Flagship

US brings toughest climate rules yet

The U.S. set strict new emission limits for automakers Wednesday, a step toward making most new American cars either electric or hybrid by 2032. The New York Times called it “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” and a major component of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. The rules will likely face election-year pushback from automakers and Republicans, but the Biden administration is betting that the shift to EVs will also benefit workers. Toyota, which despite being the world’s largest automaker hasn’t fully embraced EVs, said Wednesday that “serious challenges around affordability, charging infrastructure, and supply chain” remain before the mandate can become reality.

Senators weigh TikTok ban

A ban or forced sale of TikTok in the U.S. is unlikely to happen soon, with a key senator calling for a public hearing. “It’s important to get it right,” the head of the chamber’s commerce committee said. Others are taking a more aggressive approach; a Democratic senator described the app as a “gun aimed at Americans’ heads,” after receiving a classified briefing about the Chinese-owned app’s risks. The future of the TikTok question is defined by the word “if,” DigiChina Project’s Graham Webster wrote: If the bill passes, a flurry of lawsuits will hit the courts. If the app is banned, Americans could try to bypass it with VPNs. What is clear, Webster argued, is that “TikTok poses a non-zero national security risk.”

Vietnam’s president resigns

Vietnamese President Võ Văn Thưởng resigned Wednesday after less than a year in office in the wake of an anti-corruption campaign that has already ensnared thousands of officials. The sudden departure of Vietnam’s second-most powerful politician, 14 months after his predecessor resigned, comes amid questions over the staying power of the 79-year-old leader of the ruling Communist Party, analysts said. One Southeast Asian politics expert argued the corruption probe could ultimately backfire by revealing “divisions among the country’s political elite,” while investors worry about how it could expand to private businesses.

Indian food delivery app faces backlash

India’s largest food delivery app is under fire for offering a separate service to deliver “pure vegetarian” meals that exclude fish, meat, and eggs. Critics said Zomato’s decision would lead to discrimination and harassment of drivers — many of whom are from minority religions that eat meat. Though India is perceived to be a country of vegetarians, only about a fifth to a third of the population is actually classed as such. Zomato’s announcement came ahead of elections that are expected to be won by the ruling Hindu nationalist government, which has cracked down on the sale and consumption of meat. The company walked back a decision to differentiate the new fleet’s uniform color, but maintained the service was needed because the “smell” of meat-based food could bother customers.

Baseball in Korea a ‘trilateral event’

American, South Korean, and Japanese baseball fans converged in Seoul this week at Major League Baseball’s first regular-season games in South Korea. The season opener between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres was a cross-continental mashup of sports, culture, politics, and media: Fans flocked to Seoul to see Japanese star Shohei Ohtani make his Dodgers debut, as well as his “mystery wife” who was only recently publicly identified. A performance by K-pop girl group Aespa showcased Korea’s booming entertainment sector, and officials from the three countries attended the game together. “It’s almost become a trilateral event,” the U.S. ambassador to South Korea said.

AI helps design antibodies

Researchers used artificial intelligence to design new antibodies from scratch. Antibodies — molecules that our immune systems use to attack pathogens — are tuned to detect particular proteins. The scientists used an AI architecture similar to image-generating tools like DALL-E: It was trained on thousands of known antibodies attached to target proteins, and then asked to generate new ones that would fit specific proteins found in certain bacteria, viruses, or cancers. It’s a “proof-of-principle” work, one scientist told Nature, and the antibodies are a long way from becoming clinically useful treatments, but it raises the possibility of creating bespoke therapeutic antibodies to attack specific diseases. Another scientist said: “Ten years from now, this is how we’re going to be designing antibodies.”

Gates plans first US next-gen reactor

Bill Gates’ nuclear power startup is set to build its first next-generation reactor in June. TerraPower’s chief executive told the Financial Times that it would apply for a U.S. construction permit in Wyoming, and that its planned reactors, which use liquid sodium as a coolant, could be built at half the cost of existing water-cooled reactors. It’s one of several companies racing to bring smaller, cheaper reactors to market — U.S.-based firms are behind state-backed rivals in Russia and China, each of which have one small modular reactor operating already. NuScale, another U.S. company, canceled its plan to build the first American SMR when costs went up.

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Astrologers debate about new year date

Sri Lanka’s government astrologers disagree on the most auspicious date for new year celebrations. The country’s Buddhist and Hindu communities often consult astrologers on the ideal time to conduct business deals, marriages, and even national elections, The Guardian reported. A group of 42 were employed by the culture ministry to decide when to celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil new year, and the majority chose April 13. But one dissenter said this date would lead to “disaster” and that Sri Lanka would “go up in flames.” Sri Lankans take this seriously: In January 2015, the then-president called a snap election on the advice of his astrologer. The stars did not align, and he lost.

Birkin exclusivity prompts lawsuit

Luxury fashion brand Hermès was accused of unlawfully forcing shoppers to buy products like scarves and homeware before getting their hands on the famous Birkin handbags. Two California shoppers alleged in a lawsuit that Hermès violates U.S. antitrust law by effectively bundling goods or tying the Birkins to other purchases, according to The Business of Fashion. The brand is known for playing hard to get; it tightly controls supply and prospective buyers often find themselves on a waitlist. “In many ways, Hermès violates all the rules of the modern retail environment, which is to make shopping as effortless as possible,” The Washington Post wrote in 2015. Whether it violates the rules of antitrust law will be up to the courts to decide.

Hollywood has an archival crisis

An “entire era” of indie cinema could be lost due to poor preservation of digital archives. Changing formats, file corruption, and lost physical storage media mean that thousands of films of the last few decades are disappearing, especially smaller-budget ones. One archivist told The Hollywood Reporter that “we find issues with every single show or film that we try to preserve.” Similar archival issues impacted Hollywood’s early era, resulting in the permanent loss of many silent pictures and B-movies, including Alfred Hitchcock’s second feature, The Mountain Eagle. Experts worry that many more recent films will similarly become “true goners.”

Sen. Michael Bennet; Sen. Ron Wyden; Kevin Scott, CTO, Microsoft; John Waldron, President & COO, Goldman Sachs; Tom Lue, General Counsel, Google DeepMind; Nicolas Kazadi, Finance Minister, DR Congo and Jeetu Patel, EVP and General Manager, Security & Collaboration, Cisco have joined the world class line-up of global economic leaders for the 2024 World Economy Summit, taking place in Washington, D.C. on April 17-18. See all speakers and sessions, and RSVP here.

March 21:

• Reddit holds its initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange.
• The UN’s nuclear arm hosts its first-ever summit in Brussels, attended by South Korea, Japan, the U.S., China, and France, along with nuclear energy supply-chain providers.
• China’s state oil and gas company announces its 2023 financial results.

A “surreal and hilarious” Japanese video game turns 20 this week. PlayStation 2’s Katamari Damacy — where the player is a tiny prince who must roll a rice ball around earth to replace the moon and planets that the universe’s drunk king destroyed — cost around £650,000 to make. It symbolized an era of ambitious Japanese game development that did not require big budgets, resulting in “a bunch of short, surreal, often rather broken games that existed only because someone really wanted them to,” a fan of the game wrote in The Guardian. The game was never released in Europe, but teens found a way to import it off the internet.

• Finland is the world’s happiest country as US rank drops.
• The senators who could fill Trump’s national security cabinet.
• Biden admin awards $8.5B to Intel for advanced chips.