Flagship

Hezbollah pagers explode in attack

Hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously across Lebanon Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring more than 2,000, in an attack that the Iran-backed militia blamed on Israel. Hezbollah had ordered its fighters to get rid of smartphones that could be targeted by Israel, but the historic scale of this attack sends a message to the group that “‘We can get you anywhere,’” a Middle East expert told The Wall Street Journal. The Israeli military has not commented on the attack, which comes a day after it warned of a tougher stance against Hezbollah, stoking fears of a broader conflict at a time when Israel sees an opportunity “to decapitate Hezbollah’s capabilities,” a security analyst told Al Jazeera.

Instagram to make teens’ accounts private

Instagram will make teenagers’ accounts private by default and show them less adult-oriented content, in a sweeping overhaul of how minors use the app. The changes, which will affect more than 100 million under-18s worldwide, come as parent company Meta seeks to counter a wave of lawsuits alleging that its platforms keep young people addicted while feeding them harmful content. One key change that shows parents what topics their teens are viewing and which accounts they are messaging has led to concerns that it could threaten the privacy of vulnerable users. “We think we’ve found a decent balance [between safety and privacy],” Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri told The New York Times. “But I’m sure we’re going to get a bunch of feedback.”

Weak demand for new iPhone in China

Chinese retailers are already slashing prices of the new iPhone 16 ahead of its release, suggesting cooling demand for Apple’s products in the world’s largest smartphone market. E-commerce sites like Pinduoduo and Taobao have slapped discounts of up to 11% on the new phones. Analysts attributed consumers’ tepid response to the fact that the latest devices will be released in China without their flagship artificial intelligence features, which will only be available in the country next year. “Intense competition” from domestic players is also impacting the demand for iPhones, an analyst told the South China Morning Post, with preorders for Huawei’s new tri-folding phone reaching nearly three million just hours after it was unveiled last week.

Georgia passes Russia-inspired law

Georgia’s parliament passed a Russian-inspired law Tuesday curtailing LGBTQ rights. The law, which bans same-sex marriages, prevents people from officially changing their gender, and empowers authorities to cancel Pride events, was condemned by the European Union. Georgia has long aimed for EU membership — some 86% of Georgians support accession to the bloc — but the current government appears to be sabotaging those ambitions in order to retain political power and not upset Moscow, Politico wrote. October’s parliamentary elections are being seen as a referendum on whether Georgia “remains aligned with Western democratic ideals or veers closer to Russia’s sphere of influence,” a conservative DC-based think tank argued.

Google bows to pressure in Chile

Google said it would rework from scratch its plan to build a $200 million data center in Santiago, Chile after opposition from locals and environmentalists. The tech giant’s decision comes months after a Chilean court partially revoked its 2020 permit, siding with activists who complained that the data center would exacerbate Santiago’s yearslong drought by using residents’ water supplies to cool its servers. The artificial intelligence boom has accelerated Big Tech’s use of water: Google’s water consumption increased by 22% between 2020 and 2022, according to the Financial Times. Critics have described Google’s plans to build data centers in Latin America as “data colonialism” that exploits countries’ “cheap water, electricity, and lax environmental standards,” conservation news outlet Mongabay wrote.

SK’s nuclear energy shift

Nuclear power was South Korea’s biggest source of energy in the first half of 2024. Coal and gas each produced 28% of the country’s electricity, while nuclear reached 32%, analysis showed. Seoul has targeted nuclear in recent years, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 which hit global fuel prices: Earlier governments had planned to phase out nuclear power, but President Yoon Suk-yeol reversed the decision. It’s a good sign for the country’s burgeoning nuclear industry, which is one of the world’s largest exporters — the state energy company KEPCO is either building or planning to build reactors in the UAE, Brazil, Kenya, Ukraine, and the UK, among other places.

Indian scientists warn of political influence

A group of Indian scientists are sounding the alarm about possible political influence over a prestigious research award. A letter signed by 26 scientists last month raised concerns that at least two of their colleagues, who had criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, were dropped from the list of those selected for the National Science Awards. Modi plans to invest nearly $6 billion in scientific research to better compete with China, but his “domineering style of governance” has scientists worried about political interference in funding and director appointments, the Royal Society of Chemistry argued. One of the letter’s signatories told The Wire India that if “ideological control” had compromised the award, “it is a matter of great public concern.”

September 24, 2024 | New York City | Request Invitation

President Lazarus Chakwera, Malawi and Dr. Monique Nsanzabaganwa, Deputy Chairperson, African Union Commission will join the stage at The Next 3 Billion summit — the premiere U.S. convening dedicated to unlocking one of the biggest social and economic opportunities of our time: connecting the unconnected.

Trade tensions hit food

Food trade has become the latest geopolitical flashpoint in East Asia. South Korea imported more kimchi — almost all from China — than it exported in the first half of 2024, the Financial Times reported. Korean kimchi costs six times more than Chinese, thanks to weak consumer demand in China that has led to cheap goods flooding global markets. US-China trade tensions are a “double-edged sword” for Seoul, one researcher told the FT: Curbs on China allow Korea to export more goods to the US, but the increase in Chinese exports to other countries hurts Korean companies’ sales in those markets. Meanwhile, China has turned to South America for seafood imports, Nikkei reported: It banned Japanese seafood after Tokyo began releasing wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Moderna’s promising cancer vaccine

Moderna is optimistic about its mRNA cancer vaccines. It released new data from a small early trial into a broad-spectrum vaccine targeting several types of solid tumor, including lung cancer and melanoma, which showed promise: The pharma giant’s CEO said that its melanoma-specific vaccine could be available as soon as next year. Unlike most vaccines, the ones for cancer are given to patients who already have the disease, and help the immune system recognize tumors. mRNA technology’s flexibility means the vaccines can be individualized for patients’ tumors or, as in the broad-spectrum case, designed to work “off-the-shelf” targeting features common to many kinds of cancer.

Unreadable music hard drives

Around a fifth of hard disk music archives from the 1990s are unreadable. The music industry moved from magnetic tape to hard disk storage towards the end of the last century, as old master copies were deteriorating. But hard drives are failing too. Data recovery company Iron Mountain told Mix magazine that it receives thousands of industry archives each year to remaster, and a huge percentage are unrecoverable, even among those carefully stored in climate-controlled conditions. “Historic sessions from the early to mid-’90s… are dying.” It’s not just music that is grappling with fragile archives. “You cannot trust any medium,” reported Ars Technica, “so you copy important things over and over, into fresh storage.”

September 18:

• US Federal Reserve makes rate cut decision.
• China’s commerce minister meets EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis on proposed EV tariffs.
• Netflix premieres What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates, a five-episode series.

A London exhibition pays homage to a preeminent British sculptor who is “often overlooked,” The Guardian wrote. Alison Wilding is known for creating experimental works that juxtapose a vast array of materials — alabaster, Iranian string, and once, a desiccated frog — in precarious ways. Testing the Objects of Affection, at the Alison Jacques gallery, traces Wilding’s career from the New British sculpture of the 1980s, which saw artists turn away from minimalism and conceptual art in favor of a more traditional approach, to the abstract style she is known for. While her objects “remain firmly placed in our world,” she said, she hopes they nonetheless offer “a glimpse of an alternative order.”

• Capitol Hill’s bipartisan outrage at Secret Service: ‘They failed twice.’
• Top US antitrust cop says DOJ will overhaul how it reviews bank deals.
• The UAE wants to transform climate finance by capping its own returns.