Indonesia, home to the world’s largest nickel reserves, struggles to achieve its EV dreams

3 February 2025 at 06:00

Karawang county, located about 90 minutes by road from Jakarta, has been a major automotive hub in Indonesia for decades, housing factories of companies like Yamaha and Toyota. Last July,...

Brazil’s push for comprehensive AI regulation

Rest of World

By: Rest of World Staff

31 January 2025 at 06:00

This report is adapted from Rest of World’s recent feature “The global struggle over how to regulate AI,” written by Katie McQue, Laís Martins, Ananya Bhattacharya, and Carien du Plessis. ...

The statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Non-Western founders say DeepSeek is proof that innovation need not cost billions of dollars

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

30 January 2025 at 10:15

During a trip to India in 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked controversy when he said it was “hopeless” for a young team with less than $10 million to compete...

DeepSeek has been celebrated by some outside of Silicon Valley as an affordable alternative to ChatGPT

Meet Eva, the AI chatbot based on a woman in prison

Rest of World

By: Santi Carneri

30 January 2025 at 06:00

María Fretes, a Paraguayan social worker, had long wondered about the lives of imprisoned women in the country. Then, one day in November, many of her questions were answered by...

India’s open arms approach to AI

Rest of World

By: Rest of World Staff

29 January 2025 at 06:00

This report is adapted from Rest of World’s recent feature “The global struggle over how to regulate AI,” written by Katie McQue, Laís Martins, Ananya Bhattacharya, and Carien du Plessis. ...

Supporters of Bharatiya Janata party cheer during a felicitation program organised for Gujarat State Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel (not pictured) in Ahmedabad on December 8, 2022. - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party won by a crushing landslide in his home state, election results showed December 8, in a strong performance ahead of a national vote due in 2024.

Filipino tech workers demand protections in AI bill after Rest of World report

Rest of World

By: Michael Beltran

28 January 2025 at 06:00

Filipino digital workers launched a coalition to lobby for labor and free speech protections in the workplace as artificial intelligence is deployed. The AI tools raise new risks, and the...

Members of Code AI held a briefing on January 25, 2025 in Quezon City, Philippines.

Vietnam’s unlikely innovator: a military-run postal service

Rest of World

By: Lam Le

27 January 2025 at 06:00

On Christmas Eve in 2024, a warehouse in suburban Hanoi kept pace with the festive season frenzy. Thousands of packages intended for Shopee and TikTok Shop customers were off-loaded, sorted,...

“TikTok refugees” drove a global Xiaohongshu boom

Rest of World

By: Khadija Alam

24 January 2025 at 06:00

Ahead of the short-lived U.S. TikTok ban on January 19, so-called TikTok refugees flocked to popular Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu. In the U.S., the app was number one on...

The secret sauce of Chinese social media apps

Rest of World

By: Tiffany Ap and Kinling Lo

24 January 2025 at 06:00

In the days leading up to the January 19 deadline for TikTok, users in the U.S. scrambled to find alternatives. But instead of YouTube, X, or Instagram, the so-called TikTok...

Chinese owned apps that specialize in social commerce like Lemon8, Xiaohongshu and TikTok have dominated American attention.

The winners of Rest of World’s photography contest

Rest of World

By: Munira Mutaher

23 January 2025 at 06:00

Like last year, the majority of the entries in our 2024 photography contest captured on-the-ground realities of how technology is transforming lives in every corner of the world. We received...

Why Amazon is struggling to crack Argentina

Rest of World

By: David Feliba

23 January 2025 at 06:00

A few weeks before Christmas, Amalia Bulacios found the perfect gift for her daughter. The Disney Princess backpack she wanted was around $40 on Amazon — a fourth of what...

An automated bar code reader scans packages prepared for shipping at an Amazon Fulfillment center on Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, US, on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. Over the past weekend, US buyers spent a record $10.9 billion online, according to data from Adobe, and the company expects consumers to splurge another $13.2 billion on Cyber Monday.

The global struggle over how to regulate AI

Rest of World

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...

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