Progress towards SDG 4, which aims to provide high-quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all children, was severely disrupted by COVID-19. Even prior to the pandemic, most countries were not on track to achieve this goal with over half of children in low- and middle-income countries experiencing learning poverty, that is, being unable to […]
Meta Platforms is preparing to launch a range of artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots that exhibit different personalities as soon as September, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. Meta has been designing prototypes for chatbots that can have humanlike discussions with its users, as the company attempts to boost its engagement with its social media platforms, according to […]
Shares of cryptocurrency and blockchain related companies fell in early trading hours on Tuesday, as bitcoin hit a six-week low following a hack at Curve Finance, a platform where users can borrow and trade in crypto. Bitcoin, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, fell about 2% to $28,870. Curve Finance was the victim of a hack, the […]
Tech giants Apple and Microsoft remained the top two global companies by market capitalisation at the end of July after riding this year’s rally in technology shares. Apple last month became the first company in the world to reach a market value of $3 trillion, buoyed by hopes over its expansion in new markets and expectations for […]
It is gone. A giant, glowing X no longer marks the spot on the San Francisco high-rise that is headquarters to Elon Musk’s messaging company X, formerly known as Twitter. The city building department logged 24 complaints after a weekend of the big X, which on Friday was erected on the roof of the company’s […]
Uber Technologies on Tuesday forecast third-quarter operating profit above Wall Street expectations as it sees growing demand for ride hailing due to strong leisure travel trends and gradual return to in-office work. The San Francisco-based company’s shares rose about 4% in premarket trading, while rival Lyft’s shares increased 2%, as Uber also reported a surprise second-quarter […]
Caterpillar Inc warned of a fall in third-quarter sales and margins on Tuesday as dealer inventories rose again, stoking worries that demand for its heavy machinery used in everything from construction to mining may have peaked. Cost controls and price increases have protected profits amid persistent supply-chain disruptions and inflationary pressures, but analysts have flagged that […]
Natural disasters can shape global financial investment. This column employs a dataset that spans 2009-2019 to study the effect of extreme natural events on global financial flows. The authors find that when disasters strike, investors reduce their net flows to mutual funds exposed to affected countries only if the latter are emerging economies at higher […]
Aquaculture – the farming of aquatic animals and plants – is considered a resource-use efficient way for providing relatively low-cost protein to humans and key among climate smart, resource efficient food production systems. The new AquaInvest Platform at the World Bank complements efforts elsewhere to boost food and nutritional security. The Platform emphasizes that aquaculture should be […]
Five years ago, in 2018, the World Bank published its first World Development Report (WDR) on Education, Learning to Realize Education’s Promise. At its core was the belief that across the world, education was in crisis. The strides that many countries had made in improving access to schooling for millions of children were not translating into […]
