Digest

World and business news. The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a “plurality of worlds”

Fighting an Ocean of Plastic With a Plucky Pump

Fighting an Ocean of Plastic With a Plucky Pump

The results of three recent separate studies are staggering, the oceans are filled with about 5 trillion bits and bobs...

From Grey to Green: Smokestack Cities Power to Bright Future

From Grey to Green: Smokestack Cities Power to Bright Future

Bicycle highways, urban farms and local energy hubs — just some of the ways that yesterday’s smokestack cities are turning...

Frog-count App Aims for Deep Dive into Australia’s Population

Frog-count App Aims for Deep Dive into Australia’s Population

An Australian museum has teamed up with computer giant International Business Machines to count the country’s native frog population, and...

Bloomberg Gives $50 Million to Aid Shift from Coal Worldwide

Bloomberg Gives $50 Million to Aid Shift from Coal Worldwide

Former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is donating $50 million to help nations around the world shift from...

FBI Yet to Access Texas Shooter’s Phone

FBI Yet to Access Texas Shooter’s Phone

The FBI has yet to gain access to data on Devin Kelley’s phone four days after the former airman killed...

Video Games Could Be Next for Snapchat, China’s Tencent Says

Video Games Could Be Next for Snapchat, China’s Tencent Says

Chinese gaming and social media company Tencent Holdings Ltd. on Thursday flagged video games and ad sales as areas where...

Philippine Outsourcing Industry Braces for Artificial Intelligence

Philippine Outsourcing Industry Braces for Artificial Intelligence

The outsourcing industry in the Philippines, which has dethroned India as the country with the most call centers in the...

Congress, Silicon Valley Seek Common Ground on Social Media Interference

Congress, Silicon Valley Seek Common Ground on Social Media Interference

Executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter faced anger from lawmakers last week over their platforms’ roles in Russian interference into...

Mnuchin to Fill Fed Vacancies, Awaits Yellen’s Decision

Mnuchin to Fill Fed Vacancies, Awaits Yellen’s Decision

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that Janet Yellen has not said yet whether she plans to remain on the...

US Commerce Secretary to Sell Stake in Firm With Russian Ties

US Commerce Secretary to Sell Stake in Firm With Russian Ties

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross plans to completely divest from a shipping company that counts a Russian gas producer with ties...

EU Pushes Cut in Car Emissions, Boost for Electric Vehicles

EU Pushes Cut in Car Emissions, Boost for Electric Vehicles

The European Commission said Wednesday it wants to cut emissions of carbon dioxide from cars by 30 percent by 2030...

FBI Again Finds Itself Unable to Unlock a Gunman’s Cellphone

FBI Again Finds Itself Unable to Unlock a Gunman’s Cellphone

The Texas church massacre is providing a familiar frustration for law enforcement: FBI agents are unable to unlock the gunman’s...

Twitter, Snapchat Tweak Products to Lure More Users

Twitter, Snapchat Tweak Products to Lure More Users

Struggling social media platforms Twitter and Snapchat are taking on new looks as the services seek wider audiences in the...

Looking at Stars from a Jumbo-Jet

Looking at Stars from a Jumbo-Jet

To learn more about how stars are formed, astronomers look at light coming from deep space that illuminate events that...

Tech Training Brings Hope to Young Refugees in Malawi

Tech Training Brings Hope to Young Refugees in Malawi

Microsoft and the U.N. Refugee Agency have partnered to teach about two dozen young refugees from around East Africa how...

Venezuelan Crisis Spawns Boom in Gambling

Venezuelan Crisis Spawns Boom in Gambling

Players line up beside a small kiosk in a poor neighborhood to choose animals in a lottery game that has...

US Senate Panel Targets Chinese Banks with North Korea Sanctions

US Senate Panel Targets Chinese Banks with North Korea Sanctions

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee unanimously backed new sanctions targeting Chinese banks that do business with North Korea on Tuesday,...

Exploring Egypt’s Great Pyramid From the Inside, Virtually

Exploring Egypt’s Great Pyramid From the Inside, Virtually

A team of scientists who last week announced the discovery of a large void inside the Great Pyramid of Giza...

National Assembly: Venezuela’s January-October Inflation 826 Percent

National Assembly: Venezuela’s January-October Inflation 826 Percent

Inflation in Venezuela’s crisis-hit economy was 826 percent in the 10 months to October and may end 2017 above 1,400...

US Demining Cut Provokes Cambodia

US Demining Cut Provokes Cambodia

A U.S. decision to cut funding for a demining program in Cambodia threatens to further worsen a feud between Phnom...

Indonesia Threatens to Block WhatsApp Messaging Over Obscene Content

Indonesia Threatens to Block WhatsApp Messaging Over Obscene Content

Indonesia on Monday vowed to block Facebook’s WhatsApp Messenger within 48 hours if the service did not ensure that obscene...

Snapchat Outage Prompts Complaints on Twitter

Snapchat Outage Prompts Complaints on Twitter

Snapchat faced a worldwide outage for at least four hours on Monday, prompting a flood of complaints on rival mobile...