LLM-based approaches have recently achieved impressive results in zero-shot stance detection. However, they still struggle in complex real-world scenarios, where stance understanding requires dynamic background knowledge, target definitions involve compound entities or events that must be explicitly linked to stance labels, and rhetorical devices such as irony often obscure the author's actual intent. To address these challenges, we propose MSME, a Multi-Stage, Multi-Expert framework for zero-shot stance detection. MSME consists of three stages: (1) Knowledge Preparation, where relevant background knowledge is retrieved and stance labels are clarified; (2) Expert Reasoning, involving three specialized modules-Knowledge Expert distills salient facts and reasons from a knowledge perspective, Label Expert refines stance labels and reasons accordingly, and Pragmatic Expert detects rhetorical cues such as irony to infer intent from a pragmatic angle; (3) Decision Aggregation, where a Meta-Judge integrates all expert analyses to produce the final stance prediction. Experiments on three public datasets show that MSME achieves state-of-the-art performance across the board.

Trade finance refers to products and financial instruments used to facilitate the export and import of trade and commerce--and, thereby, the smooth conduct of business. Some of the most popular instruments in trade finance are letters of credit (LC), bank guarantees (BG), documentary collections and remittances. Essentially, these instruments have one primary function: enabling parties to the trade to make a transaction and mitigate the associated risks related to supply and payment. Trade finance drives the global economy. This segment will only grow in the future, notwithstanding temporary setbacks like the Covid-19 pandemic or geopolitical conflicts.

BEIJING (China Daily/Asia News Network): Artificial intelligence, a key technology for driving digital transformation, is playing an increasingly vital role in accelerating China's push for industrial upgrading and promoting the in-depth integration of the digital economy and real economy, business leaders and experts said. Significant progress has been made in developing China's AI industry, with technological innovation capabilities in some areas ranking among the best in the world, they said. A Stanford University report showed that China filed more than half of the world's AI patent applications last year and the nation continued to lead the world in the number of AI journals, conference papers and related publications. The report said Chinese researchers have been the most prolific in recent years, publishing 27.5 percent of all AI journal articles worldwide, while researchers from the United States accounted for 12 percent. Articles in Chinese journals also topped those of other nations for citations, an indicator of their scientific importance. Official data showed that the value of China's core AI industries exceeds 400 billion yuan ($56.6 billion), and the number of related enterprises stands at more than 3,000, with major breakthroughs being made in key core technologies such as smart chips and open-source frameworks.

Technology for MSMEs: Accounting for 70 per cent of all employment, 99 per cent of companies, and nearly 50 per cent of global GDP, MSMEs are a key economic artery for almost every nation on the planet. However, the small size and limited resources of most MSMEs have traditionally made it difficult for them to access enterprise technology and implement digital transformation at scale. In fact, less than 20 per cent of MSME digital transformation initiatives are successful. But all that is quickly changing. In the past, digital transformation for MSMEs has largely been viewed as a customer acquisition tool that helped them scale faster and access new markets.

Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Today, the digital ecosystem is signifying its ability to overcome fundamental barriers to the progression of finance for inclusive and sustainable development. New-age banking solutions have evolved from the conventional brick and motor branches. From neobanks, and e-wallets, to buy now pay later (BNPL) and no-cost EMIs, there is a stark transformation across the economy's spending, lending, and borrowing patterns. The government has adopted a cognizant approach to lead the country towards a digital economy. The new wave has bought a paradigm shift in the MSME borrowing pattern as they adapt to the digital ecosystem.

The European Commission will this week present its proposal on Artificial Intelligence (AI), seen as a step toward a new regulatory framework, promised by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union, writes Marie-Françoise Gondard-Argenti. Marie-Françoise Gondard-Argenti is a member of the Employers' Group at the European Economic and Social Committee. It is clear that there is no country or company manager in Europe at the moment that does not support the development of a trustworthy and innovative AI ecosystem, which promotes a human-centric approach and that primarily services people, increasing their well-being. There is no company in Europe that does not understand the need to leverage the EU market to spread the EU's approach to AI regulation globally. However, at the moment, the EU lags behind.

Budget 2020: India has made rapid strides in expanding the MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise) sector and adopting digital technologies. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer great promise and raise apprehensions at the same time and it will take the concerted efforts of all key stakeholders in the ecosystem to create a framework for maximum benefit while acknowledging the challenges in the most pragmatic manner possible. Here, we seek to explore how best the AI technology toolkit can accelerate business performance for MSMEs; followed up with a set of recommendations for the key stakeholders in this arena. The time is right and it is now. Embedding AI across key business functions has the potential of driving exponential impact on key business levers- innovation, growth and efficiency.

The Assistant Secretary General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ms. Ahunna Eziakonwa, called on African countries to take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchains and machine learning, and deploy these in various sectors for the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She made the call during a panel session at a side event at the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD7) in Yokohama, Japan. The event, titled "From Idea to Action: Harnessing the Potential of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in Africa's Development", was organized by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the World Bank. Ms. Eziakonwa noted that, Africa needs to harness the potential of STI for development by prioritizing policies and making investments to increase access to state-of-the-art technologies such as e-governance, finance and digital literacy and skills – at secondary and TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) level. She called for the adoption of innovative financing schemes that combine both public and private sector resources and technical expertise for the achievement of the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environment.

India is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country (with over 1.2 billion people), and the most populous democracy in the world. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Indian economy in 2017 was nominally worth US$2.611

By Manish Upadhyay The debate around Artificial intelligence (popularly called AI) has begun with extreme and not so extreme views about how it will impact jobs and particularly jobs in the MSME sector. The fact of the matter is that technology is ubiquitous, kind of a hygiene in every sector and every job, it's just that with the rise of computing power, server capacity and massive connectivity, the AI promise has become more certain and can't be ignored any further. So what is AI, as the name suggests intelligence as manifested by machines, which tends to mimic human intelligence in some form. Most importantly an AI system needs to be evaluated from what goal it wants to accomplish, largely it can be divided into three groups. Strong AI: which is focussed on actually simulating human reasoning, focussed not only to build systems that think but also to explain how humans think, 2. Weak AI: which is focused on building systems that can behave like humans, but the results will tell nothing about how humans think - IBM Deep Blue Chess programme is one such example.