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc are overweight and expect further gains driven partly by surging artificial intelligence-related demand and reasonable valuations
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2h
Nvidia, Tesla chase future via varying lanes
INDIA NEWS | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 7:01AM IST
Jensen Huang took the stage at the CES trade show in Las Vegas this week to make the clearest pitch yet for Nvidia Corp.s autonomous driving technology. In doing so, the chief executive officers vision for vehicles that can drive themselves edged into the terrain of major customers like Tesla Inc. and its boss, Elon Musk. Huangs remarks sparked a widely watched if notably polite indirect multiday exchange between two of the most influential figures in technology. It also sharpened a central question about autonomous driving: Who controls the technology that will first power consumer cars that drive themselves and later, driverless cars known as robotaxis that are designed for ride-hailing? And whose autonomous vehicle system is the best? On Monday, Huang used his speech to Americas largest technology showcase to extol the virtues of Nvidias Alpamayo, an open-source AI model designed to speed development of Level 4 self-driving cars. Such cars consumer-owned at first, and robotaxi-fleet-operated later can drive themselves without human supervision or intervention, within a defined geographic area.Nvidia described Alpamayo as part of a broader toolkit it offers automakers on top of open models. That includes powerful chips in data centers to train self-driving software, chips inside vehicles that serve as the cars brain while its on the road, and simulation software that can create vast amounts of driving data virtually reducing the time and cost of collecting it in the real world. The pitch was aimed squarely at automakers.Nvidia wants to supply the intelligence layer for autonomy without building the car itself, but it still wants to own the technology that makes self-driving a reality.The worlds first thinking, reasoning, autonomous vehicle AI, Huang proudly announced, clad in a shiny leather jacket.That afternoon, Musk weighed in with a post on X after a user shared a transcript of Huangs remarks. Well thats just exactly what Tesla is doing ????, Musk wrote.The Tesla CEO added that while getting a system to work most of the time is relatively easy, solving rare and unpredictable edge cases is far harder. The worlds richest man has claimed for a long time that Teslas system will have the ability to reason that is, to make humanlike decisions in specific traffic scenarios after a future software update. Earlier this week, his chief AI lieutenant, Ashok Elluswamy, responded to a question on X, saying a further update will come in the current quarter. Huang learned of Musks response during an interview with Bloomberg Television at CES the next day.I wouldnt be surprised, Huang interjected, of Musks claim to already be doing reasoning. I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced AV stack in the world.Tesla shares ended the week higher by 1.6%, closing Friday at $445.01. New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu, who has a buy rating and $600 price target on the stock, had posted on X earlier in the week after Huangs keynote that Nvidias strategy validated Teslas approach.What drew broader attention was the tone of the aftermath of Nvidias announcement. The exchange went viral not because of confrontation, but because of restraint. The two rivals acknowledged each others technical credibility while advancing different paths.Tesla and Nvidia already have an important, if uneven, relationship. Tesla relies heavily on Nvidias graphics processing units, or GPUs the chips that go into data centers to train its autonomous driving software even as it builds its own in-house chips to run that software inside vehicles. Musk has said Tesla will have spent roughly $10 billion cumulatively on Nvidia hardware for training by the end of this year, and that figure would be higher had it not worked on their own AI chips. Musks AI startup, xAI, is also a major Nvidia customer, and Nvidia is an investor in xAI.Tesla and Nvidia are fundamentally different companies. Tesla makes cars and builds the full system end to end. Nvidia builds chips and software that others use. Their technologies are different too. Tesla has a vision-only approach, just relying on camera sensors. The company argues its the most economically viable approach at scale and avoids sensors confusing one another. The rest of the industry argues other sensors like lidar, radar and ultrasonics are better because they are safer and offer redundancy.But the dynamic underscores how unsettled the autonomous vehicle arms race remains. Tesla depends on Nvidia to build its software, even as Nvidia builds tools that could one day help Teslas rivals catch up.Their paths to consumers also increasingly overlap. Tesla sells a suite of features known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), a driver-assistance system that requires the vehicles operator to remain at the wheel and watch the road. The system Tesla sells is capable of point-to-point driving with navigation, lane changes and can react to traffic, but drivers still need to keep their eyes on the road.Nvidia now also sells advanced driver-assistance and autonomy platforms to automakers. And those automakers, in turn, pitch the systems to the consumer in the cars they sell.Market analysts see robotaxis as the endgame, with Alphabet Inc.s Waymo currently leading real-world commercial deployments and Tesla arguing it can win at scale. Before that, the proving ground is consumer-owned cars that can do more of the driving themselves under owner supervision, serving as a bridge toward wider robotaxi adoption.Tesla sees FSD as a stepping stone to a future robotaxi network it would control. Nvidia is pursuing a similar endgame, working with other technology companies, automakers and ride-hailing companies, including Uber Technologies Inc. Again, Nvidia would just provide the tech and sees it powering fleets of robotaxis as soon as 2027.Tesla is betting on winning autonomy as a specialist, while Nvidia is positioning itself as the arms dealer, selling tools to the entire industry.Huang said the upcoming Mercedes-Benz CLA will be the first car to use Nvidias stack, offering FSD-like capabilities. Deliveries are starting in the US in early 2026 and rolling out to Europe and Asia later in the year. Moving beyond that would require additional hardware, such as lidar, adding cost and underscoring how far todays cars remain from full autonomy. Musk returned to the subject of Nvidias push into autonomous vehicles on Tuesday, arguing it posed little immediate threat to Teslas efforts. The technology, he said, was far from being ready to be rolled out safely on a large scale. The actual time from when FSD sort of works to where it is much safer than a human is several years, he wrote on X, adding that meaningful competition for Tesla could still be at least five or six years away.For all the ambition on display, Huang and Musk have both effectively indicated that fully autonomous driving at scale is still a distant prospect. And for both, the nearer proving ground comes first: cars that can drive themselves part of the way. Who wins that phase may help decide who dominates the next one.
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3h
US launches retaliatory strikes against ISIS in Syria after deadly ambush
INDIA MARKET | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 6:59AM IST
The large-scale strikes, conducted by the US alongside partner forces, occurred around 12:30 pm ET, according to US Central Command
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3h
Temperatures dip below 5C in North; Kashmir freezes, rain alert in South
INDIA MARKET | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 6:57AM IST
Biting cold, dense fog and sub-zero temperatures continue to disrupt life across North India, with the IMD warning of persistent cold wave conditions and poor visibility in several states
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3h
US may lift some Venezuela sanctions soon
INDIA NEWS | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 6:36AM IST
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has told Reuters that additional U.S. sanctions on Venezuela could be lifted as soon as next week to facilitate oil sales, and that he will also meet next week with the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on their re-engagement with Venezuela. Bessent said in an interview late on Friday that almost $5 billion worth of Venezuela's currently frozen IMF Special Drawing Rights monetary assets could be deployed to help rebuild the country's economy. "We're de-sanctioning the oil that's going to be sold," Bessent said during a visit to a Winnebago Industries engineering facility. The Treasury was examining changes that would facilitate the repatriation of sale proceeds of the oil stored largely on ships back to Venezuela. "How can we help that get back into Venezuela, to run the government, run the security services and get it to the Venezuelan people?" he said of the Treasury's sanctions analysis. Asked when more sanctions could be removed from Venezuela, Bessent said, "It could be as soon as next week," but did not identify which ones. The moves are part of the Trump administration's effort to stabilize Venezuela and encourage the return of U.S. oil producers to the country a week after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in Caracas and brought him to New York to face drug trafficking charges. U.S. sanctions have banned international banks and other creditors from engaging with the Venezuelan government without a license. The institutions have cited this as an impediment to a complex $150 billion debt restructuring widely viewed as a key to the return of private capital to Venezuela. On Friday evening, President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking courts or creditors from impounding Venezuelan oil revenue held in U.S. Treasury accounts, declaring that these funds should be safeguarded to help Venezuela create "peace, prosperity and stability." IMF, WORLD BANK RE-ENGAGEMENT Bessent, who controls the dominant U.S. shareholding in the IMF and World Bank, said that the two institutions had already reached out to him about Venezuela. The Treasury chief said that the U.S. Treasury would be willing to convert Venezuela's IMF Special Drawing Rights held at the Fund to dollars for use in rebuilding Venezuela. Venezuela currently has about 3.59 billion SDRs, which are worth about $4.9 billion at Friday's exchange rate, but it cannot currently access them. SDRs are made up of dollars, euros, yen, sterling and Chinese yuan. The Treasury last year agreed to back a $20 billion swap line for Argentina partly with that South American country's SDRs in an effort to stabilize the peso and help Argentine President Javier Milei's party win in parliamentary elections. An IMF spokesperson said that the Fund was closely monitoring developments in Venezuela and declined comment on Bessent's mention of a meeting next week. The IMF has not engaged with Venezuela for more than two decades, with the last formal IMF assessment of Venezuela's economy completed in 2004. Venezuela paid off its last World Bank loan in 2007, when Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez declared that Venezuela "will no longer have to go to Washington" for funding. A source familiar with the World Bank's internal discussions on Venezuela said that the development lender was in the early stages of exploring how it could be helpful to Venezuela, noting that the bank moved in quickly with assistance to Afghanistan and Syria after regime changes and provided early support to Gaza and Ukraine. FAST MOVERS Bessent said that he believed that smaller, privately held companies would move swiftly back into Venezuela's oil sector, despite reluctance voiced by some oil majors including Exxon Mobil, whose past Venezuelan assets were nationalized twice. "I think it's going to be the typical progression where the private companies can move quickly and will come in very quickly. They haven't talked about financing at all," Bessent said. "Chevron has been there a long time and will continue to be there, so I believe that their commitment will greatly increase." Bessent added that he believed there was a role for the U.S. Export-Import Bank in guaranteeing financing for Venezuela's oil sector, echoing previous comments from U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
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3h
Anti-ICE protesters assemble across the US
INDIA NEWS | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 6:08AM IST
Thousands of people marched in Minneapolis on Saturday to protest the fatal shooting of a woman by a federal immigration officer there and the shooting of two people in Portland, Oregon. Minnesota leaders urged demonstrators to remain peaceful. The protest was one of hundreds planned for towns and cities across the country over the weekend. It came in a city on edge since the killing of Renee Good on Wednesday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. "We're all living in fear right now," said Meghan Moore, a mother of two from Minneapolis who joined the protest. "ICE is creating an environment where nobody feels safe and that's unacceptable." On Friday night, a protest outside a Minneapolis hotel that attracted about 1,000 people turned violent as demonstrators threw ice, snow and rocks at officers, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said. One officer suffered minor injuries after being struck with a piece of ice, O'Hara said. Twenty-nine people were cited and released, he said. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stressed that while most protests have been peaceful, those who cause damage to property or put others in danger will be arrested. He faulted "agitators that are trying to rile up large crowds." "This is what Donald Trump wants," Frey said of the president who has demanded massive immigration enforcement efforts in several U.S. cities. "He wants us to take the bait." Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz echoed the call for peace. "Trump sent thousands of armed federal officers into our state, and it took just one day for them to kill someone," Walz said on social media. "Now he wants nothing more than to see chaos distract from that horrific action. Don't give him what he wants." "We will fight with peaceful expression, in court, through public debate, and at the ballot box. Keep the peace. And keep the faith," Walz said later in another post. Communities unite in frustration The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities is its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation. Trump's administration has said both shootings were acts of self-defense against drivers who "weaponized" their vehicles to attack officers. Connor Maloney said he was attending the Minneapolis protest to support his community and because he's frustrated with the immigration crackdown. "Almost daily I see them harassing people," he said. "It's just sickening that it's happening in our community around us." He and other protesters, including children, braved subfreezing temperatures and a light dusting of snow, carrying handmade signs saying declaring, "De-ICE Minnesota!" and "ICE melts in Minnesota." They marched down a street that is home to restaurants and stores where various nationalities and cultures are celebrated in colorful murals. Steven Eubanks, 51, said he felt compelled to attend a protest in Durham, North Carolina, because of the "horrifying" killing in Minneapolis. "We can't allow it," Eubanks said. "We have to stand up." Indivisible, a social movement organization that formed to resist the Trump administration, said hundreds of protests were scheduled in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida and other states. ICE activity across Minneapolis In Minneapolis, a coalition of migrant rights groups organized the demonstration that began in a park about half a mile from the residential neighborhood where the 37-year-old Good was shot on Wednesday. But the large protest apparently did not deter federal officers from operating in the city. A couple of miles away, just as the demonstration began, an Associated Press photographer witnessed heavily armed officers - at least one in Border Patrol uniform - approach a person who had been following them. Two of the agents had long guns out when they ordered the person to stop following them, telling him it was his "first and final warning." The agents eventually drove onto the interstate without detaining the driver. In Richfield, a suburb of Minneapolis, federal agents with their faces covered pointed their fingers at journalists and warned them to stay away as they detained a man outside a home improvement store. Protests held in the neighborhood have been largely peaceful, and in general there has been minimal law enforcement presence, in contrast to the violence that hit Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Near the airport, some confrontations erupted on Thursday and Friday between smaller groups of protesters and officers guarding the federal building used as a base for the Twin Cities crackdown. O'Hara said city police officers have responded to calls about cars abandoned because their drivers have been apprehended by immigration enforcement. In one case, a car was left in park and a dog was left inside another. He said immigration enforcement activities are happening "all over the city" and that 911 callers have been alerting authorities to ICE activity, arrests and abandoned vehicles. The Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal officers to Minnesota under a sweeping new crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. More than 2,000 officers were taking part. Lawmakers snubbed Three congresswomen from Minnesota attempted to tour the ICE facility in the Minneapolis federal building on in the morning and were initially allowed to enter but then told they had to leave about 10 minutes later. U.S, Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kelly Morrison and Angie Craig accused ICE agents of obstructing members of Congress from fulfilling their duty to oversee operations there. A federal judge last month temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing policies that limit congressional visits to immigration facilities. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by 12 members of Congress who sued in Washington, D.C. to challenge ICE's amended visitor policies after they were denied entry to detention facilities.
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4h
Space tech cos power up hiring engines
INDIA NEWS | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 5:30AM IST
BENGALURU: Space tech startups are ramping up hiring across engineering, research and development (R&D), manufacturing and operations, driven by increasing government demand, private investment and commercial deployments, as Indias push to become a major player in the sector takes flight.Firms including Digantara, Skyroot Aerospace, InspeCity Space Labs, Dhruva Space, Astrome Technologies, Agnikul Cosmos, Garuda Aerospace, SatSure, Pixxel, Bellatrix Aerospace and Catalyx are increeasing their headcount, according to industry executives and search firms. Hiring momentum has picked up as space-based surveillance and early-warning programmes move from pilot projects to long-term contracts and round-the-clock operations. A booming satellite industry, declining launch costs and advances such as reusable rocket technology are further accelerating demand for skilled talent.All-round Scale-upDemand spreads across the space, satellite and drone ecosystems.Digantara, which recently raised $50 million (about `450 crore) in a Series B round, is transitioning from a pureplay space situational awareness company to a vertically integrated satellite systems player.As we scale our space and ground-based sensing infrastructure, and expand our presence in the US and Europe, we plan to hire aggressively across core technical functions, said Anirudh Sharma, CEO, Digantara Industries. We are strengthening teams in spacecraft hardware engineering, infrared and sensor capabilities, and mission operations.SatSure is hiring across computer vision science, applied data science, machine learning research, optical engineering, satellite image processing and thermal engineering.126456479Bellatrix Aerospace is planning a 25% expansion of its workforce amid increasing demand for production engineers and talent in electronics, propulsion, structural and systems engineering.Having successfully spacequalified our core propulsion units, we have moved beyond the proof-of-concept phase into the commercialisation stage, said Yashas Karanam, co-founder of Bellatrix Aerospace.Our immediate priority is scaling to meet the aggressive deployment schedules of global satellite constellations, he added.R&D remains central to hiring strategies, enabling innovation while reducing dependence on imports.At SatSure, nearly half of the new hires will be in reseaerch and development roles, said the companys co-founder Prateep Basu.OVERSEAS EXPANSIONGaruda Aerospace is recruiting researchers and engineers in artificial intelligence (AI)-based perception, autonomous navigation, advanced materials, propulsion systems, energy optimisation and indigenous component development.The company is also hiring for roles across unmanned aerial vehicle design, avionics, embedded systems, battery systems, computer vision, autonomy, flight testing and manufacturing quality.Rising VC (venture capital) funding and strategic partnerships are enabling us to accelerate product development, indigenise critical components and expand internationally, said Agnishwar Jayaprakash, founder of Garuda Aerospace.Senior talent with experience in embedded software, onboard computing, hardware design and data platforms is in high demand as startups scale up operations.Dhruva Space, which has a confirmed pipeline of 18 satellites to be executed over the next three years, is strengthening teams across engineering, manufacturing, integration and operations.On the technical side, we are seeing increasing demand for specialised skills across advanced waveforms for on-orbit satellite communications, imagery data processing and analytics, IoT payloads and end-to-end mission systems, said Sanjay Nekkanti, chief executive, Dhruva Space.
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4h
Moodys changes Shriram Finances outlook to positive from stable
INDIA BUSINESS | Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 2:29AM IST
The investment by MUFG Bank will providestrategic benefits, including a stronger capital base, access to global expertise and funding channels, and willfurther improve SFLs funding diversity and risk management practices over time, Moodys said
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