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Climate Risk: Is India Inc moving fast enough?
From a disaster management perspective, parametric solutions can...
Union Budget 2025: Enhancing Health Insurance Accessibility and Affordability
The deduction limits for health insurance premiums have remained...
Hungry for change: Faulty food systems laid bare by COVID-19 and climate crises
Farmers and poor urban residents have so far borne the brunt of the pandemic, meaning inequality between and within countries could deepen further in 2021, said Ismahane Elouafi, chief scientist at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“Even before COVID-19 hit, 135 million people were marching towards the brink of starvation. This could double to 270 million within a few short months,” warned David Beasley, head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), in emailed comments.
Nine in 10 India Employees Feel Prepared to Work Remotely for the Long-Term
However, employees shared concerns about not having access to the right technologies and the blurring of boundaries between work and personal lives in a long-term remote work arrangement.
The research also found that the most in-demand technology resources that employees want are productivity equipment or tools, remote access to internal company resources and cloud technology.
From insurers to landlords, retailers to restaurants, COVID tarnsforms Economies
Like no other event in memory, the pandemic has upended economies in the United States and across the world — transforming how people work, travel, eat, shop and congregate. It has changed how students are educated, how people communicate, how households are entertained and which industries, geographic areas and categories of people will thrive and which will suffer.
It has widened a gap between educated and affluent people who can work from home and the less fortunate — people in lower-income households without college educations or high skills who depend solely on wages rather than stock or home equity gains — who now stand to be left further behind. And it’s forced many working mothers to quit their jobs for lack of child care.
Going Digital: COVID-enforced mindset changing insurance landscape in India, Indonesia, Malaysia,Swiss Re
The growing presence of e-commerce and digital wallet apps presents opportunities for innovative partnerships between insurers and digital platforms to bridge the USD 498 billion health protection in India, Indonesia and Malaysia, according to the latest Swiss Re study.
Covid-19 vaccines raise hope for cancer, throw open new field of medicine
Now, with one vaccine vaccine having gained U.S. clearance and the other close behind, the pandemic validation could wrench open a whole new field of medicine.
“We are now entering the age of mRNA therapeutics,” said Derrick Rossi, a former Harvard University stem-cell biologist who helped found Moderna in 2010. “The whole world has seen this. There is going to be increased investment and increased resources.”
How pandemic bonds became the world’s most controversial investment
Here’s how the pandemic bonds worked.
The World Bank would sell $320 million of debt to investors. In the event of a pandemic, that debt would be written off and the principal would accrue to the bank to be distributed to needy countries. Premiums were juicy – the safest slice of the offering paid 6.9% over the Libor benchmark rate, similar to returns typically found on junk-rated corporate bonds and far greater than the 2.2% available on 10-year U.S. government debt at the time. For the second tranche, which had looser triggers for a writeoff, premiums were a whopping 11.5%.
Asia Pacific Financial Services has ensured resilience amid the pandemic: Microsoft Study
“One thing is clear: the industry’s rapid response, reflected in the increase of maturity in adopting a culture of innovation, across people, process, technology and data practices, has paid dividends,” explained Connie Leung, Regional Business Lead, Financial Services, Microsoft Asia.
Now that vaccines are coming, what about poor countries?
By Andreas Kluth It’s now just a matter of weeks before shoulders are bared, syringes primed and vaccines injected. If last year was the one that gave Covid-19 its name and 2020 was defined by masks, gowns and swabs, 2021 will be the year of the...
Mental health in the workplace, saved by bots and apps?
Seven in 10 employees say this has been the most stressful year of their working lives, according to a report from Workplace Intelligence and Oracle.
For companies, that means the mental-health issues of employees have rocketed from a secondary concern in years past, to a primary one. But making help available, quickly and at scale, is no easy task.
And 68% say that they would prefer interacting with a robot on issues like stress and anxiety, as opposed to a human manager.
North American farmers profit as consumers pressure food business to go green
Investments in sustainability remain a tiny part of overall spending by the agriculture sector, which enjoyed healthy profits in 2020. They may help to head off more costly regulations down the road now that Democratic climate advocate Joe Biden was elected U.S. president.
Sustainable techniques farmers are adopting include refraining from tilling soil at times to preserve carbon. Some are adding an off-season cover crop of rye or grass to restore soil nutrients instead of applying heavy fertilizer loads over the winter that can contaminate local water supplies.