Syria’s quest to build its own Silicon Valley

16 September 2025 at 05:00

At the end of November, Hamza Hourani’s phone rang. It was a cloudy morning in Damascus, and some Syrians were quietly stocking their cupboards as rebel fighters marched south toward...

An aerial photo showing the Syrian capital Damascus.

Countries are struggling to meet the rising energy demands of data centers

Rest of World

By: Daniela Dib and Pablo Jiménez Arandia

15 September 2025 at 05:19

Behind a miles-long gray wall in the central Mexico town of Colón, a Microsoft data center portends the future for other data centers in the country. Unable to plug into...

The myth of sovereign AI: Countries rely on U.S. and Chinese tech

Rest of World

By: John Popko

12 September 2025 at 05:00

Every government aiming for sovereign artificial intelligence has roughly the same mantra: build their own ChatGPT, leapfrog into AI leadership, and be free of foreign dependence. It’s a compelling narrative,...

The cold truth about EVs: Freezing weather slashes battery mileage

Rest of World

By: Arsalan Bukhari and Kinling Lo

11 September 2025 at 05:00

Bashir Ahmad sold his wife’s gold jewelry to buy an electric three-wheeler that would revolutionize his apple business in Kashmir. Until winter arrived and killed it. On a freezing morning,...

A boy pushes an e-rickshaw in a snowbound area of Rafiabad, Jammu and Kashmir, India, on January 19, 2025. (Photo by Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

How Vietnam’s military built one of the hottest tech companies in Southeast Asia

Rest of World

By: Lam Le

10 September 2025 at 05:00

A Vietnamese military-owned company has quietly become one of the most ambitious state-backed technology firms in the world. Viettel, launched by Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defense in 1989 to build...

Is Apple’s iPhone 17 launch a win for India? We asked experts

Rest of World

By: Mehboob Jeelani

10 September 2025 at 02:48

Apple launched the much-awaited iPhone 17 on September 9, defying geopolitical headwinds and complications in its effort to decouple its supply chain from China. The company will produce all the...

Apple iPhone 16 Pro smartphone on display at the Apple Inc.

How a movement against corruption on Nepali social media triggered unrest and death

Rest of World

By: Rest of World Staff

9 September 2025 at 06:30

Nepali Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has resigned following two days of protests against rampant corruption and inequality, exacerbated by the government’s recent decision to ban some social media platforms...

Demonstrators try to break through police barricades during a protest against corruption and the government's decision to block several social media platforms, in Kathmandu, Nepal, September 8, 2025. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar

Latin American musicians say AI is stealing their streams

Rest of World

By: Laura Rodríguez Salamanca

9 September 2025 at 05:00

Afro-Chilean artist Nekki has been spreading her anti-racist message through her reggae-rap lyrics for years, but recently, she feels like she is being blocked from reaching a wider audience. She...

Indigenous group in Brazil takes TikTok to court over planned data center

Rest of World

By: Laís Martins

8 September 2025 at 05:00

In late August, an Indigenous group in the Brazilian state of Ceará, in the country’s northeast, brought a formal complaint before federal authorities, asking them to halt the development of...

Part of the Anacé from the traditional land hold up a banner in protest against the data center that reads "we are not a data center backyard".

LLMs can never be fair and other scientific AI findings

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran

5 September 2025 at 05:00

Artificial intelligence is one of the most researched fields in technology today. As more companies launch large language models and more users embrace generative AI, researchers are studying their potential...

EV jobs are starting to slip away

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

4 September 2025 at 05:00

The electric vehicle industry is cutting staff faster than smoke. More than 30,000 workers have lost their positions at electric-vehicle makers and related industries worldwide over the past year, according...

Employees work on a Trumpchi brand vehicle production line at the Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. Ltd. (GAC) plant. Trumpchi, the Chinese auto brand established in 2010 and now preparing for U.S. sales, has become a topic of debate as owner GAC considers whether American consumers would love or hate the marque with a name similar to that of the controversial former U.S. president.

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In Taiwan’s Silicon Valley, tech workers are fueling a mini baby boom

Rest of World

By: Hsiuwen Liu

3 September 2025 at 05:00

Has a tech corner of Taiwan generated the baby boom some in Silicon Valley are yearning for? A covey of U.S. billionaire tech elites have urged Americans to have more...

My mom and Dr. DeepSeek

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

2 September 2025 at 05:00

Every few months, my mother, a 57-year-old kidney transplant patient who lives in a small city in eastern China, embarks on a two-day journey to see her doctor. She fills...

China’s chip startups are racing to replace Nvidia

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

1 September 2025 at 05:00

DeepSeek said last month that its latest artificial intelligence model is compatible with domestic AI chips that would be released soon, unleashing a surge of interest in a handful of...

Why China has a tech manufacturing advantage over the U.S.

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

29 August 2025 at 05:00

China is good at making things and is getting better. Since launching economic reforms in the early 1980s, it has become the world’s hub for producing everything from toys to...

The 2025WAIC World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.

Chinese EV makers are cashing in on Western luxury knockoffs

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya and Kinling Lo

28 August 2025 at 05:00

Chinese automakers are imitating not to flatter but to profit. Companies such as Chery, Xiaomi, and Zeekr appear to be drawing heavily from premium Western car designs, banking on familiar...

AI robot dolls charm their way into nursing the elderly

Rest of World

By: Michelle Kim

27 August 2025 at 05:00

In her tiny sunlit Seoul apartment, Kim Jeong-ran sat on her bed, talking affectionately to a cloth doll perched on her lap. “Hyodol, you’re my lovely granddaughter,” the 81-year-old said,...

Kim Jeong-ran, 81, speaks with her Hyodol, an AI-equipped companion robot, at her home in Gungdong, Guro-gu, Seoul, South Korea, Jul 23, 2025.

The dirty truth behind the e-waste recycling industry

Rest of World

By: Yashraj Sharma

26 August 2025 at 05:00

In the dead of a cold December night in 2023, at a dump near Delhi, hundreds of men huddled around small bonfires, clutching paper cups of tea. They tossed plastic...

Workers dismantle discarded electronic items at e-waste informal market in north-east Delhi.

How Africa’s e-commerce giant is fighting off Shein and Temu

Rest of World

By: Damilare Dosunmu

25 August 2025 at 05:00

Competition has been steep for Jumia, Africa’s largest e-commerce platform, especially from major Chinese companies like Temu and Shein. Jumia is now using the same playbook its Chinese rivals have...

Francis Dufay, chief executive officer of Jumia Technologies AG.

The Mongolian startup defying Big Tech with its own LLM

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

22 August 2025 at 05:00

Silicon Valley firms are rushing to train artificial intelligence models with tens of thousands of graphics processing units, and offering multimillion-dollar salaries to star researchers. Meanwhile, in Mongolia, Badral Sanlig...

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