La pobreza es la principal y más cruel aflicción que afecta a la humanidad, pero el mundo ha hecho grandes avances contra ella. En 1820, el 83% de personas vivía en una situación de pobreza extrema. El Banco Mundial estima que, en el 2015, por primera vez, la pobreza se redujo a un solo dígito. Eso sigue representando al 9,6% de la población mundial, o 700 millones de personas que viven con menos de US$1,90 al día (o lo que solía ser un dólar en 1985).

Bangladesh is ground zero for microfinance. Over the decades, since Sir Fazle Abed founded BRAC and Muhammad Yunus started Grameen Bank, the strategy of providing micro-sized loans to borrowers has helped increase income and consumption for the poor, ensured food security for many, created employment opportunities, and empowered women. According to the Credit and Development Forum, nearly 700 microfinance institutions operate in the country today, disbursing approximately Tk. 647 billion (Tk. 64,700 crore) to 3.4 crore active borrowers.

Bangladesh has made spectacular progress over the recent years. The country has halved poverty and the economy has grown by about 6.0 per cent a year. But many challenges continue to frustrate its development efforts. According to the World Bank, one-third of children under age five are underweight, and two out of every five adults cannot read. A quarter of the population still lives in poverty. And other obstacles, from failing road infrastructure to limited electricity access, still plague many citizens.

 As Elon Musk presented the new Tesla 3, a fawning press announced that the “world-changing car” could “dominate” the market. Within days, 276,000 people had put down $1,000 to pre-order the car.

But the Model 3 doesn’t exist yet. There is no final production version, much less any production. Musk is “fairly confident” that deliveries could start by the end of 2017. But running on schedule isn’t Tesla’s strong suit. Meanwhile, Tesla’s current best-seller has been plagued by quality problems.

The Obama administration released a new report this week that paints a stark picture of how climate change will affect human health. Higher temperatures, we’re told, will be deadly—killing “thousands to tens of thousands” of Americans. The report is subtitled “A Scientific Assessment,” presumably to underscore its reliability. But the report reads as a political sledgehammer that hypes the bad and skips over the good.

More than six kilometres of water separate the southwest region from the rest of Bangladesh. The longstanding Padma Bridge project holds potential to span that gap both physically and economically, linking the region with Dhaka, Chittagong, and the rest of the country to the east.

Als der US-amerikanische Unternehmer und Investor Elon Musk kürzlich das neue „Model 3“ des Elektroautoherstellers Tesla präsentierte, kündigte eine begeisterte Presse ein Fahrzeug an, das „die Welt verändern“ werde. Innerhalb weniger Tage blätterten fast 400.000 Menschen jeweils 1000 US-Dollar als Anzahlung für das Auto hin.

Today, 99 percent of Bangladesh's girls and 97 percent of boys are enrolled in primary school. The great progress in primary education over recent years is the reason that the country has met the two Millennium Development Goals related to primary schooling: universal enrollment and gender equality.

In Bangladesh, remittances from people living and working abroad added up to nearly Tk. 1.2 trillion last year—more than four times the nearly Tk. 250 billion that foreign aid agencies spent in the country.

Almost 5 percent of the total working age population is now migrant workers, and every year, roughly half a million more people leave the country to work overseas. Bangladesh Bank estimates that they send the equivalent of 7.4 percent of GDP back to family and friends, from 2001-2015; this totalled to Tk. 9.6 trillion.

In northern rural Bangladesh, the autumn lean season is the most difficult time of year, especially in Rangpur, where close to half of the 15.8 million residents live below the poverty line.

The landless poor in Rangpur primarily work as day laborers on neighboring farms. But in September, while waiting for crops to mature in the fields, there is no farm work to be done. Wages fall, and at the same time, food becomes scarce because harvest is still months away, so the price of rice goes up.