French now ranks ahead of Arabic as the fourth most widely spoken language in the world, according to a report published this week ahead of Friday’s international day of the French language. With 396 million speakers worldwide in 2025 compared to standard Arabic’s 335 million, French comes in behind English, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as…
As the sun rose over a Middle East scarred by weeks of relentless conflict, the call to prayer resonated amidst the distant thunder of the front lines. Yet the region did not retreat into silence. Instead, it responded with a defiant, multi-colored symphony of tradition. Since the opening salvos weeks ago, a war many feared….
Based on more than 9 million data points tracking international flows of trade, capital, information, and people, the report offers the most comprehensive view of globalisation available. Global connectedness stood at 25 per cent in 2025, matching the record high first reached in 2022 Namibia ranks among the top three countries globally for long-term increases…
Women continue to die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and this is unacceptable. While Africa has made progress in reducing maternal mortality since 2000, the region still needs a twelve-fold increase in the annual reduction rate to meet the Sustainable Development Goal, according to the estimates from the United Nations Maternal Mortality Estimation Interagency…
China’s Lenovo Group warned on Thursday about mounting pressure on PC shipments as a worsening memory-chip shortage grips the industry. CEO Yang Yuanqing said in an interview after the company released third-quarter results that the world’s largest PC maker has raised prices to offset surging memory costs, while accelerating its push into the fast-growing AI…
Google DeepMind is transitioning its groundbreaking Genie 3 “world model” from an internal research tool into a public-facing experience called Project Genie. Originally designed to train AI agents by simulating interactive environments, this system can generate complex images and react in real-time as a user “moves” through the software’s simulated space. Starting today, users outside…
Every year, malaria kills more than 600,000 people worldwide. Most of them are children under 5 in sub-Saharan Africa. But the disease isn’t confined to poor, rural areas – it’s a global threat that travels with people across borders. For decades, the fight against malaria has felt like running in place. Bed nets and drugs…
RAM prices are surging, threatening to drive up the cost of PCs, smartphones and other consumer electronics devices Global demand for smartphones, PCs and gaming consoles is expected to shrink this year as companies from Raspberry Pi to HP raise prices to offset surging memory chip costs. The rapid buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure by…
Japan has suspended operations at the world’s largest nuclear power plant, hours after its restart, its operator has said. An alarm sounded “during reactor-start-up procedures” at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Tokyo but the reactor remained “stable”, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) spokesperson Takashi Kobayashi said. Reactor number six restarted on Wednesday a day later than planned due…
Getty Images The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant has the world’s largest installed capacity Japan has restarted operations at the world’s largest nuclear power plant for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster forced the country to shut all of its reactors. The decision to restart reactor number 6 at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa north-west of Tokyo was…
