Read It And Eat Wins UK Enterprise Award, NGX Extends Trading Hours, Anthropic Launches Claude Opus 4.7, Robots Outrun Humans in Beijing
- Dipo Owolabi
- Apr 20
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 22
It’s a mix of milestones, market reforms, and rapid tech evolution shaping today’s headlines. We’re starting on a high note as Read It And Eat earns “Best Business Newsletter 2026” at the UK Enterprise Awards, marking a major moment for the platform. Back home, the Nigerian Exchange Limited is expanding trading hours to boost liquidity and global competitiveness following its frontier market reclassification. In AI, Anthropic rolls out Claude Opus 4.7, balancing performance with reduced risk, while in China, humanoid robots are not just improving, they’re now outrunning humans in competitive races, signaling how fast robotics is catching up. From recognition to regulation and real-world AI breakthroughs, all this and more in today’s Read It And-eat! |
Markets Around The World
Markets as of 17th April 2026.. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.
MAJOR HEADLINES
Read It And Eat Wins “Best Business Newsletter 2026” at UK Enterprise Awards
Read It And Eat has been officially awarded Best Business Newsletter 2026 by the UK Enterprise Awards.
Hosted by SME News, the UK Enterprise Awards have been recognizing outstanding businesses across the UK for nearly a decade. With millions of annual readers and a growing global audience spanning hundreds of thousands of followers, the platform has built a reputation for spotlighting companies that are making a real impact in their industries.
This recognition is a strong validation of the work we do, delivering sharp, engaging, and insightful business news daily. It’s a reminder that the stories we tell, and how we tell them, are resonating far beyond our immediate audience. SMENews
Nigeria Expands Stocks Trading Hours; An Additional 2hrs Daily
Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) has announced the expansion of its trading hours from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (WAT), effective Monday April 27, 2026, in a move designed to deepen market liquidity, enhance price discovery, and broaden investor access. Approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Nigeria, the expansion shifts the market opening earlier from 9:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.
The extended trading window will provide greater flexibility for investors, improve responsiveness to market-moving information, and support broader participation across the market.
The development builds on the momentum of Nigeria’s recent reclassification to Frontier Market status by FTSE Russell, reinforcing NGX’s global positioning and enhancing its attractiveness to a broader pool of domestic and international investors. This reform reflects strong regulatory collaboration and underscores the Securities and Exchange Commission’s continued commitment to advancing market development initiatives. Alongside Nigeria’s Frontier Market reclassification, it signals a deliberate shift towards a more accessible, liquid, and globally competitive market.
The implementation follows extensive stakeholder engagement, ensuring alignment and operational readiness ahead of the go-live date. NGX Regulation Limited will continue to provide robust oversight to support a smooth and orderly transition, while maintaining high standards of transparency and investor protection. With this development, NGX reinforces its position as a leading multi-asset exchange, deepening liquidity, improving market access, and supporting efficient capital formation within Nigeria’s financial markets. Bloomberg
Anthropic on Thursday announced a new artificial intelligence model, Claude Opus 4.7, which the company said is an improvement over past models but is “less broadly capable” than its most recent offering, Claude Mythos Preview.
Claude Opus 4.7 is better at software engineering, following instructions, completing real-world work and is its most powerful generally available model, Anthropic said. But the model’s cyber capabilities are not as advanced as Claude Mythos Preview, which Anthropic rolled out to a select group of companies as part of a new cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing earlier this month. The launch of Claude Opus 4.7 on Thursday comes after Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4.6 in February. Anthropic said the new model outperforms Claude Opus 4.6 across many use cases, including industry benchmarks for agentic coding, multidisciplinary reasoning, scaled tool use and agentic computer use, according to a release.Anthropic said it experimented with efforts to “differentially reduce” Claude Opus 4.7′s cyber capabilities during training.
The company encouraged security professionals who are interested in using the model for “legitimate cybersecurity purposes” to apply through a formal verification program. Claude Opus 4.7 is available across all of Anthropic’s Claude products, its application programming interface and through cloud providers Microsoft, Google and, Amazon. The new model is the same price as Claude Opus 4.6, Anthropic said. CNBC |
Humanoid Robots Race Past Humans In Beijing Half-Marathon
Dozens of Chinese-made humanoid robots showed off their fast-improving athleticism and autonomous navigation skills as they whizzed past human runners in a half-marathon race in Beijing on Sunday, highlighting the sector's rapid technical advances.
The race's inaugural edition last year was riddled with mishaps, and most robots were unable to finish. Last year's champion robot recorded a time of 2 hours 40 minutes, more than double the time of the human winner of the conventional race. This year's contrast was stark. Not only had the number of participating teams increased from 20 to more than 100, but several robot frontrunners were noticeably faster than professional athletes, beating the human winners by more than 10 minutes. Unlike last year, nearly half of the robot entrants navigated the tougher terrain autonomously instead of being directed by remote control during the 21-km (13-mile) race. The robots and 12,000 men and women ran in parallel tracks to avoid collisions.
The winning robot, developed by Chinese smartphone brand Honor, finished the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, several minutes faster than the half-marathon world record set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon last month. Teams from Honor, a Huawei spin-off, took the three podium spots, all self-navigated and posting world-record-beating times. Du Xiaodi, an Honor engineer on the winning team, said its robot was in development for a year, fitted with legs 90 to 95 cm (35 to 37 inches) long to mimic elite human runners and liquid cooling technology used in its smartphones. Reuter
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