Thursday's biggest stories.
India and the world — brands, startups, tech, sports, money and more. Explained simply, in our own words.
Amul and Mother Dairy raise milk prices by up to ₹4 a litre from today; Mother Dairy full cream now ₹76
India's two biggest milk brands have both raised prices from Thursday, 12 November, citing higher costs for fodder, feed, fuel and packaging.
Gaurav Munjal steps down as Unacademy CEO after a decade; Akhilendra Kumar takes over, two months after the $200 million upGrad sale
The co-founder becomes executive chairman of the edtech he started as a YouTube channel in 2015, once valued at $3.4 billion.
Nvidia's board meets to decide Jensen Huang's future; the chipmaker has lost about $600 billion in value this week
Shares fell about 8.6% in late trading after a Wall Street Journal report that the board was preparing to remove the CEO who has run Nvidia for 33 years.
Kunal Shah lists his 3 priorities as WhatsApp head, and users flood his post with spam complaints
The CRED founder, now global head of WhatsApp, wants more chat features, payments and AI. Users say business spam is the real problem.
Dior's 'hand-drawn' holiday ad gets called out for six-fingered hands; director admits software filled in frames
Viewers spotted extra fingers and a shape-shifting dog collar in the luxury brand's 7-minute animated film. The director denies using generative AI.
India
4 stories
Cabinet raises rabi fertiliser subsidy by 64% to ₹62,370 crore so farmers don't pay more
Higher global fertiliser prices pushed the government to raise per-kg support for non-urea fertilisers for the October–March season.
Stand-Up India extended to 2031 with a ₹4,111 crore guarantee fund to reach 2.5 lakh more entrepreneurs
The scheme backs bank loans for women, SC and ST entrepreneurs; the new fund guarantees 85% of each loan.
New RBI money-transfer rules: walk-in customers can send up to ₹50,000 in cash by NEFT
The RBI has put all rules for small bank transfers into one document, with new limits and stronger checks against fraud.
129 betting websites were blocked on the basis of two fake high court orders, Reuters finds
The telecom department told internet providers to block the sites after receiving orders attributed to the Rajasthan and Allahabad high courts that the courts never issued.
World
4 stories
Storm Charles: Portugal shuts all of its roughly 8,000 schools and cancels 300+ flights
It was the first nationwide school closure for a forecast storm in living memory; the storm turned out weaker than feared.
Russia–Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi end with a big prisoner swap but no peace breakthrough; US envoys meet Putin today
Zelenskyy says up to 1,000–1,200 prisoners each could be exchanged. Territory and security guarantees remain unresolved.
Iran denies talks with the US and says the Strait of Hormuz stays shut until its 7 conditions are met
Security chief Mohsen Rezaei called reports of negotiations 'a pure lie'; the US says its economic pressure is working.
'The climate crisis is outrunning us,' UN chief tells COP31 leaders, as most G7 heads stay away
António Guterres said fossil fuels must 'go the way of the dinosaurs'; the UK was the only G7 country to send its leader to Antalya.
Startups & Brands
5 stories
Shops sold up to 20% fewer smartphones this Diwali as prices rose about 21%; Realme volumes fell over 50%
Buyers who did shop went for costlier phones from Apple, Google and Xiaomi, while the budget segment took the biggest hit, says the mobile retailers' body.
IPO-bound Cult.fit faces a co-founder's forgery claim over the 'CULT' trademark ahead of its ₹4,000 crore listing
A co-founder of the original CULT gym has asked the Madras High Court to cancel the trademark, alleging the 2017 transfer papers were forged.
GoKwik staff could lose vested ESOPs if they join any of 9 rivals, including Razorpay and CRED
An Inc42 investigation found the checkout startup added a non-compete clause to its stock option plan that lasts two years after an employee leaves.
Customs holds Diageo and Pernod Ricard Scotch at ports, seeking 150% duty instead of the 75% in the India–UK deal
Officials say bulk Scotch is a 'compound alcoholic preparation', not whisky, so the trade deal's lower duty should not apply.
Qualcomm begins layoffs in India, with about 1,000 jobs reportedly at risk
The first round started at the chipmaker's Bengaluru site and is expected to reach Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR and Chennai.
Tech & AI
2 stories
Markets & Money
3 stories
Foreign investors buy ₹12,563 crore of Indian shares in a day; rupee firms to 93.70, its strongest since April
FPIs have bought about $6.4 billion of Indian equities so far in November, the most in a month since September 2024.
Sensex jumps 773 points to 81,879 after the Diwali break, its highest close since February; Nifty at 25,255
Banks and autos led the rally as crude cooled and foreign investors bought heavily.
Wall Street rallies with the S&P 500 up 1.3%; Brent rises to $92.76 after Iran says its uranium stays home
Chip stocks led US gains on Wednesday before Nvidia slid after hours; oil climbed on Iran's hard line.
Sports
4 stories
Niraj Kumar wins 50m rifle 3P bronze in Doha and earns India's first rifle quota for LA 2028
It is his first individual World Championship medal and takes India's tally in Doha to 10.
Vaishali, the lowest-rated of 24 players, beats Wesley So and Hans Niemann as Carlsen wins the Total Chess blitz opener
Magnus Carlsen went unbeaten on 7/9 in Budapest; Arjun Erigaisi was the best-placed Indian.
Lakshya Sen beats Chi Yu Jen 21-19, 21-18 to reach the Kumamoto Masters second round
The eighth seed came through a tight opener in Japan as he chases a place at the World Tour Finals.
India's footballers take on New Zealand in Auckland today, only the third meeting between the sides
Khalid Jamil's team, ranked 138th, play the first of two friendlies; kick-off is around 11:30 am IST.
Entertainment
3 stories
OTT this Friday: Ranabaali on Netflix in 5 languages, plus Student of the Year: After Dark and Parivarik ManuRanjan
Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna's period action film arrives on streaming four weeks after its cinema release.
Ramayana: Part 1 crosses ₹500 crore net in India in its first week; worldwide gross near ₹935 crore
Trackers estimate ₹70 crore-plus net on its first Wednesday, as Nitesh Tiwari's epic keeps up a strong run.
Salman Khan's Galwan war film Maatrubhumi drops its trailer: about 15 million views in a day, in cinemas 4 December
The film, earlier titled Battle of Galwan, is inspired by the June 2020 clash between Indian and Chinese troops.
Good News
9 stories
Tigers are raising cubs in Rajasthan's Kailadevi sanctuary for the first time in nearly 30 years: 8 cubs in 5 years
A WWF-India and Rajasthan Forest Department study confirms tigers are breeding beyond Ranthambore.
Indian Navy commandos free all 20 crew of a hijacked Iranian fishing boat off Somalia, with no injuries
INS Kolkata and Air Force-airlifted marine commandos ended the hijack more than 3,000 km from Mumbai.
Ladakh grows saffron on restored barren land, harvesting 22 g in the first four days
Flowers bloomed in under 30 days in Leh, pointing to a new source of income in the cold desert.
A BARC scientist's Nisargruna plant turns a tonne of kitchen waste into about 150 kg of manure in 24–48 hours, now in Goa's Bicholim
The technology from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre is set to spread to more Goa towns and villages.
Chennai startup EarthFokus has helped 130+ buildings save over 5 billion litres of water by catching hidden leaks
Born during Chennai's 2019 water crisis and incubated at IIT Madras, it uses smart meters and AI to spot waste.
A Gurugram Class 12 student built SkyQi, a free site that rates light pollution from a phone photo; people in 63 countries use it
Suhani Gupta's tool has collected nearly 1,200 night-sky photos from more than 490 people.
Two fishermen pull a cruise ship pianist from the Pacific after about nine hours treading water
The 37-year-old went overboard in the night; the fishing boat spotted him about 20 miles off California around noon.
Floods strand a 38-year-old chimp on an island, so his sanctuary delivers bananas by drone
Staff at Florida's Save the Chimps made sure Kaleb didn't miss a meal until the water went down.
Researchers find 280 Ice Age engravings that tourists walked past for decades in a Catalan cave
The drawings include 55 animals; before this, only two such images were known in all of Catalonia.
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