The global struggle over how to regulate AI

By: Katie McQue · Laís Martins · Ananya Bhattacharya and Carien du Plessis

21 January 2025 at 06:00

In March 2024, a Brazilian senator traveled on a commercial flight to Washington, D.C. Marcos Pontes, a 61-year-old former astronaut, had become a central figure in the effort to regulate...

EV sales in Ecuador are surging despite crippling power cuts

Rest of World

By: Carolina Loza León and Daniela Dib

16 January 2025 at 06:00

In 2020, Priscila Chalán, a taxi driver in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, ditched her gas-fueled car in favor of an electric vehicle made by Chinese company BYD. She was...

A view of Quito before a national scheduled fourteen-hour blackout on October 25, 2024.

Everything you need to know about Xiaohongshu

Rest of World

By: Rest of World Staff

15 January 2025 at 16:00

Xiaohongshu, which translates to “little red book” in Chinese, is a lifestyle e-commerce and social media platform. Think Instagram meets Tiktok: an app whose feed offers an infinite scroll of...

A phone screen showing Xiaohongshu, which translates as "Red Note" or "Little Red Book", on January 15, 2025 in Suqian, China.

Despite tensions, U.S.-China AI research collaborations are alive and well

Rest of World

By: Khadija Alam

15 January 2025 at 06:00

The field of artificial intelligence has long been dominated by the U.S. and Europe. Recently, however, AI research has become more collaborative across countries outside of the West, according to...

U.S. TikTokers flock to Xiaohongshu, baffling and bonding with Chinese users

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo and Viola Zhou

14 January 2025 at 17:02

American high school student Venus Rios sparked a flurry of chatter when she posted this week on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, writing in Chinese characters. “Hi Chinese netizens! I...

Singapore is turning to AI to care for its rapidly aging population

Rest of World

By: Reeta Raman

14 January 2025 at 06:00

Twice a week at a senior care facility in Singapore, a few dozen elderly men and women with dementia gather in a large sunlit room with Dexie, a humanoid robot,...

Global fact-checkers were disappointed, not surprised, Meta ended its program

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

10 January 2025 at 12:06

Meta’s fact-checking partners around the world are disappointed — but not surprised — by Facebook’s move to do away with fact-checking by trained teams. In a January 7 blog post,...

FILE -- Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 31, 2024.

Starlink is now cheaper than leading internet provider in some African countries

Rest of World

By: Khadija Alam and Damilare Dosunmu

10 January 2025 at 06:00

Starlink, launched in 2019 by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has become the leading satellite internet provider in the world. Now available in more than 100 countries, Starlink can also be a...

FILE -- A Starlink satellite internet antenna at the Manakieaway village of the Marubo people in Brazil's Acre state, on April 6, 2024. A panel of Brazilian Supreme Court justices voted on Monday, Sept. 2, 2024, to uphold a decision by one justice last week to block the social network X across the country because its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to suspend certain accounts.

Foxconn stops sending Chinese workers to India iPhone factories

Rest of World

By: Selina Cheng and Viola Zhou

10 January 2025 at 06:00

Foxconn is halting new work rotations for its Chinese employees at its Apple iPhone factories in India, and sending Taiwanese workers instead, according to five people familiar with Foxconn’s operations...

Employees test mobile phones on an assembly line in the mobile phone plant of Rising Stars Mobile India Pvt., a unit of Foxconn Technology Co., in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, India, on Friday, July 12, 2019.

The little ride-hailing app that could catch up to Uber and Bolt in Kenya

Rest of World

By: Damilare Dosunmu

7 January 2025 at 06:00

Peter Mutei, a ride-hailing driver in Nairobi, gets his gigs through Uber and Little, a Kenyan ride-hailing platform. Uber gives him more business overall, but he still prefers Little, as...

A picture taken on February 4, 2016 shows Kenyan taxi parked in a street of Nairobi, waiting for clients, on February 4, 2016.
In Kenya, Uber has made a big splash on the market in 2015, to the chagrin of taxi drivers accused of retaliating in recent days by multiplying acts of vandalism and assaults against their competitors.

The Philippines is creating a ChatGPT rival that speaks Filipino and Taglish

Rest of World

By: Angel Martinez

23 December 2024 at 06:00

ChatGPT impressed millions of internet users when it was first launched in December 2022. To Filipino Elmer Peramo, though, it felt familiar. After typing in some prompts and seeing the...

Why so many influencers are running for election in Indonesia

Rest of World

By: Michelle Anindya

18 December 2024 at 06:00

The social media feed of Indonesian singer and content creator Vicky Shu generally features her clothes, makeup, and family. But when she decided to run for the regional elections in...

Pakistan’s mass transit is failing. BusCaro thinks it has the solution

Rest of World

By: Zuha Siddiqui and Ananya Bhattacharya

16 December 2024 at 06:00

The day mass transit startup Swvl announced its decision to downsize operations in Pakistan in June 2022, its country general manager Maha Shahzad fully grasped the dire circumstances that female...

Demand for Starlink in Zimbabwe is overwhelming capacity

Rest of World

By: Chris Muronzi

13 December 2024 at 06:00

When Alois Kachere decided to order a Starlink kit after the company’s launch in Zimbabwe in September, he hoped to be the first person in his neighborhood to get the...

Malaysia tightens grip on internet, in blow to online freedom

Rest of World

By: Tashny Sukumaran

12 December 2024 at 06:00

Malaysian digital artist Kitty Misa, like many other creators in the country, had long used the ArtStation site to showcase her work. Since the site was blocked by the government...

Mexico is using an AI-powered app to prevent suicides

Rest of World

By: Lillian Perlmutter

12 December 2024 at 06:00

Last fall, school administrators at the University of Yucatán asked Abraham Slim, a 23-year-old medical student, to fill out a survey on his smartphone. The questions on the survey did...

When disaster strikes, the world opens WhatsApp

Rest of World

By: John Beck

11 December 2024 at 06:00

Fidaa Maksour, a dispatcher with the White Helmets, a volunteer organization that operates largely in the war-torn northwestern region of Syria, was on duty in the early morning hours of...

Movie stars, matchmakers, and aunties: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable cultural force

Rest of World

By: Sonia Faleiro

10 December 2024 at 06:00

It’s a warm September afternoon in Lagos and filming of the Nollywood slapstick comedy Osas and Nosa is delayed for the day. The scene being shot takes place in the...

How WhatsApp ate the world

Rest of World

By: Issie Lapowsky

9 December 2024 at 06:29

Shivika Sabharwal’s nerves kicked in the second she spotted the size of the crowd. It was mid-September, and Sabharwal was standing center stage inside a massive event space at Mumbai’s...

The most surprising tech champions of 2024

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou， Lam Le， Daniela Dib， Damilare Dosunmu and Ananya Bhattacharya

6 December 2024 at 06:00

Lesser-known tech companies were rewarded by changing headwinds outside the West this year. India’s homegrown EV industry, a Chinese video game that became a soft power success, and a U.S.-based...

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