The world's average temperature reached a new high this week, topping 17 degrees Celsius for the first time.

This broke the previous record of 16.92 degrees from August 2016.

Vivienne Nunis speaks to one of the world's top global insurance brokers.

It's 20 years in the making, but could the European Union and South America's trade blocs finally strike a deal?

Members of the Mercosur trade bloc have been meeting in Argentina, with beef and deforestation still significant stumbling blocks to any agreement.

We find out what the road ahead looks like for the leaders of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Facebook owner Meta is launching its new app to rival Twitter and says it will go live later this week.

The app, which is called Threads and is available for pre-order on the Apple App Store, will be linked to Instagram.

The move is the latest in a rivalry between Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk.

Over 30 EU lawmakers have signed a document that aims to ensure access to co-working spaces, prohibit tracking workers’ computers at home and protect them from having to send or respond to emails outside of working hours.

The non-binding document was developed by the Future Workforce Alliance, a forum of politicians, business leaders and focused on policy changes in response to the digital transformation of work environments.

The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has announced that she will be in China later this week.

She recently warned that the collapse of relations between the two countries would pose a huge risk to the global economy.

The Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has welcomed a new three-billion dollar loan agreement with the IMF, saying it will help his country achieve economic stability. Mr Sharif said the deal would help sustainable growth and boost Pakistan's foreign currency reserves.

The social media giants Meta and Google have said they'll block local news from their platforms in Canada after it became the latest nation to pass a law to force tech giants to pay news providers for their content. It follows similar disputes in other jurisdictions including Australia.

A BBC investigation has found that TikTok is not removing many videos that deny the existence of man-made climate change - despite a promise in April that it would do so.

The cases concerned admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC). The court's conservative majority ruled 6-3 against UNC and 6-2 against Harvard. The justices sided with an organisation called Students for Fair Admissions, founded by a conservative activist, Edward Blum. The group argued before the court last October that Harvard's race-conscious admissions policy violated Title VI the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race, colour or national origin.

Affirmative action is one of the most contentious issues in US education. It first made its way into policy in the 1960s, and has been defended as a measure to increase diversity.

Virgin Galactic launches its first commercial spaceflight called Galactic 01. Three Italians are on board, along with a Virgin Galactic instructor and the spaceplane's two pilots.

Sri Lanka's central bank has unveiled a plan to restructure government debt in an attempt to restore economic stability. The debt restructuring is part of a bailout programme Sri Lanka agreed with the International Monetary Fund in March. China holds more than half of the foreign debt.

Lookalikes of Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift and Freddie Mercury - among others – are angry with have Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram. They're unhappy about a Meta rule that bans accounts of people "pretending to be someone famous". We speak to one of them.

We take a look at Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring plans and what it could mean for people there.

Also in the programme, we find out how businesses that operate outdoors in Texas are managing to stay open during the latest heatwave.

And would you mind if your local sports team is transferred to another city? That is what fans of baseball team Oakland Athletics are going through. We hear why and what some US policymakers are proposing to stop this.

Annual profits at China's industrial firms extended a double-digit decline in the first five months as softening demand squeezed margins, reinforcing hopes of more policy support to bolster a stuttering post-COVID economic recovery.

One way that China is looking to revive its economy is by investing in batteries, spurred by massive government spending aimed at achieving energy independence. Goldman Sachs estimates that China requires a 70-fold increase in battery storage in the next eight years or so, to meet its targets of curbing fossil fuel use.

A new report published this week is making some devastating claims against Google accusing of overcharging firms using its ads. Google charges companies for the amount of time people spend looking at their ads online.

And a new study found that loan officers in Uganda are more likely to offer loans to heavier-looking people than thinner-looking individuals.