In The News

Heizo Takenaka April 2, 2018
Big data, artificial intelligence and robotics are revolutionizing business, both increasing efficiency and reducing labor requirements. Japan, the world’s third largest economy, confronts two challenges, slow government response for labor and other reforms and the need for stronger corporate governance, explains Heizo Takenaka, a former fiscal policy minister for the country. Japan also has two...
Geoffrey Hoffman March 21, 2018
Various cultures are emerging on the internet, and “as the international system slips away from American unipolarity, a competing model of cyber sovereignty has emerged in China that seeks to bind cyber borders to online censorship and surveillance,” writes Geoffrey Hoffman for ChinaFile. Distrust also emerges, and he questions if the two models can coexist. China enforces cyber borders and that...
Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison March 19, 2018
A whistleblower has exposed how Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm, relied on a software program and Facebook user profiles to target voters with political advertisements. The number represents about a quarter of the US electorate. “Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on...
Katie Roof and Ingrid Lunden March 13, 2018
Donald Trump cited security concerns for blocking Singapore-based Broadcom’s hostile buyout of US-based Qualcomm. “The combination of the two chipmakers would have potentially been the biggest tech merger of all time, and would have brought together two of the biggest companies that manufacture the processors that power phones, computers and almost the entire array of connected devices,” report...
Taylor Lorenz February 22, 2018
In a crackdown on mass automatic posts, Twitter has deleted thousands of accounts. “The pulldown took place quite literally in the middle of the night, without warning or explanation from the company,” explains Taylor Lorenz for the Daily Beast. “Leading right-wing trolls and conspiracy theorists, many of whom woke up this morning to discover that their follower numbers had plunged by the...
Zia Qureshi February 22, 2018
People even in the world’s most advanced and wealthiest economies are unhappy and politically fractured – this despite a full recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and growing economies. “The increasingly unequal sharing of the economic pie lies at the heart of the rising social discontent,” explains Zia Qureshi for Brookings. “Income and wealth inequalities have risen practically in all major...
February 16, 2018
A research group from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have modified enzymes in bacteria that degrade polyethylene terephthalate, a main ingredient in plastics. Non-bio-degradable plastics contribute to pollution. Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacteria that can use PET as a carbon source. The research team, using 3D modeling and biochemical studies, identified how the bacteria...