NewsBytes

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum which gathers the world's business and political elite in the Swiss mountain village of Davos every year, has resigned as chair of its board of trustees, the WEF said on Monday. The Geneva-based institution had announced earlier this month that Schwab, 87, would be stepping down, without indicating a timeframe. "Following my recent announcement, and as I enter my 88th year, I have decided to step down from the position of Chair and as a member of the Board of Trustees, with immediate effect," Schwab said in a statement released by the WEF. The WEF board said in the statement that it had accepted Schwab's resignation at an extraordinary meeting held on April 20, and that Vice Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe would become the interim chairman. A committee to appoint a future chair has been established. Schwab established the WEF in 1971 with the aim of creating a forum for policymakers and top corporate executives to tackle major global issues.

Instagram is beginning to test the use of artificial intelligence to determine if kids are lying about their ages on the app, parent company Meta Platforms said. Meta has been using AI to determine people's ages for some time, the company said, but photo and video-sharing app will now “proactively” look for teen accounts it suspects belong to teenagers even if they entered an inaccurate birthdate when they signed up.  If it is determined that a user is misrepresenting their age, the account will automatically become a teen account, which has more restrictions than an adult account. Teen accounts are private by default. Private messages are restricted so teens can only receive them from people they follow or are already connected to.  “Sensitive content,” such as videos of people fighting or those promoting cosmetic procedures, will be limited, Meta said. Teens will also get notifications if they are on Instagram for more than 60 minutes and a “sleep mode” will be enabled that turns off notifications and sends auto-replies to direct messages from 10 pm until 7 am.

Research from NASA's Curiosity rover has found evidence of a carbon cycle on ancient Mars, bringing scientists closer to an answer on whether the Red Planet was ever capable of supporting life. Lead author Dr Ben Tutolo, PhD, an associate professor with the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment in the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary, is a participating scientist on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover team. The team is working to understand climate transitions and habitability on ancient Mars as Curiosity explores Gale Crater. The paper reveals that data from three of Curiosity's drill sites had siderite, an iron carbonate material, within sulfate-rich layers of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater. Sedimentary carbonate has long been predicted to have formed under the CO2-rich ancient Martian atmosphere, but Tutolo says identifications had previously been sparse. NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars on August 5, 2012, and has travelled more than 34 kilometres on the Martian surface.

Two-year-old Sumaiya Ansari, a resident of India's Byrnihat town which is ranked the world's most polluted metropolitan area by Swiss Group IQAir, was battling breathing problems for several days before she was hospitalised in March and given oxygen support. She is among many residents of the industrial town on the border of the northeastern Assam and Meghalaya states - otherwise known for their lush, natural beauty - inflicted by illnesses that doctors say are likely linked to high exposure to pollution. Byrnihat's annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2024 was 128.2 micrograms per cubic meter, according to IQAir, over 25 times the level recommended by the WHO. PM2.5 refers to particulate matter measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter that can be carried into the lungs, causing deadly diseases and cardiac problems.