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July 22, 2025
 

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BIG TECH

A high school student uses social media applications in November 2024.
WORLD / Society
Jul 15, 2025
EU states to test age-check app to limit children's access to online services
The European Commission has unveiled a prototype of the app that Denmark, France, Greece, Italy and Spain will customize and launch within several months.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been frustrated by the quality of his company's past AI efforts, so has been investing heavily in the energy, computing power and talent needed to compete in the fast-moving AI race.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 15, 2025
Meta to spend billions building gigawatt-size data centers for AI
Frustrated by the quality of Meta’s past AI efforts, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing heavily in energy, computing power and talent to compete in the fast-moving AI race.
Meta hired Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple’s AI models team, with a pay package in the hundreds of millions over a several-year period, according to sources.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 10, 2025
Meta poached Apple’s Pang with pay package of over $200 million
Apple didn’t try to match Meta's offer to engineer Ruoming Pang as it far exceeded pay at the company for leaders other than CEO Tim Cook.
Apple is reportedly challenging current Formula One broadcaster ESPN for the sport's U.S. television rights next year.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Jul 9, 2025
Apple eyes U.S. Formula 1 broadcast rights after movie success: report
The report follows the strong box office performance of Apple's high-octane racing film "F1: The Movie."
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been recruiting top artificial intelligence engineers for the company’s new superintelligence division.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 8, 2025
Apple loses top AI models executive to Meta’s hiring spree
The departure of Ruoming Pang marks another setback in the iPhone maker’s struggling efforts in the emerging space.
The people tasked with removing harmful content from tech giants like Meta Platforms or TikTok report a range of noxious health effects, from loss of appetite to anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 4, 2025
Content moderators for Big Tech unite to tackle mental trauma
Social media companies are facing increasing pressure to address the emotional toll of moderation, with many moderators reporting a range of toxic health effects.
This digital visualization shows the small modular nuclear reactor being developed by Rolls-Royce SMR, which is set to be the first in the U.K. A widely cited IEA report says global data center electricity demand will more than double by 2030 to 945 TWh — more than Japan’s current total usage.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2025
Data centers and small reactors could change Asia’s nuclear dynamic
An estimated 402.74 million terabytes of data are created each day and storing and processing all that information creates virtual volcanoes.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at a news conference during a NATO summit in The Hague last Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jun 30, 2025
Canada rescinds digital services tax to advance stalled U.S. trade talks
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump will resume trade negotiations in order to agree on a deal by July 21, Ottawa said.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's controlling interest in the tech titan frees him to have the company invest heavily in artificial intelligence efforts.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 30, 2025
Meta spending big on AI talent but will it pay off?
OpenAI boss Sam Altman recently lamented that Meta has offered $100 million bonuses to engineers who jump to Zuckerberg's ship, where hefty salaries await.
Racks of servers being tested at the new Amazon Web Services facility in New Carlisle, Indiana, on June 3
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 30, 2025
AI data-center boom could destroy Big Tech's net-zero plans
The tech sector faces a "climate strategy crisis" as its data centers demand ever more electricity and water to power growing fields, such as artificial intelligence.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney take part in an arrival ceremony during the Group of Seven leaders' summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, on June 16.
BUSINESS / Economy / FOCUS
Jun 29, 2025
Trump turns on ‘nice’ Mark Carney with Canadian tech tax ultimatum
The tax became law while Justin Trudeau was still in power and had prompted warnings of U.S. retaliation but Carney went ahead anyway.
A San Francisco District Court has ruled that Meta's use of copyrighted works to train its AI model was "transformative" enough to constitute "fair use" under copyright law, in the second such courtroom triumph for AI firms this week.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 26, 2025
U.S. judge rules for Meta in AI training copyright case but says it isn't lawful
The ruling said the authors could have pitched a winning argument — that by training AI with copyrighted works, tech firms are creating competition in the marketplace.
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority spent years setting up a regime to intervene in the operations of tech giants such as Google, only for the Labour government to say its need to grow the economy meant tough regulation was now out.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 26, 2025
U.K. politics blunts antitrust action against Google
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority spent years setting up a regime to intervene in tech giants' operations, only for the Labour government to say tough regulation was out.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s second-term tech policy consolidates AI regulatory power in the White House, empowering American tech giants at the expense of state authority, international cooperation and democratic oversight.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 25, 2025
The 'Washington Effect' could decide the AI race
While Trump administration officials pressure foreign governments to ease up on U.S. firms, Congress moves to block state-level oversight altogether.
Morning commute traffic streams past the Meta sign outside the headquarters of Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc, in Mountain View, California, in 2022.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 12, 2025
Meta taps top researchers from Google and Sesame for new AI lab
The new group is part of an ambitious, and costly, effort by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to gain ground on rivals like Google and OpenAI.
Apple’s delayed AI rollout in China, hindered by regulatory hurdles and declining local popularity, may still succeed through a partnership with Alibaba.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 11, 2025
Can Apple salvage the AI iPhone in China?
Despite earlier reports that Apple Intelligence could launch in the country in May, the lack of a fresh announcement isn’t a total shock.
Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Jan. 28
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 8, 2025
Meta in talks for Scale AI investment that could top $10 billion
The financing could exceed $10 billion in value, some of the people said, making it one of the largest private company funding events of all time.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet, presented a vision of AI that was at once optimistic about the technology’s possibilities and sober-minded about some of its present limitations, at an event at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 5, 2025
Alphabet CEO expects to keep hiring engineers while AI advances
Alphabet's CEO presented a vision of AI that was at once optimistic about the technology’s possibilities and sober-minded about some of its present limitations.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a speech during the Meta Connect event at in Menlo Park, California, in September 2023. The partnership between Zuckerberg's Meta and defense firm Anduril to build battlefield XR gear underscores how working with the military, once taboo in Silicon Valley, is now actively embraced.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 5, 2025
Mark Zuckerberg finally found a use for his Metaverse — war
Anduril and Meta are partnering to design, build and field a range of integrated XR products that provide warfighters with enhanced perception on the battlefield.
Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York on May 23
BUSINESS / Tech
May 28, 2025
Apple reels from share selloff as Trump’s 25% tariff threat drives uncertainty
Some are skeptical the tariffs will come to pass, but any such measures would require Apple to absorb costs or raise prices, eroding demand.
Japan ruling bloc loses majority in Upper House after election drubbing
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who serves concurrently as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, leaves at the party's headquarters following announcement of Upper House election result projections in Tokyo early Monday.
‘Japanese First’ Sanseito emerges as powerful force after Upper House poll
Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya in Tokyo on Sunday night
Foreign residents closely follow Japan's election and party pledges
A police officer walks past posters of Liberal Democratic Party candidates, as well as one showing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, outside the party's headquarters in Tokyo on Sunday. As Japan’s foreign population continues to rise, one of the talking points during Sunday’s election was how the country should deal with the increase of international residents.
Japan’s top brands get tied up in the great sunscreen debate
A coral reef in Okinawa in July 2022. Some jurisdictions around the world have moved to ban certain sunscreens in a bid to protect coral reefs, but some say the impact on reefs is far from clear.
Voters in Tokyo reflect shifting political views across Japan
Pedestrians walk in front of an election notice board displaying posters of candidates in Tokyo on Sunday.
Japan’s top brands get tied up in the great sunscreen debate
A coral reef in Okinawa in July 2022. Some jurisdictions around the world have moved to ban certain sunscreens in a bid to protect coral reefs, but some say the impact on reefs is far from clear.
Pentagon looks to unleash ‘military drone dominance’
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosts a drone demonstration at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on July 10.
‘Noto Democracy’ and the slow work of civic change
Yukio Iokibe’s “Noto Democracy" centers on Motoyuki Takii, a former junior high school teacher who publishes a handwritten newspaper every month to encourage the residents of Anamizu, Ishikawa Prefecture, to engage in local politics.
In microbes we trust: Embracing the nature of fermented food
You don't need an oven to make Kenji Morimoto's easy and delicious Miso Sticky Toffee Crepe Cake.
Touring the Silk Road — without leaving Tokyo
One of the entrances to Pao Compound, a nine-story Silk Road-inspired complex in Tokyo's Higashinakano neighborhood

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan
By Alex K.T. Martin

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