Business Daily

Why plastic ends up there and how to stop it. Stephen Ryan reports from the Ganges - a major source of plastic that ends up in the oceans. Manuela Saragosa speaks to Dr Hannah Ritchie of the Oxford University Martin School about the importance of plastic disposal. Professor Tony Ryan, a polymer chemist and sustainability leader at the University of Sheffield, explains why recycling is still the an...

What Silicon Valley titans learned from an American football coach. Despite a fairly unspectacular career with the Columbia University college football team, Bill Campbell found himself guiding the leadership at the top of both Apple and Google simultaneously. One of his mentees was the former Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who speaks about the surprising contribution that someone with a background...

How can educators ensure that every child in the world - and particularly every girl - has access to a decent school? And how should the curriculum prepare young people for a workplace about to be transformed by artificial intelligence? Tanya Beckett hosts a debate in Dubai with Vikas Pota, chairman of the Varkey Foundation; Elizabeth Bintliff, chief executive of youth NGO Junior Achievement Afric...

Can a burger help save the planet? The Business Daily team try out the plant-based burger designed to convert meat eaters. Dr Marco Springmann from Oxford University explains why eating less meat can help slow climate change. Simeon Van Der Molen, founder and CEO of food technology company Moving Mountains outlines the future for the meat-free food industry. (Photo: a burger made by Beyond Meat, C...

India's bid to capture a slice of global shipping. The east-west shipping line off the southern coast of India carries around 30% of the world's cargo. As container ships get bigger, the Kerala state government wants to build a deep-water container port at Vizhinjam. But the $1.2bn project has been badly delayed by Cyclone Ockhi in 2017 and by last year’s torrential rains and flooding in the regio...

Should governments spend more money? 'Modern monetary theory' or MMT is gaining traction, particularly in the US. It says governments should worry less about balancing the books. Its detractors call it the 'magic money tree'. Manuela Saragosa speaks to hedge fund founder Warren Mosler - the man who first proposed MMT - and economist Frances Coppola about the criticisms facing the theory. Producer:...

Could a new scheme alleviate the crippling cost of university fees for young Americans, who have already accumulated a trillion and a half dollars in student debts? Dr Courtney McBeth tells Ed Butler how under the "income sharing agreement" scheme that she is piloting at the University of Utah, the amount that students repay depends on how much money they manage to earn in their future careers. Th...

Was the NotPetya attack, that struck Ukraine and then the world in 2016, a portend of potentially devastating cyber-wars in the future? Ed Butler goes back to ground zero of that sophisticated cyber attack to speak to Oleh Derevianko of the Ukrainian cybersecurity firm ISSP, and Valentyn Petrov who heads Ukraine's information security service. How did a piece of malware allegedly designed by Russi...

With the sea level rising and storms strengthening thanks to climate change, will much of the world's most valuable real estate find itself underwater? Justin Rowlatt visits London's main line of defence against the sea - the Thames Barrier - a hugely expensive piece of engineering that will need to be replaced by an even larger barrier later this century, according to its operator Steve East, and...

Getting more disabled people into the workforce. Manuela Saragosa speaks to Rich Donovan, a trader who forged a successful career on Wall Street with cerebral palsy. Alice Maynard, a business advisor on inclusion in the UK explains the challenges still facing disabled people at work. And blind skateboarder Dan Mancina talks about his career. (Photo: Wheelchair user at work, Credit: Getty Images)

In Mozambique, Cyclones Idai and Kenneth did tremendous damage to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in March and April. The country is still trying to get the crisis under control, as flooding, cholera and poor food and aid provision continue to threaten lives. Dorothy Sang is Humanitarian Advocacy and Campaigns Manager for Oxfam, and gives Ed Butler the view from the ground in Mozam...

Is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tinkering with the reservation system nothing more than a bid to grab votes in the general election? India has long had a system of positive discrimination to enable people from lower castes to get political representation, government jobs and university places. But as Rahul Tandon reports, the Prime Minister's decision to broaden the quotas to include anyone from...

The video streaming service Netflix has announced a major push into Africa, with original series commissioned from around the continent. Netflix had already commissioned its first Nigerian original movie with 2018’s Lionheart, and a number of new projects have been announced, including the Zimbabwean musical animation Tunga. Ed Butler speaks to screenwriter Godwin Jabangwe about how he based it on...

This global food staple used to account for half of some people's income. Dr Kaori O’Connor a food anthropologist at University College, London, explains how it became central to so many of our diets. Plus we’ll hear from Dominique Anract, President of the National Confederation of French Bakers who explains some of the rules of the bread industry. Renowned chef, Francisco Migoya tells us about re...

Housework and caring - is technology about to transform this essential but overlooked part of the economy? Manuela Saragosa speaks to Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in the US about why workers in the home still aren't valued, and to Megan Stack, author of Woman's Work, about the power employers have over domestic help. Professor Diane Coyle from the University of Ca...

The campaign for a four-day working week is gaining traction, particularly in the UK. Manuela Saragosa hears from Lorraine Gray, operations director at Pursuit Marketing, a company that has already made the switch from five to four days. But Ed Whiting, policy director at the charity Wellcome Trust, explains why they decided against the change after a major consultation. Asheem Singh, director of...

Foxconn is causing a political headache for President Trump, as the Taiwanese manufacturer fails to deliver on a promise to build a 13,000-employee factory in Wisconsin. The LCD screen plant - which was intended to hire 13,000 local blue collar workers - was heralded by the US president as a win in his struggle to return manufacturing jobs to America. But while the Wisconsin authorities have spent...

As India holds elections, getting decent jobs is top of the agenda for most young voters, as the BBC's Rahul Tandon discovers. Most Indians still live in rural areas, and on a trip to the village of Burul just outside Kolkata, Rahul hears the fears of students at a local high school at their lack of meaningful career prospects. Employment could be a key factor in deciding whether Prime Minister Na...

What does the video-sharing site needs to do in order to stop inadvertently promoting dangerous conspiracy theories and extremist content? Alex Jones's InfoWars channel (pictured) - which among other things propagated the lie that the Sandy Hook school shooting in the US was faked - has already been banned from YouTube, although his videos still find their way onto the site. Meanwhile the social m...

Imagine losing your home, your job or your reputation, all because of a computer error. We speak to people who say that's exactly what happened to them. Kim Duncan and her children lost their family home in the US after Kim's bank Wells Fargo mistakenly said she didn't qualify for a loan modification she needed to keep up with her repayments. Meanwhile in the UK, the Post Office is being litigated...

Do rent controls and the expropriation of apartment blocks provide an answer to the increasing cost of housing in the rich world? Such radical measures are being considered in many of the world's biggest metropolises, as more and more residents find themselves being priced out of their home cities. Manuela Saragosa speaks to Tom McGath of the Berlin-based campaign group Deutsche Wohnen Enteignen,...

Are markets and companies beginning to grasp the threat of global warming? Ed Butler speaks to Meryam Omi, head of sustainability and responsible investment strategy at Legal and General, a major investor, about divesting from companies that contribute to climate change. And Jeff Colgan, director of security studies at the Watson Institute, Brown University, in the US, tells us why he thinks secto...

Periods. We rarely talk about them but half the world's population will have to manage menstruation for a good chunk of their lives. For some women, their monthly period brings shame and stigmatisation, as they are forced out of their communities. Others simply can't afford the products they need to carry on with their lives. Ruth Evans reports from Nepal on some of the challenges and the solution...

Jane Wakefield reports from the Ted conference in Vancouver. (Photo: Social media app icons, Credit: Getty Images)

Jane Wakefield reports from the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, on the businesses shooting for the stars. Chief Executive of Rocket Lab Peter Beck shares his concerns about the amount of space junk being left in orbit. Former astronaut Nicole Stott explains why an ill-fitting space suit can be a big problem. And Assistant Professor of Astrophysics at University of Arizona, Erika Hamden, tells...