Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America.

I'm Katie Weaver.

And I'm Mario Ritter Jr.

This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower,

and we use words and phrases especially written for people learning English.

Coming up on the show, the Health and Lifestyle Report.

We close the show with The Lesson of the Day.

And John Russell has a story on a newly identified, leading artist from long ago.

But first,

The Union Bank of Switzerland, UBS,

billionaire ambitions report for 2024

said the total number of billionaires worldwide

had risen to 2,682 from 2,544 a year earlier. Their worth increased to

$14 trillion from $12 trillion. In 2015, their total wealth stood at $6.3 trillion.

The World Bank says that the world's population was just over $8 billion, and its gross domestic product, or GDP, was about $105.4 trillion last year.

GDP is a measure of all the goods and services produced in a year.

This shows that a very small group of people

holds about 13% of the world's GDP.

The UBS report for 2023 showed that new billionaires gained more wealth through inheritance than through

entrepreneurship. But most of the years new billionaires were self-made. The 2024 report was based

on a study of billionaires between June and September and wealth data on the super rich.

It showed the risk of international conflict and inflation were their main worries.

...