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The United Nations says the world economy resisted battering by conflicts and inflation last year and is expected to grow a subdued 2.8% in 2025

immigration policy: the H-1B visa for college-educated foreigners. Proponents say the visa is an essential but insufficient pipeline of global talent for hard-to-fill jobs — jobs that have long been part of the lifeblood of the American economy. Critics say visa holders are stealing jobs from American workers and driving down wages. The profanities both sides have lobbed across social media obscure their agreement that the H-1B program isn’t working as well as it should. Created in 1990, the H-1B is an employer-sponsored visa that authorizes foreigners with “highly specialized knowledge” to work in the US for up to six years. Tech companies and IT consultancies rank among the top recipients. Every year, a government lottery awards 65,000 slots to applicants with an undergraduate degree and another 20,000 to those with advanced degrees (universities and nonprofits are exempt from these caps). The private-sector allocation is typically filled within days. ALSO READ: TCS, Infosys & other Indian-origin tech firms corner 1/5th of H-1B visas issued by US

unicorn startups has reached $340 billion, with seven new startups crossing the $1-billion valuation mark in 2024, according to a report by venture capital firm Orios Venture Partners. India now ranks as the third-largest nation, after the US and China, for venture capital-backed tech initial public offerings (IPOs), the India Tech Unicorns & Exits 2024 report said. These IPOs have pushed the total market capitalisation of India’s listed tech firms to around $150 billion. However, the report revealed an increase in the average time for Indian startups to achieve unicorn status, rising from 5.5 years in 2023 to 11 years in 2024. Similarly, the average time to go public went up from 12.5 years to 13.4 years during that period.

Bryan Johnson, the 47-year-old tech entrepreneur who has spent millions on his quest to reverse his biological age, has ditched taking a medicine that he had been taking for years to increase his longevity. The millionaire, who gulps down 54 pills for breakfast, recently discovered a wrinkle in his meticulous approach to dodging death. In his attempt to live' forever', the tech millionaire consumes 13 milligrams of the immunosuppressant rapamycin, which transplant patients take to help prevent organ rejection. However, the US Food and Drug Administration has not approved rapamycin for anti-aging therapy, but physicians have been prescribing it off-label because it has been shown to extend the healthy lifespan of mice. Johnson, who undertook the «most aggressive rapamycin protocol of anyone in the industry», said it may have done more harm than good.

Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella was pleased to hear that the 6,000 students at the Manipal Academy for Higher Education (MAHE) – which includes his alma mater, Manipal Institute of Technology – are being given access to Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, an AI-based code completion tool. On being asked by representatives of the institution to visit, he said, “I should. I’ve never been back since ’88 (the year he graduated), but I should.” The top executive of the US-headquartered technology firm was meeting with customers ahead of his keynote address in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Paris Olympics silver medallist Neeraj Chopra has been named the best male javelin thrower in the world in 2024 by globally-renowned American magazine 'Track and Field News'. The 27-year-old Chopra, who was beaten by Pakistan's Arshad Nadeem for the Olympic gold medal in August last year, pipped two-time world champion Anderson Peters of Grenada for the top spot in the 2024 rankings published by the California-based magazine. Nadeem was ranked fifth as he competed in only one event in 2024 besides the Olympic Games where he came up with a monster throw of 92.97m as against 89.45m of Chopra. He finished fourth in Paris Diamond League. Founded in 1948, the magazine, which claims itself to be 'The Bible Of The Sport', publishes world and American rankings every year. The magazine is considered an authority in global track and field circles.

Trump’s obsession with Greenland has put the world’s largest island in an unexpected position of power. While Trump’s 2019 bid for the Arctic territory was dismissed as little more than a joke, the president-elect’s timing is better this time around — Greenlanders are intensifying their push for independence from Denmark. Within the next three months, they will hold a general election that will take the temperature of that relationship. Greenland is not for sale. But its new position gives it the ability to play the US and Denmark off of each other – a dynamic that might ultimately see it come out on top.

SN Subrahmanyan has stirred a debate on social media on work-life balance with his advocacy of 90-hour work weeks. In an undated video, which has gone viral on social media. Subrahmanyan seemed to dismiss the value of time spent at home, saying, «What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? How long can the wives stare at their husbands? Get to the office and start working.» He was advocating for working Sundays. During the recorded interaction, when questioned about mandatory Saturday work at L&T, Subrahmanyan said, «I regret I am not able to make you work on Sundays, to be honest. If I can make you work on Sundays, I will be more happy, because I work on Sundays also.» Also Read: ‘How long can you stare at your wife?’: L&T chief advocates 90-hour work week

Nvidia on Thursday criticised a reported plan by the Joe Biden administration to impose new restrictions on AI chip exports, saying that the outgoing US leader should not «preempt incoming President Trump» by enacting a last-minute policy. «We would encourage President Biden to not preempt incoming President Trump by enacting a policy that will only harm the US economy, set America back, and play into the hands of U.S. adversaries,» Nvidia Vice President Ned Finkle said in an emailed statement. The US Commerce Department and the White House did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment outside regular business hours.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) delivered what the Street had been eagerly awaiting—an optimistic demand outlook. The management of the IT services major highlighted early signs of recovery in discretionary demand across key sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), and consumer, during its December quarter (Q3FY25) earnings call.

Out-of-control wildfires are ravaging parts of Los Angeles this week, ripping through neighbourhoods and enclaves many Hollywood stars call home, including the Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It was known all along that Elon Musk, the billionaire acquirer of Twitter (later rebranded X), was against the moderation of posts on social media, preferring to let comments call out fake news and the like.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Two big speeches are coming up, President-elect Trump’s Inaugural Address on Monday, Jan. 20, and President Biden’s farewell address, expected in the days just preceding.

US Supreme Court that could determine its future in the United States. Unless ByteDance sells TikTok to a US-based company by January 19, the platform could be removed from app stores and blocked by internet providers, as mandated by a bipartisan law signed by President Joe Biden in 2023.

Meta has decided to do away with the third-party fact-checking programme in the US and will instead rely onuser-generated community notes to cross-check and establish the veracity of content on its platforms.

Tata Consultancy Services said its net profit grew to Rs 12,380 crore in the third quarter of fiscal 2025, clocking a lower-than-expected expansion of 3.9% sequentially and 5.5% year-on-year as demand slowed in its primary markets across the US and the UK amid the holiday season.

Federal Reserve interest rates. Shares in Australia and Japan fell, while those in South Korea were little changed. Contracts for the S&P 500 dropped for a second day after US trading was closed on Thursday to observe a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter.

milk linked to a deadly listeria outbreak has permanently closed all four of its plants.A spokesperson for Toronto-based Joriki said the closures meant the majority of Joriki’s employees were laid off when it shuttered its two plants in Ontario, one in B.C. and one in Pennsylvania owned by a subsidiary.The spokesperson said that as the company is pursuing creditor protection, it doesn’t have the finances to maintain operations and does not plan to reopen the plants.Joriki has filed for creditor production and says it plans to restructure its business.Its filings listed more than 100 organizations that Joriki owes over $200 million, including $775,000 in unpaid wages.The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the company’s Pickering, Ont.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has eventually sparked a pretty huge controversy by criticizing the California fire officials while claiming that they prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures over actually and effectively combating the wildfires, reported Independent. The remarks of Tesla CEO Elon Musk actually comes amidst the catastrophic wildfires which took place in Los Angeles County consuming over 27,000 acres while leading to at least five fatalities and widespread evacuations of more than 100,000 residents.

AI stocks through the years, 2023 and 2024. The S&P 500 index has also become a major gainer in this regard, as it has relied heavily on he likes of Apple, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, Amazon and other Magnificent 7 stocks for its optimum growth in 2024.